The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Demolishing City of the Dead displaces lively area
CAIRO » Whoever was being buried in Cairo’s oldest working cemetery on a recent afternoon had been of some consequence. Glossy SUVS crammed the dusty lanes around an antique mausoleum draped in black and gold; designer sunglasses hid the mourners’ tears.
The cemetery’s chief undertaker, Ashraf Zaher, 48, paused to survey the funeral, another job done. But he did not stop for long. Just down the lane, his daughter was about to get married. Hundreds of his neighbors, who like him also live in the cemetery, were gathering outside his home, a few mausoleums away.
As part of the celebration, men and boys were already updating a traditional sword dance with new break-dance moves. Women were serving celebratory couscous. They had set out on long tables the belongings the bride would take to her new home, a jumble of abundance against the austere centuries-old tombs where she had grown up: pots and plates; a furry red basket; a mattress made up as if for the wedding night, its frilly white coverlet topped with a stuffed panda.
Since the Arabs conquered Cairo in the seventh century, Cairenes have been burying their dead beneath the Mokattam cliffs that rise over the city’s historic core, interring politicians, poets, heroes and royalty in marble-clad tombs set amid verdant walled gardens.
By the mid-20th century, the City of the Dead had also come to house the living: tomb caretakers, morticians, gravediggers and their families, along with tens of thousands of poor Cairenes who found shelter in and among the grand mausoleums.
Much of it will soon be gone.
The Egyptian government is razing large swaths of the historic cemetery, clearing the way for a flyover bridge that will link central Cairo to the New Administrative Capital, Egypt’s grandiose new seat of government, which President Abdel-fattah el-sissi is raising in the desert about 28 miles east of Cairo. The destruction and construction is part of his campaign to modernize Egypt. But its costs are rarely mentioned.
“You’re seeing Cairo’s family tree. The gravestones say who was married to whom, what they did, how they died,” said Mostafa el-sadek, an amateur historian who has documented the cemetery. “You’re going to destroy history; you’re going to destroy art.”
“And for what?” said Seif Zulficar, whose great-aunt, Queen Farida, the first wife of King Farouk of Egypt, was buried here in one of the mausoleums scheduled for destruction. “You’re going to have a bridge?”
Great cities are always cannibalizing their pasts to build their futures, and
Cairo is a notorious recycler. Medieval conqueror Saladin tore down ancient buildings to construct his massive citadel, now one of the chief landmarks of the city it overlooks. In the 1800s, one of Egypt’s rulers pried stones off the pyramids to erect new mosques (although, as far as pharaonic plunder goes, European visitors were greedier).
Nor is Cairo the only metropolis to pave over graveyards for public infrastructure, as New York did to establish some of its bestknown parks. But, preservationists say, Cairo’s City of the Dead is different: What will disappear is not only a historical monument where Egyptians still visit their ancestors and bury the newly deceased, but also a lively neighborhood.
The government plans to move residents to furnished public housing in the desert. But, critics say, few will have the means to cover the roughly $3,800 down payment or the $22 monthly rent, especially after their livelihoods — jobs in the cemetery or commercial districts nearby — disappear along with the graves.