I once followed a long speech by the late Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, in which he recounted in painstaking detail the events of “the day the Prophet’s family women were taken captive.” He was visibly and deeply moved throughout. I remember being genuinely struck by the way this painful episode was summoned as though it had occurred two or three days before, presented in a manner admitting no question of its veracity, as if transmitted by eyewitnesses whose testimony stood beyond all doubt. Images of village women weeping in churches on Good Friday, listening to the chant “Wa habibi” or “I Am the Sorrowful Mother,” came naturally to mind. But those rituals remain anchored in their spiritual dimension, not in the precise time, place, and circumstances of the event itself, unlike the Ashura commemorations and the days associated with them, among which figures “the captivity of the Prophet’s women.”
