From the funeral until the seventh day after it, the house of the departed will be full of relatives and friends, who also stay for meals and to help the family through those difficult first days. Traditionally no cooking was done in the house of the bereaved until the seventh day, and relatives and neighbors took turns providing cooked food. The custom has since changed, at least in Tehran, and relatives now cook food in the house. A light should remain on in the house for forty days, because the soul will be visiting. This light is also a sign that life goes on for the departed and the family. This custom reminds me of a childhood memory and underlines the similarities between two apparently unrelated cultures. After my grandfather’s death in Athens over thirty-five years ago, my grandmother kept an oil lamp lit day and night “for grandpa’s soul,” she said.
On the third day after the funeral, the family visits the grave and spreads flower petals and sprinkles rosewater on the soil. A child goes around offering fruit and dates to guests and to people visiting other graves in exchange for a Fatiha prayer. Mourners read a chapter from the Quran, intending that the divine reward reach the departed soul. Every Thursday evening until the fortieth day they visit the grave and repeat this same ritual. The third-day ceremony takes place in the evening at a mosque or prayer hall (Hosseiniyeh). It starts with a recitation from the Quran and continues with a sermon intended for the congregation to contemplate the transience of this world, and of how good deeds and the prayers and donations to charity by others come to a person’s aid in the afterlife. Then the preacher moves the congregation to tears with a dirge and concludes by thanking everyone for coming on behalf of the family.
If the departed owned a shop, or if close relatives own one in the area, it usually remains closed from when the person died until the third-day or the seven-day ceremony, The mourners walk with the sons or the brothers to the shop and, reciting salutations to the Holy Prophet and his family, older kinsmen pull up the shutters and unlock the shop, symbolically granting the family permission to reopen it. If some of the bereaved are civil servants or teachers, they are granted compassionate leave for at least seven days. For example, my sister-inlaw was a schoolteacher when Mâmân-jun passed away. Even though schools don’t usually have substitute teachers, she wasn’t expected to report to work until the first working day after the seven-day ceremony. In her absence, her colleagues, the principal, and the vice-principal covered her class as best as they could by splitting classes for a couple of days until a retired colleague of hers volunteered to help out without remuneration. Her colleagues also attended at least one of the memorial services, even though they did not personally know the deceased, to show their compassion and their respect for my sister-in-law. On the day she was due to return to work, the principal and one of her colleagues came over to her house early in the morning to escort her to the school, where a fabric banner with all the colleague’s condolences written on it was hung over the main gate. The graveside ritual has a private, spiritual nature, just like a visit to a loved one, whereas the mosque or prayer hall gathering takes on a social feeling. Both private and social memorial customs are based on the beliefs that the soul has access to the physical world and derives pleasure from the actions of the living, and that the living can help the soul in the afterlife through prayers and good deeds, for which they are also given divine reward.
Religious Customs of Persia: Rowzeh
