From Karbala to Kufa
When the caravan of prisoners neared the Dar ul-Imarah, Zeinab seized this opportunity to address the treacherous crowd of the deceitful Kufans. She cried: Praise belongs to God and may His blessings be upon my father, Mohammad, and his Household-the chaste and the sacred! O people of Kufa! You deceivers! You traitors and saboteurs! You sinners... now you weep? May God never abate the flow of your tears and may your hearts ever smolder with grief and sorrow. You are like the woman who painstakingly and with great labor twines a strong rope, and then herself unwinds it, thereby wasting her effort and energy. Your false pledges have no bearing on truth and sincerity, Know that you have naught to offer but fictitious harangues, false pride, knavery, deception, lust, malice, lies, and flattery. Know that you are as vile and devoid of character as low and despicable slave girls. Your hearts are full of antagonism and spite, you are as odious and loathsome as the vegetables that sprout and flourish around cesspools and the rotten plaster on old graves. Beware, for you have sponsored a very wrongful act for which God is totally displeased with you. You have foraged but poorly for the Hereafter. Without doubt, His wrath shall soon descend upon you. Now you weep for my brother and raise wailing cries for him. Yes, by the Almighty, weep! Because you are only fit to weep Yes, by the Almighty, weep! Because you are only fit to weep. Yes, weep in plenty and laugh less, because you are wholly steeped in the ignominy of the murder of the Imam of your time. The stain of his blood is upon your hands and you cannot wipe it off. Nor can you be exonerated from the crime of slaying the vicegerent of the Last Prophet of God (pbuh&hh) the light of his House and the apostle of the divine saints.
You have martyred a man, who was your succor, your support in adversity, the tower of your strength, your guide in precept and practice. Realize that you are guilty of an extremely obnoxious crime and a heinous misdeed in this world. What ridiculously futile assets have you amassed as an offering for the Day of Reckoning! May the Wrath of God descend upon you and may you perish and be ruined! Your efforts have miscarried and you have miserably failed. Your aspirations have fallen through, and you are not only the universally despised and hated of this world but have also reaped the eternal enmity of God! Woe to you, O people of Kufa! Do you know where you have hurt Mohammad (pbuh&hh) most? What vows you have broken and whose blood you have shed? Truly, you have committed such a colossally loathsome and hateful act that the heavens may fall upon the earth, the earth may tear up ad mountains scatter like ashes! Remember! Yes, remember that your retribution shall be extremely harsh and severe and there will be no one to come to your rescue. Do not gloat even during so a short time at your disposal before the Final Reckoning. The lapse of a period of time between the commitment of a crime and the meting out of punishment is but a reprieve. For God knows best when to strike! Understand; surely God is watching you and is waiting for you! Zeinab's words fell like angry thunderbolts over the minds of the people of Kufa who were shaken out of their base complacence by the daughter of Ali (a.s.) The older people heard Zeinab with surprise; to them, it was as if after twenty years they were again hearing Ali (a.s.) himself; for Zeinab had a voice, a manner of speech and eloquence that closely resembled that of her father. Today she stood as a prisoner in the marketplace - place of Kufa, where her father had once ruled as the Khalifah of Muslims, and where Zeinab herself had lived as the Khalifah's daughter.
This speech of Zeinab, delivered with undaunted courage and fiery eloquence of her father, had a very deep effect on the minds of the people. It sowed the seeds of an uprising that was to manifest itself five years later (remembered in history as the Movement of the Tawwabun" or the penitents). After Zeinab, her sister Umm-e-Khulthoom addressed the people of Kufa and under the guise of attacking the people of Kufa for their treacheries delivered deadly blows to the regime of Yazid. Ali ibn Al-Hussein (a.s.) too, with all the weakness of a man who had only half-recovered from a serious illness, addressed the people: Are you not ashamed of your selves? With what face shall you meet the Prophet of God (pbuh&hh) on the Day of Judgement? You invited his son and this is how you have received your guest! You called him and then put him under siege and martyred him together with his companions; and having imprisoned his women and children you have them paraded around the streets of your city! This is how you welcome your guests... It was at this stage that the people again started speaking against the regime and some approached Ali ibn Al-Hussein (a.s.) declaring their support and offering to fight with him against the government. To Ali ibn Al-Hussein (a.s.) this was yet another affront; angrily he replied: Strange! Your treacheries and disloyalties with my father are before my eyes! As it is, we are undergoing the manner of your hospitality! But still, you do not abstain from fabricating your devilish designs! If what you say is really true, do not do anything against us and abstain from saying anything that would bring us greater harm. We do not want either your support or your favors! Soon the officials came to realize that the speeches of the prisoners before the people, even if it were not dangerous, might heighten anti-government feelings among the people, Ibn Ziyad ordered the heads of the Martyrs to be taken out to be carried at the head of the caravan of the prisoners being paraded around the streets of Kufa. When the spectators saw the heads of the martyrs appear, all their attention was absorbed by these heads, which they pointed out to one to one another, and their attention shifted away from the prisoners and they no longer paid any heed to what they had to say. In this fashion, the prisoners were finally brought to the residency of the governor of Kufa.
