I was bicycling in a distant part of town when I came across a cemetery. A tiny wrought iron gate marked the entrance into what appeared as a small stretch of land. A street vendor just outside the gate was selling roses by the dozen both available as petals and as garlands. Many mourners presumably bought flowers from him whenever they came to visit their beloved deceased’s graves. I parked my bicycle next to the entrance wall and headed inside. I noticed that there was no symmetry to where graves were placed. It looked as though people had buried their loved ones wherever they had felt suitable.
Each grave was accompanied with a marble slab of various sizes. I stopped by several gravestones and read the names of the people who were no more. It felt odd that these people who now lay buried had lived normal lives and gone about their businesses. On most of the gravestones the date of birth and the date of demise was mentioned. Several of gravestones also had Quranic verses inscribed on them. Often accompanying them were loving words written in the deceased’s memory. One grave that particularly caught my eye seemed to have been of a little girl, seven years at the time of her death. Her epitaph read:
Responsibilities of a Good Citizen Paragraph
“An angel lent to us too briefly”
Her grave was decked with fresh rose petals which meant that somebody had visited her grave recently. I walked away because it was disturbing to think of someone who had died at such a young age. The next grave I came across was located beneath the canopy of a large neem tree.
In the
