Cemetery: City of the Dead

"My sister and I preferred our father's family tomb. With its monumental outer walls towering over the deserted streets it made us feel as though we were living in a fantastic city. In that desert of sand and stone, where any games lible to wake the dead were strictly forbidden, we went in search of that intermediate world where the dead waited, in limbo for the day of resurrection. We would press our ears to the ground, straining to hear a snatch of their conversations of wails, desperate for a tangible sign of their presence, but in vain. So we let our imagination run wild, seeing a reincarnated soul in a passing black cat or the ghost we were so longing to meet in the white robes of a muqri' as he disappeared around a bend in the road, at which point we would take to our heels and flee."

From Galila el Kadi's introduction to Architecture for the Dead: Cairo's Medieval Necropolis

Born in the City of the Dead 40 years ago, Karima grew up there, married the caretaker of the mausoleum she now lives in and, since her husband died young, raised three kids herself. Thanks to a “section head who was a good guy,” she became the caretaker herself.

To this day, she tends the trees and flowers, greets family members and strangers alike.
When the tomb’s owners and their sheikh come in to read the Qu’ran in honor of the dead, her family slips off.

"People think we are poor, but we are not, 'thanks be to God',” she says. “We give to the poor.”

Today her son is buying his own apartment, her older daughter is working and her youngest - although ashamed to tell her friends where she lives – is getting a college degree in commerce.

Karima opens the living room door and points proudly to her children's computer.
See her ktichen and garden in Photojournal: City of the Dead

Fatma, born in the City of the Dead and now 42, is responsible for the upkeep of her street. Her husband transports bodies, as did Fatma's father before him. Here she raised her four daughters.

See her home and street in Photojournal: City of the Dead

Cairo's City of the Dead

Walled community
Dead center of Cairo
Good neighbors
Bougainvillea
Carousels and ice cream
Silk shrouds and silver coins
Photojournal

Walled community

The City of the Dead, a cemetery covering 10 square kilometers (4 square miles) of Cairo keeps a thousand years of dead people below the surface.

Millions have lived above and among them; usually poor people, with no place else to go, who - over time - have crammed themselves into every nook, making lives like insects in the dust of crumbling mausoleums.

But today, if you look over the City from the heights of the Citadel or Al Azhar Park, it looks suspiciously quiet.

Dead center of Cairo

And oddly enough, this prime real estate, a kilometer-wide course of flat, buildable (or, from an environmental perspective, irrigable) land running between Cairo’s major downtown neighborhoods and the city’s natural boundary on the east– the Muquattam plateau -- is mostly empty.

Good neighbors

Only 13,000 living people make homes in tomb houses today; although another 95,000 live in the area. A good portion of the locals make a living in the business of death -- transporting bodies, preparing them for burial, constructing new mausoleums, and earning their keep as caretakers of the tombs.

The rest are a mixed group -- artisans, day laborers, low-level government employees, as well as the unemployed. Most share stories of a life crisis: maybe their house fell down in the ’92 earthquake, or their relatives, with whom they shared spaceand found unbearable, or they had an accident and lost their means of making a living.

Bougainvillea

But they have a secret. In spite of the fact that some have to walk to a common tap for water, share a washing machine, use a pit latrine and endure embarrassment of a cemetery address, their housing's quite attractive, espcially when compared to squatterly neighborhoods.

The dead lie in vaulted stone tombs below ground, reached via staircase sealed off from the outside by a stone slab: they do not present a health hazard to the living; the lack of moisture prevents polluting agents from rising to the surface.

The above-grounders -- many of whom are involved in the funerary/mausoleum business -- live in solid stone or brick buildings with several rooms and stone or marble-tiled floors, of walled plots of land, maybe even with trees.

Carousels and ice cream

Traditionally, families would travel across the country and set up camp in the family mausoleum, which was designed for long stays. Some imitated grand villas - multistoried structures with balconies and patios, some are humble cement plots contained by small walls.

Today fewer people make extended visits; and fewer go out to the tomb for a reading from the Qu’ran on a Friday night.

But , as one can see from fresh writing on the walls, there are the birthdays of certain holy men, (not sainted, just highly regarded) to be celebrated in mulid fashion, which means that music, dancing, candy, balloon men, ice cream and popcorn carts, mobile carousels, whirling dervishes, face painting and other marvels take over the neighborhood.

Silk shrouds and silver coins

Because the City hosts many major architectural landmarks, like the Funerary Complex or Qurquemas to the right, it draws the attention of historians and restorationists. But over the centuries, less savory types have found it attractive. As a despository of “silk shrouds and silver coins,” it caught the attention of thieves. It's wood mausoleums, few of which are left, called out to those in need of building supplies in this relatively treeless country. It's said that those rebelling against Napoleon used its nooks and crannies for hideouts; and those resisting the British used it to store gunpowder.

Later, Nasser had some of the grander tombs transformed into temporary schools.

It's offered shelter for the needy, homes for the Sufis, long term accomodations for sultans and and has been an obligatory prayer station for pilgrims on the road to Mecca. As mentioned above, residents of Cairo enjoy walking in the cemetery today – even singing and dancing – on feast days or at night to enjoy the full moon.

In 1966, a new cemetery code was written to protect the area and while it had some successes, “control over the city of the dead…continued to elude the management and planning authorities. Absolute power remained firmly in the hands of the morticians.”

On the other hand, considering the City's capacity for flexible use, over the centuries, perhaps it's not an entirely bad thing that it remains open to organic change.

Meanwhile, people who live in the City of the Dead today have light, trees and that most improbable quality in Cairo, quiet.

Comment on this article

FOR MORE
Eye Photojournal: City of the Dead
Website: http://www.egyptmyway.com/articles/picturescityofdead1_2.html
Best book: Architecture for the Dead:Cairo's Medieval Necropolis, by architect Galila El-Kadi and photographer Alain Bonnamy is a comprehensive survey of the City and it's history.