It’s been an eventful few days for the Different Moons project. Our links with the wider Asian community are having an effect and on Sunday we hosted an event at the Boo in Waterfoot organised by Rizwan Iqbal of the amazing Love & Etiquette Foundation. 25 young people joined us and Mohammed Ali (http://www.aerosolarabic.com/mohammed-ali/) ran graffiti workshops, while Saqib Choudhrey and Tom Burford provided Hip-Hop and Beatboxing…
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| Work by Mohammed Ali in Amsterdam |
The fountain and the problem of creating tiles on a small budget (previous post) was still worrying me…then, also on Sunday, I went with Shamshad and Habiba to prize giving at the Rossendale Islamic Supplementary School, where Mazhar Hussain was giving out the prizes. I discussed this concern with Mazhar and he mentioned that some years ago Rossendale Groundwork had created ceramic tiles for the Muslim section of Holden Cemetery, Helmshore. He though they may have been vandalised, or perhaps just damaged with time.
I decided to check this out as it’s close to my home:
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| The column that must have housed the ceramics |
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| The Muslim section of Holden Cemetery |
Despite being close to home I have to say that I had never set foot inside the cemetery before. I once worked as a grave-digger, briefly when I was barely out of my teens, and they always bring back a flood of odd and slightly unsettling memories. I walked around for a while before I found the Muslim section, with its perhaps 25 or 30 gravestones, and the broken column that must have housed the ceramics Mr Hussain talked about. No other sign of them.
Although no nearer a solution for the fountain tiles, I looked more closely at the stones, and a handful mentioned Attock (see blog 30/09/13) as a birthplace. It made me wonder again at what stories were buried in those graves along with their tellers.