currently mesmerizing me

[rm]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060925.wxdead25/BNStory/International/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20060925.wxdead25

For decades, Cairo's Northern Cemetery -- a walled Mamluk-era necropolis better known as the City of the Dead -- has been home to tens of thousands of people who have made their homes inside the often extensive tombs that sometimes hold centuries-old bodies. They are some of the many urban poor who inhabit the Egyptian capital, forced to live among the dead by the overcrowding and unemployment that plague this city of 16 million.

...

Parts of the cemetery seem remarkably alive, as children in public-school uniforms head to and from schools located just outside the graveyard. They skip along the dirt paths between the burial chambers, ducking under the power lines and the drying laundry strung between the tombs.

...

Most who live here were born in the cemetery, got married here and have raised their families the same way they lived -- as if it were any other neighbourhood in Cairo.

"I don't like to go outside. I like it better here. Here is where I was born, where I work, where I live," says Abdel Aziz Faragh, a 47-year-old gravedigger who also runs the local convenience store out of the cemetery guardhouse.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm very pleased to actually learn about this place. When I visited Egypt back when I was 12, the tour guide mentioned the city of the dead in Cairo and gestured at it out the window of the tour bus, but refused to go into details. I wondered about a modern city of the dead in Cairo, that from the outside appeared to be just like any of the other neighborhoods of the city, if somewhat older looking. Now, many, many years later I know.

[torenheksje.livejournal.com]

Truth is really so much stranger than fiction. At least they have a healthy attitude about death and dead people, as opposed to the fear and loathing that a lot of western cultures have.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Oh, Egypt!