I had the misfortune of experiencing the tragic death of my Moroccan husband, seven months ago, in Morocco. Any idea I throw around when I say "Moroccan" will clash with the person he was: open, versatile, wise, and, in many ways, exceptional. In fact, I've always been amused to see the relief it evokes in the interlocutor when I add that he was also Canadian and Spanish. This isn't the place to talk about prejudices, nor is it the space to deliver a eulogy. I'd simply like to note how experiencing the mourning of an unexpected death in dramatic circumstances on both sides of the Mediterranean (Casablanca and Barcelona) has allowed me to see how helpless and without resources we are when it comes to facing death in this hyper-technological and individualistic society in which we find ourselves.
The authorities brought his body from the Sahara to Casablanca and facilitated air travel for us—his wife and children—and the rest of the family who came to meet us in El Aaiún. While the staff at the Spanish consulates contradicted each other, scolded me, and gave me erroneous information, the Moroccans made everything easy for us. Nor is this a place to praise a system that has terrible flaws;
In less than twenty-four hours, the neighborhood on our street in a working-class neighborhood of Casablanca was organized. The women prepared couscous for all the visitors who came to share their condolences—at least two hundred people. The wake and the street luncheon were open to everyone. In the face of a death, everyone feels involved. It's a collective mourning. During the following week, it was once again the neighbors who took turns bringing us lunch. Every day. While even today the neighborhood I don't always recognize stops me and asks how we're echoing a cliché ("I wear your mourning," "peace in her soul") in Barcelona, beyond the close circle that overwhelms and accompanies, death provokes, in most cases, a great unease due to the impact of the death, as if to consider the time to address those of us who remain lost in the hole of the other's absence. Often the reaction is silence: from the officials who care for you, from acquaintances who, embarrassed, have neither the words nor the courage to tell you that they don't have any. How we fear death, how far away we want it from us. But we survivors of a tragedy remember in every moment, in every instant, itWe live in itWe are the remains of the shipwreck, the ship that, little by little, straightens its sails and takes a new course.
In a society disconnected from spirituality, the space that mourning can occupy socially is practically non-existent, it is relegated to the intimacy of each person and in the places specialized: grief groups, psychologists, etc. In everyday life, things "aren't going well." At the same time, it's evident that the weight of religion in a Muslim country, in this case Morocco, allows for formulas, ready-made words, and an accepted idea of death that help navigate grief on an individual level but also on a social level: "We belong to God, and we return to God," "God gives us life and gives us death." In my homeland, Mallorca, at funerals, when people come to offer condolences, the most common phrase is "we'll see you in heaven." A simple phrase that places us in the same place, that of finitude, and that opens the door to the afterlife. In fact, it's curious: just as we have a hard time accepting and accompanying the death of others, there is great interest in finding scientific explanations for the mystery of death. It's likely that research on superconsciousness captivates us because it tells us we are eternal.
Of the formulas Islam offers, the one I like most is a verse from the Quran: "Every soul will know death." If we kept this in mind more, if we dared to look it in the face, we wouldn't be so frightened by the death of others and would live with more serenity the thought of our own.
