I walk northwest along the old town walls, built in the 16th century to keep out Barbary pirates. Ochre dirt carparks stretch along the wall. At the end of the wall, tucked on a narrow interior street, is a small cemetery, gleaming white and overlooked by apartment blocks. I am the only person on the grounds.

Worn opalescent fish-scaled paths are flanked by tall pines and cypresses. White marble gravestones lie under them, decorated with bouquets of sun-faded plastic flowers in marble vases. Why do modern Christians, Muslims, and Jews continue to plant cypresses in their necropolises? It is an ancient tradition according to a cursory Internet search; the cypress is a symbol of hope and eternal life.

The cypress also symbolises the underworld, which may mirror this world: the rows of mausoleums remind me of the eerily empty streets lined with small terrace houses just beyond the cemetery walls. The mausoleums themselves are smaller versions of the houses of the living, with metal filigree doors, some hung with white lace curtains, into which are tucked faded flowers. One almost imagines that their occupants have just stepped out, to return soon.

I find relief from the sun in a small building, possibly the ossuary under renovation, with recesses the length of bodies cut into the marble walls. Perched on a long marble table, I muse that corpses might have been prepared for burial on the surface beneath me. Two alcoves are occupied, sealed with cement and bearing the entombed's names; here a 23-year-old woman, buried a century ago in April.

In another nook is a framed tinted photo of a little girl, red flower in her short brunette bob; she must have died shortly after this photo was taken, or so I imagine. In the photo she is looking at something beyond the photographer's shoulder; her gaze is serious and dreamy, and retrospectively poignant.

//

A few days before the holiday, I dream of Dad. I approach a table set for lunch, and realise a man is sitting here. He laughs at something someone unseen says, and I am startled to realise the man is my father, only much younger. It is the first time I see his face in a dream, 6 years after his death.

But as I wake up the image of his face fades. I can't remember it clearly, as much as I want to. I can't hear his voice, deep and rough and above all tender. How I want to retrieve him from the inevitability of time, and how impossible it is.

I think now of his gravestone on a hill in San Diego, which I have yet to visit in person. I think of how my Buddhist aunties visit their mother's grave, with incense and offerings of roast chicken, spending the day here to pray and remember. If I could visit his grave, perhaps he wouldn't continue to haunt me.

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