During iGolide 002, Iman Isaacs presented a performance entitled Day of Atonement. It grappled through movement and dance with questions of heritage, spirituality and the self. Sadly there is no surviving documentation of the piece, although the following is a reflection on the engagement by the performer herself:
A minority of Shia muslims engage in an annual celebration of Ashura. For Shias, Ashura commemorates the killing of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in 680 CE. They consider Hussein to have been the one true heir of Muhammad’s legacy. Through self-flagellation, Shia muslims mourn hussein’s death and express regret for the fact that they were not present to fight for and save Hussein and his family.
Trapped, in the north of India, amidst a vast mass of Shia peoples on the day of Ashura:
People marched by the thousands through the streets / Hitting their chests / Cutting their foreheads / And whipping blades from side to side / Slashing their flesh / Sons mimicking their fathers / Drenched in blood / The rattling of chains and blades / And pieces of jagged metal as they hung / Suspended against the grey skies / Before tearing through wilted flesh / The smell of blood perforated the air / I struggled to breathe / To move / To find the dots that connect me to this ritual / Alienating myself from the Islam I thought I knew.