but Iraqis consider it classically Shia because it is the name of the daughter of the slain caliph Ali. Every time the teacher called on me, I felt she was labeling me. Zainab = Shia.
“I want to change my name,” I told Mama one day when she picked me up from school.
“Why, honey? Zainab is a beautiful name,” she said. “Zainab was one of the most courageous women in Islam. I thought you liked your name.”
I had always admired that historical Zainab. It was because of her that we celebrated Ashura, the night Shia commemorate the massacre of Ali’s sons with public acts of charity and mournful ceremonies retelling the massacre. In some areas Shia men flog themselves in symbolic penance for their ancestors who failed to prevent the murder of the prophet’s heirs that night. Even the public displays of charity for Ashura ended when we went to war. I’m not sure to this day if they were formally banned, or if we just thought they were; either way, they were forbidden. That year, instead of going to Uncle Adel’s house for a ritual that ended with sharing pots of steaming food with hundreds of people, we stayed home. That day, Mama listened to a voice on a distant radio station wailing the traditional stories of mourning as she prepared a single special dish, rice pudding with saffron and cinnamon.
Then, like generations of women before her, she recounted for her children how Ali’s sons and cousins were massacred on the Night of Ashura. She talked in particular that night about Zainab, who had witnessed a bloody battle in which her brothers and cousins were all beheaded. Zainab had already lost her mother, Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed and Islam’s earliest heroine, as well as her father, Ali. After the massacre, she and the other women and children were taken prisoner by the man who had led the uneven battle, and she dared to speak out against him to his face. So eloquent and powerful was she that he became afraid and sent her into exile. She spent the rest of her life spreading word about the atrocity and urging others to repeat the story so no oppressor could ever commit such an injustice again.
I loved that story of Zainab. But I was a preteen. I didn’t want to stand out. I wanted to fit in. It had nothing to do with religion, I told myself. Zainab was an old lady’s name, and I just wanted to be called something cool, like Jasmine.
Mama was right, you can’t freeze life, not even for war. In that first year after war broke out, my baby brother began to walk, I got my period, and I found out that my mother was keeping secrets that could take her away from me.
I was the very last one of my friends to get my period. Every other girl I knew got hers before I got mine. This is an important rite of passage everywhere, but particularly in Islam, where a girl is treated as an adult and starts fasting at Ramadan. In some societies, she takes a veil. In our more liberal circle in Baghdad in the early 1980s, it meant that I was supposed to stop swimming with the boys and girls at the Hunting Club and start swimming with my aunts on days set aside for women, which as far as I could see was the only downside of being an adult. I learned about reproductive health, as we later called it in school, when Mama and I went to pick up my friend Wasen to spend the night with me. Her mother was in London at the time, and when I went inside her house to get her, she said something was wrong with her, that she was bleeding “down there.” Her grandmother was home, but she was uncomfortable talking to her about it.
“Don’t worry,” I told her confidently. “My mother’s a teacher. You can ask her. Mama knows about everything. ”
When we went outside, I got into my normal seat in the front of the car next to Mama, and Wasen climbed in back. I started tuning in the radio, and when Wasen didn’t say anything, I finally turned to Mama and told her that Wasen had a secret question to ask her.
Wasen leaned over, put
“I want to change my name,” I told Mama one day when she picked me up from school.
“Why, honey? Zainab is a beautiful name,” she said. “Zainab was one of the most courageous women in Islam. I thought you liked your name.”
I had always admired that historical Zainab. It was because of her that we celebrated Ashura, the night Shia commemorate the massacre of Ali’s sons with public acts of charity and mournful ceremonies retelling the massacre. In some areas Shia men flog themselves in symbolic penance for their ancestors who failed to prevent the murder of the prophet’s heirs that night. Even the public displays of charity for Ashura ended when we went to war. I’m not sure to this day if they were formally banned, or if we just thought they were; either way, they were forbidden. That year, instead of going to Uncle Adel’s house for a ritual that ended with sharing pots of steaming food with hundreds of people, we stayed home. That day, Mama listened to a voice on a distant radio station wailing the traditional stories of mourning as she prepared a single special dish, rice pudding with saffron and cinnamon.
Then, like generations of women before her, she recounted for her children how Ali’s sons and cousins were massacred on the Night of Ashura. She talked in particular that night about Zainab, who had witnessed a bloody battle in which her brothers and cousins were all beheaded. Zainab had already lost her mother, Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed and Islam’s earliest heroine, as well as her father, Ali. After the massacre, she and the other women and children were taken prisoner by the man who had led the uneven battle, and she dared to speak out against him to his face. So eloquent and powerful was she that he became afraid and sent her into exile. She spent the rest of her life spreading word about the atrocity and urging others to repeat the story so no oppressor could ever commit such an injustice again.
I loved that story of Zainab. But I was a preteen. I didn’t want to stand out. I wanted to fit in. It had nothing to do with religion, I told myself. Zainab was an old lady’s name, and I just wanted to be called something cool, like Jasmine.
Mama was right, you can’t freeze life, not even for war. In that first year after war broke out, my baby brother began to walk, I got my period, and I found out that my mother was keeping secrets that could take her away from me.
I was the very last one of my friends to get my period. Every other girl I knew got hers before I got mine. This is an important rite of passage everywhere, but particularly in Islam, where a girl is treated as an adult and starts fasting at Ramadan. In some societies, she takes a veil. In our more liberal circle in Baghdad in the early 1980s, it meant that I was supposed to stop swimming with the boys and girls at the Hunting Club and start swimming with my aunts on days set aside for women, which as far as I could see was the only downside of being an adult. I learned about reproductive health, as we later called it in school, when Mama and I went to pick up my friend Wasen to spend the night with me. Her mother was in London at the time, and when I went inside her house to get her, she said something was wrong with her, that she was bleeding “down there.” Her grandmother was home, but she was uncomfortable talking to her about it.
“Don’t worry,” I told her confidently. “My mother’s a teacher. You can ask her. Mama knows about everything. ”
When we went outside, I got into my normal seat in the front of the car next to Mama, and Wasen climbed in back. I started tuning in the radio, and when Wasen didn’t say anything, I finally turned to Mama and told her that Wasen had a secret question to ask her.
Wasen leaned over, put
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