Najibe had already removed her shoes in the hallway, on the women’s side of the Shia Ithna’asheri Jammaat mosque in Woodside, Queens, at 48-67 58th Street. She stepped from the bright fluorescent light and linoleum floors into a large, open room filled with dark shadows. Prayer beads hung on the wall, the only light, blue and transparent, streaming from a line of high windows along the left wall. She walked through the darkness, feet silent as they stepped over the red, plush carpet to the door at the end that would lead into the women’s side of the main prayer space of the mosque. It was a wooden door, simple in appearance, with a printed paper sign stating that the Zarih room would be closed to women during Ziyarat. But once Najibe turned the knob, gauzy curtains drifted out, slightly veiling a vision of gilded, golden structures, gleaming in contrast to the dim room she left behind. The waving material and the ornate, gilded structures dazzled the eyes, as though the simple door had, in effect, become a portal to another world.
Najibe put her hands to her lips and touched each of the structures, sitting behind glass on shelves, one atop the other, in the tiny, closet-like room. In doing so, she was praying not to, but in the presence of the Fourteen Infallibles, which include the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter, Fatimah, and the Twelve Imams. Twelver Shi’ism, the sect which the majority of Shiites belong to, holds in great respect the Twelve Imams who were descended from the Prophet Muhammad, and succeeded him as spiritual and political leaders after the Prophet’s death in 632 A.D. Sunni Muslims diverged in that they believed in another line of succession. Though each sect has many aspects of Islam in common, over the centuries Shiites and Sunnis have developed differing practices, rituals, and interpretations.
The zarih room is important in the Shi’a tradition. The gilded miniature mausoleums, which Najibe’s hand passed over gently from outside the glass protection, are each a replica of the zarih of the resting place of the Fourteen Infallibles. A zarih is the actual latticed piece of metalwork that is normally constructed around a tomb either inside of a mosque or as the outer face of a shrine or tomb. Each of the Fourteen Infallibles is represented by a model zarih, a simple physical structure that indicated their holy presence. For Najibe, their presence was a type of intercession, a presence that, another worshipper noted, is similar to the concept of saints in a Catholic Church. Najibe, as a worshipper of Twelver-Shi’ism, does not worship the Twelve Imams, but looks to them as an example of how to live, and feels that nearness to them lends strength to one’s prayers to Allah.
“It’s simple. It’s a replica,” Mustafa, a worshipper at the Shia Ithna’asheri mosque said, explaining that the glittering models in the zarih room are models of the actual zarihs that exist at the graves of the Twelve Imams, and serve to stand in for those holy places, especially for those believers who do not have the resources to make pilgrimages to the shrines themselves, mostly located in Iraq and Iran. Mustafa, from East Africa, and his wife, Kira, from Pakistan, work in the kitchen to prepare the meal that will be shared by all following prayers. Both say that they personally prayed in the zarih room many times, and have seen miracles happen because of prayers said in the space.
“You can cry in there any time. You can go in there and ask for whatever you need,” Mustafa said, adding that members of the congregation who are trying to conceive often pray for children in the zarih room, and he himself had often gone to the zarih room in times of distress.
“Look,” Mustafa said, pulling down the zipper of his hoodie to reveal a metal box attached with straps across his shoulder. “I have a dead heart.”
Mustafa, originally from East Africa, explained that he was alive by virtue of the metal box, an LVAD (left ventricular assist device), that pumps his blood in place of his heart. He said that throughout his health problems, he has prayed in the zarih room, and believes that the intercession of the Fourteen Infallibles represented in the zarih room is part of what has kept him alive.
After jummah, Najibe left the main prayer space and passed again through the zarih room. She pressed her hand to her mouth and then to the glass case in front of each zarih on her way, leaving her prayers in the air filled with golden, gleaming light, and exiting through the billowing curtains to the large, empty room beyond.
