Did you ever participate in the matams as well or just watch?
I did participate in the matam, it was more of a musical experience for me, now looking back I realize that. When you have crowds of people beating anything (their own chests in this case) in unison, it creates a sort of trance like state, the monotonous rhythm that is. Plus the chanting/singing is usually very melodic and sometimes actually beautiful, if you have an ear for rhythm and music. I used to sing the nohas too, with my mom and later by myself, and lead the chorus in the singing - the whole enchilada. It's how I learned to sing, and where I developed a bug for performance and poetry, so in a way, I'm glad I went through all that. Though I wouldn't go back now, no way. I use the singing/performance/poetry/music in other ways now.
And did you ever cry? I'm just wondering because I find it hard to understand how they could cry so easily about something they had only read about in the books and never saw with their own eyes.. i think i would have to try very hard to make myself cry.
Y'know that was the strangest thing to me. I felt bad about these characters Hussain, Asghar, Abbas, Zainab, Sakina etc. whose highly mythologized (a term I learned later) stories were repeated in every majalis (several ones each year are held in both private homes and public mosques). I felt bad for them like I would feel bad for any character in any story who goes through torture and a painful, slow death. But I never, even when I believed in Islam as a whole, ever understood why the extreme emotional attachment some people seemed to show to these at most historical figures, and possibly just mythical composite characters in what is essentially a tribal/folk legend. Some people seemed to be really deeply crying over the events at Karbala. Like it was happening NOW. Like it was happening TO THEM.
Some years later, I once asked one of the older ladies how to get myself to cry like those people who seemed to be wailing and walking around with red puffy eyes all evening. She told me to just imagine the worst thing I could imagine that has happened to me or could happen to me, and then let the tears flow.
I wondered about this later... all this grand religious ritualistic spectacle was really like a giant group therapy session. Where nobody was talking about their own actual issues, but were all using this mythical story as a way to purge their own sadness and fears, a pseudo-catharsis that is probably a very human thing to do, cry sometimes, let the steam off, but it comes, in this case and in most cases of religion, wrapped in unquestioned traditions and imaginary characters, mythology and ritualized self-flagellation.
I don't think that's a nice way to talk about allat's family etc
No offense taken. LOL I've said the same thing about some of them.
Topic: Funny cleric crying (video)