Thread: Caretaker of Kabul's British cemetery Rahimullah dies

From The Times
March 20, 2010
Caretaker of Kabul's British cemetery Rahimullah dies

Rahimullah looked after the British cemetery in Kabul for almost 30 years
Jerome Starkey, Kabul
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To a shopkeeper with a few sheep in a part of Kabul, a well-watered patch of grass with high walls to fend off the urban sprawl was prime city-centre grazing. It didn’t matter to Rahimullah that it was an old British cemetery.

It was a few years after Russian troops had invaded and the previous caretaker had died. Most of the foreign diplomats had fled and the hippies had long since moved on. According to his son, Abdul Samay, the newly married Rahimullah took it upon himself — and his sheep — to keep the grass in check. So began a new career.

Last week, after almost 30 years of tending the graves in the British Cemetery — through a second foreign invasion, Taleban rule and a civil war — the elderly caretaker was laid to rest in a Muslim graveyard not far from where he worked.

His son has taken over. He gets paid a few pounds a day by the British Embassy but now the sheep are rarely, if ever, seen inside
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7069201.ece