the funeral

I saw my first funeral in Bahrain a few weeks ago. It was quite the experience. I'm glad I was in my car or else it would have been quite frightening. We turned the corner from one of these little side alleys onto one of the larger back roads and were immediately met by a mob of men coming down the street. They were chanting and parading down the street together. We pulled off to the side and watched in confused fascination as they came closer and closer. As we watched, we realized that the men were passing something between themselves. Once the men from the back passed it forward, they would walk up the line to the front where they were ready to receive the burden again. It was only as they got closer that we realized what they were passing: a dead body. It lay on a simple wooden platform, and the body itself was tightly wrapped in cloth; the topmost cloth was a decorated piece of green fabric. They marched down the street in this fashion, displaying the body, all the way to the cemetery, where the body would be placed in a grave. No coffin, no flowers, no nothing. This was the middle of the day, about one o'clock and only men were present. I learned later from a friend that this was really quite common; the cemetery is right at the end of our street and Bahraini's always bury the dead in this fashion; so I guess I shouldn't have been shocked, but it's not really what you expect to see on a random Tuesday afternoon.