Picking up from where I left, I returned home after the Shaam-e-Ghariban majlis. My parents were too worried about my back and making me feel like a Mummy-Daddy kid. They weren’t letting me pick up any weights in case my stitches came apart and I was like “What the hell, it’s no big deal!” They stopped at three different places to collect medical supplies: bandages, spirit, cotton, etc.
Back home, I had no idea what was in store for me for the next few days. My mother cleaned my back with spirit and dressed it up. I went to sleep.
The next morning I took a bath to wash the blood off my body. Before putting on my shirt, my mother came to dress my wounds again. And that’s when all hell broke lose.
I hate spirit! 
She wet a cotton swab and literally squeezed it onto my wounds. She rubbed the rest on my back. And that’s when I yelled out in pain. Spirit will make normal skin burn and go dry, talk about open cuts. Then next ten days were sheer torture!
On the tenth, she cut off my stitches. Hurt a little but all was well. And that was the end of it.
Back to the second day after Ashurah, I went back to pack and collect my Azakhana. I was reappointed as the official family driver and assigned the task of driving my mother to different majalis at our relatives’ houses.
On the 22nd of Muharram, the majlis was at my youngest phuppo’s house and I went there. The biryani was awesome. One thing I must say about Biryani in Muharram is that it get’s distributed in majalis as tabarruk and I eat it three times a day, seven days a week but I never get bored of it. Nor does anyone else. And I absolutely love it in ‘langars’. Four guys get to eat from the same platter/tasla and no one can tell who ate how much. 
Fast forwarding, the annual majlis was held at my house on the 3rd of Safar, the date of martyrdom of Imam Husain’s (A.S.) four year old daughter Sakinah (S.A.). Went to pick the Zakira near NIPA, then had to get the Soazkhwans as well. Came back, took a bath and then got busy in the management work. Man, did the men eat! Aurton ke liye to chhora hi nahin. Okay, they did leave a lot but they ate more than their share. Maybe the food was too good. Don’t know, didn’t get to eat much and I wasn’t feeling hungry in those days.
Two days later, there was a gents majlis at my eldest phuppo’s house to be addressed by Allama Zameer Akhtar Naqvi. The biryani fell short of filling up all the tummies and we had to get more. After this majlis, I went to another of his at Imam Bargah-e-Chaharda Masumeen. Later on that night, I attended one more at Imam Bargah-e-Akhir-uz-Zaman. Can you believe that he addressed 11 majalis in a span of 30 hours without sleeping? That’s gotta be a world record!
The plan of our ‘khandan’ leaving for Syria materialized as we got our passports and visas. Bound to leave on the 16th of Safar, I got busy in the preparation for the annual majlis of Karavan-e-Murtaza to be held on the 22nd of Safar in my absence. Karavan-e-Murtaza is the name of the group of my batchmates and friends from Al-Murtaza School who organize and hold a majlis every year. We got posters and pamphlets published, arranged for tents and video makers, etc. I went out with my friends to put posters up on the walls near Imam Bargahs and on the route of the main juloos on the 20th of Safar. Had to rub glue on the walls with my hand so you can well imagine how dirty they got.
Then came the unfortunate day of 13th Safar. Went to a majlis at an acquaintance’s house, to be addressed by Zameer Akhtar Naqvi of course. Returned around seven. When I left again for the Ashara-e-Chehlum majalis at Jama-e-Sibtain, I got a message which said that ISO planned to attend Zameer Akhtar’s majlis that night. I quickly forwarded it to Allama Sahab’s close friends.
When I reached the Imam Bargah, my cousin was there with two friends who were armed. Inside, Allama Sahab’s nephews made me sit in the middle of the crowd, away from my usual place near the mimber and asked me to watch around. They had already gotten the news.
As soon as Allama Sahab took the mimber, a guy got up from the crowd and started shouting slogans. Around 40-50 people stood up to reply to them and they all started moving towards the mimber. I rushed towards the mimber to stand near Allama Sahab. His close friends and associates made a wall between the ISO guys and him. But we were only a handful as compared to them. At that time, we only thought they were there to disrupt the majlis. We had no idea they would attack.
Allama Sahab stood up on the mimber and at the same moment one of them threw a brick at him. It him in the ribs due to which he collapsed on the mimber. One guy went behind the mimber and started to climb it to attack Allama Sahab. They attacked us also and I got three punches on my right eye in the process.
But our side was not unarmed. The guy to whose house I went that day for the majlis had brought his guards with him. He fired shots in the air. My cousin’s friends all did so and the attacking crowd dispersed. Allama Sahab was taken inside the mosque and armed guards were placed at the door. He kept fainting time to time from the pain in his chest. We managed to catch a few guys and gave them the beating of their lifetimes. Meanwhile, the ISO guys called for backup and around five to six hundred of them gathered outside the main gate with loaded weapons.
Allama Furqan Haider Abidi and MQM MNA Haider Abbas Rizvi arrived on the scene and met with Zameer Akhtar. More of his fans arrived at the Imam Bargah.
Now the task at hand was to get Zameer Akhtar out of the Imam Bargah to his sister’s house directly across the street. But the ISO crowd was in between. The Rangers and Police just stood there watching, doing nothing.
Soon, some of his close friends picked him up and took him outside. ISO attacked him again but he remained safe although unconscious. Some of the people carrying him got hurt but they came back inside the Imam Bargah.
One of our tasks had been accomplished and Zameer Akhtar was safe. The second was to save ourselves.
Soon, Abbas Kumaili and Mirza Yousuf Husain arrived and they tried to negotiate with the ISO crowd. We knew it was a drama as they were the main orchestrators of the whole thing.
Around half past one in the night, we came out of the smaller gate besides the main one. My father made me walk quickly towards my uncle’s car and sit in it lest anyone recognize me and attack me. After we drove of, everyone breathed a sigh of relief that we were safe. We had women with us and that was the most worrisome thing.
I couldn’t sleep for a long time that night. I never expected myself to be in the midst of such a thing and I was cursing myself for not hitting back at the guy who punched me. But more so, I was worried about the safety of Zameer Akhtar and kept wondering if there would be more attacks in the future. I decided that if needed, I would stay behind from the Syria trip to help protect him.
The next day I learned that he was alright but had been admitted to a hospital so he could relax in a safe environment. I was relieved to hear that the majalis had been canceled from Jama-e-Sibtain and would be held privately.
I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere far away from our house just in case someone recongnized me from the previous night. As I said, Mummy-Daddy… 
The night before I was to leave, I paid Zameer Akhtar a visit and he was good, chatting with his friends although he still had pain in his chest and a big bruise. I came back around 12:30 and did not sleep. Instead, I wrote down a quick blog post, took a bath and got ready. Left the house at four, flight was at 6:25 a.m.
Karachi looks beautiful from the sky at night, as Absar wrote in his post.
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I’ll write about the Syrian tour in the travel log soon, not now. The next post will continue from 24th Safar when I returned.
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