Thursday of the Dead and the yellow ka’ak

This is the single date in the Levant that two communities keep on the same day and in the same way. It goes by three names: Khamis al-Amwat, Thursday of the Dead; Khamis al-Asrar, Thursday of the Secrets; and Khamis al-Bayd, Thursday of the Eggs. The cemetery, the yellow ka’ak and the painted egg sit at the centre of it. No church and no mosque owns the day.

Which day it falls on

It is not fixed on the calendar. The day falls somewhere between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Easter Sundays, and the sources disagree about exactly where. Salim Tamari places it three days before Easter Sunday, on Holy Thursday; a study published in 1948 puts it fourteen days before the Good Friday of the Eastern church.

The practical answer is to ask where you are. Two calendars run side by side in Syria, so the same day can meet you on two different dates. The calendar page in this section covers that doubling.

What happens at the cemetery

The real hour of the day is before sunrise. Women go to the cemetery, pray for the dead and hand out what they have brought: ka’ak al-asfar and dried fruit, to the poor, to children and to relatives. The giving is itself counted as an act of mercy, and that is its name — rahmy.

The day belongs to women. The accounts note that the visit itself is often short and the time is really spent in company; the cemetery doubles as a meeting place.

The yellow ka’ak and the painted egg

Ka’ak al-asfar, the yellow ka’ak, is a small stamped bread cake. It is not the sesame ring sold from a pole in the souq: that one is street bread, this one is feast dough. The stamp is pressed into the dough, and every piece handed out carries the same mark.

Children are also given painted eggs, usually yellow. The third name of the day comes from that. Together the ka’ak and the egg are the visible side of the day — they are what is in your hand on the way back from the cemetery.

Why two communities share it

The sharing is said to go back at least to the 12th century, and is linked to Saladin urging Muslims to take up Christian customs. The anthropologist Anne Fuller ties it to something older: the belief that the living and the dead make up one community.

The day is part of Muslim mourning practice too. After a death the cemetery is visited every Thursday, and after that once a year on Thursday of the Dead. Stamped bread cakes are still handed out on the Thursday and the Monday that follow a death.

Where it is still kept

Across the region the day is observed less than it once was. The place in Syria where it is said to be kept in the same way is Homs. The name has shifted there: many now say Khamis al-Halawa, Thursday of Sweetness, since women buying sweets and giving them to children and the poor counts as a double act of sweetness.

For a visitor it comes to this. If you see a crowd walking to a cemetery early in the morning during Easter week in Homs or in an old quarter, it is not a funeral. If ka’ak is held out to you at a door or at the cemetery gate, taking one and saying thank you is what is expected.