Word: birthdaying
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...night of my birthday party I noticed the neighbors across the street weaving colored lights into the trees of their huge yard frontyard, unfurling a Koranic banner from their second-story balcony, and arranging dozens of chairs around their veranda. Within an hour their guests had taken up all the parking spaces in a three block radius, and a speaker attached to an immense sound system began congratulating everyone on the Twelfth Imam's birthday. The voice launched into an excited sermon, detailing how God concealed the Mahdi -- the last in a line of Shi`ite imams descended from...
When I first noticed my birthday this year would coincide with the birthday of the Twelfth Imam, a revered figure in Shi`ite Islam, the possibility of a scheduling conflict didn't occur to me. After all, the Twelfth Imam, also known as the Hidden Imam or the Mahdi, has been occulted since 874 A.D., and the festivities held in his honor are usually a daytime affair...
...party off and the din rising, I resigned myself to sitting on the balcony and spying on the neighbor's festivities. The buffet tent and the chairs were filled with men, so the female members of the household were either invited to an all-women's Twelfth Imam birthday party, or confined to the house. I couldn't see the speaker, but his voice transfixed the all-male assembly, rising to extol the Mahdi's virtues (immortal, pure)."He may even be among us right here right now, in this very gathering!" he exclaimed, looking about exaggeratedly. The idea that...
...Iranians have celebrated the Twelfth Imam's birthday for centuries, but it was only after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that the holiday was celebrated by draping Tehran in tinsel and colored lights, much like a Western city during Christmas. The government honors the Mahdi's birthday with more fanfare than it treats other arguably more prominent Muslim holidays. This year, out on a short trip for groceries, I ate Mahdi birthday cookies on one street, and was offered a cold fruit drink at a nearby square. The result of this government-nurtured devotion to the Mahdi has transformed the piety...
...well (on the male or female side). Caretakers fish the letters out regularly, and burn them nearby. If you happen to be walking through the area, it's common to find half-scorched fragments of letters to the Mahdi in the grass. On the occasion of the Mahdi's birthday this year, the government installed 60 new payphones at Jamkaran, and extended Iran's mobile network coverage to the site...