Until fairly recently, people led relaxed lives within a warm social atmosphere in which neighbors knew and cared about each other, exchanged regular visits and gifts and stood by each other. That was until they allowed themselves to be influenced by the temptations of modern life. I realized how people had changed and how life had became so very different from what it used to be when I recently went to a cemetery for a funeral. The least I can say of what I experienced there is that it was appalling. Wherever I looked, I saw people talking on mobile phones with no respect whatsoever for death or for the place or their reasons for being there. I was shocked to hear mobiles emitting all kinds of so-called music everywhere with people moving among graves, talking in loud voices on any subject and seemingly totally unable to realize that just a few feet away, someone was entering a totally different world. These individuals seem to forget that one day, their own life and happiness will end and they themselves will be led into this very place.
I heard one person telling jokes, a second phoning a friend to find out when his expected promotion and salary increase would happen, a third chatting about satellite television programs, a fourth engaged in serious discussion with somebody over the stock market and why shares of one company had crashed. I could detect no sign of grief or sadness in the face of any of those individuals who could not wait until the dead was buried and then leave the place to resume the despicable habit of talking on mobiles anywhere, at anytime.
What is far worse is to know that the problem is not confined only to these examples. You can hear one person telling another how he concluded a business transaction while at a funeral. Someone else is trying to arrange a spur-of-the-moment appointment with a friend or business associate, telling him the cemetery is the best place for the meeting. You may even come across someone boasting of how he met an official at a funeral and received a promise that the official would expedite the man’s documents which were stuck in his department!
- Arab News From the Local Press 8 May 2003
