by David Yeadon
It’s an upmarket-ish offshoot of the old Pakistani-peddler days here, when, in the crofting era, mysterious gentlemen of exotic origin would wander the outer islands on bikes, horse-drawn carts, or in clapped-out vans, selling everything from ladies’ undergarments and other lacy feminine accoutrements to hair lotions, health potions, cheap cutlery and crockery, combs, shoelaces, and “guaranteed” mousetraps.
Akram’s is a modest peddler’s or packman’s pushcart transferred into an exotic Aladdin’s cave of anything and everything that one might ever need in an average island household. Thousands of diverse items fill the shelves of this long, narrow bazaarlike store overlooking the dock from the steep bluff of the town. There’s no food, of course. The two grocers defend their monopolies rigorously. But if you’d like a selection of half a dozen different types of can openers, a box of bonnie wee woolen bonnets for babies, a cornucopia of costume jewelry and toiletries, cheap and not quite so cheap watches, rolls upon rolls of rugs and wallpaper, footwear galore from delicate ladies’ pumps to gargantuan hiking boots—even TVs and VCRs—then this is your place.
I’d met the lady behind the counter many times before as I scoured the shelves for Band-Aids, photo frames, cuddly toy gifts for children, hard-to-find batteries, and, on one occasion, a special kind of manual masher guaranteed to produce the creamiest of potato dishes. She was a plump, warm-faced woman with pronounced teeth, always pearly-white, and she had never yet failed to help me find what I needed. But she always seemed a little distracted by her voluminous stock lists, which she constantly checked, the requests of other customers, and the frenetic activities of family members whose job it seemed was to scurry about cramming even more items of choice onto the already overpacked shelves.
This day was different. She was in despair. A black tie was not to be found anywhere. There were boxes of brightly colored striped, polka-dotted, and paisley-patterned ties, but not a single simple funereally black tie.
“I know we had…we definitely…I saw one only last…it was right…it must have…,” she mumbled, mainly to herself, in her increasingly enervating search. “I’m so sorry…I can’t understand.” Then she vanished, half whispering something about the stockroom. “Maybe it’s under that pile of blankets and sheets…”
A few minutes later she returned, her face transformed into a smug smile, her eyes glowing with achievement and pride. “You see?! Here we are…I knew we had…” I thanked her sincerely and then she decided that, as I’d been so patient and understanding, she should finally, after all my previous visits, introduce herself.
“I am Bushra and my husband, who also works here with us and the family, is Ghaffar…he is really a doctor, you know. A PhD doctor. A biochemist. Very, very clever man. He worked in Japan for quite a long time. After the war, you know. And I was there too. We lived an hour or so outside Tokyo. Now, that was very interesting time, you see, because…”
And on she went with not a hint of her previous reticence. In ten minutes I’d received the full and fascinating story of her life, and then, to occupy another ten minutes, she launched into an eloquent and well-informed series of monologues on the old crofting life of Harris; the Scottish Parliament (whose new headquarters in Edinburgh had recently astounded the country by costing over $800 million when initial estimates had suggested a tenth of that price); the cruelty of the Taliban in Afghanistan; the difference between the Pakistani and Indian economies (“The Indians want economic success very badly—Pakistanis are Moslems and not so, well [big shrug here]…”) and a potpourri of other worldly issues.
I looked at my watch. It was almost 2:00 P.M. and Peggy Ann’s funeral service, way down at the bottom end of the island, was set for 2:30 P.M. I apologized to Bushra for the urgency of my departure, grabbed my black tie, and tried to complete the forty-five-minute drive in half an hour. Unfortunately, the sheep did not cooperate. The tarmac road surface had been pleasantly warmed by the morning sun, and sheep love warm tarmac, happily plonking themselves down in the middle of the one-lane highway and refusing to budge until horns are blared vigorously and wheels are almost nudging their fleeces and ready to squash them into roadkill.
