In a tiny workshop in Lebanon's Tripoli, coffin maker Michel Homsi is surrounded by his carefully crafted handiwork, waiting for customers that never seem to arrive. He hasn't sold one of his handmade wooden caskets in a year, due to competition from machine-made coffins but also to dwindling numbers of Christians in the northern port city.
Most of Tripoli's residents are Muslims, who are buried in a simple shroud and have no need for Homsi's talents. And most of the Christians he once catered to have left the city in waves, fleeing first the country's 1975-1990 civil war, and then sporadic violence between local neighbourhoods. "The last people who bought a coffin from me a year ago got it for their mum, who was living here," Homsi said.
Homsi began making wooden coffins in 1964, following in the footsteps of his father, though his first job was in the workshop of a competitor. He was inspired early on by a woodwork teacher and went into the coffin making business while just a teenager. After three years at a rival workshop, he joined his father's business in the Zahriyeh district, at the time a mixed neighbourhood of different sects. Initially, business was brisk, with the father-son pair making four or five coffins a month. "My father didn't teach me about coffins, but he taught me to love wood," he said.
Homsi's passion is evident in the work he continues to do, despite the dearth of customers. It takes him anywhere from three days to a week to finish a coffin, but with so little demand, these days he takes his time and works on one for up to a month.
Coffin making is virtually the only trade Homsi has ever known. He and his father worked throughout the early years of the civil war that erupted in 1975. But in 1982, when the fearsome Sunni Islamic Unification Movement militia began targeting Christians, Homsi decided to flee. He moved to Germany and worked as a car mechanic for eight months, but returned home after learning his mother was ill. Back in Tripoli, Homsi resumed making coffins with his father, but business had already started to dwindle as local Christians fled. By the end of the war in 1990, Homsi was making just one coffin a month and was forced to take up a cleaning job on the side to make ends meet for his wife and two children.
Even peacetime brought no new customers for Homsi. Many Christians who had left failed to return, while others fled sporadic bouts of violence between the Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tebbaneh neighbourhoods, near to Homsi's district, or felt it was now too dangerous to come to his workshop.
It's a depressing turn of affairs for Homsi, who has decided not to teach his son his craft. Passersby say hello, but don't stop in, and he cancelled his phone line after being unable to pay his bills. "At church, people talk to me and say hello to me but nobody stands near me for more than a minute," he says. But despite the difficult prospects, Homsi says he plans to stay open, waiting for clients. "Where would I go? Maybe work will come at some point. I'm waiting. Either I work or I die."
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This story in 30 seconds
• Coffin maker Michel Homsi is surrounded by his carefully crafted handiwork, waiting for customers that never seem to arrive
• Most of Tripoli's residents are Muslims, who are buried in a simple shroud and have no need for Homsi's talents. And most of the Christians he once catered to have left the city in waves, fleeing first the country's 1975-1990 civil war, and then sporadic violence between local neighbourhoods
• Homsi began making wooden coffins in 1964, following in the footsteps of his father
• Homsi's passion is evident in the work he continues to do, despite the dearth of customers
• It's a depressing turn of affairs for Homsi, who has decided not to teach his son his craft
