The Lamentations Series: The Ninth Night and Day Filming Locations

While the ten-day ceremony 'Âshûrâ' is a commemoration of the slaughter of the grandson of the prophet Muhammad and his relatives and companions at Karbalâ' in 680, it is also an invocation of the occulted Twelfth Imam, the Mahdî, in the hope of hurrying his exoteric earthly return. But how would the one invoked, who is (imaginally) present albeit occulted, perceive the ceremony? He would not perceive it the way we see it but in more temporal detail. While the first part of the video appears to be a documentation of the ceremony as it might be perceived by an all too human audience member, the second part of the video, which happens across a lapse of consciousness if not of being (indicated by the cut to black on the sound of the participants' hands striking their chests), and where time is dilated, implies that the essential spectator of the ceremony is the one to whom it is addressed, the Mahdî. While the participants' self-flagellation is excessive, it is even more so when perceived by its essential addressee, the Mahdî, who has keen (hadîd) perception. The video's subtitle subtly implies another excess since its "night and day" refers not only to (something that continues for) one day and one night, the ninth, but also to something that goes on all the time ("night and day: all the time" ["Oxford Dictionary of English," 3rd edition, 2016]).