Four years ago, I saw something on a computer screen that I have never forgotten. The UK was six weeks into lockdown, and I was working on a series of Guardian videos based on raw footage from around the country, most of which had been filmed on people’s phones.
We had made contact with a community activist from Alum Rock in central Birmingham – and he had captured an unbearably vivid signifier of what people there were faced with. First, he showed us a car park outside a mosque, where six or seven rectangular white tents had been put up. Then, he pulled back the flap that formed one of their front doors to reveal a sight that left him silent: stacks of coffins, each awaiting a janazah, the Muslim funeral.
