The following is an account of my journey to Tangier last summer, where I aimed to find my grandmother's unmarked gravesite and erect a tombstone for her. She had travelled there with terminal diabetes, and died before I was born. No family member had attended her funeral, and no one had visited her grave since. I had been in Morocco for a 6 week language program at the Arabic Language Institute of Fez, and I embarked on my spiritual mission 3 days before leaving the country.

I awakened at 8am, burdened by the urgency of my duty. I had the tombstone, but the final goal remained slinking in Future’s mist. Armed with a Rough Guide map of Tangier, I set out to find “The English Cemetery.” My brother had researched churches in Tangier and found the only English one was called the St Andrews Anglican Church. The Rough Guide turned out to be very rough indeed and not at all a guide: none of the landmarks was in the right place, hotels were listed that burned down decades ago, there was no indication of topographical relief, and the cartographer arbitrarily decided which highways were worth recording.

I strolled by the Café de Paris, the famed haunt of World War II spies when Tangier was under the suzerainty of world powers, sidestepped the next hill, and passed the dilapidated Gran Teatro Cervantes, the once extravagant entertainment venue for the city’s colonial elite. The closed Grand Hotel Villa de France sat up the road in gloomy disrepair, another adumbration of Tangier’s glorious past. The city reeked with decay – the glamorous memory of an international duty-free haven for tycoons and crooks, spies and courtesans, sailors and pirates swirling and mixing and clashing with the seedy quintessence of today’s Morocco. Meanwhile, St Andrews Church was nowhere. I vainly perambulated around this gigantic Muslim cemetery, wishing it would suddenly turn Anglican. I stumbled across an unkempt Spanish church with shattered windows and a dead atmosphere. The sign outside displayed only 3 masses a week, and I descried no adjacent graveyard in which my grandmother, Corinne, could have been buried.

Retracing my steps across a twice-familiar road and down a side street, two small signs brandished the much-anticipated words, “St. Andrews” and “The English Church.” Exactly as my aunt Gail and brother concurred! The straw-hatted attendant greeted “Good day” in an impeccable English accent as I passed the threshold into the leafy churchyard. But it looked far too circumscribed to have been the same one in the photographs; the grassy slopes and large white tombs of the photos were here replaced by only a handful of gravestones surrounded by a brick wall and shaded by a canopy of trees occluding the blue sky above. Could the graveyard have been altered, moved, removed? Had the development of Tangier imprisoned this little churchyard? Positively depressing. Observing the ancient tombstones in advanced states of degradation, I suspected the area had remained untouched for at least 50 years. No, this was not the same site as the photographs. Just in case, I recounted the details of Corinne’s untimely death to the attendant. Unfortunately, his flawless accent did not accurately reflect his English. For 40 years he had raked leaves in the yard, cultivating a perfect “Good day” but little else. Resorting to Arabic, he lead me into the empty church and uncovered a dusty plan of the graveyard, with each gravesite labeled. I scanned all 250 plots – names of famous generals, bankers, and a druglord named Dean who fled London from charges of money laundering among other felonies. But no Corinne McEachern.

"Fee moqbara agnabeeya okhra?” I beseeched the straw-hatted man.

“Hmmm…” he ruminated, “Yes, there is another Christian cemetery. Bubana. That’s what it’s called. Mostly Spanish, but all foreigners are buried there.” he replied in Arabic. “Much bigger, take taxi.”

“Shokran. Shokran geddan!” I exuded, and hurriedly hailed a taxi as he brushed a fresh coat of paint on the gate. The taxi drove me toward the edge of town through a picturesque area called California. The sun filtered through swinging branches of eucalyptus, the smooth road curved along the side of a verdant hill, the white rooves of the old medina sparkled across the valley…California…what an apt name! We could have been on Sunset Boulevard in Santa Monica. My spirits uplifted already, for I knew we careened toward a more spacious place akin to the photos. Ten minutes later, I was deposited at a wide empty intersection in front of a blue, signless gate. Inside I caught a glimpse of a grassy slope through a bower of trees. This might be it! I knocked on the door of the guardhouse, and out emerged a smiley middle-aged Moroccan man who looked as if he had just tumbled out of bed. I immediately embarked on a reprise of the story I had told to the St Andrews attendant, adding my most recent exertions, but he cut me short.

"Say no more. All I need is your grandmother’s date of death and her name,” as he unearthed a behemoth tome of all the people who had ever been laid to rest there. He flipped through the dusty pages, passing decades of deaths as I peered anxiously on.

