Graveyard Shift

---

I've never had the pleasure of wandering through the silent alleys of the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris that is probably the most renowned cemetery visited by thousands of tourists a year. Nevertheless, my fascination with afterlife and all things gothic has guided me to some interesting and fascinating burial grounds around the world.



I lived altogether four years in London and never visited Highgate Cemetery which I was told was the quintessential place to visit if interested in burial grounds. During one of my return trips I did finally get my act together and headed to Highgate, only to take horrendous pictures of Douglas Adams's grave and to lose my camera later.



First one to be buried here was a 16 year-old baker’s daughter Mary Ann Webster in 1860, and many notable have since followed her here, including Douglas Adams, George Eliot, William Alfred Foyle, Karl Marx, and many others.



Colma in California is where the population of San Francisco go to after leaving this life. Or at least the physical remains. Instead of starting an analysis titled ‘after life: does it exist?’ Here's probably the only remaining picture of that journey.







Colma is a 2 squaremile town with a (living) population of 1200, and there are over a million bodies buried here. Segregation reigns over the dead, apparently. There is separate graveyards for the American-Italians, Chinese... You name it.





In Turkey I had the opportunity to visit a few Islamic graveyards. The first one we drifted in was in Istanbul, at Galata Mevlevihanesi near Galata Tower. This house is also a popular tourist destination. Mevlevihanesis are places similar to what Western people refer to as monasteries, but here the wandering or more stable dervishes come to meditate, live in asceticism and refine their selves. Galata Mevlevihanesi is famous and open for tourists. A dervish named Jalaluddin Rumi, known for his beautiful poetry resided here in his time. Here, aside the little cemetery in the courtyard and a community of cats you can familiarize yourself with the history and dogma of sufism, and get to understand what life was (and to an extent, is) in a Mawlawi house. Our initial plan was to see a Sema here, but I will write of our adventure to see dancing dervishes in another post as it was much, much more complicated than we initially thought.

























































Towards the end of our stay in Istanbul we wandered into another cemetery somewhere near Topikapi metro station after carefully examining ruins of city walls (where most likely some homeless people spend their nights). As we were walking towards the cemetery, a local man indicated with the international sign language that there was nothing here but people sleeping.

---