I approach the necropolis through the labyrinth of medieval Cairo, past the grand bazaar of the Khan el-Khalili. Crossing the highway of Salah Salem, the Citadel comes into view. It glows from a high plateau to the south bathed in gold light. Before me, a host of domes and minarets rise into the evening sky framed by the cowering Muqqattam Hills, where pyramid blocks half-carved, remain embedded in the cliffs. In the shadows, historic tombs and royal mausoleums lie in wait.
Behind, the swirling street noise slowly dies down with each step. It is quiet here… only a few lights. To the right, a few old men smoke their pipes, leaving honey tobacco lingering in the air. Down the alley to the left, a figure closes a door. A small group of boys peers from around a raised tombstone. I pass a withered donkey still strapped to its care, laden with garbage. His bead down, asleep. Some call this the City of the Dead, others call it the northern and southern cemeteries… but tonight, hundreds of thousands of people call it home.
Cairo is a humble, but a grand city… aged and overweight, her robes are frayed at the edges, her jewels have lost their luster. Although her face is now deeply lined, her hair gone dusty gray, she still keeps her legendary humor and carries herself with dignity. In her heart she knows that she is and will always remain Umma Donya to her people: Mother of the World.
Not a humble legacy. With self-effacing pride, she would never boast. Her years speak for themselves. These words, Umma Donya. linger on the lips of all Egyptians from Aswan to Alexandria, when they speak of Cairo. Her allure and scent of easy riches pulls the fellaheen (farmers) year after year from their irrigated land on the Nile. Some. if they are lucky, find a dwelling among family or friends before beginning their new life in the city, others find themselves stumbling into the City of the Dead. A voice calls out from a tomb, “Ahlan wa sahlan, etfaddal eshrub shai (Welcome, join me for a drink of tea).” The introduction begins. This area has been the final resting place for Cairo’s nobility and celebrated saints for centuries. The countless tombs were built as permanent structures, adorned with elaborately carved stonework and protected by surrounding walls. Care-taker families were also paid to guard and keep up the sites. On holidays, it was a tradition for descendants of the deceased to visit, picnic and pay their respects. As far as anyone knows these gigantic graveyards have always had inhabitants. But, things have changed. Now the living out-number the dead. “Please come closer, those children may bother you.” An older man who introduces himself as Mohammed Abdel Latif. The boys disappear around an elegant Turkish style tombstone, giggling. lnviting me into his wooden shack, he pats a bench which becomes my seat. “Ahlan wa sahlan, Welcome,” he repeats again and the verbal floral exchange begins. Egyptian Arabic has an elegant dialogue of greetings that flow from evenings of roses and cream to strawberries. We parry back and forth, each response brings a smile to his face. It is a joyous game that, even in these desperate surroundings, illuminates visions of a beggar’s banquet. If any city has always been and shall always be – it is Cairo. Each year, skeptics write their eulogy and epitaphs. They say it is a city without a future. Yet, like the Nile, though deformed and disfigured, she will still flow. The City remains timeless or, more importantly, a source for all times. Her land has seen imperial canopies collapse from age to age spanning 5,000 years of recorded history: from the Pharaonic to Hellenic, the Roman to the Christian, from the Byzantine to the Islamic, the Colonial to the Modern. She is a city for all centuries. But as her younger sisters in the globe’s urban family, prepare themselves, body and soul, for the next millennium, Cairo’s age is both her pride and her weighty burden. Her focus is blurred, like that of her legendary singer Umm al-Kalthoum. Through her thick glasses, she peers out onto this changing new world, intuitive and aware, picking up scents from abroad, images both sacred and profane, and intonations from foreign tongues passing through her land. But in her heart, she is too old to change. Mohammed calls to the other room of his make-shift dwelling inside this neglected tomb. It is time for introductions. “The little ones are asleep.” he says, “but, ahh, there he is. Ahmed, ta’al habibe (come, my love) say hello.” The young boy shakes my hand, then fills his father’s glass with more tea. “Ahmed helps me every day. My cousin and I work in transport. You saw my Mercedes?” he asks, pointing to the donkey. Behind the door his wife, nurses a small cooking fire. She smiles and asks, “Min fain inta? (where are you from?)” A little girl peers bashfully from behind her, clinging to her dress. As soon as I answer, she nods and asks, “And how do you like Misr?” Unlike Alexandria, Cairo was not born of foreign hands. She is not complexed. She existed long before her other half-sisters in the global urban family were cursed by colonial births, out of wedlock. And today they grow, still afflicted with schizophrenia: Hong Kong, Lima, New Delhi, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City. Once