Ashura

Today is the tenth day of Muharram. This is the day that Shii'ite Muslims mourn the passing of Hussein Ali. You can get more of its history at Wikipedia. My goal is to give you a picture of how they mourn.
Again, for Afghanistan, I need to go back a bit and explain ethnicity here. There are many ethnic groups in Afghanistan. This is part of the reason it is so difficult to unite them. There are Pashtuns (the Taliban was made up of Pashtuns), Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and a myriad of other groups.
Most people in Afghanistan are Sunni Muslims. The Hazara people, who are the people that I happen to have a lot of contact with are Shi'ite (also known as Shia). They look more Mongolian that typical Afghan, and because they are Shias, they tend to be persecuted, especially by the Pashtu.
In the city that I live in, there was a massacre of Hazaras during the Taliban. I have a friend who literally ran with her husband and two small children to the mountains when the Taliban invaded this area. She was still hemorrhaging from the birth of her second child.
So, today is the day for the Hazaras to mourn their hero. They do this by flagellating themselves with chains into a bloody mess. It is one of the most difficult holidays here. The calls to prayer from the local Shia mosque are mournful to begin with, but the singing that lasts all night for Ashura is dark and frightening. It reminds me of the phrase from Lord of The Rings that says, "there is a fell (deadly) voice in the wind." I have to sleep with ear plugs to block out the heartbreaking pain of the voice.
When they work themselves up into such a frenzy, there is no telling what will happen, so needless to say we expats don't leave our house on Ashura for safety sake.

In addition to the sadness of people beating themselves to the point of sometimes having to be hospitalized, this is the coldest winter that many can remember. It gets down to 8-11 F every night, and there is no central heat here.