Residents pray for the departed on the night when graveyards light up

Muslims believe their fate for the upcoming Islamic year is written on this night.

KARACHI:

Celebrating Shab-e-Baraat [Night of Deliverance], Karachi’s graveyards lit up and residents offered prayers for their departed loved ones.

“Before my books are sealed tonight. I would like to ask you to please forgive me for anything I may have done to hurt you, intentionally or unintentionally.” Such text messages made their rounds as Muslims prepared to spend Monday night praying for a blessed upcoming year.

Shab-e-Baraat, observed on the middle of the Islamic month of Shaban, is widely believed to be a night when believers ask for forgiveness for wrongs as the fate for upcoming year is re-written during this night.

In Karachi’s graveyards, brightly coloured fairy lights were draped across trees and several political and religious groups set up their camps to help the visitors. The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and Auqaf department also launched their cleanliness and fumigation drives ahead of Shab-e-Baraat.



Abbas Bhatti, a watchman at the Gizri graveyard in DHA, usually stays up the whole night to help families coming in to offer prayers. People usually start heading to the graveyard after the evening prayers and continue to come through the night until Fajr, he recalled. “We have spent three days decorating and lighting up the graveyard for Shab-e- Barat and we do this every year,” the excited watchman told The Express Tribune.

Bhatti has been working at the graveyard since 1999 but he feels this is one of the activities in the city which is still celebrated with the same enthusiasm. “Everything goes according to routine, we provide car parking and guidance to the visitors, and they recite Quran and Fateha Khawani and put flowers on the graves of their relatives,” Bhatti explained. “Some people also distribute ‘niaz’ and this goes on through the night until the morning prayers because the graveyard is safe and secure.”

Older residents have, however, seen the celebrations die down over the years. “Things have changed in the past three to five years. The city’s law and order situation has also effected the celebrations and activities of Shab-e-Baraat,” said 55-year-old Fateh Muhammad, whose family has been looking after the city’s largest graveyard, Mewa Shah, for decades.

“People used to stay the whole night inside the graveyard and almost every grave used to be decorated like a shrine with lights but now hardly one forth of them receive visitors and most people leave before dark,” said Mohammad. Unsatisfied with the arrangements made by the Sindh police, he said the police are to blame if people decide to stay home tonight.

There are no arrangements for lightings from the government and no one is crazy enough to come to such an insecure place where you can be robbed by anyone hiding behind a tree, he pointed out.

The excitement of Shab-e-Baraat was at its peak for Zeenat Zaheer, a resident of PECHS. “I have made daal halwa for the whole family,” she said, excited that she will be following her mother’s recipe for the first time. She plans on waiting for her father and brothers to return from the graveyard before she starts her prayers for the night.

“There has been a new trend that everyone keeps updating their statuses and asking their friends to forgive them,” she pointed out. “It should not be this way that you keep hurting people through the year and ask for forgiveness once a year.”

Not everyone is, however, going out of their way to celebrate Shab-e-Baraat. Yasir Siddiqui, a resident of Gulberg, will follow the same routine as he does any other Monday night. He did say, however, that it was a good thing that people are devoting at least one day to seek forgiveness for their sins.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 25^th, 2013.