In Memory of Bibi Zainab

    In remembrance of Bibi Zainab S.A.— an older piece of mine titled, "Zainab in the Garden of Ibrahim, in the Furnace of Namrood," and another piece titled, "Amamah."

    The first piece compares the state of Zainab S.A. in the court of Yazeed with the condition of Abraham A.S. in the furnace of Nimrod; when Abraham is thrown into the fire, his faith in God is embodied as a garden, a cooling oasis that springs forth from the flames. Similarly, Zainab S.A., when forcibly de-veiled and marched through Yazeed's court, responds with strength, power, and resilience. When Yazeed asks her to recount the humiliation of her brother and companions at Karbala, Zainab throws the question in his face by famously responding, "I saw nothing but Beauty." This Beauty of just anger and resistance—of seeing Allah SWT's grand plan in the face of oppression, in dwelling within His ever-existing Jannah in the face of a transitory, illusory world—elevates the formidable presence of the oppressed over that of the puny tyrant. This is what "Zainab in the Garden of Ibrahim, in the Furnace of Namrood" attempts to convey.

    The second piece, Amamah, evokes the memory of three figures: the first, Hussain A.S., martyred at Karbala, his head placed on a pike (which figuratively sprouts with life, becoming a new, extended body), as he watches over his sister Zainab S.A. confer the Amamah (the turban) of the Imamate to his son, Zainul-Abideen A.S.

    Here is where the illustration becomes a bit untraditional; rather than the silsila of Ali A.S. continuing directly from Imam Hussain to Zainul-Abideen A.S., it appears to stop in Zainab S.A.'s hands first. Indeed, for much of her life after Karbala, when a traumatized Imam Zainul-Abideen A.S. (understandably) retreated into a non-political, quiet life of asceticism, Zainab S.A. acted as the public voice of the wilaya, establishing some of the very first traditions of aza (ritual mourning).

    I have discussed the role of feminine anger in the ways of the Divine before. Here too my Tamil perspective leaks onto my work; Zainab S.A., in her public humiliation of Yazeed's caliphate, is not unlike Kannagi of the Silappatikaram epic, who burns the city of Madurai down at the unjust beheading of her husband. The source of her power is the "Ananku," a controversial and much-debated phenomenon of sacred feminine power in premodern Tamil society. A woman's Ananku is withheld and nurtured by her chastity and observance of social expectations; if her role ever ventures beyond her household, then her Ananku breaks free from her grip and threatens the patriarchal society which attempts to confine it. The Ananku thus operates somewhat paradoxically as both a tool of patriarchal regulations, in its inert form, as well as an eruption of violently feminine anger against the atrocities of men, in its active form. When Kannagi transforms from the meek, loyal wife to an anti-tyrannical revolutionary, her Ananku sets the Pandiya kingdom ablaze. Similarly, Zainab S.A. post-Karbala, her hijab forcibly removed as she is paraded in chains alongside the other captured women and children, accompanied by the heads of the martyred, has lost nearly everything dear to her; it is in this state, at the height of her suffering where her "Ananku" is set free, that she crushes the legitimacy of Yazeed's caliphate.

    As Kannagi raises her broken anklet, Zainab S.A. rattles her own fetters in her demand for justice—a cry that resonates into every era, within every movement against fascism.