Weeping is not one of my distinguishing features. Between the two of us—moisture and me—there is no particularly intense, intimate relationship that one can depend on. It is true that I am the water’s child, and my feet carry the flavor of salty sand. I am like as can be to a seashell as I move along the ground; in my cupped palms I conceal the reverberations of the Gulf. If you were to scratch at my memory, you would see nothing but astounding blue and boats and the splash of the tides. But it is true as well that I have inherited a superabundance of weeping that goes back to an ancient era. Ever since Karbala, ever since the death of that young man so long ago, we Shi‘is have been weeping, and our tears never have dried up. And since Karbala we have come to understand our weeping as an ongoing, never-ending daily act, a deed that is always there. It is not seasonal, selling us its goods and leaving town. And so, I do hold inside of me a profuse reservoir, tears that exhaust me every night, but I do not cry.
