The Hosay

Zorina Shah

A Hosay memory in this month of Muharram

My father built the Hosay for years in our rural village of Fullerton, Cedros. It was a community project which took place in an empty lot owned by the Dolsinghs, next to our house. He and young men in the village built a camp out of used galvanise and lumber. 

While my father mobilised the adults for various tasks, my sister, not yet in her teens gathered girls from the village to make hundreds of rosettes from crepe paper, decorated with sequins of many colours. The rosettes would then be used to cover the entire surface of the tadjah, the main frame, pillars and dome. I myself was not so good at the rosette-making so a rap in the knuckles was always on the card. Only the builders were allowed inside the camp.

This picture of the sunset to herald the start of the
 lunar calendar was taken by Jim Rakesh on Tuesday
 evening, July 18, 2023, off the coast of Guyana

Each village on the southernmost part of the Cedros peninsula built its own Hosay- Bonasse, Bois Bourg, Fullerton and Icacos. My brother told me there was a time when the people of Coromandel, a community a little to the east, also built a tadjah. They mounted it on the tray of a truck and transported it to Bonasse Village for the parade. 

As children, we were involved in the Hosay events on afternoons after school and at nights, but invariably the parade of the tadjah fell on a school day. When it first emerged in the night, it was impressive but our village was still without streetlights, so we lost some of the majesty. The first time we saw the Hosay in daylight, in all its splendour, glittering in the midday sun with the decorations we had made was when it passed in front of our school. It left the camp for the parade southward through the hamlet of Lochmaben and a small collection of houses in a place known as Chip Chip. We were allowed into the school yard for the parade, back and forth, more likely because our teachers wanted to observe the spectacle. I don’t remember ever seeing my father in the parade. In reflection, I believe that he handed over the Hosay after the rituals on the 10th night of Muharram, maybe two or three hours after the sunset and never rejoined it until the next sunset.

Second of Muharram

This image of the second day of the new moon
to begin the lunar year, at 2.5%,
was taken by Stonehenge drone in 2022.

Third of Muharram:

The lessons of the Hosay are those which we witness, of community and freedoms and preserving traditions and culture. The greater lesson is that of standing up to the oppressor. Husayn put himself on the frontlines for his people, leading, negotiating for solutions and paying the ultimate price when all else failed. 

My concern has always been that people who overcome these calamities are themselves willing to employ the tactics that they survived and impose that horror on others.

On October 30, 1884, British troops fired on about 6,000 participants in the Hosay procession in Trinidad, killing 19-22 people and injuring hundreds. That event took place less than a hundred metres from where we now live in San Fernando. This collage on the "Hosay Massacre" is put together by my friend Wayne Chen.

Fourth of Muharram:

I remember how I loved Maleeda, but I had never eaten it since I left Fullerton when I was eleven years old. I can now say that a few days ago for the observance of Eid ul Adha 2023, the feast of the sacrifice, a friend of our family brought some for us, though it tasted much different from how my mother made it.

Maleeda is a North Indian delicacy which was served at the Hosay in our village. I would see my mother making maleeda, as I imagine other women in our village did. The base for the maleeda is something like a paratha roti but without salt and with lots of ghee. The texture allowed it to be crushed into small bits. The sugar and spices were then added and it was rolled into small balls. 

No one ate from the maleeda until the Hosay reached the chowk and after the women dressed in white performed the rituals. I stood in the front row just where my sister placed the sweet that my mother had made, so I could put out my hands to be among the first to receive the maleeda.

Occasionally my mother made maleeda specially for us. Once when I won a poetry recitation competition for primary schools in County St. Patrick, I asked for maleeda. Instead, three days later we all sat on the floor around the fire as my mother made jalebi. The jalebi was more popular with my older sister and younger siblings and one we didn’t have too often.

Fifth of Muharram: Oral History, The Chowk.

The chowk in our village of Fullerton was located in a big yard where the families Dulal, Ramdeen, Jaggernauth and Cooper lived and behind the home of our teachers Anthony and Ena George. It was just about 200 feet from the Hosay camp.

The chowk is a square earthen block on which the tadjah is placed. The base of the tadjah is built for the chowk, not the other way around. It is a permanent spot prepared for the observances each year and is visited by the builders of the Hosay on Flag Night, on the night of the small Hosay and again on the tenth of Muharram, to offer prayers for this significant date on the Islamic calendar especially for Shi’i Muslims. I believe that every Hosay in St. James has its own chowk as do the villages in the deepest points of the south western peninsula. 

I have written before of an indentured labourer who in packing his jahaji bundle sacrificed some essential items in order to include his harmonium. There is also a story of an indentured labourer bringing dirt from a chowk in Northern India to include in his own chowk, most likely one in San Fernando, but who very generously shared with those who introduced the Hosay in other villages.

The theatre is a reenactment of the battle on the plains of Karbala, in Iraq and the two Hosays, the big and small represent Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and Husayn's six month old son. The infant was held aloft by his father when Husayn asked the Ummayads for a safe passage through the plains for his companions and became the first casualty. The elder grandson Hasan died in 670, ten years before the Battle of Karbala. These events are well documented.

