KARBALA, IRAQ – In the holy city of Karbala during the commemoration of Arbaeen, the story of the killing of Imam Hussein 1,400 years ago, resonates down through the centuries. It's in the plastic containers of cold water handed to sweltering pilgrims, not just for hydration but in remembrance of the water denied to the Imam and his followers before they were killed by a powerful army.
For many of the 20 million pilgrims attending this year, the killing this year of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his family by Israel and the United States is a thundering echo of grave injustice against the Shia Muslims. Iran said more than three million of its pilgrims attended Arbaeen ceremonies in Karbala.
Some, like Maryam Ghanbari, showed their devotion by walking 200 miles from the Iranian border.
"More people came to Arbaeen this year because they want to avenge Agha's blood," said Ghanbari, using the Persian honorific for the slain Iranian leader. This was the ninth pilgrimage for the municipal worker from Mazandaran province.
Arbaeen commemorates the beheading of Imam Hussein in 680 in the Battle of Karbala, when the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed was killed in a dispute over who should become the heir to the faith's founder. It was the moment that caused the schism between the Shia, who followed Hussein – and the Sunnis, who gathered around his rival.
The festival is commemorated by the world's roughly 200 million mainstream Shia. Iran is the world's most populous predominantly Shia nation.
Suppressed for years under Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's rule, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq opened the door for Iraq's Shia majority to take power, including reviving ceremonies central to the Shia faith. Iran, which fought a devastating eight-year-long war with Iraq in the 1980s, turned from an enemy to an ally of the new Iraqi government.
Two decades after the U.S. toppled Saddam and oversaw his execution, Iran has a seemingly unshakeable hold on the Iraqi government and security forces. During the ongoing U.S. war in Iran, Iran-backed militias that are now officially part of Iraqi security forces have launched rockets and drones at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and military positions in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Echoes of other wars
Many Iraqis, as well as Iranians, see the U.S. and Israeli war as a war against the Shia Islam.
Ali Aadi Khairi and his cousin Sajjad Haitham Latif, both 18, walked five days from the Iraqi city of Kut to get to Karbala. Two days ago, a stick attached to the large image of Imam Hussein they were carrying broke. They walked the final two days carefully holding the image between them. On the corner of the image portraying the imam with long hair and piercing green eyes were photos of Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abdul Mehdi al-Muhandas, the late head of Iraq's Iran-backed forces. The U.S. killed them in an airstrike near Baghdad airport six years ago.
"In Iran the U.S. attacked the schools and the granddaughter of Khamenei," said Khairi, referring to the U.S. Tomahawk missile which hit an Iranian elementary school in southern Iran in February, killing 120 children, according to Iranian health authorities. Khamenei's 14-month-old grandchild was among the family members killed in the U.S.-Israel strike on his home.
For weeks before Arbeen, pilgrims set off on foot for Karbala, some carrying flags with images of Imam Hussein in the searing heat. Hospitality tents along the highways and inside cities along the pilgrimage route offer free meals and shelter. Many Iranians arrive on package tours which include bus fare and a week's stay in budget hotels in Karbala.
Inside the Imam Hussein shrine, pilgrims in men's and women's sections press against the gold and silver-encrusted latticework around the spot where he was killed, many striking their foreheads in grief. Millions of mirrored tiles reflect the crystal chandeliers and gilded walls. For Arbaeen, the lights inside the shrine and the flags fluttering from its golden dome are switched to red – the color of vengeance.
Outpouring of grief
The sound of sobbing underlays chanting in dozens of dialects woven together in a single expression of sorrow for Imam Hussein and his companions and family, killed and taken captive in the defining event of Shia Islam. Many of them call out to Hussein and his slain relatives – seen as part of every Shia's family. In the men's section, some of the Iranian pilgrims add a Persian suffix of endearment as they cry out to Husseinjan.
Outside, processions of young men in 120-degree heat carry images of Khamenei. Some hoist Iraqi and Iranian flags joined together. Some of the religious chants refer to the trip back to Karbala from Damascus by companions and relatives of Imam Hussein to reunite his severed head with his body on the 40th day of mourning in 680 C.E. The battle of Karbala is known to every school Shia child in Iraq and Iran – re-enacted every year by participants in period costumes – often with horses and camels.
On a covered walkway between the Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines this week, metal fans blow a cooling mist. Shrine guards flick sticks with ostrich feathers at female pilgrims lingering too long in the shade to try to keep the flow of people moving. Medics treat heat stroke and other ailments from trailers while an announcer calls out an endless stream of names of people separated from their families.
While Iraqi Shia in particular still express gratitude to the U.S. for toppling Saddam and helping to fight ISIS militants a decade later, many now believe that the U.S. and its Gulf Arab allies are intent on destroying the region.
A show of Shia power
Naser Zadih, 38, a teacher from Tabriz, says Khamenei's killing has hardened support for resistance against the U.S. and Israel.
"It helped this movement get more depth. It got deeper and more targeted. It has helped us flaunt the power of Shia more to the face of the world to show that the Shia are building their own civilization," he says.
Asked about the economic hardship of the war, the schoolteacher says that Iranians have learned to deal with it as part of "the culture of resistance."
Like the Iranian government, he says the U.S. is not interested in negotiations. "We can talk to someone who actually wants to talk," he says.
Iranians on religious pilgrimage are disproportionately supporters of the country's Islamic regime. In upscale hotels in Karbala, a city some 55 miles south of Baghdad, wealthier Iranians dressed in black fill the lobbies. None of those asked will speak to U.S. media. One man says he is afraid of repercussions in Iran.
Near the shrine, Mohammad Yasin Ahmadi, 15, has come from the Iranian city of Qom on his second pilgrimage. He says many Iranians came this year because of Ayatollah Khamenei, who visited Iraq in the 1950s but was never able to come as Iran's supreme leader.
Before Khamenei was buried in July in his hometown in Iran, his body was brought to the Iraqi holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.
"Most people came for him this year," Ahmadi says. "This Arbaeen has the scent and the feeling of the Ayatollah."
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