The Gravedigger

About this book

While the world rushes toward life's din, "Ali" stands alone in a forgotten cemetery in one of Morocco's villages, not only to bury the dead, but to extract from under the soil the questions of existence the living forgot. "The Gravedigger" is no mere play, but a revealing mirror exposing a reality oscillating between poverty and dignity, between the philosophy of perishing and the absurdity of the everyday. In this work, the cemetery transforms from its wonted stillness into a stage teeming with social and intellectual conflicts; where the humiliated teacher meets the scandal-hunting journalist, and the philosopher chasing "the philosophy of graves" meets the simple folk owning nothing but their prayers. The work's tone progresses from the mystery of graves and their tombstones engraved with the finest Maghrebi and Kufic lines, to a deep inspiration breaking the fear of death's barrier, turning it into a chant of contentment and hope. Mohamed El-Wassaf takes us on a narrative journey of human excellence, touching the issues of forced migration and "boats of death" whose victims' bodies find no place in this soil, and posing burning questions about the urban fabric that grew too narrow for the living and the dead alike. It is an invitation to contemplate that tiny distance between the first axe stroke and meeting the Creator, in a literary style joining black satire and pure spirituality, leaving the reader before a single question: do we guard the cemeteries, or do the cemeteries guard our absent truth?