But the day of the year is the day of the death of Husain when the nakhl is carried and the great passion play of the death of Husain and Hasan is played.
This is a general holiday and all through the early part of the day, the villagers come trooping in to the towns. The streets are now full and processions pass along them carrying the nakhls from the squares outside the smaller mosques. In some towns, too, they carry alams, or long poles with a series of handkerchiefs tied to them. When the processions from two different quarters of the town meet there is generally a struggle, often ending in a free fight; so both alams and nakhls are now forbidden in some towns.
I only once met a procession myself, and then it most politely halted to allow me to pass comfortably.
The smaller processions being over, everyone crowds to the large squares to see the carrying of the great nakhls of the big mosques.
The nakhls are wooden frameworks carried on poles and hung on one side with looking-glasses, on the other with daggers. Those in the large squares are of immense weight. They are said on this day to be carried across the square by Fatimeh, Muhammad’s daughter, but it is a work of great merit to help her, so as many as can possibly get within reach of the poles join in the work, and the nakhl moves across the square. But the afternoon is the best part when the great play of the death of Husain and Hasan is acted. Then, indeed, there is wailing and beating of breasts. “I enjoy it more than anything in the year,” one lady told me.
One year there was a little boy dangerously ill with inflammation of the lungs when the great day came round. It was considered quite out of the question for any of the family to stay away from the play to nurse him, and being a boy he was not likely to obey the woman servant who was being left in charge of the house. “He would have been all over the roof trying to get a glimpse of the play,” his mother said, “and probably would have fallen off, so we had to take him.” So they took a mattress for him, and he lay and listened to the play from a gallery, and of course got up to watch the exciting parts. It very nearly killed him, but they seemed to feel they had taken the only reasonable course, and he eventually recovered.
CHAPTER VI
PERSIAN SWEETS
In a Persian town there is a curious arrangement of the shops. All the shops where one kind of article is sold are generally grouped together in one street or bāzār. To buy shoes we go to the shoe bazaar, for cooking pots to the copper bazaar.