ID 2444 “Lo que tanto desseé”

Not only do the configurations of VR glasses and telephones mediate emotional connections and delineate boundaries (such as immersing some into pilgrimage and positioning others as audiences as we saw in the Iraqi story), they also make evident an urge or longing – in the cleric’s words, a thirst – to connect to the shrine of Imam Reza. As Parkinson notes, emotions are intentional, meaning they’re ‘about’ something; they entail a ‘direction or orientation towards an object’ (Parkinson 1995, p. 8 Cited in Ahmed, 2001). This ‘aboutness’ suggests a certain stance on the world, or a certain way of apprehending the world. All of the pilgrims in the documentary discussed above expressed sorrow and desperation during their phone calls to the shrine and prayed against life’s adversities. Hence emotions expressed during pilgrimage not only reveal how pilgrims are apprehending pilgrimage, Imam Reza and his shrine, they also reveal something of why they make calls in the first place, and what emotions instigate the call. Acknowledging these emotional orientations leads us to the contemporary conditions and struggles of Shiite Muslims in Iran and outside.

The following is an example of the prayer of a pilgrim who is unemployed and is desperate to find a new job. His prayer was posted and shared publicly on Razavitv.aqr.ir, a website dedicated to Imam Reza and his pilgrimage that I introduced in the previous chapter. He has been leaving online prayers for Imam Reza for a few months in the hope that Imam Reza would provide him with a job somewhere. This prayer illustrates the difficult conditions of sustaining a career in Iran.

Name: need a job Country: Iran

Prayer: My dear sir, oh the eighth Imam, I’ve come here many times, it’s been months since I’ve been begging for a career, begging you to give me a job, can’t you grant me my request, I don’t know how to say prayers, but you’re kind, please take a look at me, so I can hear the good news tomorrow[...] Find me a job somewhere good and appropriate. I am requesting from everyone (pilgrims) to pray for me[...]79

Figure 6.8 Pilgrimage prayers (source: razavitv.aqr.ir Accessed January 2017)

The next example shifts attention from problems of unemployment to loneliness among diasporic Iranians:

Name: Mojtaba

Country: Great Britain

Prayer: Greetings Sir, I’m greeting you from abroad, Sir help me, I need your assistance. I’m lonely like always.

Figure 6.9 Pilgrimage prayers source: razavitv.aqr.ir (Accessed January 2017)

The short prayer, which was written by a pilgrim residing in Great Britain, illustrates the use of pilgrimage platforms by diasporic populations.

This next example depicts a woman’s struggle to find a life partner: Name: ...

Prayer: Oh Imam Reza [...] today I’m heartbroken again [...] from what others say [...] that I tried so hard [...] I have problems with studies [...] I’m unemployed [...] oh God please solve these issues [...] help me marry someone who is great and spiritual so that with that marriage I’ll be happy [...] I’m getting older [...].

Figure 6.10 Pilgrimage prayers (Source: razavitv.aqr.ir accessed January 2017)

The above excerpt from an anonymous pilgrim is one example among many of a pilgrim who asks the Imam and God to find a suitable husband for her. In Iran and especially among the traditional and religious families, pre-marital relationships are not common, and most marriages are arranged. However, the social and economic barriers in the

country have restricted the ability of youth to settle down and marry, which has resulted in an increase in age of marriage for women. It is mainly women who make these marriage requests to the Imam, and not their counterpart male pilgrims. Other prayers ask the Imam to get accepted for university entrance exams, or for healing and recovery for someone with serious or terminal illness.

The inscriptive power of digital technologies such as the Internet and social network websites enables certain emotions that are too personal or shameful to share in public by pilgrims who are inside the shrine to be made public and be openly shared within the digital realm. Lasen (2013) notes this effect more generally for social media (see also Ahmed, 2001; Lasén & Gómez-Cruz, 2009). In the case of the shrine’s website, pilgrims evidently dare to say or show what would remain silenced and hidden in face-to-face encounters. The distribution of pilgrimage prayers that are filled with personal issues, shared in blogs and social network websites among friends and strangers, marks a change in what is considered to be embarrassing or shameful. But it also reveals more of what pilgrims say, and feel, when performing pilgrimage. Traditionally, the content of pilgrimage prayers has not been textually shared, recorded and made public inside the shrine. However, the inscriptive power (Ferraris, 2005) of digital technologies, tied to anonymity, makes it possible to unpack more details of why and how people experience pilgrimage. As an example, in general Iranian boys and girls, when they get to a certain age, will seek a life-time partner and plan to get marry. The expression of a desire to marry is frowned upon, particularly among girls, thus girls will never talk about their feelings in public if they’re desperate to get married. What I found interesting in relation to online pilgrimage prayers was that many have clearly and openly noted in their prayers that they are lonely, and have asked Imam Reza to help them find their