proud centers of colonial Empires, they carry the scars of bastard children, forever questioning their identity from the split parentage. Cities in whose eyes burn the afterglow of fallen empires. No, Cairo never suffered that fate. Umma Donya, the Mother, has always positioned herself as guardian of her children, sitting watchfully above the Delta’s rich alluvial farmland which fans our stretching north to the Mediterranean. All of Africa to her back. As the Nile meandered, so did the city. Her predecessor was Memphis, home of the earliest Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom. Later, the Romans called her Babylon. and the holy mother, Mary, with her child sought refuge in the old Coptic quarter. The first Bedouin conquerors from Arabia named her Fustat. She was later named “Al-Qahira” (The Victorious) in the 10th century by the conquering Fatimid dynasty. However, to Egyptians the city is much more. She and the country are, literally, seen as the same. Egyptians rarely use the word Qahira for their city. Instead, they use the Arabic word “Misr” which means both Egypt and Cairo. The two are inseparable. They are one. Cairo is a city where infinite worlds and time frames are at work. Where all realities and fantasies are played out. The stuff of dreams. Of 1001 nights. At the crossroads of continents, she is the largest megalopolis in both Africa and the Middle East. Surrounding the city is the unforgiving Sahara. It has been an unrelenting siege. The encirclement of the desert is broken only by the lifeline of the Nile. Guarding the city’s perimeter are two monuments of death. On her western flank, looms the pyramid of Cheops and the watchful Sphinx. On her eastern boundary sprawls the necropolis. Within the enclosure, lie the living quarters for an estimated 15 million people. The city’s crushing weight of humanity is uncontrollable, and by most assumptions, unmanageable. Egypt’s birthrate is staggering, a million new children annually. When Sadat was asked about his biggest fear as President of Egypt, his immediate reply was, “The million new mouths we have to feed each year”. Cairo’s population has doubled in the last 20 years. The problem is simple, too many people The city reels under the classic pressures: a severe housing shortage, growing slums, heavy pollut1on, failing sewage system, deafening noise, collapsing infrastructure. There is a need for more schools, hospital beds, improved transport, basic public utilities, and clean drinking water. It is an agonizing list of burdens for an economy riddled with debt, inflation and unemployment. Foreboding signs for the future “Our home is now here.” declares Mohammed firmly. “Our children must have a future.” There is a pause. “But, of course, I miss my village. The mish-mish (apricots) are blossoming now,” waxes Mohammed. “Soon, Inshallah (God willing). I’ll take the family back for a visit. My little son, Mustafa, hasn’t seen it. Wallahi, balad helwa (By God, the land is beautiful), so green it can hurt your eyes!” Journeying just beyond Cairo’s dusty and boisterous embrace is a revelation. The change in pigment is striking. Green colors splash onto parched eyes with brilliant intensity. It is a tropical pageant with timeless images; farmers reclining under outstretched palms, buffaloes slowly turning water wheels, children swimming in the irrigation canals, their mothers working in the fields, young men herding their cows back to their villages from grazing. All is tranquil. No noise. Just the greenness, and a pace of life chat has not changed for centuries … millennia. But, now, tragically, this land cannot provide for the all the new mouths. There is only one option: the painful uprooting from their fields. So begins the great exodus out of rural Egypt. And daily they come, flooding in from the countryside. Economic refugees seeking shelter in a city already swollen with overflowing families and crowded streets. It is a universal diaspora being repeated throughout our globe in all the 3rd world metropolises. Perhaps the only saving grace is that, with Cairo, the village has moved to the city. but not been transformed by it. The village spirit still survives. “We come from a small place near Zagazig, “Mohammed explains. “Only Ahmed and Fatima were with us then. It was 15 years ago. My cousin, who lives over there,” he points to another mausoleum, “told me there was enough room to fit the whole village. Quiet, open space. Well, I think everyone else heard about his great news. His secret is out.” He laughs. Pouring another tea, his wife, Ameera then says “At midnight, when it is finally quiet, I dream of our village.” Cairenes ridicule their inefficient and bureaucratic government which operates with unabashed patronage and a laissez-faire kleptocratic attitude. Money is being made and flaunted. But only by those fortunate few. The vast legions of the poor, in turn, enthusiastically mock those “Mercedes pashas” with sarcastic gibes. Their irrepressible humor both dramatizes and lightens the heavy burdens of their daily lives. Gossip, scandal and intrigue are traded back and forth in lively jests. Laughter continues to be as important as breathing. And certainly, violence has