Thus, I was late. I could hear the slow, sad hymn singing already echoing out from the tiny church across from Leverburgh’s An Clachan Co-operative store. So I feverishly pulled out the folded black tie from its packaging and proceeded to knot it around my neck. Unfortunately, as I am not normally a tie man, I’d failed to check if my shirt collar was of the “extra generous” circumference normally necessary to button for a tie. It wasn’t. The button and the hole refused to meet. Okay, I thought, I’ll do a fat Windsor knot and that’ll cover the gap. Which it did quite effectively. I was about ready to leave the car when I noticed that my somber black tie possessed one particular element that set it apart from any other funeral tie I’d ever seen. There was a gray rabbit embroidered into the lower part of the tie that, in my haste, I—and Bushra—had failed to notice. I mean, one doesn’t normally expect somber black ties to support embroidered representations of rabbits. And as I looked closer, I realized this was no ordinary rabbit. This was a rabbit with very large ears. And it was a rabbit holding an unusually large red carrot. It was the rabbit we all know and love. It was Bugs Bunny…
Epithets were definitely not deleted for the next minute or so and they covered quite a hit list, including me and my stupidity for not looking at the tie in the store, ditto Bushra, and certainly Bugs Bunny, who, up until now, had been one of my favorite cartoon characters.
Finally, I calmed down enough to realize that if I buttoned all three buttons on my Harris Tweed jacket, the offending image would be hidden. So I left the car and walked briskly to the church, trying to fasten the buttons. But something had happened to my midriff. Or to the size of the jacket. Bottom line: once again buttons and holes would not meet. Oh, the hell with it, I thought. Just stand at the back somehow and hold the damn jacket closed. No one will notice. Then I’ll be back in the car. Tie off.
Alas, ’twas not to be so.
I crept quietly into the church to find the place packed with more than two hundred mourners all singing this very, very depresssing dirge. Not only were all the pews full, but there seemed to be no standing room anywhere. Ah, well, I thought, at least I made the effort…
The singing stopped abruptly. Then a finger tapped my shoulder. I turned and a tall, stern-faced gentleman mumbled something incoherent, grabbed my elbow, and started half dragging me down the aisle. There was a somber, hushed silence in the church. Our feet were the only sounds to be heard. Heads turned at the disturbance. Scowls appeared on men’s faces. Women’s eyebrows were raised under a remarkable array of large black funeral hats. And on and on we went down the aisle. I couldn’t see a seat anywhere. Finally we arrived directly below the pulpit, where the minister towered over us, regarding me with an odd mix of curiosity and distaste.
My guide—presumably an usher—waved to a cluster of elderly gentlemen sitting in a special raised pew that directly faced the congregation, indicating they should move up and make room for me. They did so with distinct ill grace. And I can’t say I blamed them. I had been bodily transported to the most important place in the church—the Seats of the Elders—and here they were, all eight of them, all very elderly and very stern faced, having to shuffle and squeeze to let in this uninvited and rather overportly outsider. An outsider who was totally unfamiliar with the ways and rituals of the Church of Scotland, most inappropriately dressed in brown shoes, brown trousers, and blue jacket, hot and sweaty from the tortuous drive to the church, and, sacrilege of sacrilege, sporting on his tie an embroidered cartoon likeness of Bugs Bunny eating his trademark carrot, hidden under a jacket that was far too ill-fitting to fasten.
What followed after this can possibly be summed up in a single word: black.
Of course, one normally expects black to be the dominant color at funerals, but, notwithstanding a couple of men’s modestly colored shirts, I have never loo
ked across so much blackness in a single place before. And the dark-toned service moved somberly along from slow, sad hymn to long—very long—prayers to Gaelic psalms chanted in melancholy minor keys. One writer suggested that the Harris islanders possessed “a deep, dark fear and fascination with death.” Certainly, there seemed to be few references to poor Peggy Ann but abundant fire-and-brimstone content, along with threats of eternal damnation for the unrighteous and salvation only for those few chosen ones who managed to carefully preserve their own souls relatively unblemished and untainted by the nefarious ways of our wicked world. I remember one particularly morose line delivered by an equally morose-looking minister: “We are here on earth only to suffer and pray in fear and faith for eternal forgiveness…”
Now, I’ve been to dozens of funeral services encompassing widely contrasting cultures, religions, and societal mores. And while I’m certain I missed many of the subtleties and subtexts in the ceremonies, invariably I sensed that there was always a latent sense of celebrating the life, achievements, and contributions of the deceased. On some occasions these funerals resembled frenzied carnivals of joy, proclaiming the passing of an individual into a far better place. Others were more silent and mystical but rippled through with love and hope. A few were more structured by religious protocol but still left space for smiles and memories of “sweet sorrow.”
