The Day of Kerbeh
later with the other women to Damascus, is buried in a
beautiful Kufic tomb in the Maidan with Shi'a and Sntvm
graves around her and sixteen of the severed heads of
Kerbela.
Then, in the morning, a moment of stillness fell on the
surrounding army. The first arrow was shot. The slow,
heart-rending process of the day is told. Fought to a
finish, it ended in the death of every one of the small band
(every combatant is said to have been beheaded after the
battle and seventy only were counted), and the last scene
comes as the head of Husain is laid before Obaidallah in
Kufa, and as he spurns it with his foot, an old man's voice
in the crowd is heard to say: " Deal gently with it, for, by
God, many a time have I seen those lips kissed by the blessed
lips of Muhammad/'
History has stopped since that day in Kerbela and Nejf:
they live on their memory of hate.
I drove between them one day along the desert strip in
a rather derelict taxi and tried to save the lives of huge
lizards who tramp there in large numbers with clumsy,
scaly steps and often end like Diehards under the Wheels
of Progress. The taxi-driver liked tunning over them, and
when I remarked that they were, after all, harmless, said:
" No. They creep up to a flock of sheep from behind, and
suck the udders of the ewes without their noticing."