ELEVEN
In the last week of November, we finally received word to proceed with the absentee funeral. A funeral without a body, we learned, wasn’t a common concept.
The casket we saw was for a janazah service for another fallen victim of the attack, a Muslim. It was not an option for us, we were told later. It was a simple casket made of wood with wooden fasteners hugging it together, the only one allowed since wood, like flesh, disintegrates in soil. I looked at the green satin sheet inside the coffin with the flowing Arabic script in gold thread that read, “We belong to Allah and to Allah we return.” Sunnah was to spread dust in the casket. From dust we come, and to dust we return. Why did He need the dust back? Did He not have enough?
There was a red satin pillow on one end of it. Here
