By Zero Forest
Sahel, an octogenarian cairoer, may never have imagined when he was young that he would one day become a neighbor with a king.
Now, when he wakes up every morning, Sahel knows it's not a dream — yes, a king, right next door to his house, has been a neighbor with him for more than 50 years!
However, the king was no longer high above, but buried in the ground.
This king was Farouq I, who ruled Egypt from 1936 to 1952 and was the tenth ruler of the Muhammad Ali dynasty.
Today, the place where his grave is located is where Sahel's home is located, and this is the most peculiar and intriguing place in Cairo: the city of the dead.
The so-called "City of the Dead" is a special area of Downtown Cairo, covering an area of about 6 square kilometers, located near the famous Saladin Castle, officially known as the "Karafa" Cemetery Group.
In recent years, or nearly a hundred years, this cemetery has attracted the attention of the world because it is inhabited by dozens of living people, and has even become a "net red" destination for tourists around the world to explore and punch cards.
In fact, more than 1,000 years ago, this was a public cemetery. During the reign of the Maluk dynasty in Egypt, it gradually became an important burial ground for the burial of princes, nobles and dignitaries.
Therefore, to say that they are neighbors with "nobles", the residents of the city of the dead are actually not rare at all.
For example, Ismail, who has lived here for many years, said: "Just like near my house, there are princes and Pasha (high-ranking officials such as the governor of Egypt during the period of foreign rule). ”
How can the resting place of the deceased become the resting place of the living?
That's a long story. In short, there was a tradition in Egyptian history of hiring "tomb keepers", and the employers were mostly descendants of bureaucrats and aristocrats. After the deceased was buried, a house similar to an ordinary house was built in the cemetery, so that the tomb keepers lived here to watch the tomb robbers.
As the years passed, the tomb keepers lived here for many years, and some of the descendants of the tomb owners even stopped hearing. Thus, the tomb keeper automatically became the owner of the cemetery and the house, and multiplied here.
Of course, it was impossible for the Tomb Keepers and their descendants alone to gather a population of millions in the City of the Dead. This is the entry into modern society, with the development of the city and the rapid expansion of the population, a large number of people in Cairo who have no place to live, began to look for vacant cemeteries to live in. Gradually, they became the main force in the new population of Cairo's Dead Man's City.
Before I came to Egypt, I had heard of the great name of the City of the Dead in Cairo and wondered what kind of living world it was.
When you really come to the area where the City of the Dead is located, what unfolds in front of you is a unique scene.
Just on both sides of Salah Salem Street, a main thoroughfare in downtown Cairo, there are two very different worlds on display:
In addition to the famous Al Azhar Park on the west side of the road, there are also many clean and tidy and palatial buildings lined up one after another, many of which are government agencies located in those high-walled compounds;
Moving to the east side of the road, the vast area suddenly collapsed like a large pit, and the huge depression was full of gray and yellow buildings, low and dilapidated, staggering to each other for several kilometers, and from time to time you could see the mosque with the round top tower towering in between.
You need to get up close and even close to the houses in these depressions to find that this is indeed a large cemetery:
The mottled walls and dilapidated doors and windows are no different from ordinary houses, but a certain wall or wall next to the door is engraved with the name of the tomb owner and the number of the tomb.
The first time you step through the gate, you can often see the stone foundations and tombstones standing in the middle of the courtyard, sometimes in a long row!
In the cultural customs and life experiences that we Chinese, such a scene of tombstones seems to be somewhat maddening. However, in such a courtyard, there lived a large family of ordinary Egyptians.
Among the low houses surrounding these tombstones, such scenes are sparse and ordinary: the elderly are leisurely smoking, the housewives are busy washing and cooking, the cats and dogs are squinting and resting, the older children carrying water pipes to wash the ground, the younger children chasing each other, and even playing peek-a-boo between the tombstones...
