Consanguinity is a widespread form of status among Shiʿis that frames the descendants of the Prophet and his family as Sayyids. This chapter explores an affective and alternative perception of consanguinity based on a haptic relation with the blood of the fallen soldiers of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) who are perceived as ‘martyrs.’ My ethnographic study among washwomen of wartime draws on theories of affect and material religion to indicate how the practice of wiping blood from old and damaged military uniforms constitutes womenʼs experience of martyrdom and motherhood while prompting an intimate attachment to the martyrs.This chapter rethinks the Islamic emic binary between biological blood lineage (Sayyid) and the less attended consanguinity through substitution (baladīya), to trace affects and tactility that engender martyrdom. Both genetic and haptic bloodlines can produce and proliferate sacred bodies; one through direct lineage of saints and the other through martyrsʼ blood.