1922… 1950… 1962… 1966… 1967… March… June... July… August… 28th…29th…30th…. There, under 30th of August 1967 was Corinne Kearfott [sic?] McEachern. At last! A physical find! An array of columns described the circumstances of her death and burial in Spanish, and I wondered, did she harbour a few innocent secrets? Why was she listed Inglesa under Nacionalidad? He took out an auxiliary catalog and showed me two cards. One had Corinne’s name and the details of her burial. The other had replicate details, yet a new name: The Countess of Huntingdon. Who was this mystery woman? I pondered. After intensive dialogue, I realized this curious countess supervised and funded her burial. Something to ask my aunt Gail...

The man hurried outside and beckoned me up the slope. He fervidly counted the rows of graves, plunged down side paths, then turned back again in an eager hunt for her plot. The day warmed under the brilliant mandarin sun, and a cool Atlantic breeze rushed up the hill, caressing the weeds and the tops of the trees. Life coursed through this spectral domicile of death. I couldn’t imagine a more pleasant place to be buried. About 100m up the slope, the man turned left and passed a dozen graves, comparing the names on the tombs with their respective plot numbers. There, between 2 Spanish tombstones was a grassy gap overgrown with weeds. We doublechecked the catalog he had brought, and undoubtedly, it was Corinne’s. It was arresting to think my grandmother lay beneath this very earth, a mere metre from my feet. No tombstone, just weeds celebrating her nutrients.

I scrutinized the photographs and, looking down the slope, the same ridge stood watch across the valley. Significantly more buildings festooned its green flanks, but I could discern the familiar-looking tree crenellating its crest. I rejoiced in nature’s reliability: the trees calmly observed so many changes over the decades! I could also identify the exact same box-like tombs found in the photos and could recreate them from similar angles. How could I be the only McEachern to have visited Corinne’s indefinitely subterranean abode? Thirty-eight years of quiet waiting…let’s hope Corinne McEachern was a patient woman!

“Right, I brought a tombstone for this empty plot. How can I stick it in the ground?” I launched into immediate action.

“Tombstone? Like a marble slab?” the cemetery guardian queried.

“Yes.”

“Well, you need a box like everyone else’s. See these boxes everywhere? The epitaphs are mounted on them. That’s how it’s done here.”

Hundreds and hundreds of white rectangular tombs peppered the hillside, most the size of single beds, others taller like bunk beds.

“Why are some taller?” I asked him.

“They are for families. When another family member dies, he is placed above the previous deceased member. Keeps them together, saves money, saves space. Bubana has 16,000 graves altogether,” he elaborated.

Sixteen thousand! I had no idea! How far up the slope did this cemetery stretch? Sixteen thousand boxes. No, a duplicate white box, no different from any other, would not suit Corinne’s “independent spirit.” She would be lost in the sea of uniformity, worse than a weed patch. If I could not simply stick it in the earth, the epitaph demanded something bolder, more personal, and unique.

“I would like a tall structure,” I conveyed in crude Arabic. “Something that commands height. And not white. Traditional tiles, colourful, attention-grabbing.” Aesthetic visions flooded and flocculated in my brain.

His eyes widened. “allahlahlahlahla! Ghalee bezaf!”

“Expensive? How much?”

“Ten thousand dirhams probably, but you have to speak to the foreman.” I balked at the price, but refused defeat.

“What if I didn’t make it so long horizontally and concentrated on height?”

“You mean, like a tower?”

“Naam, a 2-metre tower.”

Thus continued our negotiations of the final design, considering price, beauty, and structural durability. After meeting with the superintendent, visiting a professional zellij master (traditional tilest), and bargaining down to the very most I could afford, the superintendent promised he would have the monument fashioned for 4,000 dirhams by next week. By this time I would be sipping champagne with my family back home in Egypt.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured, “it will all be done just as you want it,” as he presented his National ID card and contact details to confirm his identity. “There is no strange business in death,” he intoned, which meant he would never cheat me in the earnest pursuit of death’s recognition.

“I have faith in you. You’re a kind man,” proffering our address in Egypt, to which he could send photos of the completed monument.

Worried that I hadn’t adequately thanked him, I unveiled all my lexical guns and extolled in the most formal Arabic: “Atamanaa As-Saada Lakaa fii hadhiihii As-Saif wa baqeat Hayaatak,” which means, “I hope happiness for you this summer and the rest of your life.”

“Inshaallah, we will see you again.”

“Definitely. My family and I will pilgrimage to see the finished work with our bare eyes someday. Good Health to you! Alf wa Shokran! Ma’salaama!”

Four weeks later, just days prior to our departure from Egypt and one day after Mom expressed doubt over any forthcoming news, a small letter from the superintendent arrived. Enclosed were 3 photos, and the following message scribbled on a little piece of graphing paper:

“Monsieur, Comme convenu j’ai fait les travause tells vos desires. J’espere que vous serez d’accord avec le resultat des travause. Salutations. Tanger. 23-7-05"

I couldn’t be more relieved to finally know Grand Corinne has been given satisfactory homage.

Firth McEachern is a sophomore at Harvard University.