In the case of my own late aunt, the priest’s homily on Cynthia’s life was full of warmth and love and deep affection. So were the stories that were shared by family members. Cynthia was almost reincarnated on that day, so mutual and so vibrant were the realities, joys, and memories of her life and her existence among us all.
But here, in this little Leverburgh church, as the minister read strange, dark passages from Revelation, unfamiliar at least to me, and ringing once again with those constant threats of punishment and the “great wrath and everlasting damnation to come,” I wondered what had happened to poor Peggy Ann. Why was there no celebration of her life and so much focus on our own transgressions and the constant need to “save ourselves”? Her death seemed to be used primarily as a reminder of the tenuousness of earthly mortality and a warning of the harsh judgments we will all, according to the Church of Scotland at least, ultimately face at the end.
St. Clement’s Church, Rodel
After the service the coffin was driven the few miles through wild heather and gorse-flecked hills to St. Clement’s Church at Rodel, that proud stone edifice perched on a rocky puy at the southern tip of the island, with broad vistas of the surf-whipped coastline. And there was Peggy Ann’s resting place, neatly dug in the Stewart family plot and protected from the elements by a sturdy, dry stone wall.
As the mourners gathered around the grave and the minister began his final litany (yet another dour reminder of life’s abruptness and the looming fires of hell that could await us all), two strange, omenlike events occurred.
I’d noticed on my drive to the cemetery the gathering clouds, darkly ogreish and moving rapidly in from the west. When I arrived it seemed as if the afternoon had turned suddenly to dusk. The clouds carried much weight in their massive gray bulks. They were angry, bloated, and ready to implode. But as the coffin was being prepared for lowering, one of those timely coincidences that primarily seem to occur in Romance and Gothic novels happened. A brilliant shaft of light lasered through the looming clouds and fell directly on Peggy Ann’s coffin. The polished wood gleamed an amber glow and the brass handles and decorations sparkled like gold. It lasted no more than thirty seconds and then was gone. Some seemed to notice. Most didn’t. But everyone noticed the next event as the coffin was being lowered into the ground. Barely had that shaft of light vanished than a violent wind came tearing across the Rodel hills. Hats were blown off, coats flapped like bats’ wings, and the rain began. A sudden torrential downpour of storm-chilled water hit us all without warning.
It was then I finally spotted Roddy—one of the few men without a coat over his black suit—looking as if he’d been abruptly dipped in a sheep fank (pen). But, to give the mourners credit, no one left the grave site to seek shelter in the church. They all stood stoically, not only until the coffin was in the ground but until the two gravediggers had completely refilled the hole and even replaced the rain-sodden squares of turf on top of the grave. Normally, one sees a few shovels of earth scattered over the coffin and then it’s off to the reception. But here these sturdy hell-and-damnation, get-thee-behind-me-Satan Calvinists of Harris stood through the storm until the job was properly done and Peggy Ann was safely and securely at rest.
Maybe the solemnity and sadness of the whole affair had gotten to Roddy too. He suddenly appeared at my side as the other mourners were still gazing at the grave and whispered, “Have y’ever been inside the church here—our ‘Cathedral of the Isle’?”
“Only briefly…”
“Well, c’mon, let me show you a few things…”
Considered by many architectural historians to be the ecclesiastical jewel of Scotland’s west coast, this fortresslike structure was rebuilt in 1528 by Alasdair Crotach, the hunchbacked chief of the MacLeods of Harris and Dunvegan, on the site of a fifteen-hundred-year-old St. Columban–era teampall. It was then restored to its present splendor in 1873 by that matriarch of Harris fortunes, the much-beloved Dowager Countess of Dunmore.
Alasdair was renowned for his courage in battle and his ruthless manner of dealing with his adversaries. Possibly as penance for his overreactive spirit and sins, he invested a substantial sum in the creation of this monumental edifice but—with a pragmatic eye on posterity—he also gave himself pride of place inside the church.
