Cost of Burial Plots Soars

Saturday, 13 March, 2010

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IWPR

Mahmoud Kaabour can afford to stay in Damascus but only during his lifetime.

For his eternal rest, the-50 year-old businessman had to find a cemetery outside the city centre where burial plots are still relatively affordable.

“None of us know when we might die naturally or have an accident,” said Kaabour, who has bought two graves for 650 US dollars each in the Damascus suburb of Mahadamia. One is for himself and the other for his wife.

The price of a grave in Damascus in well-known cemeteries like Bab al-Saghir (small door) and Al-Dahdah can reach up to 10,000 dollars but even at that price they can be hard to find since the cemeteries are virtually full.

With the prices of real estate shooting up in Syria and affecting even the prices of graves, many Syrians are buying their burial plots well ahead of time.

This increase in demand and the absence of enough land for burials has led to the creation of a black market, which is making graves more and more expensive.

The government has tried to tackle the problem by creating a cemetery for the inhabitants of Damascus outside the city called Najha, where graves are relatively cheap at 20 to 80 dollars.

However, because Najha is about 40 minutes by car outside Damascus and is neglected, well-off Damascenes prefer to buy graves in closer areas like Mahadamia or, on the black market, inside the city itself.

Where they are buried is an important matter for many Syrians.

Muslims take special care over the vegetation in cemeteries, especially ensuring evergreen trees like cypresses are planted. They believe that plants, like all living creatures, continually worship God so their presence in graveyards attenuates the suffering of the dead.

Muslims are not buried in coffins because they believe that human beings are born from dust and shall return to dust. Burying people directly into the soil also helps speed up the decomposition. This makes it simpler to add bodies to a family plot but the process is subject to certain rules.

According to Islamic laws, the deceased is first washed and covered with an alcohol-free balm then shrouded in white linen. Prayers are spoken over the body and the burial has to be performed as quickly as possible. A 40-day period of mourning is customary.

A new corpse is only buried in a family plot after making sure that the previous body has decomposed entirely. This takes between five and six years depending on the soil.

Some clerics believe that anyone can be buried on top of another corpse after it has completely decomposed. Others say that dead women can only be placed in plots where men related to them by marriage or blood are buried.

Some plots become available when the relatives decide five or more years following the burial to sell it on. Gravediggers have developed a tidy sideline as intermediaries between buyers and sellers in this new real estate boom.

In some cases, abandoned graves are also sold on like this.

Graveyards in Damascus now carry warnings against black market grave trading but the practice is nonetheless thriving.

Experts link the rise in prices to the real estate boom in Damascus among other factors.

“The growing population and economic development have driven up the prices of graves just like for any other type of property in Damascus,” said real-estate expert Ammar Youssef.

In recent years, the space shortage has led officials to start stacking new bodies on top of old ones belonging to the same family.

Abu Tayseer, a gravedigger in Damascus, said that graves can be inherited just like property.

“Every four or five years, they put someone’s corpse where his family members are buried,” he said.

In the cemetery where Kaabour has bought his burial plot, it is not an unusual sight for a gravestone to bear a birth date but without a date of death because its owner is still alive. Many only have numbers indicating that they have been sold.

“When I bought the graves, I asked for them to be located near the road. After I die, I don’t want to feel alone,” said Kaabour, who regularly visits not only the graves of his father and brother buried here but also to make sure that nobody is vandalising or attempting to steal his future grave.

Since Kaabour bought his burial plots three years ago, prices outside the city centre have soared to between 2,200 and 3,300 dollars for one grave.

According to gravedigger Qasem Zeen al-Deen, money flowing from Damascenes has pushed up prices at Mahadamia, even though local people have priority and those from outside the area have to pay extra.

“People from other areas have to pay more for a plot, in addition to paying for construction materials for the tomb and the gravestone,” he said.

Stonvemasons say that there is increasing demand for elaborate gravestones, often made with the best quality marble with prices reaching up to 3,000 dollars.

“One wanted to have 14 leaves engraved on his gravestone. I was surprised. It turns out he liked the number 14,” Tawfeek al-Halaq, a stonemason, said.

This story by IWPR trainee Hani Mawed was reported for an audio slideshow produced as part of an IWPR multimedia workshop.