Tenth day of the first month of the moon calendar, Ashura. Duodeciman Shiism commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussain ? grandson of Mohammed ? and his followers in the arid plain of Karbala in the year 680, 61 after Hijrah. It is the ratification of the schism between the Sunni majority and the Shiite minority faithful to their Mohammedan lineage. In Iran, the Messianic imaginary of martyrdom ? derived from redeeming suffering and identified with the figure of Hussain and the celebration of Ashura ? becomes a key element to legitimise the Islamic Republic. The culture of death is accompanied by a profusion of mural paintings, flowers or poems. During the war with Iraq (1980-1988), the regime used the tacit heroism of martyrdom to enrol youths that would march over Iraqi bombs, thereby opening the way for the army. However, Hussain's universal martyrdom goes beyond the battlefield to appear grandiloquently on the streets during Ashura and therefore fills part of the collective imaginary. "A nation with martyrs does not know serfdom," former president Mahmud Ahmadinejad firmly stated in 2005. Throughout history Shiites have conceived multiple ceremonies to commemorate their foundational status, the death of the Imam. The processions in which penitents carry images of the Battle of Karbala and express their pain flagellating themselves with chains or rhythmically hitting their chests are common. The tazié, in its turn, is a genre of religious drama that recreates the life of the Imam and, specifically, his death. One of the most specific rites, however, is held in the city of Khorramabad, where the devout bathe in mud pools. ‘ten' is a journey through today's Iran during the celebration of Ashura, an amalgam of faces, gestures and events filled with mourning: the sorrow of the community for the martyr Hussain, whose loss awakens a collective catharsis that serves as penitence, purges the feeling of guilt and allows the process of redemption to be shared. An ambivalent fervour, sometimes real and sometimes socially feigned. Because crying in Iran can be a virtue and pleasure: the ostentatious art of redemption.