

When the friends get to the burying-ground they hack an oblong hole a foot or two deep, dump the body in it and fling over it a little of the dried-up, lumpy earth, which is like broken brick.

What really appeals to the flies is that the corpses here are never put into coffins, they are merely wrapped in a piece of rag and carried on a rough wooden bier on the shoulders of four friends. 1 As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later.Ģ The little crowd of mourners - all men and boys, no women-threaded their way across the market place between the piles of pomegranates and the taxis and the camels, walling a short chant over and over again.