never had an appeal among Cairenes. “Before, those muwazzafin (government bureaucrats) refused to listen to us. They could not admit we were living here,” Mohammed proclaims circling his arms from the polished gravestone to the tomb’s wall “Then one day, they opened a police station,” he pauses with a smile, “and then a post office. Now, if we’re lucky, we even get water and electricity… sometimes.” Discontent and melancholy over life’s hardships continue to rise in Cairo. For some it has reached the breaking point. Intense frustration among unemployed youth creates fertile soil for Islamic fundamentalists to cultivate their rebellious message. This may spell real trouble. In our modern age of weaponry, an entire nation can be held hostage by the committed few. Headlines scream daily against the angry extremists, their sanitizing morality, their demands for an end to the secular scare and their random violence. The Ikhwan el-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) have, in turn, stepped up their attacks, strengthened by the fresh infusion of zealots returned from the fighting in Afghanistan’s brutal civil war. It is certain that these mujahaddin are behind the Ikhwan’s recent campaign of bombings and assassinations designed to destabilize the regime and isolate Egypt from the world. “Walahi Haram (by God, it is sacrilege}!” Mohammed’s face turns solemn when I ask about the recent attack on a tourist bus in upper Egypt. “God teaches us to love of our brothers, not this cruel bloodshed. They are not men of God, Haram. ” He shakes his head. It is a paradox. The city and her people have always armed themselves with wit and diffused their frustrations with humor. No, they have nor succumbed to the aberrant violence plaguing American cities. In Cairo’s grinding poverty, faith and family give meaning to inner lives. Patience and humor also add considerable grace. Violent crime is non-existent. Where we in America equate poverty with danger, here the reverse holds true. You are far safer in the City of the Dead at midnight than on 5th Avenue in Manhattan at high noon. Your only risk is your willingness to sit for hours drinking tea with complete strangers, like Mohammed, who pour out with each cup their humble hospitality. It is this strong moral solidarity that holds the city together. It is quite inconceivable that passers-by would nor instantly come to a victim’s aid. Street crime so familiar in Rome, New York, London and Rio is virtually unknown. In the most impoverished areas of Cairo, this spirit is intact. From where does this come? Certainly, most say from the religion: a kinder, gentler Islam. Others say its roots far deeper, ingrained over millennia from the land of Misr. Bur there is no mistaking this social cohesion through Cairo’s chaos. No one denies this. It begins with the family where the bonds are unconditional. The affection is dramatic. Creating an unbreakable and tightly woven thread. Add to that the extended family: grandmothers, uncles, nephews, near and distant cousins, well-tied knots that strengthen the fabric. In Cairo, the friendships of the neighborhood carry the same intensity as those in the village. These then become the counter weave that make up an entire tapestry of relations. It is in sharp contrast with other urban settings. There is little marginality. Instead, all are connected. All involved. There is meaning. Even in the midst of squalor. One is never alone. There is humanity. Rising far above the poverty. It is said that grace and ugliness take equal seats at the court of creation. That neither is refused entry by the guards. Cairo has this same accepting heart. There is a kinder, gentler face to Islam. A more tolerant faith. There is also a great tradition of venerating saints (men and women) renowned for their piety. Their tombs have become shrines and mosques have been founded to commemorate them. Some have even become places of pilgrimage. On the birthday of a saint, colored lights drape the mosque, bands of musicians cast their spell, peddlers sell food, toys and souvenirs and miniature fairgrounds are even set up: all to serve the festive crowds. Mohammed raises his head to the midnight air, “Listen to the music. It is the Mulid (the birthday of a saint), tonight. Come, my son, let me show you the way to the celebration. Have you been to one before? Wallahi (By God) we’ll travel to the song of the stars, to the gates of dawn.” And as we leave his home and penetrate together Cairo’s heart of darkness, the colored lights of the Zain al-Abdin mosque come into view above the mausoleum walls. The music is getting closer. It is a Sufi celebration. The worshipping mystics will chant deep into the night to flutes and drums. Mohammed leads me through the cemetery, past other shacks dimly lit with families bedding down for the night. A voice inside a tomb to the left calls. Mohammed turns and whispers, “Tesba’alla khair, ya Abdel Rahman. Allah maak (Good night, Abdel Rahman. God be with you)…” and the old man takes my hand, as we walk through the garbage-strewn maze of the living and the dead.
“Good evening. ”
“Evening of light,” I respond.
“Evening of jasmine,” he counters.
“Evening of cream.”
“Evening of honey.”
“Evening of roses.”
