Way to Cemetery

 

Since my arrival to Makkah, and we've been praying on dead in every prayer of the daily 5 prayers. Some of the dead were locals while the others were foreigners who came to Makkah to pilgrim or work.

 

This morning, I helped carrying two dead. One was a Malaysian and went into a van to be taken to the mortuary then to be sent to his country. While the other was an Egyptian but living in Saudi. We carried the Egyptian to the end of the cemetery. The cemetery was huge and of two sections.

 

To reach the second section you need to pass through a tunnel under the surface. As I could see, this cemetery was a mountain and been cut several times for expansion. Checking the rocks, it seems like granite to me. Not so far from the end of the cemetery -where we are to burry our dead- are rock breakers and they are very noisy, trying to cut another section of the mountain. There are houses on top of the mountain, but I doubt anybody lives in there. Who would live near a cemetery? And who would stand all those noises?

On top of me is about 10 meters of the mountain with small pieces of granite every where. With this vibration, some big pieces can fall on me so I'd better move away.

 

In Bahrain, to dig a hole to burry your dead, it should be around 1 Mtr deep, 2 Mtr long, and 750 CMtr wide, usually for an average adult. We dig the hole, lay the dead, then on top of the hole we lay 1 Mtr X 40 CMtr of cement boards, we then mix some water with sand and roughly lay it on those cement blocks. Then when the grave is leveled we put small rocks on the grave so when the water evaporates from the sand or when it rains, the grave doesn't lose it's soil much.

While here in Makkah, the grave is not dogged but built. Sets of graves are built using red blocks and cement then covered with cement as chambers precast leaving a removable entry of about 1Mtr made by a cement board with grips for easy removal. Then sand is used to cover the entire structure.

When they need to open a new hole, they just open the cement block area only after removing the sand and this doesn't take more than 5 min. The grave chamber in each set is about 1.5 Mtr wide, 2.5 Mtr long, and 2.5 to 3 Mtr deep. Between every chamber and the other is a window, it's a one red block missing that made that window.

The undertaker uses a ladder to go down the grave chamber and to climb out of it as it is very deep I don't know why are they made this way but it could be that this is made for future reuse who knows maybe the mountain is not big enough for all the dead. While inside laying the corpse, the undertaker takes along battery operated florescent lights. The hole is covered with the removable cement block then they add some hay on it then the mixture of water and sand. The grave is then marked with pieces of granite rock from the area as the grave marker.

 

The area where I'm at now smells like rutted corpses.

At the new area where the rock breakers are cutting the mountain, are some builders building new sets of grave chambers.

 

Looking at the mountain, there is some water running through it. It's not too much water but just enough to keep running non stop making the area surrounding green caused by algae. I wonder where it comes from. The mountain doesn't reach to the sky so that's definitely not melted ice.

I don't even think it's sewage water cause the houses on the mountain could not just throw their water in their backyard or else it's going to be a disaster and the granite mountain could never suck the water into it.

I didn't have the time to go around and further investigate the water source, nor that I'm a geologist so I'll just leave the case to what I recon�

I think it came way up from other areas through the mountains reaching here and may be one of Zamzam's water source. Makkah is surrounded with mountains and the Ka'aba was built by Gods' messenger Ebrahim on an area even lower than the sea level. A reason why the water had rose when baby Ismaiel was kicking with his feet on the ground and Zamzam spring water rose under his feet.

 

As early as it is, we had just finished fajir (morning) prayer and went to burry a dead man so it should've toke an hour or so since I finished the prayer. It's about 05:00 or 05:30 AM. Anyway, at this time a group of family, a father and a punch of kids -about 6 of them- they were of an Indonesian background. Due to restrictions on the cemeteries by AL-Hayaa, the graves were not marked except by a rock marking the place of the grave entry and it's where the place of the feet.

This made it hard to the family to locate the grave they came here for.

In Bahrain, we never step on a grave, and we never toke our shoes off when we enter the cemetery. They toke their shoes off before walking on the grave sets and they don't respect the markers and the idea of someone being down there under their feet.

The grave they were looking for could be the mother's. I could see the father crying. The grave is not old, though. Watching the faces of those young kids made me stood up and pray with them then quickly left the area going down the mountain back to AL Haram.

 

 

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