In His Name, the Most High
سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ
Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.
Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.
Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.
Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.
Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.
Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.
— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn
The Voice of the Awaited One
This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.
And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.
Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.
The Maqtal — “The Stone With No Name”
I. A Road, and a Man Who Was Not Travelling
I was not there — but I remember.
I remember a road going east, and a man on it who was not travelling.
There is a difference. A traveller has somewhere he is going back to.
II. The Road East
They took my forefather al-Rida out of Madinah.
Not in chains — that is what makes it worse.
There was no rope on him.
There was an invitation, and a robe of honour, and a title, and soldiers to make sure the invitation was accepted.He knew.
He took his leave of his grandfather’s grave the way a man takes leave for the last time, and those who watched him never forgot it.He left a child behind him in that city.
A boy.
The boy would not see him again.They took him east — past the towns that knew his name, then past the towns that did not, out to where the language changes and nobody in the street owes you anything.
And at the end of that road they gave him a palace, and a place at court, and the second seat in an empire.
Which is another way of saying they put him where he could be watched.He was the loneliest man in that kingdom.
Surrounded every hour by men who smiled at him and wrote reports about him at night.And when they had finished using him, they poisoned him.
He died at Tus.
Far from his father’s grave.
Far from the boy in Madinah.And then they buried him, and I want you to hear where.
They put him in the ground of a house that already held a grave — the grave of the man who had spent his life hunting my family.
The father of the man who poisoned him.He was laid down beside his own family’s jailer.
There is no dignity in that.
There was not meant to be.
It was the last thing they did to him, and for a long time it worked.
A stranger, in a strange province, in a stranger’s tomb.I was not there — but I remember.
III. They Have Never Stopped Coming
And now go and look at it.
Stand in Mashhad on a Thursday night and try to move.
Count the languages.
Count the people who saved for eleven years to stand where you are standing.They buried him in a stranger’s garden so that nobody would come.
They have never stopped coming.
That is the thing none of them ever understand.
You can take a man from his city, put him at the far end of an empire, lay him down beside the one who hunted him, and think you have finished the sentence.You cannot stop people coming.
IV. The One They Cannot Come To
So they come.
They come to my forefather at the back of Kufa, who asked for that ground himself before it was his.
They come to Karbala in a single night, in numbers most kings never ruled.
They come to Madinah, where four of my fathers lie under a flattened yard.
They come to Kazimayn.
They come to Samarra, and stand at my father’s grave, and some of them turn afterwards and look at the wall, because they know I was born in that house.They come to al-Rida at Tus in their millions — in the dark, on foot, having sold things they could not afford to sell.
And of all my house, I am the one they cannot come to.
There is no stone with my name on it.
No dome, no lamp left burning, no keeper at a door.
Nowhere on this earth you can stand and say: he is here, and I have come.You have a grave for every one of my fathers.
You have nothing for me.
And I hear you anyway.
I hear the ones at their own parents’ graves on a Thursday afternoon, in cities I have never been named in.
I hear the man who says the words after the dawn prayer with his coat still on.
I hear the woman who has never travelled and never will, and who greets me every morning by name.You think that because there is no address, it does not arrive.
It arrives.
V. What Are You Building?
Long ago, on a plain, men said to one another: come, let us build a tower, and let us make ourselves a name.
That is what they were after.
Not the height.
The name.
Something with their word on it still standing when they were not.They got neither.
And I have no name written anywhere on this earth.
Not on a stone, not on a door, not over a threshold.
No mason has ever been paid to cut my name.You will not find me by looking for it.
You will find me the way you were always told to: by getting up, and going, and greeting people who cannot be seen — until the day it is my name they carve, and it is not on a grave.
I was not there — but I remember.
And I am not gone.
May our Lord hasten my return.
Sources Cited
Al-Kafi, the Book on Dying People, the chapter on Visiting of the Graves
Kamil al-Ziyarat, the chapter on the Merits of Visiting the Believers
Uyun Akhbar al-Rida, the chapter on visiting al-Rida at Tus
Nahj al-Balagha, Saying one hundred and thirty
Genesis, chapter eleven, verse four
What are you building?
