"Oh my father!" laments Jamil, prostrate on the grave. Tears and prayers are the daily life of one of the largest cemeteries in the world, final resting place of millions of dead Muslims, in the holy Shiite city of Najaf in Iraq.
"I'm sad, of course," admits Jamil Abdelhassan, who came from Baghdad to pray at the grave of his father Abdelhassan Qassem, who died in 2014. "But I'm also happy. I know that when Judgment Day comes, my father will be with Imam Ali".
This is the reason for so much fervor. Imam Ali, the founding figure of Shia Islam who died in 661, rests in a mausoleum located near the cemetery of Wadi al-Salam (The Valley of Peace, in Arabic), in Najaf, in central Iraq .
Or more precisely, "since Imam Ali was buried there, people have stopped burying their dead in another cemetery in Najaf, that of Al-Thawiya, to put them to rest in Wadi al-Salam “, explains to AFP the historian Hassan Issa al-Hakim.
For the Shiites, the majority in Iraq, "being buried near Imam Ali is very important. They believe that Ali will play the role of intercessor for those around him during the Last Judgment", he specifies.
Some historians estimate that more than six million souls rest there, an immense majority of Iraqis, but also Iranians or Pakistanis of the Shiite faith.
"No, it's a lot more! But it's impossible to quantify," says Hassan Issa al-Hakim. "During wars and crises, there are more deaths. We bury up to 200 people a day."
To find your way around this 9 km2 necropolis, there is no map.
"The cemetery of Wadi al-Salam is one of the largest in the world", indicates a presentation submitted by Iraq to Unesco to request registration as a world heritage site.
And to remember that it is "one of the oldest" in the Muslim world, with burials "which still continue today, for more than 1,400 years".
The accumulation of visitors who come by car sometimes causes traffic jams on the avenues that separate the squares, disturbing the tranquility.
But not that of Ahmed Ali Hamed, 54, who came from the south to bury his aunt Fatima, who died "at about 80 years old".
Around him, about twenty mourners.
Only men, "because the women don't come for the funeral. They wash the deceased and they come back. It's the tradition," he says. "The women will come, but another day".
Wrapped in a shroud, the deceased is lowered into a pit dug in the ocher earth. The gravedigger turns the body towards Mecca.
A colossus suppresses a sob, then he joins in the recitation of the Fatiha, the first sura of the Koran also chanted in a low voice as a prayer for the dead. And it's over.
We launch "Agoulak akhouya", "listen to me, my brother", in the Iraqi dialect. One smokes fine cigarettes which make the voice hoarse.
A little further on, a photo of a smiling young man in an Iraqi army uniform is topped with a caption.
Here lies "the martyr Ahmed Nasser al-Mamouri. Date of death: April 7, 2016", when the Iraqi army, supported by an international coalition, was in the midst of a war to retake the Iraqi territory it occupied from the Islamic State group.
Because Wadi al-Salam is above all a reflection of the tragedies that are going through Iraq.
Like the war between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988. As proof: the inscription on the marble tomb teaches the visitor that a certain Hassan Karim died in 1987, in the midst of the conflict, and that he is a "martyr", a title conferred in particular on those who fell during the conflicts.
It is also in this cemetery that rests Abou Mehdi al-Mouhandis, Iraqi lieutenant of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. The two men, great enemies of Washington, were killed in an American raid in Baghdad in January 2020.
More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic caused excess mortality and therefore increased work for Thamer Moussa Hreina, 43, including 20 as a gravedigger. "During the coronavirus, we had 5,000 to 6,000 more bodies over a year," he says.
Around him, as far as the eye can see, thousands and thousands of graves in tight rows surmounted by tombstones.
"To dig the grave, it takes 150,000 dinars (about 100 euros) and for the tombstone, it goes from 250,000 to 300,000 dinars (160 to 200 euros)", explains Najah Marza Hamza, manager of a pump company funeral.
25/02/2023 09:23:17 -- Najaf (Iraq) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
