Mohammad al-Bahadli dug the warm sand of the Iraqi desert with his bare hands to succeed in his father’s corpse.
“Now, in spite of everything, he can be with our people, our family, in the old cemetery,” Bahadli, 49, said as his relatives sobbed over his body, wrapped in a shroud.
After restrictions on the burial of those killed by the new coronavirus have been provided, Iraqis exhuman the sick and put them back in their post in the circle of family cemeteries.
For months, the families of those who died after contracting Covid-19 were barred from bringing the frame to bury him in a circle of family graves, so that the corpses would not yet spread the virus.
Instead, the government established a “coronavirus cemetery” on desert outdoor lands in the sanctuary town of Najaf, where volunteers in protective clothing consciously buried the sick five meters (16 feet) away.
Only one member of the family circle was able to attend the quick funerals, which happened in the middle of the night.
Victims of all sects, Shiite and Sunni Muslims, as well as Christians, were buried there.
But on September 7, the Iraqi government announced that it would allow those who died after contracting Covid-19 to be transferred to the cemetery of their family choice circle.
Many of those buried under emergency regulations came here from other parts of the country.
“The first time he buried so far,” Bahadli said of his 80-year-old father’s funeral rites.
“I’m not sure it was done in the correct and devoted way. “
– Serious confusion –
Iraq has been one of the Countries of the Middle East hardest hit by Covid-19, with more than 280,000 infections and nearly 8,000 deaths.
On September 4, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that “the likelihood of transmission by manipulation of human remains is low”.
A few days later, after the tension of the families, the Iraqi government announced that it would allow the bodies to be moved through “specialized fitness equipment. “
But the first burials were chaotic.
In the “coronavirus cemetery” in najaf’s open-air desert, many families began arriving Thursday night to dig up their circle of relatives and take the bodies home.
They brought their own shovels, sand-collecting baskets and new wooden coffins to bring the dead.
The sounds of fierce tears and prayers of bereavement with the cursed beaks echoed in the sand.
There were no medical professionals or cemetery guides on site for families to locate or search for bodies properly, an AFP correspondent said.
In some cases, families dug into a grave marked after a relative, to locate an empty coffin, or to notice a young man’s body as they waited to locate his elderly mother’s body.
Other bodies were wrapped in funeral shrouds, demanded by Islam as a sign of respect.
The findings provoked outrage at the state-sponsored armed organization that had taken over funerals in recent months, and some relatives set fire to the base of the nearby faction.
– ‘disturbing’ –
“The gravediggers do not have the right materials,” said Abdallah Kareem, whose brother Ahmed died as a result of Covid-19.
“They don’t even know how to locate the graves,” he told the AFP while tending the grave.
Kareem, who reaches about 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of Iraq’s Muthanna province, decided to re-enter his brother in case he violated the devout decrees.
In Islam, the deceased will have to be buried as soon as possible, regularly within 24 hours.
Cremation is strictly prohibited and new burials are virtually unknown, but they are necessarily prohibited if the frame remains intact, a Najaf cleric told the AFP.
Despite the complications, families were relieved to see the closure through a classic burial.
“Since my father was buried here, I’ve been repeating his words in my head before his death: ‘My son, look to bury me in the circle of relatives of the cemetery, don’t let him take me too far away from my enjoyments,’ Hussein, another mourner who only gave his first name, told the AFP.
The 53-year-old man dug up his father’s body in his hand and transferred it to the Wadi al-Salam cemetery, where millions of Shiite Muslims are buried.
“The dream that has haunted me in months has come true,” Hussein said.
str / mjg / pjm