Shafaq News- Karbala

Between the shrines of the third Shia Imam, Husseinbin Ali, and his brother al-Abbas in the heart of Karbala, a city in southernIraq held sacred by Shiite Muslims, an elderly woman moves through the crowdsunder a punishing sun, a large bottle of water in one hand and a single metalcup in the other. The pilgrims call her Hajja Umm Jasim. She is in hereighties, and for as long as many of them can remember, she has been here,pressing cups of water on the thirsty, paying little mind to her age or the heat.

The visitors come for Imam Hussein, the grandson ofthe Prophet Muhammad, who was killed at Karbala in 680 CE (the 10th of Muharramin the year 61 AH of the Islamic calendar), and whose death Shiite Muslimscommemorate each year. Serving those pilgrims, and the volunteer processions,known as mawakib, that look after them, is an act of devotion. For Umm Jasim,it was once also an act of risk.

In the years before 2003, she said, the work wasanything but free, describing hiding water beneath her abaya, the long blackcloak worn by Iraqi women, and slipping it to pilgrims unseen, fearful of beingpursued for taking part in the religious rituals that the government of SaddamHussein, which suppressed open Shiite mourning, treated with suspicion."Simply offering it could bring you questioning, harassment, evenprison," she told Shafaq News.

"Today I serve the visitors and the processionsfreely and with pride. It is a great blessing, and I thank God for it."

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Umm Jasim prefers to keep moving, carrying her waterto whoever needs it, and she says no one leaves without a share of her prayers."With every cup I offer, I pray for the pilgrim's wellbeing, their health,and that their needs be met, and for the processions and the servers who giveso much to care for people."

Her devotion has come at a cost that few of thestrangers she serves would guess. A mother of seven, Umm Jasim, lost her eldestson, a surgeon, to execution under the former regime. The loss did not turn herfrom the work.

"[Imam] Hussein is my intercessor, and today Ifear no one but God," she said. "What is left of my life, I want tospend in the service of Imam Hussein and his visitors. This service gives methe peace I find nowhere else."

Pilgrims and procession members say she has become afamiliar face between the two shrines, returning each season with the samebottle, a metal cup, and a smile that arrives just before the water does.

: Karbala, where memory breathes and future beckons