Where is the escape from the heat?

Editor-in-Chief's Word "Exploit" a team of editors of the "National Geographic Arabic" magazine's absence for compelling reasons from this issue, to publish an investigation I have been "struggling" to delay its publication for five years or more. The team chose for it this title: "In our house... the dead." My reasons for refusing are based on the fact that it contains heartbreaking and painful images on its pages; and the fact that your magazine — without a doubt — is shared by our adult readers with their school children. Also because the world is already in no need of sorrow and pain, especially during the pandemic, so I did not want the magazine to be one of the outlets of pain. Furthermore, the topic contains strangeness that contradicts our Arab and Islamic culture regarding dealing with the bodies of the dead and the respect and sanctity they hold in our pure religion. I did not read the topic again after my decision then to postpone its publication indefinitely, but its details kept haunting my mind, and I recall them whenever I hear about a death; I quickly remember the strange and wonderful rituals and customs of the "Tauraja" people who inhabit an island in Indonesia. This is what I recently experienced when I saw a ten-year-old boy who, upon learning of his beloved grandfather’s death, said: "So... I won’t see him again!?" So, the whole story revolves around the pain of loss. That loss which only hurts the living... "I won’t see him again!?" "I won’t talk to him!?" "I won’t hear his voice again!?" We cry out in pain from our inability to bear the feelings of loss, and we remain so until we get used to it; then the tears stop — or dry up — and the pain subsides... even though the dead remains absent. We honor our dead by hastening their burial, while other peoples have rituals that differ from ours. Those are their rituals; and their dead; and that is their affair. ... It’s the difference! Read in this issue: Climate change exacerbates drought in the Kalahari Desert The "living" dead in Indonesia Hunger in the land of "Uncle Sam" Peru’s gold