CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Azaam Afaan did not want to be late. The first funeral since Friday’s terrorist attack was about to begin, and though he had no idea who was being buried, he just knew he needed to participate.

Staring through dark sunglasses at the cemetery’s fringe — fighting back tears for a slain friend, as hundreds of mourners approached a hilltop of dirt cut open with row after row of graves — he said he wanted to be part of someone’s goodbye.

“It’s like you’re short of breath,” he said, explaining what it has been like to wait so long for the burials to begin after a gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. “Now we can breathe freely. They’re going to the place they’re supposed to be.”

Islam’s rituals of death prioritize immediate burial and a joyful departure. But as the first six victims were laid to rest on Wednesday in a city where flowers and police tape still fill intersections, the opportunities for relief continued to be elusive, drawing out sorrow, allowing time for relatives to arrive from abroad and delivering closure in spare droplets.