The funeral procession passing through the streets was that of Akram al-Aqrash, who died without having married, and with no relatives to inherit the immense fortune he left behind. He did not leave a will. The women mourners walking behind the coffin were more distressed than the men. Their tears flowed freely, and they wailed and lamented, tearing their clothes and walking with heads shamelessly uncovered. When the procession arrived at the cemetery, the women fell into a fight. Each claimed the dead man had not married her only because she was already married but that he was the real father of all her boys and girls. Very quickly, however, the grieving women resorted less and less to words and more and more to slapping, punching, and kicking. A number of them cut down thick branches from the trees in the cemetery and used them as sticks, which descended with painful blows upon the heads and backs of the other women. Some of the women gathered stones that hit back without mercy at those wielding the clubs. Soon the graveyard was strewn with women’s bodies stained with blood. A man with a white beard, exclaiming there was no power and no strength save in God, edged himself into the fray in an effort to calm things down. He was surprised by a blow to the forehead from a hefty stick that made him reel and fall to the ground, moaning like a pregnant woman whose time had come. The stones falling all around forced him to muster his energies and crawl toward the open grave in order to hide. The gravedigger was dumbfounded and could not believe his eyes. He rushed out of the cemetery in the hope of finding a policeman, a doctor, or an ambulance. As for the husbands of the feuding women, they were content to stare at the coffin on the ground, angry at the one who had cheated them by pretending he was an old man who couldn’t take a step without leaning on a stick. They kicked the coffin with malicious joy. Akram al-Aqrash cried out from his prone position inside the coffin, asking to be buried quickly, but his cry was lost in the uproar of the fighting women and no one heard it.