Page 105 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat
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sitting up oil a chair above all the other people. Just after I had finished
my coliee the mullah arrived. There was a stir among the people, who
left off smoking as he made his entrance from a distant comer of the hall.
He was a tall, sallow man with a saturnine expression. His beard was
dyed black, he had a prominent nose and large, expressive eyes. He wore
a black, round turban, a black cloak and a green scarf round his neck,
which he used with dramatic effect while he was preaching. His voice was
rather hoarse, he had been preaching for several hours each day for the
last eight days, but it carried all through the hall and the people who
thronged outside the barred windows could hear what he said; he
possessed the histrionic skill of a Victorian tragedian, but the story which
he proceeded to tell needed little dramatization to wring the hearts of
his audience.
At first he spoke quietly and softly and the audience listened, silent,
with rapt attention. His voice increased in volume and intensity as he
began to tell the piteous story of Husain; there were occasional groans
and choked sobs from one or two of the older men. Then he became
Waller Sanders—courtesy 'Life' Xfagazine. 1952 Time Inc. more dramatic, describing the scene on the plain of Kerbala, pausing
In Court. On the bench, C.D.B. and Shaikh Daij bin Hamcd every few minutes to wipe the tears from his eyes; sometimes the story
became a chant in what sounded like blank verse. Now men in the
audience were weeping without restraint, swaying to and fro. With his
A Palace dinner party. Left to right: H.R.H. the late Amir Abd-al-Ilah of Iraq, Shaikh
Mohammed bin Isa, Lady Belgrave. On the dish a young roasted camel voice breaking with sobs the preacher began to tell of Husain’s last
moments; how, when he was wounded and exhausted, with the dead
Photo. Bahrain Petroleum Co.
body of his little son in his arms, he sank down outside his tent , overcome
by thirst, and drank some water, and as he drank an arrow, shot by one of
the enemy, pierced his mouth. The preacher buried his face in his scarf
and his body shook with sobs. Not a man in the audience was dry-eyed,
and even the ‘modem’ youths were swaying and crying. Then came the
climax. The preacher, half rising from his chair, leaning forward above the
hundreds of swaying, weeping men, described the death of Husain, and
how the horsemen of the enemy rode over and trampled on his body.
Now everyone in the audience was in a frenzy of emotional excitement;
men beat their chests and foreheads and the hall resounded with moans
and cries. Nobody, not even I, could feel unmoved at this harrowing
story of over a thousand years ago. For a minute the preacher sat silent
while, the mass of men swayed and moaned, some of them bursting into
paroxysms of hysterical sobbing.
Then, suddenly, without a sign or a signal, every man was on his
feet. The old men moved out of the way into the aisles of the building.
The younger men, stripping off most of their clothes, which they wrapped
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