significant other; they even go further than that, and share what type of person they’re interested in.

Further examples reveal that pilgrims share secrets about their lives in the context of online pilgrimage, and write prayers regarding hurting someone they loved, or even in one case ask for forgiveness because they have committed burglary. Digital devices offer great possibilities for these emotional intensities to be shared and experienced (Featherstone, 2010, p. 210).80 _{This reading goes against the writings of scholars like} Jameson and Baudrillard who have argued for the loss of emotionality and the ‘waning effect of affect’ (Jameson, 1990, p. 10 see also Featherstone, 2010) with the emergence of new electronic media.

In contrast, these examples of online, textual prayers illustrate how the use of new media sets the stage for emotions, experiences and narratives to circulate. The social, material, and historical properties regarding the ways in which pilgrimage is performed, recorded, shared and viewed, shapes an affective field. Affective fields that manifest intense longing for the Imam, sorrow, sadness, desperation or the pain felt by pilgrims continue to stick and circulate as these stories are shared online, being intensified even after the original pilgrimage experience is done. These structures of feeling, as they continue to live and extend to the online realm, become stronger through time, as emotions are intensified (Ahmed, 2004) and come to entail a broader constituency. In enacting socially mediated pilgrimage, the community of Shiites is imagined as larger but also as more solid, and the boundaries against others become more delineated.

Another example, which depicts the solidarity and shared disposition among Shiite Muslims is the practice of clicking a small button above a pilgrimage prayer that is posted online. This feature, which is similar to the ‘like’ button on Facebook, points to the fact that the person who read the pilgrimage prayer is not only acknowledging that s/he has read someone else’s prayers, but also lets them know that s/he has also prayed for that pilgrim to the Imam.

Figure 6.11 pilgrimage prayers (Source: razavitv.aqr.ir accessed January 2017)

Figure 6.12 Icon of the shrine (Source:

http://razavitv.aqr.ir/index/delneveshte_module/show_all/20/40 accessed January 2017)

Kosar, the girl who had written this prayer is saying:

Greetings dear Sir, I was reading some of other’s prayers, some would want to get married, dear Sir I am married but my husband is away from me, we see each other

once a month, dear Sir this is really hard please pray for us so that everyone gets what they desire [...] I will be operated on in the next two weeks, dear Sir please heal all the sick, including me [...].

As you see in the screen shot 40 people have read Kosar’s prayer and prayed for her. If you hover on the button which is in the form of a little photo of Imam Reza’s shrine, a message will appear which reads, ‘I have prayed for this prayer’, which lets the pilgrim know not only that her prayer was read but also that it instigated others to pray for her and her situation. Not only the act of typing your prayer into a public space and sharing it with others, but also the small act of clicking a button, contributes to the formation of an online community of Shiite pilgrims through social media. Emotions that are shared online are no longer, in Ahmed’s words, a ‘private matter,’ nor do they ‘come from within and move outward’. Rather, as emotions circulate, and move, they are ‘doing things’ (2004, p. 117).

Conclusion

Taking inspiration from Sara Ahmed (2004), this chapter considered theoretical foundations with regards to understanding emotions. Emotions do things and align individuals with communities, or bodily spaces with social spaces. To Ahmed emotions circulate between both social beings and material artifacts. They work by sticking bodies together, and it is this sticking that generates the effect of a collective. Emotions are not located within but among bodies and objects, and the non-residence of emotions is what makes them binding, sticky and circulatory. Material objects create and are inherent to ‘affective fields’ that are webs of emotionally evocative connections amongst objects, things and places (cited in Kuruoğlu & Ger, 2015, p. 215). In this chapter, the