Letter from Quetta: Quetta is an enigma, the troublesome capital of an unruly province in the desert of western Pakistan. Disgruntled tribesmen, resentful of central government, plant bombs outside police stations. Black-turbaned Taliban militants, from across the border in nearby Afghanistan, skulk in the bazaar. So do spies from the despised state intelligence service, the ISI, although they prefer the heated lobby of the only four-star hotel, writes Declan Walsh
And sometimes Quetta is the scene of murderous violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims that claims dozens of lives, but barely causes a ripple outside Pakistan.
Last Sunday my friend Shahzada came to find me. Outside, the air was clear as water after a bitterly cold night that scraped minus 10 degrees.
"Come and see Ashura," he implored. Squeezing into his tiny, ancient car, we headed for the city centre.
Ashura is the 10th day of the holy month of Muhurram and marks the death of Imam Hussain, grandson of the prophet Muhammad.
Hussain's death deepened the schism between Shia Muslims, who believed he should have succeeded the prophet, and Sunni Muslims, who didn't.
Fourteen hundred years later, it remains a bloody argument. Last year two Sunni extremists hired a room above a shop in central Quetta, where they claimed to be setting up a software business. In fact they came to attack the Shias' Ashura procession.
As the crowd passed, the militants used their perch to open fire with a stack of grenades and guns. When the ammunition was spent 42 people were dead. Then they turned the last rounds on themselves.
So this Ashura, Quetta looked like a city braced for battle. Racing through the deserted streets in Shahzada's car, we passed shuttered shops and a multitude of checkpoints. An armoured troop carrier stood by one corner; helicopters crawled across the crystalline winter sky. Riot police idled in a playground.
Abandoning the car we pushed down an empty boulevard and, passing a final barrier, reached the procession. In the main square, thousands of ethnic Hazara men spilled around a monument. We climbed a stairs to the roof of the tallest building, where police snipers and local reporters had gathered.
Far below, hundreds of bare-chested young men snaked through the throng, stomping the ground in circular movements and chanting a strangely beautiful prayer. They seemed to have red paint on their backs. I asked another reporter what it was.
"That's no decoration," he said incredulously. "It's the real thing - blood."
We went back down the stairs. The procession was both appalling and entrancing. The air was filled with the undulating noise of prayer. Young men, mostly teenagers, whipped their bare backs rhythmically, tearing the skin until large globs of blood splashed to the ground. Each whip had a handle attached to six blades, each long as a dinner knife and curved like a sultan's scimitar. Black stretchers carried away those who collapsed. The street surface behind them looked like the floor of an abattoir. Yet it was mesmerising - the jingling chains; the hypnotic rise and fall of the prayer; the silences in between; and the glistening sweat on the stony-faced men, energetically lacerating their own flesh. Some went too far. A feverish teenager thrashed his head until a wound appeared and a black-clad steward wrestled him into the crowd.
The procession participants halted under a large Sony hoarding to sip sweet tea as a mullah bellowed his sermon. Then they moved on again, pressing down a narrow street, past the blackened building where last year's attack took place.
Tension for fear of a repeat attack was high. Three days earlier police had found another two putative bombers in a Quetta neighbourhood. They blew themselves up before anyone could ask questions.
The Shia weren't taking chances either. Along the route burly men perched in doorways, guns hidden beneath oversized coats. At the bottom of the street the provincial Interior Minister, a smiling 27-year-old, waited with a phalanx of police. "Nothing to worry about this year," he said. Metres away a sniffer dog probed a doorway and the regional army commander, a tall potbellied man, paced back and forth.
As we left, Shahzada pointed out the small flecks of blood splattered on my pants, camera and face. The other journalists chatted but I felt mildly dazed by the mystery of this ancient macabre commemoration. Horror or wonder? Devotion or fanaticism? I felt no closer to knowing.
I thought of home. Certainly Irish Catholicism has its gold-tassled theatrics, but none that leave a stranger's blood on your clothes.
As we crossed the barriers into the eerily quiet streets, a local photographer called out a jibe. "Now what do you think" he smiled wryly. "Is the blood real or not?"