“Just look at this tomb,” whispered Roddy as we passed other ancient and intricately carved grave slabs lined up against the walls. “Na there’s a man who was pretty proud of himself, wouldn’t y’say?”
Recessed into the rugged stone wall by the altar was a magnificent arched tomb with an effigy of Alasdair lying in full armor, grasping his huge sword, and with his faithful hunting hound at his feet. The sculpture was worn by time and effacements, but I could still sense the power of this most feared of island chieftains as he lay, ever ready for battle, beneath a meticulously carved arch depicting a wealth of biblical scenes in nine medieval panels. On the recess wall was also a series of other equally elegant panels of St. Clement, third bishop of Rome after St. Peter, and other saints and apostles, animals, hunting scenes, a sailing galley, and a dedication tablet in elegantly carved Latin script.
Nearby was the far less ornate tomb of William, Alasdair’s son, who died in 1551, and on the floor of the nave were other gravestones.
“These, so they say, were where the bearers of the MacLeod flag—‘the Fairy Flag,’ they called it—were buried,” said Roddy, still whispering. “And they say that each of the coffins here had a metal grid in the bottom so that as the next lot of flag bearers were buried, they’d push the remains of the previous guys through the grid to make room for the new ones!”
“A sort of religious recycling…”
“Aye, sort of. Very thrifty policy, I’m thinkin’! Oh—and c’mon, there’s somethin’ else y’should see…might give ye’ a wee smile…”
I was surprised by his suggestion. He was one of the key mourners and had certainly worn a stern, somber expression throughout. But now he was bounding up the steep grass slope of the cemetery to a weatherworn caibeal—a private walled burial plot on top of the hill by the church tower. “Now just read this inscription!” So I did and found it celebrated a Donald MacLeod of Berneray who, having fought with Bonnie Prince Charlie at the disastrous battle of Culloden in 1746, “returned home and, at the ripe old age of 75, married his third wife by whom he had nine children and died in his ninetieth year.”
“Now, that’s what y’call a man!” chuckled Roddy.
“Good to see you laughing again,” I said. “That was a rather dour funeral.”
“Och! Tha’ was nothin’. Sometimes th’ go on for hours.�
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“Oh,” was all I could think to say (with a silent thanks in this instance for brevity).
“Aye, but y’re right—it was a wee bit on the mournful side…more than usual,” agreed Roddy. “That was a surprise—reading all that stuff from Revelation. Couldn’t see how it related to Peggy Ann. She didn’t get much mention at all now, did she? She was such a good…a vital…person. But it was all about saving our souls. No relation to the deceased. Jus’ giving us warnings…I suppose that’s the old form, though. It’s all a bit confusing nowadays. What was the Free Church a while ago is now splitting up again into even smaller churches. It’s all very difficult…strange…”
Finally came the reception at Donnie and Dena MacDonald’s Rodel Hotel, set cozily nearby below a rocky cliff overlooking an attractive inlet-harbor. This was once the home of an eighteenth-century island benefactor, Captain Alexander MacLeod, renowned for his vision of Harris as a focus of the west coast fishing industry (alas, yet one more failed philanthropic initiative). And what a transformation in the day! Suddenly gone was all the earlier dark gloom and doom. People were smiling, laughing, and sharing tales of Peggy Ann, sipping tea, and eagerly devouring dainty, crustless sandwiches. Some of the men, Roddy and myself included, sidled into the adjoining bar and enjoyed a couple of stronger libations before joining in the sandwich gorging. And I looked around and smiled, glad to be reminded once again that despite religions and other differences and all the will-I-be-saved? angst that permeates so many lives here on the island, people are still people, and laughter and smiles can still work their magic here, as they do everywhere else in the world.
But apparently I was not the only one dismayed by the mournfulness of the proceedings, and during my conversations with some of the men at the adjoining bar I was intrigued to note among the various comments the following: “Even wishin’ is said to be sinful in these parts,” murmured one elderly gentleman. “Acceptance, humility, passivity. These are the catchwords of our island religion. Keep y’mouth shut, y’heart pure, and pray for forgiveness and immortality!”