KARACHI: This year, it will be over four decades since Muhammad Jameel, 52, first began digging graves as a nine-year-old.
Earlier this month, Jameel used his rusty shovel to break the soil for a new grave, looking forward to the $5 he will take home to his family of eight from Karachi’s Yasinabad Graveyard, one of over 250 cemeteries in the southern port city. The cemetery is officially closed, having run out of space, but the funerals keep coming.
Indeed, hundreds of graveyards have filled to capacity and become prime real estate in the city of over 20 million people. Yet, people like Jameel, who have been involved in the profession of gravedigging through generations, struggle to make ends meet.
“I have been working here since I was 9 years old,” Jameel, a third-generation undertaker, told Arab News as he wiped sweat from his brow and began to dig. “I used to pour water [on the graves]. My maternal grandfather used to be here. With him I would dig graves.”
Today, Jameel’s responsibilities involve digging new graves, lowering the dead into the ground, and washing and repairing graves and tombstones for little reward in terms of both money and respect.
“If a funeral or body comes, we work on it as if it were a member of our own family, it feels as if someone in our home has died, we work like that,” the gravedigger said.
“But people don’t think much of us … Making ends meet is very difficult for us. The children also bring in some income from various sources and that’s how we manage to get by.”
Younus Khan Niazi, a 40-year-old second-generation gravedigger at Karachi’s Mewa Shah Graveyard, said there were days when he went home empty-handed.
“A laborer who goes to work in the morning earns a daily wage and brings some money home, but in our cemetery, there’s a chance to earn something only if a body arrives,” he said.
Despite the small pay-off, the nature of the work of death means gravediggers often have to stop all of their life’s activities in the lime of duty.
Jameel recalled one such instance when he missed the birth of his child: 
“The delivery was happening there [at hospital], I was digging a grave here.”
And while Jameel said his family was likely to quit the profession due to a lack of respect and money, Niazi, who has four sons, said he intended to pass on the tradition to his children.
“Just as I took over after my father, my son will take over after me. Skill is wealth, and this cemetery work, grave digging and laying blocks, is a skill.”
Niazi acknowledged that his line of work meant he often had to miss out on important family occasions but said he could not be ungrateful that other people’s grief was putting food on his table.
“When someone passes away, they will come to me to dig the grave,” Niazi said. “I will dig the grave and it will provide livelihood for my children.”
GRAVE BUSINESS
Of the over 250 graveyards in Karachi, only 38 are managed by the state Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC), and of these, six have reached capacity and are officially closed, namely Yasinabad, Paposh Nagar, Society, Model Colony, Qur’angi and Mehmoodabad. 
And while many of the cemeteries like Yasinabad and Society no longer have space for new graves, locals and experts say this has created opportunities for both officials and gravediggers to make money by overcharging grieving families and asking for bribes. 
One mourner, Owais Ali, an electronics trader, said he had wanted to bury his mother in the Society graveyard near his house but was asked by the supervisor of the graveyard and on-duty gravediggers to pay over $300 for a spot, instead of the KMC fee of around $35. Ali managed to negotiate the amount down to Rs35,000 ($126) “by using a contact,” he said. 
Those who don’t have such contacts end up paying as much as Rs200,000 ($719) for “prime locations,” said Zahid Farooq, a joint director at the nonprofit Urban Resource Center.
“People are forced to bury their loved ones in existing graves due to a lack of space. They are also forced to buy graves at exorbitant prices,” Farooq said, calling the graveyard business a “mafia.”
But he commiserated with gravediggers who he said received little in return for their hard work while cemetery supervisors enjoyed a “good lifestyle.” He said everyone from police to municipal and district administration authorities shared in the profits. 
“They all together share in the expensive graves and the excessive costs,” Farooq added. 
KMC spokesperson Ali Hasan Sajid admitted that graves were regularly sold at rates higher than the KMC fee but blamed gravediggers and families of the deceased for the corruption. 
People often wanted burials in graveyards where their relatives were already buried, he said: “They strongly insist on being accommodated, often tempting the gravediggers with money.”
Low paid gravediggers accepted bribes and assigned graves without the approval of KMC authorities, Sajid insisted. 
“When we investigate and ask the gravediggers if they made such a demand [for higher fee], they deny it,” the KMC spokesman said, admitting that burials were still taking place at the six officially closed graveyards in the city.
“People insist that they need a grave [at this place] in any case and at any cost.”
Gravediggers say they aren’t involved in either the politics or business of the trade. 
Muhammad Abid, a 38-year-old gravedigger, said his community barely made ends meet and had no say in the allocation of graves or how much they cost.
“Our job,” he said, “is only to dig graves.”

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus held a bilateral meeting in New York on Wednesday during which the two agreed to revive bilateral ties and expand cooperation in various sectors, a statement from Sharif’s office said.
The Pakistani prime minister met Yunus at the sidelines of the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session in New York at the UN headquarters.
Historically bitter ties between the two countries have seen a thaw in recent weeks after the government of former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina was dismissed following violent student-led protests in August. Both sides have since then expressed the desire to improve relations with each other.
Sharif highlighted Pakistan’s strong fraternal ties with Bangladesh, noting that they were based on common faith, history, and culture, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said.
“He also emphasized that both sides need to work together to further strengthen the bilateral relations,” Sharif’s office said, adding that he called for fostering relations through parliamentary exchanges, people-to-people contacts and interactions among sportspersons, academics, artists and students.
The Pakistani premier also invited Yunus to undertake an official visit to his country, stressing the importance of regional cooperation and dialogue.
“Both sides agreed that there was a need to work closely at bilateral, regional, and multilateral levels for the progress and development of the peoples of both countries,” the PMO said.
Separately, Yunus’ office said the Bangladeshi leader called for the revival of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as a top platform for cooperation in South Asia.
Yunus said reviving SAARC could be “a good way” to revitalize ties between the two countries and sought Pakistan’s support in that regard, his office said.
“Shehbaz Sharif promised his support for the initiative and suggested the countries move step by step in reviving the regional platform,” Yunus’ office said.
“Sharif said Bangladesh and Pakistan should open a ‘new page’ in their relations to enhance cooperation in various aspects,” it added.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani prime minister expressed his country’s interest in investing in Bangladesh’s textile and leather sectors while Yunus proposed an exchange of youth programs between the two countries.
“The two countries also discussed renewing foreign secretary-level talks and reactivating the joint commission between the two countries,” Yunus’ office said.
Established together as one independent nation in 1947, Bangladesh won liberation from then-West Pakistan in 1971. Relations between the two countries continued to deteriorate during Hasina’s administration, which prosecuted several members of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party for war crimes relating to the 1971 conflict.
Pakistan’s foreign office said Islamabad desired “robust, multifaceted and friendly relations” with Bangladesh after Hasina’s ouster.