|
 Like Naema Zaki and her five
children have been forced to make the cemeteries in Cairo’s
City of the Dead their permanent home because of the
country’s chronic housing crisis shortage. ”We came to
live in these cemeteries because they are inexpensive and
practical for a starting point. However soon we realized that
its not a temporary house and that we want to continue here…
these people are kind and all of us here care for each other,
unlike other Cairenes.”
said Zaki, a widow who lives in a tomb room in the
Northern Cemetery with her children.
For many Cairenes the City of the
Dead is a mysterious, foreboding area. Many Cairenes are aware
of its existence but few understand this group of vast
cemeteries that stretches out along the base of the Moqattam
Hills.
Among these cemeteries lives a
community of Egypt’s urban poor, forming an illegal but
tolerated, separate society. “More than five million
Egyptian live in these cemeteries, and have  formed their own
enterprises,” said Malak Yakan, an anthropologist and tour
guide.
“There are five major
cemeteries in this city there, the Northern Cemetery, Bab el
Nasr Cemetery, the Southern Cemetery, the Cemetery of the
Great, and Bab el Wazir Cemetery,” said Yakan.
From the Salah Salem Highway, the
City of the Dead appears to be organized and proper, a match
for the beige, sandy landscape of the distant Citadel. Inside,
however these cemeteries bear witness to the centuries of Cairo’s
history.
Previously, Cairo rulers chose the
area for their tombs outside the crowded city in a deserted
location. “This area was used as a burial ground for the
Arab conquests, Fatimids,
Abbasids, Ayyubids,
Mamlukes, Ottomans, and many more,” said Yakan.
The historic belief in Egypt is
that the cemeteries are an active part of the community and
not exclusively for the dead. “Egyptians have not so much
thought of cemeteries as a place of the dead, but rather a
place where life begins.” said Yakan.
In modern times, because of
Egypt’s housing crisis, a lack of satisfactory and
affordable housing for a rapidly growing population, many poor
Egyptians have made these rooms their permanent homes.
 These invaders have adapted the
rooms to meet their needs. They have used the grave markers as
desks, and shelves. They have hung strings between gravestones
for their laundry to dry out.
“We have brought in the
electricity by wires over the roofs coming from the nearby
mosque to be able to be able to live properly,” said Zaki.
The
City of the Dead seems to its inhabitants ideal because it is
already built, affordable, and partially equipped. However
there are many disadvantages of living there. “They are
joined by even a greater number of cockroaches, mosquitoes,
flies, and vermin of all sorts", writes Nedoroscik in The City
of the Dead, A History of Cairo’s Cemetery Communities.
The
rooms are also filled with the overwhelming smell of the
garbage piled outside their doors and sewage leaking out of
the un-drained tanks.
In addition, “The residents
settling in the City of the Dead are insecure about their
living status because they are living there against the
law,” said Yakan. It was the French occupation from
1978-1801 that began changing the image of the vast cemeteries
of the City of the Dead.
“It has brought a more
westernized attitude towards cemeteries in the Egyptian
society, making the presence of people living and carrying out
activities in the cemeteries ignored, condemned and shamed by
the majority of Cairene society,” writes Nedoroscik. The
cemeteries built in the City of the Dead are much different
than the western idea of cemeteries. This is because
traditionally, Egyptians buried their dead in room-like
“burial sites” so they could live in them during the long
mourning period of forty days.
Today, the population of the City
of the Dead is growing rapidly because of rural migration and
it’s complicated housing crisis that is getting worse.
But the future of the City of the
Dead remains uncertain. The residents of the city will not
deliberately agree to relocate unless the government
provides other housing for them.
“I
will not move from this house after all these years to go out
in the streets,” said Zaki, “Of course I want to leave the
depressed mood in this place, but that doesn’t mean I want
to live in the street. We deserve proper houses.”
Archives
|
