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there was one thing he was very afraid of . . . he was afraid of the righteous voice of Imam Husain—grandson of the Prophet, son of Fatima and Ali, who is our first Imam—who lived in Medina. There were some people who remembered the Prophet, still, and who remembered the goodness that he had taught them—to feed the poor, to take care of widows and orphans, to remember that this life is but a journey of return. That when it is done, we will be held accountable for the harm we cause to others and ourselves. Those who remembered these lessons were loyal to Imam Husain. And Yazid considered this loyalty a threat to his power. He demanded that Imam Husain pay allegiance to him as ruler, but Imam Husain, who knew what a corrupt man Yazid was, refused.
    Later, louder voices intruded on the quiet scenes of anticipation that the older women had set, as younger women, for whom the call of piety was a less immediate concern than the social need to be seen as pious, and wealthier women, whose day-to-day lives had little to do with the deprivation and sacrifice the gatherings were intended to honor, greeted one another warmly, lowering their voices only to exchange the latest news of community misfortune and scandal, which the congregation surreptitiously served the purpose of spreading.
    The people of the city of Kufa, who like so many others had begun to forget, invited Imam Husain to their city as a spiritual teacher. He accepted their invitation, leaving Medina to make a pilgrimage to Mecca on his way there.
    Husain knew that his life was in danger because he had refused to bow down to the will of the tyrant Yazid, but he traveled only with his family and friends, not with an army. Imam Husain’s caravan, after leaving Mecca and on its way to Kufa, was forcibly stopped in its path by Yazid’s army. They were made to camp at Karbala, near the banks of the River Furat—the Euphrates. There, Imam Husain told Yazid’s forces that he had no wish to fight them, no desire for blood to be shed. He asked them to let him go home. Peacefully. They refused.
    Three days before the tenth of Muharram, their access to the banks of the river was cut off by Yazid’s forces, and they had no water to drink and no food supplies left. On the night before Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram, Imam Husain urged his friends to leave him to his fate, not to sacrifice their lives for his. Not one of them listened. Instead, one of Yazid’s military commanders, Hurr, the very one who had arrested Husain’s journey in the first place, forcing him to stop at Karbala, came over to the Imam’s side, knowing full well what this decision meant—certain death. The next day, one by one, the men from among Imam Husain’s companions battled forth, hungry and thirsty, in his defense.
    A small group of women then gathered near the pillow placed in front of the carefully tended altar, a table dressed in black, which was set up at one end of the room—the back wall of which was lined with long poles, draped in rich fabrics and topped with hand-shaped sculptures made of silver and gold—around one of them, its fabric adorned with the figure of a lion, hung a mushk, a water bag, which everyone knew was for Abbas.
    Husain’s brother, Abbas, the standard-bearer, could not stand to see the plight of the thirsty, innocent children in the camp. When they came to petition him for help—their brave uncle who never denied them anything—led by Sakina, his beloved niece, he agreed to venture out, alone, to the banks of the river, to gather water for them in his mushk.
    A preliminary rustling of yellowed pages from a worn school composition notebook, whose thread and glue binding had often long since retired from service, would be followed by an exaggerated throat-clearing signal from the usually middle-aged woman in the center, who, by now, would have soberly donned a thickly rimmed pair of reading glasses.
    In a scratchy whisper punctuated by an exclamation point, the