Comprehension of Iranian Women’s Experience of Arbaeen Foot Pilgrimage

Arbaeen walk in its current form is a novel ritual and diverse social phenomenon. The diversity comes from the multiplicity of pilgrims’ narratives and the variety of meanings people attach to it. The feminine narrative of Arbaeen walk, despite all its diverse meanings, is neglected and marginalized by the formal, masculine meta-narrative. The present research aims at comprehending women’s foot pilgrimage experience through the thematic analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 25 women aged between 22-68 made in the camps (moukeb) of the pilgrimage route. The findings show that as part of the feminine subjectivity, the female pilgrim constructs herself as a fragmented identity in form of five major themes: fatigue of everyday life and ridding of modern life monotony; gratification of self-imposed, sanctified pain; memory of war and the fluid meaning of body; historical feminine subjectivity averting everyday life objectivity; and spiritual illumination in moving from egoistic, habitual behavior to altruism. The female pilgrim re-presents herself as an active subject by assimilating her experience of Arbaeen walk to the Ashoura agony and its aftermath incidents, thereby deconstructing and re-constructing herself through critical reflexivity on gendered stereotypes constructed in the formal discourse of Iranian society.