The songbird and his elegist mother(A.Zaak) Bulbul the songbird and his elegist mother
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A eulogy should be written immediately after a death. It is not as time-sensitive as an obituary but has a short due date. However, Bulbul's mother had a stock of a written tribute to honour anyone who died. She eulogizes laudatory speech when the dead person's family hires her in their house. She obtains and lists the achievements and character of the lost person as part of the in-house funeral mini-mass.
Whereas an elegy might be written months or years after a death, the mother also had a stock of poems and songs that lament public or religious figures who died long years ago. She inherited orally the lyrics written in old books and could also create grief poems despite being illiterate.
She was talented in howling, wailing, lamenting over a stranger's loss and expressing sorrow or sadness.
That is how Bulbul's mother made her scarce and sacred living all the year through, except for the Muharram Islamic lunar month, during which her work flourishes and becomes a para-religion-based business. At this time of the year, her profession is precisely inside a sectoral belief system with certain religious aspects.
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In Muharram, every year, the practice of Ashura rituals commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Al-Hussein, his brothers and sons. The Imam is the grandson of the Prophet Mohamed. He was cruelly massacred with his family by an army of Yazid, the second Umayyad Caliph in the Karbala region, on Ashura day, the 10th of Muharram 680 AD.
The annual mourning ceremony includes men parades in the main streets, flogging their backs with blades or chains while the watching women chant and hit their chests. The men also attend the Husseini Majalis (gatherings of sorrow) in certain mosques called Husseiniats, where they listen to a daily lecture by one of the Mullahs.
Some families hire a Mullahya (an elegist woman) in their house to read mournful poems lamenting the death of the holy family. Women from the neighbourhood attend the one or two-hour chanting rituals in these Majalis, beating their chests in a heart-rendering manner for thirty days even though the practice is less regular after the first ten days of Muharram.
The sectoral groups organizing these rituals consider the gatherings of the sorrow of Imam Al-Hussein as the announcement of the tragedy's philosophy, goals, and circumstances. They revive the message of the Imam and bring it to life year after year so that people may relate to it and apply its principles in their daily lives.
They believe his immediate descendants established the first mourning ceremony to honour him.
The tradition of elegiac poetry, known in Arabic as marthiya, had its roots in pre-Islamic times in regard to themes and form. There is beauty and effectiveness in this type of poetry. Tumadir Al-Khansa (575-646) was one of the most influential poets of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods. Her elegies included the mourning of her four sons martyred in a single battle (Battle of Qadisiyah in 636). She also mourned in poetry her two brothers who were killed earlier.
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So, in Muharram, the demand is high for Mullahs and Mullahyas. Without wasting a day, everyone was doing well, swooping down on Majalis and veering away just in time to avoid a collision.
Bulbul's mother moves from one house to another all night, reading her elegy while the attendees hit their chests in sorrow or cry. Like a faith-based business in any company that incorporates religious beliefs or values, she provides compassionate pastoral care to those women who need to cry. Her elegy citation is the input in this business, while the output is the women's tears.
Elegies for the martyrdom of Imam Al-Hussein usually involve madh (laudation) for his holy character, courage, and sorrow for his death. She used to recite phrases like:
The revolution you made is holy, O Hussein. All honest men will follow your way. Through it, the land is illuminated. You were a solid mountain where I could take refuge. He who was light, shining, is murdered. May you be spared judgment on the day when deeds are weighed. Whoever participates in a gathering where our remembrance is evoked, his heart shall be alive on the day all hearts die.
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On the Tenth day of Muharram, another activity is due; these families distribute the Qeema and Harissa that they cooked the night before to people experiencing poverty. Qeema is a lump of minced meat, tomato, and chickpea stew. The traditional Harissa is homogeneous oatmeal made of previously stewed meat and coarsely ground-soaked wheat. It was said to be a favoured dish of Imam Hussein. They are cooked on an open fire, usually in front of their houses on the side streets, using giant saucepans.
However, this activity doesn't end the Husseini Majalis, which peaked on the 40th day by walking to Karbala city and paying tributes to the Imam's (and his brother Imam Al-Abbas) holy shrines.
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With the end of the forty-day rituals, hiring the elegist mother would be very occasional to mourn someone who recently passed away in their neighbourhood.
Her son Bulbul was born in 1964 in a deprived neighbourhood. His father died from Tuberculosis, which was endemic in the region. Bulbul was raised on what the widowed mother earned and lived with her voice, reciting soulful poems and songs at home.
He was nicknamed Bulbul because he was a beautiful child with blue eyes and a small, tidy mouth like a songbird. Growing up, he was the most handsome boy in his dead spot.
Bulbul loved folk poetry like his mother. He sings as if he has a well-developed syrinx, the vocal organ of a songbird bird.
He fell in love with his neighbour's girl, who was his age and loved him back, filling his empty days. However, he was recruited to compulsory military service but promised to marry her upon his release. And she promised to wait for him.
When Bulbul completed the basic military training, they sent him to the volatile front of the war with Iran. After a few months, Bulbul was captured by the Iranians in the north sector of the front while he was singing.
They locked him in a remote camp for prisoners of war (POW) at the Iranian-Russian border. It was early 1988, the last year of the long-forgotten war.
The mother was told he was missing in action, but she didn't give up on his fate. She searched the war records of the killed and injured and followed news of the limited release of wounded POWs, trying to meet them to ask about her songbird.
Although the war ended in August 1988, a few months after his capture, It took the mother four years to receive his only letter informing her that he was alive in a POW camp. During these years, she composed many poems addressing him in despair, but with his letter, she could shine a little and combine optimistic verses because he told her good news. He said he heard in the camp that there would be an exchange of POWs from both sides, but he didn't know when. He also asked his mother to assure his girl that he was still in love and would marry her once he was released.
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Bulbul stayed 15 years in captivity in the Iranian camp. He was released and returned home coincidently on the night of Baghdad fall in 2003 following the American invasion.
The songbird found his nest abandoned. The neighbour told him his mother died three years ago after a long-suffering of elegizing him and herself. She gave up her persistence and patience after a long wait.
When Bulbul entered her room, he found his shirt and pyjamas folded neatly on his pillow with the sheets folded back the comforter of his bed.
He also found a piece of dusty paper on which she had written her last poem for him:
"I taught myself how to write to answer your letter
I thought you would feel better
The Eids come and go, and you didn't show
I waited like a candle in its tolerance row
I lit my life to receive you, but then it was melted away
I am turning into threads on the days' tray
I hoped you would be the needle netting me back
I had the buttons and the darning yarn but no soul to crack
And never more!"
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Bulbul wept and cried and cried. He kept the elegy in his pocket with his fingers, sensing its words all the time. When he got hold of himself, he went out to trace his girl to find she had married and moved far from their neighbourhood.
Bulbul was no longer that handsome songbird. He lost interest in life.
He locked himself inside his mother's room for three years. They found him dead there in 2006.
His neighbour found the poem in his pocket and arranged it to be encrypted on the grave epitaph.
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*Image from https://depositphotos.com/photos/songbird.html

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