Newly sanctified Tunisian cemetery for migrants filling fast

A newly sanctified cemetery for Tunisia's migrant dead is filling quickly

ZARZIS, Tunisia -- Most of the headstones have dates but no names. Row after row of palest white, practically gleaming in the Mediterranean sun. The cemetery in Zarzis is nearly exactly as Rachid Koraïchi pictured it when he sketched his vision of the “Garden of Africa” that would be the final resting place for hundreds of anonymous men, women and children whose bodies have washed up on the shores of this coastal Tunisian city in recent years. For him, it was a duty “to make a burial ground, one with presence and intelligence, so that one day the families, the fathers, the mothers, the tribes and the countries know that their children are in a heavenly place, the first step to heaven," Koraïchi told The Associated Press. Zarzis is a port city where migrants bound for Europe frequently wind up after their boats go astray in the Mediterranean's uncertain currents. One of its cemeteries is already filled with those who died trying to make the crossing. Zarzis residents refused to bury migrants in the local Muslim cemeteries.