Diary: Where the Elite Meet to Eat: Ashura as a Community Event in Tehran

After watching the Ashura processions last night, we were very interested to see what would happen in the neighborhood today, the actual anniversary of the killing of Hossein 1,300 years ago. Sa'adat Abad is not a particularly religious or old-fashioned neighborhood. It's known as an area where young women can get away with showing a lot of hair and where youth with money in their pockets meet at chic restaurants and shops. I can remember some years back when the mosques played tapes of crowds chanting even when there was no one in the courtyard. My thought at that time was that they were desperate to appear popular. But religious practice in Iran has changed with the times and apparently Ashura has become a community event, at least in this neighborhood.

My husband and I started our explorations on a very long street with expensive apartments where we suspected famous cooks had been hired to prepare the traditional Ashura meal. On the last two days of Ashura, religious community groups throughout the country cook a particular dish ? a meat and potato stew over rice-to feed the masses. The masses in Sa'adat Abad do not need a free lunch, most of them, but there was a line stretching the equivalent of four New York City blocks. We didn't see any Afghani construction workers in line, however. I hope they had gone somewhere of their own today and someone was cooking for them.

When I peeked into the parking area of the host's apartment building, I saw 8-10 aluminum pots, each measuring at least 2 feet high and 2 feet across, full of colorful food. A young man spoke to me in English: "If you can wait a half hour, the food will be ready then. And you don't have to stand in line." This was a courtesy to a foreign guest, I suppose, but we really didn't want to skip ahead of the line. So we walked along to see what was happening at the central circle called Kaj in front of the mosque.

We weren't disappointed. At least four separate processions had converged on the circle, and crowds of onlookers lined the sidewalks and mingled on the edges of the marches taking photos. I saw one policeman; the marchers directed traffic themselves. Most of the participants were young men of high school or college age. They looked like the boys next door, and that's who they were. Some little brothers were tagging along with tiny chain sets made of links as light as paper clips. The most impressive was a group with a singer and sound system and a whole percussion section: two snare drums, two bass drums, cymbals. Their steps, turns, and swings of chains were well synchronized, evidence that they must have practiced for weeks. They had plastered light clay on their heads, a sign of extreme mourning, but in this case it was done very stylishly. Some had smeared it so that their hair looked blonde, others had used the clay almost like gel. Centered on the front of each black shirt was a handprint in the same clay, the hand being a sign of the five martyrs.

I wonder if the thought crossed any of my neighbors' minds, as it did mine, that some of these young men would step forward to defend their mothers and their country if the unthinkable happened and the US or Israel attacked. In the years after Iraq attacked Iran, the country walked through the valley of the shadow of death. Hundreds of thousands died, tens of thousands were poisoned with Saddam's chemical weapons, and all that sacrifice succeeded only in regaining the territory that Iraq had initially seized. It's odd now to remember that at that time my husband and I weren't sure if Reagan was backing Iraq or not, and one of my in-laws who worked in a lab was the first to tell me that they were seeing blood tests suggestive of chemical weapons. So much has come out since then, but a lot of my fellow Americans don't really know the history of that war, much less the history of the U.S.-supported dictatorship of the Shah.

Today I didn't see onlookers crying or beating their chests, and the marchers were rather calm, too. (Perhaps some expressed stronger religious sentiments during services in the mosques and neighborhood Islamic centers.) What was really significant, I think, was that the performance in our neighborhood seemed to interest, rather than antagonize or embarrass, a host of relatively secular people. They've grown up with this, so it doesn't seem bizarre and scary to them like it is portrayed in the West on TV. The neighbors seem to know that these folks, although not the local high school marching band, are certainly not a bunch of scary fanatics or potential terrorists.

After checking out a few places where food was given only to people attending indoor services, we returned to the street where we'd started. Before we had a chance to decide whether to join the line or just forget about eating that stew today, a young woman pushed a container of food into my hands. My husband had told someone that I wanted to participate, and Iranians love to feed guests. It was embarrassing, but it would have been even more embarrassing to refuse and make an issue of going to the back of the line. The stew was deliciou, and there was plenty of meat in it, undoubtedly from a freshly slain sheep.

I had another thought while watching these processions today: Why don't the religious fundamentalists in the U.S. put on religious/cultural parades and pageants for their communities? They could keep it politically neutral by sticking to events that happened at least a thousand years ago--like the death of Christ at the hands of the Roman imperialists. And they could pass out free food. As long as they could resist evangelizing, I for one would attend and be very respectful. American society could definitely benefit from such a dialogue.