The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1885-05-29
Death and Burial in Persia.

The sick man lies in extremis on a
thin mattress upon the floor, covered by
a quilted silken coverlet. Twenty or
thirty persons are in the room where he
is dying. The smoke of many hubble
bubbles clouds the air; whispered con
versation is general. The doctors have
declared their patients condition hope
less, and, as a last resort, certain charms
suggested by weird looking dervish
have been tried But the crab broth
prepared from the tiny crustaceans that
inhabit the streamlet around Shiraz, the
patient has been unable to swallow and
the dervish points out to the relatives
of the dying man that his panacea has
only not proved infalllble because it was
tried too late. A yelled woman, the
wife of the dying man, sits weeping at
the side of her husbands pillow. She
frequently holds to his face moistcned
piece of mud torn from the wall this
wetted mud is supposed to have very
reviving influence, and is used by Per-
SLAMS as we use smelling salts)
Tea is handed round in small cups the
crowd in the room becomes greater
every window is shut and, as the OUT
side temperature is ninety degrees, some
idea of the heat within can be formed.
The crowd is not here from mere curios-
ity. A man is sick; then where should
his friends be, they say, if not by his
bedsidel The samovars (Russian tea
urns) steam and bubble; the room is
filled with clouds of tobacco smoke and
the steam from the urns. And now, just
as two hundred years ago was done in
England, fowl is killed and placed
warm and bleeding on the patients feet.
All is of no avail, however. The man
has breathed his last.
The wife yields her place by the bed
side. Moistened cottonwood is placed
in the mouth of the dead, in the orifices
of the nostrils and in the ears. A mool-
lah begins to read aloud the prescribed
portion of lie X oran. commencing "Oh,
man, | swear by the instructive Koran
that thou art one of the messengers of
God sent to show the right way etc.
This portion of the Mussulman's sacred
book was called by Mohammed himself
"the heart of the Koran" And now all
present witness aloud that the dead
man was good and pious Mahomme-
dan. The limbs are composed and q
cup of water is placed at the head of
the corpse. No sooner is this done than
a moollah ascends to the fiat roof of the
house, and begins to read in a shrill
monotone certain verses from the holy
book. This announces to the neighbors
that the man is veritably dead; and at
the same moment his relations shrek
and wall, ''Woe, woe he is dead; he
has passed away" These are the ex-
pressions of real grief But presently
the professional mourners arrive and
rend the air with their shrill screaming,
which is like the "keening" of the
Irish.
The house is soon filed with friends
and neighbors, who add their cries to
the screams of the mourners. The wom-
en- of the family hasten to array them
selves in "bitter" Ii. e., sombre) gar
ments-not in actual black, but in sad
colors, neither they nor the men wash or
dress their hair until the funeral and the
first days of mourning are over. The
male relatives do not literally rend their
garments, but give them the right APP
pearance by opening certain seams of
their coats and cloaks with penknife;
and instead of casting dust upon their
heads they dab mud on their hats.
And now come the "washers of the
dead" To each parish are attached a
family of these people, who get a de-
spised livelihood by performing the last
offices for the dead. The corpse having
been washed at an adjoining stream, the
hands are placed across the chest, and it
is wrapped in the shroud of cotton cloth
that the deceased has probably had by
him, sort of memeatO mort, for years.
Camphor (real vegetable camphor is
placed beneath the shroud, and the body
is laid in rough coffin made of thin
planks and brought back to the house.
The coffin in Persia is of thin and un-
substantial kind, and the burial always
takes place within twenty-four hours Of
decease. st. James Gazette.