Holding rainbow-coloured golf umbrellas above their heads to shade themselves from the sun, members of the Saudi royal family buried King Fahd yesterday in an unmarked grave at a public cemetery in Riyadh.
The private burial, watched from a distance by TV cameras, was an unpretentious end for a man who in life had managed to combine an outrageously extravagant lifestyle with membership of one of the most austere sects in Islam.
The all-male funeral began at Imam Turki mosque where the new ruler, King Abdullah, greeted the Arab and Muslim leaders who had been able to arrive in the short time between Fahd’s death on Monday and his burial on Tuesday.
A white ambulance bringing the late king’s body from the hospital reversed up to the mosque with its red lights flashing. Its doors opened and the royal pallbearers lifted his body, wrapped in a plain brown cloak on a wooden stretcher, and carried him into the mosque.
It was a short, simple service, with little sign of emotion apart from the unusually quavering and mournful sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer. There were no eulogies or tributes.
In Wahhabi tradition, death is the will of God and excessive displays of grief might be interpreted as challenging the almighty’s decision.
The asr — the third of the five normal daily prayers — was followed by the prayer for the dead. King Abdullah, who is in his 80s, and several of the elderly princes, sat in chairs with their heads bowed but did not prostrate themselves on the ground with the other worshippers.
Soldiers and TV crews, together with the constant flashing of cameras, brought a modern touch to the centuries-old ritual.
It was all over in a few minutes and Fahd’s body was placed back in the ambulance for his short, final journey to the burial ground.
Details of the king’s terminal illness began to emerge on Tuesday when an American doctor who specialises in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) said he had spent three days in Riyadh early last month, helping to treat the king.
”His chances of survival when I was there were about 5%,” said Phil Dellinger, director of critical care at Cooper University hospital in New Jersey. ”Everyone realised that he was very close to dying, but no one wanted to say it.”
Dellinger told the Associated Press he believed the king’s death was eventually caused by ARDS, an illness that severely impairs a person’s ability to transfer oxygen from the lungs to the blood.
At one point, after the king’s oxygen levels had dropped to a critically low level, senior officials, including the minister of health and the chief of hospitals, discussed whether to try to resuscitate him if his heart stopped.
”They didn’t discuss it with the family,” Dellinger said. ”They just decided that the family would want it.” – Guardian Unlimited Â