The gesture of grief and self-flagellation was known as latmiya. In various corners of the world, there were Shias who engaged in a more forceful, sometimes bloody latmiya, self-flagellating with chains, cutting their foreheads and beating them with their hands to make the blood flow—just as Easter passion processions run the gamut from parades through villages in Italy to actual crucifixions in the Philippines. Lebanon had been on the tamer side. But now Ashura, and every funeral of a Hezbollah fighter, was an occasion for mobilizing, indoctrinating, and forcefully thumping one’s chest.