What is even more impressive is that the embarrassment of life not only makes people here sleep with the deceased, but even many families have learned to use local materials - some families have directly pulled up a clothesline on the top of the tombstone; some families have used the tombstone as a table and removed the tombstone as a desk; some families have simply used the coffin board as an ironing board...
You may have a hard time imagining how the living can live with the dead.
In fact, according to the interpretation of Egyptologists, Egyptians have believed since ancient times that although the cemetery is the end of life, it is also the beginning of life, and it is a natural part of the living environment of human beings. For in Egyptian custom, the living and the dead are "not divided."
In addition, the Greek historian Carlos once said that in the concept of the Egyptians who believed in the afterlife, the dwelling was only a "hostel", and the tomb was the permanent dwelling. The famous German philosopher Hegel even said that in Egypt, buildings above and below ground were associated with the kingdom of the dead.
It can be seen that death, the grave, is not so terrible in the Egyptian conception, but another form and passage of life.
This is why the existence of the City of the Dead is unimaginable to many people in the world, and for the Sahel at the beginning of this article, life here is peaceful.
"For an old man like me, it's good to live with the dead. Because they don't talk, they don't even make a fuss at all. He said it with a lot of humor.
In fact, in order to meet the needs of tens or nearly a million people, the City of the Dead is no different from other communities in Cairo except that the land attribute is a cemetery.
Mosques, buses, schools, commissaries and cafes were built here, and almost everything was available. Whenever you come here, the narrow and chaotic streets will always be full of people and traffic, noisy and endless, conveying a strong smell of the city.
Many people who visit the city of the dead with curiosity or even the so-called "adventure" will always deliberately highlight its alternative and secret side when introducing life here.
For example, some people exaggerate that the residents of the city of the dead are not easy to approach, and even have hostility toward strangers and tourists, and it may be dangerous to rush in; some people deliberately show the poverty of life here, and "impart experience" saying that they must bring large bags of snacks and drinks to go here, which can be distributed to the elderly and children to win their trust, and then get close to or even photograph them.
In fact, life in the City of the Dead is not so secretive, and the residents here are even less dangerous. If you give them something for a friendly gesture, of course it's fine. But even if you just go with a smile, the enthusiastic local residents will smile in return, and the children will wave at you or even gather around you.
Therefore, the inhabitants of the City of the Dead do not reject strangers, what really makes them repulsive is to intervene in their lives rashly, and even recklessly break into their homes.
In recent years, the Egyptian government has made great efforts to improve people's livelihood, Andi Sisi has personally launched the "Decent Living" initiative to improve the living conditions of the poor, and has also taken special actions and allocated huge funds to improve slums and old houses, and many people have benefited from moving into buildings (see my previous article "Two Months of Hard Work, Eliminating Slums, Egypt is not bragging?). 》）。
For such a good thing, people living in the city of the dead naturally have expectations.
For example, Zaki, who lives in the city of the dead, is a mother of 5 children, although she feels that her life is OK, the neighbors care for each other, and they are quite humane, but when she thinks of the children, she immediately feels sad.
"I want to move out of here, we should have a better house to live in. But I know it doesn't seem like much hope. She said.
I am afraid that is also the case.
In the view of the Cairo City Protection Department, the situation of the City of the Dead is different from that of ordinary slums, although the people living in poverty, the buildings here have a long history, and some are even famous royal cemeteries, which are historical monuments included in the scope of protection.
As a result, the buildings of the City of the Dead will not be demolished for a while and the inhabitants will continue to live here. What the government can do now is to protect these historic buildings while doing their best to limit the influx of more people here, and to continuously improve the existing living and living conditions.
As it got darker, the sun in the west radiated a gradually softer light, illuminating the gray-yellow city of the dead more and more golden.
In pairs of threes, some of the burial chambers floated above the cooking smoke. Men who work odd jobs, returning on their battered bicycles.
Children gathered in clearings, playing soccer balls that were about to crack. The tombstone next to them was inscribed with names that they could not yet pronounce.
Of course, they don't need to know those names, they just remember that The City of the Dead was where they were born and raised.