Ramadan in the Middle East

I should have listened. You can’t forget something that scars you permanently.

It’s Ramadan. I stand before the row of black tents, heavy-duty polyester fabric forming the roof and walls. They’re called Heyats. A place to mourn the death of Imam Ali.

My mother has this theory that Iranians aren’t religious. She says that most Iranians are forced to celebrate Ramadan out of fear of the government’s power. “Iran was an empire! We had a king” She enunciates the past tense words.
I tug my chador that isn’t properly positioned closer, and follow my mother inside.

Smell. Pungent. It burns. Sweat pouring from the glands of overweight women pollutes the airtight tent. Piss stained carpets lie like tiles, covering every inch of the concrete floor, the women pressed against one another like Lego pieces. I sit down, my arms wrapped forcibly around my legs, tucking in my elbows to take up even less room than what is available to me.

A voice charges through from the amplifiers. I’m told that somewhere in the men’s tent next door, a mullah waits on his makeshift throne, lounging. His microphone perched in his hand, ready to begin his prayer.

He begins. Singing. Chanting. Preaching. His voice ranges from high to low, low to high, from angry to sad and vice versa. He makes weird, incoherent noises, as if voicing a cartoon character in heat, and I begin to question if this guy knows what he’s doing. Does he know what he’s saying?

I start off scared. Then horrified. Then petrified. All this for an Imam.

It begins in soft sobs. Whimpers. Whines. Then it booms. Shrieking, wailing, howling. The women claw at their faces, wail like banshees, palms turned towards the sky, their heads shaking. Cries fill my eardrums, looping in like a song on full blast. It dances around my brain, runs through my blood stream and makes home in the pits of my stomach.




It doesn’t end.
Fainting, tantrums, hyperventilation. A seizure. I see things I’d never seen before. Bile forms in the back of my throat. My mother was wrong.

I push my fingers in my ears; my palms press my eyes shut. I see black and blue. I hear the thud of my heart. It doesn’t drown out the tornado of cries. It doesn’t blur the images I saw.
Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop!



Time passes slowly.



I think about earlier when my aunts had tried convincing me to not go to a heyat, “It’s no place for you child.”

I should have listened. You don’t forget something that scars you permanently.