QUAINT BURIAL CUSTOM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2343, 18 October 1921, Page 4

QUAINT BURIAL CUSTOM.

A MESOPOTAMIAN CAVALCADE

A vivid impression of a burial custom among the people over which the Emir.Feisul, the new King of Mesopotamia, rules, is given by a writer in the Daily Mail. A heavy cloud of dust is seen upon the horizon. It slowly rolls towards us, and in the hush which occurs in the desert with the sinking of the sun the distant tinkle of many-toned bells is brought faintly to our ears by the first breath of the evening breeze. As the calaveade approaches we can hear the cries to the muleteers, and gradually make out its component parts.

It is a motley company. They are Shia’s pilgrims on their way to the holy places which lie in the desert of Mesopotamia west of the Euphrates.

In the van is a man, from his appearance a merchant from the eastern provinces of Persia. He is dressed in a long smock-like garment of black silk, thickly powdered with the white dust that lies like a pall on the whole caravan. His bushy black beard and moustache give him an air of forbidding vigour that the curves of fatigue cannot soften. He is mounted on a small pony whose saddle and rider seem to be too big and heavy for the beast, which nevertheless bears them along at a steady walking pace.

On donkeys laden with bedding, and perched in a most insecure at* titude on top of the load, come the womenfolk and children of the leader. The women, veiled, with long black cloaks and quaint baggy trousers, chatter incessantly in high-pitched tones.

A little farther back is a donkey led by an old man, and bearing on its back two long wicker baskets and several hide bags. These objects represent the spiritual obligation of the leader to his deceased relatives.

The wicker baskets contain the bodies of two recently dead relations, while the bags contain the bone* of his people who have died and who wished to be buried at the great mosque in Kergela. It is the ambition of every member of the Shia’s sect of Moslems to be interred in that consecrated ground. When a man dies he is buried temporarily in the burial ground near his own town, but this is only until an opportunity occurs for some of his friends or relations to make the pilgrimage, when the bones or corpses are disinterred and taken hundreds of miles to the last resting-place.

A party of savage-looking Kurds follow next. They can be distinguished by the high, black felt domeshaped hats, with gay fringed silk kerchiefs wound round them. They wear embroidered waistcoats, open in front and disclosing what were once white smocks. Their waists are swathed with multi-coloured cummerbunds, from whose folds the silver-inlaid handle of wicked-look-ink curved daggers appear. Their very baggy blue trousers and the easy way in which they sit astride their sturdy ponies give them a rakish devilmavcare look that timid wayfarers do not relish when they encounter it far from home.

The khan for which they are making is a large rectangular court, unpaved, and having in the middle a well from which, by means of a crazy windlass and bucket, water is drawn for the use of man and beast. The accommodation consists of a series of little alcoves built out from the wall.

The sentry gives warning of the approach of the caravan; the massive iron-studded doors arc thrown open. Some naked children appear from the sorry hovels grouped round the khan, and starp solemnly at the caravan as it wends its way slowly to its shelter for the night.