Glory Ho

Some call it the Northern Cemetery, Bab el Nasr or the Cemetery of the Great. Those in a hurry might say: el’arafa, meaning simply “cemetery”. We were tourists so we called it City of the Dead, which just didn’t translate. But we were no longer in tour-bus territory. As usual, as education decreases, hospitality increases, so we eventually found our way. Across the Saeb Salem Highway, it mazed like a sunny, dusty ghost town.

Due to a serious urban housing issue, over five million Cairenes call this four mile stretch of stone their neighborhood, forming a macabre and illegal, but tolerated society atop generals, sultans and conquerors of centuries past. But it wasn’t exactly a graveyard. Not how I picture one, anyway. Centuries ago, tombs, mausoleums and places of honor were different. More spacious and less leafy. Set aside, outside the city for idolatry and isolation. Expected to host forty days worth of mourners, burials were surrounded by gardens, rooms, walls and shelters to accommodate dozens of relatives. It is within those walls, before a saffron yellow family plot, between six-feet high tombs meant to intimidate, that poor, urban Egyptians dry their laundry, park their motorcycles and fry their samosas.

Electricity lines bunched across nearby mosques minarets like the strings of a necklace around a plump woman’s neck, delicate and out of place all at once. Sewage drains ended much sooner than the stench. The lack of screeching music, rattling traffic and high-pitched police whistles of the city center combined with voiceless respect for every inch of your cement floor created a hushed, floor-staring manner for most.quat

Living souls s squatted in life while buried ones basked in death.