Street Funeral

Many mornings I am woken up by the loudspeaker across the street, announcing Druze dead. My area of town, Jerimana, is predominantly Druze, explaining the frequent liquor stores. We live near the worship sight, called al-mawqif, where funerals are held, so either the day prior or the morning of, funeral announcements are issued on the loudspeaker in Sahat as-Suyuf. Jerimana is a bustling neighborhood, with perhaps as many as 80,000 residents. It's not unusual to hear the loudspeaker go off a couple times a week, announcing the death of old people. I like the euphenism for death used, "moved to the mercy of God [heaven]".

Wednesday morning I thought little on the latest funeral announcement, though it did include "ash-sha'b ash-shaheed" before the name of the deceased. The young martyr. This was the first time I have heard this. Martyr? I thought. Martyr for what? My mind race for a minute to think of what could have happened. I then went back to sleep for an hour and awoke to nothing unusually, just the normal bustle of Jerimana in the morning, and promptly forgot about it.

While, at least in my opinion, the word martyr in English is reserved mostly for religious purposes, the use is much wider in Arabic. The victims of the Iraq war are martyrs. Those who died in the Lebanese Civil War are martyrs. The Palestinians killed under occupation are martyrs. The dead do not have to be actively participating in the cause at the time of their death to be called martyrs.

At noon, I was sitting in the living room with my flatmate Michelle and her friend visiting from the States. The friend went to the kitchen, and asked if people playing with firecrackers was common. Um, no? There were bang bang bang! noises audible from the kitchen window. I shrugged and attributed it to the widespread construction. "Maybe it's like a nail gun."

From the balcony, we started to notice people running and walking quickly. Soon the body of the procession came into the square, holding up pictures of the dead young man, chanting, and shooting pistols into the air (blanks). The square was full of men, before they continued on to al-mawqif. I ran out into the streets and followed the procession at a distance of 10 meters, with other women, and people who happened to be walking somewhere when the procession cut them off. The procession would stop occaisonally to clap and chant (I couldn't make out what they were saying). People on the sides stopped and watched, some crying. I asked an older man watching what had happened.

"A youth died."
"How?"
"Army. Three days before he was done with service there was an accident and he was killed in an explosion."
"Allah yarhamhu"

He then asked me if I wasn't Syrian, so I told him I was American.
"Do you have demonstrations like this in America?"
"Not really for funerals."

I stopped followinf the procession, not going to al-maqwa3 as I decided to be only semi-vulturous.

The kid was probably only around 20. I asked some of my friends about his martyrdom, since it was an accident, tragic, but not in a conflict.
"He died while serving his country. Of course he's a martyr."