They entombed President Hafez al-Assad at dusk on a hillside in the village where he was born 69 years ago, in the mausoleum he built for his eldest son Bassel. The death of Bassel, whom Assad had chosen to succeed him, broke the ageing President's heart.
"Bassel stand by the door - you are going to receive your father," the Imam said as Assad's casket was pulled by a Russian-made truck on a gun carriage from the mosque where the final rites were held. Assad had built the mosque, too, in honour of his mother Na'isa.
On the road from Latakia to Qordaha, there were the same slogans chanted by crowds prompted by pseudo choir masters, the same posters, the same banners we had seen in Damascus since Assad's death on Saturday. But as you would expect, restraint disappeared when the dead President reached his home village.
Policemen beat back the mourners who tried to surge towards the coffin. Republican guards leaned in a human wall against the crowd where many wailed and fainted. Confusion broke out inside the Na'isa mosque because the coffin was set down facing in the wrong direction. High-ranking religious and military officials had to be held back; they all wanted to touch or kiss the coffin. One cleric repeatedly tried to prostrate himself on top of it.
The ancient Imam who read the funeral prayer wept so profusely that a box of tissues had to be found for him. Practising Muslims were scandalised - a Muslim superstition says it hurts the dead if one weeps while praying for them.
In Islam, the dead are meant to hear but cannot speak. "Why don't you talk, President Assad? You can hear me!" Mr Marwan Shekho, a member of parliament who gave the funeral oration, insisted. "Every day you spoke to us of dignity and glory," Mr Shekho continued. Now every Syrian was Dr Bashar, Maj Maher, Majed and Bushra - Assad's children.
It could not have been easy growing up as the second son, knowing his spoiled, adored big brother was the favourite. But Dr Bashar rose to the occasion, enduring nearly 12 hours of funeral rituals across Syria yesterday. During the five hours his father lay in state, he had a crash course in diplomacy, juggling President Khatami of Iran and the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, and putting up with the wet kisses of the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, that his father so detested.
When the squabble broke out in the mosque, it was Bashar who gave orders.
Only at the end, when the trumpets sounded and the cannons fired outside the mausoleum, did Dr Bashar begin to look fraught.