Shams spent day and night in a floating daze, his body held aloft on currents, his mind anaesthetised. He picked up his father’s effects from the hospital, obtained his body’s release, then a trip to Wandsworth Town Hall to get the death certificate, and at the same time called Muslim cemeteries to procure a burial place.
Traditional Muslim funerals take place as soon as possible and are a simple affair. A wash of the body, the saying of prayers by the community, a journey to the graveyard, and then a quick burial without complicated ceremony. The priority was for the arrangement to be a mercy to the soul of the departed, to ease and quicken their journey forward. Rather that than the burden of a busy speech-filled event, that was meant more for the catharsis of those that had been left behind.
The mosque’s morgue had been been created from a small adjunct to the main building. It kept a few basic cold chambers for temporary storage and a sizeable basin, but the room was dominated by the steel washing table. Shams breathed in the dulling smell of unknown chemicals, closing his mouth to avoid taking in too much. He felt the walls pinch his ribs, and the low ceiling close in on his head. As he moved round the room he put a supporting hand on the table, drawing its clinical coolness to keep him alert.
The body arrived from the hospital. Shams and the mosque official gently lifted the body onto the table. Shams felt some shame as he struggled to lift his father’s torso. His father’s corpse was extremely heavy, a result of those last few years of ignoring all his loved ones’ health warnings. His father had had a passion for gulab jamuns, the sweet and oily sweetmeat. Shams remembered him always slipping him some after work, and winking. A trusting code between them that he was not to tell Mum. When working he also used to surreptitiously discard his pack lunch, of lentils and a simple unbuttered chapatti, to indulge far too often in the fried chicken from next to his place of work, one of those that were called something implausibly southern American. He saw it as one of his few pleasures. Shams’ mother would always find the branded red and white sachets of wet-wipes in his pockets, but no amount of encouragement or admonishment swayed him.
Shams expected to see a lifeless grey cadaver lying on the table but his father merely looked asleep. Not quite at peace but at rest. Helped, he removed his father’s outer garments. They ensured that his private parts were not revealed by placing a large white cloth over the lower part of the body. Carefully, they washed the body with warm water, softly pressing the stomach to ensure that anything foul was expelled. Shams’ hands flinched as they touched bare dead skin. He could not not shed tears. His swollen head ached, and at times he had to stop, but he contained himself, wishing to finish the washing with some dignity. At these times the Imam’s assistant took over, or guided his hand, offering soft words of solace and comfort, reminding him that this is the final destination of all of mankind. As friends would say at times of calamity, ‘Inna illahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon’ – ‘Surely we belong to God and to Him shall we return.’
They proceeded to wash the body in the manner of ablutions before prayer, taking special care with the nose and mouth. They then washed his father’s hair, still strong and full, grey with black flecks. They spread lightly scented oil over stiffened skin. After drying, they shrouded using three white cotton sheets. It was done.
They waited for duhur to finish before starting the janazah. The word had gone out, and the mosque was busy with extended family and the local community. Some had traditional words, some hugged him, some avoided his gaze, not knowing what to say or how to respond. Shams was grateful to all for their attendance. Some inappropriate comments were par for the course, and expected. One uncle told Shams how the family in Bangladesh would be angry that the remains had not been repatriated. All he could reply was that this was the example of our prophet. We are buried where we die.
The Imam led the prayer, standing by the middle of the body. The funeral prayer differed from normal daily prayers in that there was no bowing and prostration. Another defence against idolatry. Once finished the men set off for the burial plot. This graveyard had special dispensation for burial without a casket, so the shrouded corpse was taken out and placed in a dug out indent within the sidewall of the grave. The people who had followed the procession then proceeded to throw three handfuls of dirt into this final resting place. When they finished the gravediggers were left to complete the internment. He was gone.
Shams had always been told to remember death as a guide, a marker for life. The prophet, peace be upon him, said, ‘At evening, do not expect to live till morning, at morning do not expect to live till evening. Take from your health for your illness and from your life for your death.’ He was not sure what to make of his father’s life, now buried in cold, rain-sodden ground in a small island off northern Europe. He had been born in a hot country, surrounded by people who, though changeable, were warm and sociable, people who cared for him – gossipy people who were always in your face and overly-worried about your business. Sharing people who touched, and joked, and sang about the minutiae of their lives. He had migrated to a tough and lonely nation for a life of struggle, in the hope that his progeny would have a chance for something better, to be more successful. Shams did not understand what that better and more successful part meant, and he wondered whether his father had ever known. Life in Bangladesh was indeed a struggle under the arbitrary whims of the powerful, and this had been swapped for living with people who had little understanding of him, who never really reached out to each other, but who had order. The swap of constant existential worries for some semblance of material wellbeing. Maybe this was better, however hard it had been. All Shams knew is that, ultimately, his father had been a good parent, one he had been blessed to have. Shams only hoped and prayed he would also have a child that would wash his body and bury him when he died.
Shams shook the hands of, and hugged, the mourners who gathered around him. He struggled while watching the weeping of people who he did not recognise, who he did not know. He yearned for his opportunity to escape and mourn.