I found myself asking why it is no problem for me to wander through a Christian graveyard, when I felt so intrusive and voyeuristic in doing so here in a Muslim country. WHy would I feel different? I can only surmise that it has something to do with fear of offence. Short of tipping over or defacing headstones in graveyards at home, I actually have always felt quite at home in cemeteries in Canada. In fact, we have taken our children on bicycle tours and stopped at the one south of Newcastle and had lunch there, many times. Of course, I feel a certain reverence when walking among the Christian dead that I feel when walking among the Muslim dead. Watch those grave edges! But tip-toeing and picking my way through the higglety-pigglety collection of surface rectangles at the Fatamid Cemetery was energizing and interesting and, yes, voyeuristic. There is always a frisson of tension when visiting anywhere here, insofar as the chance you’ll get shouted at for something, and in the last light of yesterday I felt no different. Carrie and I walked carefully and quietly and when returning to re-trace our steps, were surprised at how far we’d come. The place is huge, with some sites dating to the 9th Century. And its still in use; we passed when someone had been buried two days ago, according to a self-appointed guard and guide we somehow engaged for LE40 for a little while. But then we were left alone and loved, loved, loved the time, the (dying) light, the absence of kids and grandmother, the photographs that rose up before us.
