Then I was walking in the graveyard last week, a weird thought crossed my mind. I convinced myself, right there and then, is that the greatest tragedy is not when we are going to die but how we live our life. I think my thoughts were inspired by the countless numbers of fading graves that littered the place. This was the finality, I reminded myself, the end of a journey. We take so many things for granted while we are alive but never spare a thought that there would be complete and eternal darkness one day.
As we queue up to pass the coffin from one person to another, we all knew this would be the last attention the deceased would ever get from this earth. After that, only God knows what was going to happen. Yet, all of us there did not fully comprehend the seriousness of life and where it is going to end one day. When the coffin was rested on the ground to start the burial ritual, my eyes drifted to a bright red tent on my right. There was a light inside and the tent surrounded a grave. Out of curiosity, I walked towards it. There was a man sitting inside the tent, his back arched towards a grave, reciting the Quran. I caught the name written on the headstone. It was of a man who died a week before that.
Then my thoughts strayed. I looked around me to other graves within my sight. I thought of all those dead people who laid there in eternity. The irony was that the paupers and the powerful all were laid to rest side by side surrounded by dirt. I also noticed that most of the writings on the tombstones faded away. But a handful were renovated to stand out above the rest.
One of them had a headstone made of marble. The money spent to buy the material for that grave would have fed a hundred poor families for the entire year. When it occurred to me that my thoughts strayed too far, I went back to my concrete bench under the shade of a tree. The houses on top of a rock just behind the graveyard’s compound wall attracted my attention. They must have been standing there for at least a century, like senile old guards looking after the abodes of dead people.
It must take a lot of nerves, and considerable faith too, to live on top of a graveyard. Without any doubt, the past occupants of the houses had only a short journey towards their final destination due to the vicinity of their houses and their final resting place. It was a morbid thought and I needed a distraction.
I looked at the three people who were sitting at the opposite bench. They were talking and laughing, oblivion to the burial ritual that was taking place. So was the exact scenario on other benches around me. Funerals these days are not any more a sad occasion. It is just a formality to mark the presence of people so they could say “we were there to pay our respect” but they really do not show their respect. How could they if they talk and laugh while the family of the deceased were mourning.
When it was all over, I joined the queue for the opportunity to express my condolences to the family. Again, it was far from a sober occasion. While we were queueing up, people were catching up with the latest gossips. I think, it would not be far-fetching if in the future, they would start hanging a television somewhere in the graveyard for people to watch a soccer game or their favourite television serials while they wait.
Saleh Al Shaibany
saleh_shaibany@yahoo.com
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