Tuesday, June 30, 2009

A man becomes part of the largest circle ever drawn by human beings

The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 19

It was in the evening and we were brought face to face with the reality of death. We had been in the back of a milk truck in Pakistan when we caught an odd scene towards the side of the road.  An old tottering villager had at last been taken under by a flu, and his family members rushed round to prepare his body for burial.  They washed him, and wrapped in in a white garment as prescribed by their Prophet, and lay him into the ground on his right side at the precise spot where he last drew breath.

Our host translated the grandson’s explanation.  “Laying on his right side, he is facing Mecca, which is far away.”

“Towards what purpose?” we asked.

“The community is laid out in an array like this,” the young man said, motioning a circle shape with his arms. “My grandfather is now part of a circle that is magnificent and large, perhaps the largest circle ever drawn by human beings. Like rays of light we lay ourselves out from a single source: in life and in death. In life we are arrayed vertically, like the beams of the sun as it rises in the morning.  In death we lie horizontally, like the sunlight hitting the clouds as it sinks in the evening. The array is only visible to God, or to your mind’s eye, but it is real, as real as the body of my grandfather who has been put in the dirt.”

We paid our respects to the man’s family, and moved on.

—-

Rumbling along on the milk truck, the large ceramic bottles clacked and clattered around us.  The liquid within could be heard to turn and fall.

“We feel as if we have entered into a dream,” we told our host.

“Indeed you have,” our host said.

“That man who was laid in the ground, was he also part of our dream?” we asked.

“What do you think?” asked our host.

We clattered on in silence along an uneven dirt road.