I recently read The Four Humors by Mina Seckin and it made me think about funerals.
The book’s main character has just lost her father. She’s spending her summer in Istanbul, and in the first part of the book, her only goal is to avoid her father’s grave. She’s looking for her father, and she doesn’t think she’ll find him in the grave.
The funeral is this specter that hangs over the book. It happened right before the book begins, and I really love the way the book describes the funeral rites, mostly because I think they’re beautiful traditions, and also because it fits so well with other themes of the book: the way we burden each other in grief, the way those burdens are welcome, the ways we isolate ourselves, the ways we can be forgiving, unforgiving.
“Before the funeral, you have to wash the body. If it’s a male body the men wash it. If it’s a female body the women wash it. Uncle Yilmaz washed Baba’s body with my cousins. Then they put the body in a white cotton bag. No coffins allowed. Your body will become soil faster this way.”
This is the way my grandmother was buried. There was no embalming. The body must be buried within two days. Her daughters, my aunts, washed her body. She was wrapped in white cloth and nothing else, the same garb of pilgrims. Her death is the most intimate I have been with the act of dying. I was the last person who saw her open her eyes. Our cousins and I heard her take her last breath. My dad had a reciting of Surah Ya-sin playing on loop. It was for her to listen to as she died, but it was also to soothe us as we watched.
When I moved to Boston, my mom told me that her cousin’s father-in-law was buried there. It’s not like I have ever visited his grave. I barely know my mother’s cousin, let alone his father-in-law. But she told me this to give me comfort, and oddly enough, I did take comfort. Someone is here that I can make prayers on behalf for. I am rooted to death here too.
Two generations of my family are buried in one cemetery in Westminster, California. I like the word graveyard in Urdu: kabristan. Kabr means grave and stan means place of, or land, which is why some countries’ names end in -stan. The word makes me imagine death itself as a country.
A Muslim’s body is buried perpendicular to qibla, or the direction of the Ka’aba in Mecca. The head is turned to face qibla. The land in this cemetery in Westminster, California has been hard-earned. My grandfather helped set aside this land for Muslims to be buried in, back when there was very little place for our dead. He is buried there now.
Space is precious and must be used economically. The dead, here, are buried shoulder to shoulder, the same way prayer is done.
Each grave is covered in white gravel. The grave is unadorned. Even leaving flowers isn’t really allowed, though people still do. It’s meant to show that you are equal in death. No matter how wealthy, no matter how renowned, your grave is plain, the same as everyone else’s.
To walk from grave to grave, you step carefully over a thin border of stone. From the back of the lot to the front, I can introduce you to the timeline of my family’s history in Southern California. On the edge of the cemetery, there’s a faucet where you can wash your bare feet and make ablution for prayer, which is also done facing qibla. You make prayer for the dead, and you know that you are facing the same direction they are.
I like Muslim funerals. I don’t long for death, but I think my body longs for the funeral.