It’s January 10, 2014. I’m standing in front of my house in Prizren, on a narrow dead-end street — just wide enough to accommodate a hearse that will soon depart for the city cemetery, where my father will be buried.
About 20 of us are gathered behind the hearse, waiting for the ritual to begin. It moves slowly so that we, mourners, can follow without rushing. The first half of the journey will be accompanied by our closest family members, while the rest will join us at the Terzimahalla mosque to pray for the deceased.
Then we all continued to the cemetery.
It was my first time attending a funeral. Still, what happened next was not entirely unexpected. The imam leading the ritual refused to continue because I, my mother and my aunt — three women — had assumed we could take part in the procession.
In that moment, I felt nervous — another raw emotion stirred by everything happening that day, and by my uncertain understanding of the traditions surrounding such a ritual. In my mind, it was self-evident that I should be there. I believe my father would not have objected to my presence.
However, I was not in a position to argue with the imam in front of everyone. I thought it would be better to return home, where most of the women in the family were gathered — because, for them, this exclusion felt quite natural. But then, a conversation between my aunt and the imam not only gave me a moment to breathe, but also changed the course of the day. I don’t know what was said, but in the next moment, we were on our way.
We arrived at the mosque, where a large crowd had gathered. The namaz, however, was performed only by men. I stood outside, waiting with my mother, my aunt and a few others — mostly male family friends. The presence of men outside made me wonder: was there no more space inside or had many come simply because the mosque served as a convenient meeting point?
We continued to the cemetery. The weather was bad. It had rained the previous days, and we walked mostly through mud. I remember only a few moments from the funeral. I thought that the next time I visit the cemetery, I will come alone. This farewell, as it happened, didn’t seem connected to the life my father had lived.
Like the weather, the day itself was heavy. Whether accepting or not accepting this ritual — the final farewell to someone who still lives within me — I don’t know if it made things harder. But I believe that a negative and excluding experience had formed in my subconscious, one that may have influenced the anxiety I later felt whenever I was invited to enter a mosque or a holy house.
The intense rituals continued for weeks, intended to create a supportive environment and help us cope with our untimely loss. If the circumstances had been different, I might have been curious to observe these inherited traditions more closely. But in that moment, all I wanted was for everyone to go home so I could be alone with my family.
After a while, the house emptied — and now, a decade later, each of us still carries our own wounds.
Another type of funeral
It is September 10, 2022. I am on my first long car journey from Prizren. I will cross many borders, ones I had never crossed before, in order to arrive in time for orientation day at the university where I’m starting my master’s program in Berlin.
At Merdare, the customs officers wished me a safe journey after noticing a piece of glass in my window displaying various European flags. In the center, it read: “Zastava 101: Tour d’Europe ‘73.” It was likely a reference to the surprisingly good performance of the Yugoslav car brand, Zastava, in a 1973 car rally.
The glass was part of the window from my father’s old room, which I, after a renovation at home, had turned into a kind of exhibition piece to greet visitors at the entrance to our garage in Prizren.
On Sunday morning, I woke up in Belgrade, Serbia, and by evening, I had arrived in Prague, Czech Republic. I hadn’t heard much about Prague, and I certainly hadn’t seen it before. I arrived around 10 p.m., took some photos and sent them to various people, asking why no one had told me how beautiful it was. One of them replied that, aside from being beautiful, there’s nothing else to it.
Anyway, Prague held another connection for me, because that summer I was reading my first book by Milan Kundera, “The Joke”, which frequently mentions the city. The best part was that I was on the final chapter. So, early Monday morning, I stopped at a café on an empty street, surrounded by Romanesque-style buildings with Ukrainian flags fluttering from their windows. The café wasn’t open yet, but I finished “The Joke” there.
Then I went back to my hostel room, which I shared with 13 other travelers, and started reading the biography of the author. I also began paying attention to the biography of his father, which opened with the line: “Ludvík Kundera, born August 17, 1891, was a Czechoslovak musicologist, pianist, and academic administrator.” The final line read: “He died in Brno on May 12, 1971. His funeral was accompanied by the String Quartet No. 2, ‘Intimate Letters,’ by Leoš Janáček.”
Despite the orchestra blaring in my room and the jealousy I felt over a funeral 1,500 kilometers north of Prizren, I put on my headphones and listened to “Intimate Letters.”
Then I fell asleep, imagining a different kind of funeral for my father.
P.S. The title is borrowed from Leonard Cohen’s song “First We Take Manhattan.” When I was a child in Kosovo and had just begun to understand English, my father would give me the lyrics to Cohen’s songs to translate and explain — often in exchange for a bit of pocket money.
Feature Image: Atdhe Mulla, with photos by the author.
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