It was a relief to leave the oppressive heat of Damascus permeated by the mournful wailing of the mosques and drive through the silent, moonlit countryside towards the late Syrian president's home village of Qardaha. As we sped along the highway, huge pictures of the recently deceased dictator, illuminated by the car's headlights, loomed eerily out of the darkness. I wondered what would become of the thousands of crude statues of Hafez al Assad that are a feature of every Syrian town.
It was the small hours of the morning when we reached the turn to Qardaha, but a cluster of cars was stopped on the main highway while their drivers paused to accept small cups of the bitter black coffee traditionally offered at funerals in Syria.
Deserted streets
With no rooms available in Qardaha, I spent what was left of the night in a small hotel in Latakia, the coastal city most closely identified with the Assad family. In the morning, the streets were deserted, save for a solitary figure with a roll of black cloth still attaching it to anything he could think of. They must have used miles of the stuff since Assad's death was announced.
It was difficult to see out of the taxi I took to Qardaha for all the posters of Assad and his son Bashar plastered on the windows. A live commentary of the funeral blared deafeningly from the car radio. A few miles up the road, we swerved to a halt to remove a dangerously flapping poster.
Despite its location in the hills above the Mediterranean coast, Qardaha was already sweltering by late morning. The streets were full of a mixture of soldiers and men wearing red-and-white keffiyeh head-dresses and long Arabic abbayas, fingering their worrybeads as they surveyed the scene.
Groups of young people, many holding posters of Assad, were wandering aimlessly. Others headed more purposefully - perhaps towards the Na'isa mosque that Assad had built in memory of his mother and where prayers over his coffin would be said later. The mood was subdued, and people seemed stunned. It was uncannily quiet except for Koranic verses and the periodic chanting of mourners.
I kept getting offered cups of the bitter black coffee, and once someone offered me his chair so I could watch the funeral in Damascus on television. Out on the street again, a man wanted me to buy one of his bouquets of wilted flowers. The mosque wailed relentlessly the prayers for the dead. The faces of the women looked as if they had really been weeping, but there was also a feeling of quiet resignation.
I was invited inside a house where the family was watching television. The women were elaborately dressed in black. A large glass-framed portrait of Assad stared benignly from the wall. New arrivals were greeted effusively and a fresh tray of coffee appeared. It was as if each family was experiencing a death in its own immediate circle.
Secret police
Throughout the day I was reminded several times how unusual it was for foreigners to be wandering around this bastion of the Assad family's security-obsessed Alawite sect, where one assumes almost every other person is a member of the secret police. Once, when I climbed onto the roof of a three-storey house, two men in plain clothes appeared beside me and asked what I was writing. Saying I was trying to determine which building housed the Assad family tomb seemed to dispel their fears.
As the day wore on, more and more mourners from the surrounding area appeared on the streets, disgorged from buses on the outskirts of the town. The sun beat down mercilessly and people queued around a parked water-tanker and held their faces under the taps. Others drank from hoses.
The hours passed interminably, and people huddled under bushes to get some shade. In mid-afternoon another family offered me their hospitality, which even included a plate heaped with rice and beans, apologising that it was only "fast food" due to the circumstances.
The sense of anticipation grew as television pictures showed the plane leaving Damascus. People began to take up positions on semi-constructed buildings, on balconies and rooftops - anywhere they could be sure of getting a view of the coffin.
I found a spot a few hundred metres from the Na'isa mosque and was surrounded by youths wearing black headbands who kept breaking into hoarse chanting and punching the air with their fists. A cameraman, dressed completely in black and wearing a headband, appeared on the cleared street inciting the mourners to a frenzy. I couldn't help feeling it was a bit like a football match.
Motorcycle outriders
Reinforcements of military police and soldiers kept running up, and it was obvious the authorities were terrified order would disintegrate. Police linked arms and formed a double row to hold back the crowd, while republican guards stood facing us, their guns aimed straight at the people.
It all happened very quickly: first the motorcycle outriders, then the army truck pulling the gun carriage with the coffin came into view. The chanting turned into a great roar and part of the crowd surged up the hill after the coffin. The scene took on the aspect of a Godfather funeral with the appearance of black-suited men wearing sunglasses, leaning out of American off-road vehicles. One brandished a Kalashnikov above his head, while they screamed at the crowd and made menacing gestures to get back.
In a few seconds it was over. As the final cars in the convoy disappeared and the heatweary crowd dispersed, it was time to go home.