now comes night to roof the dark horizon,
the black standard of the People of the Cloak
slides from the shoulder of ever-revolving time,
pitiless heart, let your sigh of sorrow scorch the sky!
tongue, it is time to mourn, eye, it is time to weep!
We are coming near the steps and men around me are flinching as they feel gusts of heat from the fire, still they move steadily forward, me with them, we are going up the steps. No one has stopped me, nor said a thing.
It’s like my mind is detached and floating above, I see myself mounting the stair on fours, my hands on the wooden planks, splashes of heat catch my face, beyond the topmost step is a ledge of wood, then the brick wall of the pit, from then on it’s fire. I can now hear the fire, it does not crackle or roar, it’s hissing like some giant cobra stirred up and enraged, if I had anyone to say prayers to, I would say them, but I haven’t, so I’ve started under my breath singing a different song.
I am an animal fierce and free
pure in heart I’ll never be
but not this way shall my life end
this fire itself shall be my friend
The man ahead of me steps off into the fire. Little clouds of smoke squirt from under his feet as he runs, where he has stepped the coals are dark for an instant. A voice in my head says “You shall cross,” and then my fear is gone, I’m filled with a certainty that I will do this and live, I will run across like that man did, quicker than he, I will live.
“Hey, who’s this?” A burly Yar-yilaqi guy is looking down at me. A black band is round his head, his black shirt’s unbuttoned, something of gold is gleaming in the hairs of his chest.
“I’m doing the fire,” I mumble.
“No you are not, get him out of here.” So I’m bundled back down the stairs and into the crowd.
Two feet appear under my nose, toes pointing right at me. It’s Farouq. “Ha ha, enjoying yourself, Animal? What can you see?”
“Nothing. I would have done the fire walk. They stopped me.”
“Yes, I know,” he sniggers. “Want to watch me do it?”
“Would give me a laugh if you catch fire,” I retort. Bitter disappointed I’m that I was stopped. I could have done it.
Without a word the bugger beckons to one of his chums and suddenly I’m hoisted off the ground and into the air.
“If I burn, you burn,” he says with a weird laugh, like he’s high, next thing I’m arsed to his shoulders which is exactly the last place I expect to be.
“Pray I don’t drop you,” says he from below.
It’s crossed my mind that Farouq’s not joking, he plans for me a terrible end. Or maybe he’ll trip and, oh, Animal le pauvre’s short, awful life ends in a public cremation. Now again I’m terrified.
Way above the heads of the crowd, the fire’s heat is fierce on my face. A little way off I spot Somraj and Elli. A couple of guys are looking at her in a not too comfortable way, but Zafar’s there beside them with Nisha and the surliness turns to smiles flashing. Nisha looks round, our eyes meet. Fully amazed she’s, to see me looking at her from a fire walker’s shoulders. She tugs at her dad and points, so I’ve given a wave.
All wave back, except Elli. Elli’s eyes are fixed on the pit of cokes being quickened by the bellows-men, strange eddies are playing under the red glow of the fire, her father in his hell hole, he had quietly faced such danger every day out of love for her.
Somraj is speaking in her ear, I think he’s telling her the story of Hussein, but such is the hubbub in the place, the sound of the fire itself and above all the waves of chanting Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! that she cannot hear much. Then Eyes, it comes into my head with perfect certainty what she is thinking. It’s of a different kind of fire, that Somraj had breathed, which had scoured his lungs and taken away his singer’s breath. What must it have been like, that inferno? O who will speak now for the orphans? She has heard so many stories of that night, so many accounts of that vast slaughter of innocents. Who now will speak for the poor? What must have been the terror of waking in the dead of night, blinded by acrid gas who will protect these wretched ones running out into the night gulping fumes that tore and burned your insides where now will they find refuge causing you to drown on dry land because your lungs have wept themselves full of fluid. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! That night had been cold, a night of bright stars hear what harm the heavens have wrought and all over the city, weddings were taking place for the astrologers had decreed it an auspicious time a strange wedding for Hussein, the son of Ali somehow they did not see the knot that fate had twisted for they have dressed the bride and the groom the threads of thousands of lives gathered together not in wedding clothes, but shrouds and severed, all at the same moment. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Elli feels horror, also the failure of her imagination. What music was played at this wedding? She’s unable to imagine the cries of the dying, of those who lost their families in the stampede of panicking people the thirst tormented cries of men and women whose children’s hands had been ripped from theirs. One woman there was who, knowing that she was dying instead of festive lamps, the house itself was torched wrapped her newborn son in her shawl and laid him in a doorway hoping he’d be found the colours used at this wedding were bloodstains by someone who would love him. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Elli’s thinking that this woman was perhaps lucky not to have seen the furnace that melted her son’s spine, the hammer-blows that beat his humanity out of him. She wants to give that boy back the gift of walking upright the bride’s gift was the groom’s severed head but as she thinks this she looks at Somraj and realises there is something she wants just as much in which country may a bride expect such a gift a gift for the sad, gentle man standing beside her by God I swear, never will I wish to marry another she would reach out and take his hand did she not fear he would be embarrassed, perhaps offended no, not until I am covered and in the grave how she yearns to give back Somraj the gift of his voice Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein!
The marble balconies that surround the courtyard of the fire are lined with women in dark robes. On this night most of them have pushed back their veils, their faces are lit from below, the glow softly rouges their cheeks watching with unblindfolded eyes. As I sway towards the fire on my strange two-legged steed, the men just ahead of us are placing their feet on the wooden steps as the seventy-one rode off to die. A thrill of excitement or dread goes through my body, the pitch of the chant rises.
Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein!
The black-robed Yar-yilaqi women raise their arms and bring them down hard on their chests pierced by the spears of his enemies. There are old women up there, and young pretty ones trampled by the hooves of horses I try to imagine Ma Franci in her black nun’s dress among them, she would fit, lamenting Sanjo and the death of the world, with a grief as pure as these women mourning for their lost Imam O Hussein! Never shall I forget Hussein! How their arms all rise at the same instant, and all fall, thump! Ya Hussein! thump! Ya Hussein! thump! Ya Hussein!