Every commemoration of Husayn is a pilgrimage. Definitive Twelver Shī‛ī texts order the believers to visit the grave of the Imām on the day he was martyred, ‛Āshurā’, the tenth of Muharram. And if they can’t be in Karbalā’ where he was martyred and his headless body buried, then they are to visit ‘from a distance,’ mourn his suffering and share the grief of the afflicted, namely the Imām’s grandfather, the Prophet. Typical of a pilgrimage, as Victor Turner tells us, the commemoration consists of reliving the founder’s (in this case Imām Husayn’s) tragedy. Empathy is the aim and narration is the prime means. Yet the ziyārāt (single: ziyāra, visit) and the narrative of the Imām’s plight in Karbalā’ (where he was killed) are both texts, i.e. they are open to interpretation and, with this, variability. In accordance with different contexts readings vary, and with them meanings and forms of performance also differ. What would be defined as the same ‘ritual’ varies in structure, content and the message it delivers; drama will always be present yet its degree will not be the same; at least this is what my research on the mourning sermons in Lebanon demonstrate. Based on examples from my fieldwork and textual research I will demonstrate the link between textuality, interpretability, and variability in commemorating Husayn. I will discuss the evolution of the narrative of Karbalā’, the ‘historical’ accounts that were never free of hagiography, and the contemporary, often politically-loaded, debates that redefined Husayn’s memory over the last decades. In addition to the textual references and material I will use examples from the mourning sermons I attended in Beirut. As this presentation will make clear, such debates with their full-fledged complexity are at heart of Imam Husayn’s memory as presently perceived.