You know I cannot write without saying something silly, so I do not know if our former Attorney General Faris al-Rawi is descended from the older grandson Hasan as Hussein’s entire family was wiped out at Karbala. That could make the AG a 41st descendant of Hasan or any of the grand daughters of the Prophet. Hasan and Husayn were the only male descendants of that generation.

After the Hosay leaves the chowk in the night at the start of the 10th of Muharram, it is taken on a short journey, then returned to its resting place. The daytime parade covered the entire village, from the hamlet of Lochmaben on one end and to the northern coastline at the other end. 

Many people contributed to its construction, making it a community event. The Hosay is accompanied by flags, tassa drums and stick fights, all symbols of battle, some of the peace offering, others of aggression and then of mourning.

Sixth of Muharram- the tassa

The only tassa I ever heard in our village of Fullerton was the tassa played at the Hosay. The instruments consisted of three of the small drums hung around the neck, a two-sided bass and the cymbals called jhang. The small drums looked like part of a sphere, maybe half, the baked clay pots purchased from the Chase Village area in Central Trinidad. The covers were not the synthetic material we see today, but goat’s skin. I remember my father carefully removing the skin after the goat was killed. The skin was dried to a certain texture, the hair removed and stretched over the open end of the tassa and tied with some sort of string which we were told was also made from animal skin. 

During the Hosay procession a fire was lit at various points on the road to heat the covers to give the higher pitched notes. The small drums are played with two thin flexible sticks and the two-sided bass with a stick in one hand while the other side is played by the hand itself. Some players used both hands.

The passages called ‘hands’ are representative of what is being played out in the streets through the techniques of “cutting” and “folay” and possibly others that I do not remember.  There is the sound of the slow approach of a happy unsuspecting group of travellers, a hint of aggression, slowing again as there is an offer for a peaceful resolution, the initial attack, the response from the traveling side, the clash of battle and the soulful mourning period. 

Our family friend Kelman Bharat (may his soul find eternal rest) was one of the most enthusiastic players as a young man and he later built the Hosay himself. I remember Kelman crying at all the stages of the Hosay, building, processions, and as the Hosay made its last journey to the seashore just before the sunset to end the tenth of Muharram. 

One of my friends told me that her young son was so disturbed by the painful emotions evoked by the tassa at the Hosay in St. James that he covered his ears and begged to be taken away. I have never heard tassa sound as it did when I was growing up and I have attributed it to the quality of the goat skins and an understanding by the players of what the hands represent, the true story of the battle of Kerbala.

My nephew Anil describes the Cedros tassa hand

“There is a certain tassa "hand" played in Cedros that is unique...only persons born here can play it...its like "default Cedros hand"...

A war drum...when outside drummers come to "jossle"...the sign is given and the Cedros guys revert to the Cedros hand" and all is over...lol

Growing up in Primary school...we used to beat the desks...learning the "hands" come Hosay night…"

When I went to high school in Central Trinidad I heard other tassa rhythms, happy ones at weddings and different cultural events.

My biggest engagement with this music, however, was when I worked at All Trinidad Sugar Union and we hosted a “tassarama”. Mr. Panday, the president, had brought back a sound system from a foreign trip. It was a Peavey 12-microphone set. Someone from San Juan came to teach us to use it and I was most present among the two who showed up to learn. The first use was in the tassarama on the grounds adjoining the Rienzi Complex and of course I was the sound person. I thought I did well, but the leader of more than one group accused me of sabotaging their performance.

Seventh of Muharram.

"Do not follow the majority, follow the truth." Ali Ibn Ali Talib, fourth Caliph of Islam.

Imam Ali (the father of Husayn) was the first male to accept Islam as a nine-year old. The prophet called together members of his family, forty of them, to report the Divine Revelation. Only Ali professed to be a follower. The Prophet waited for an older relative to show acceptance but there was none. The family was called together a second time and again only Ali believed the Prophet. When the Prophet called them together a third time and Ali professed to be a follower, the Prophet accepted his profession of faith.

Shi'i Muslims believed that Ali is the first Caliph of Islam. Sunnis accept Abu Bakr as the first Caliph.

Eighth of Muharram.

My reading on Islamic history has focused on the period after the Abbasid Revolution which ushered in the Golden Age of Islam. This Caliphate was guided by the Hadith (teachings/sayings of the Prophet) that "the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr". There are numerous records of this saying in different forms.

The Muharram of 2020 may have been the first since 1847 that the Hosay was not observed publicly in at least one village in Trinidad and it allowed me to catch up on some of that other reading.

The Abbasids included non-Arab Muslims in the Ummah (global community of Muslims) and extended through the Levant and parts of North Africa.

As the sun sets to signal the 8th of Muharram, villagers prepared for flag night, flags and moon-shaped cut outs. The flags are intended to be those of peace, battle and surrender.

My niece's son leads the parade
in Bonasse Village. 

Ninth of Muharram

This is the night of the small Hosay a mini version of the big tadjah which represents the infant child of Husayn. The parade is similar to that of the big Hosay and the child is being shown to illustrate an offer of peace.

This picture of the Hosay moon was taken in 2022
 by Mark Baldeo, a friend of my nephew Troy Liddelow.

Tenth of Muharram. 

This picture by my nephew Vijay Manna, of the tadjah being taken out to sea at Bonasse Village, Cedros rekindles wonderful memories from my childhood on the peninsula.