laura.fo

This is my first successful YouTube upload. It came out small. I don't know why. But if you can get past that, the quality is quite good. I'm so proud of myself.

I took this from the backseat of the car while we were driving to K's grandfather's grave in The City of the Dead. Those of you who follow my life in minute detail will remember that the last time I was in Egypt was 14 days after his absolutely unexpected death of a heart attack. We rushed to Cairo in a state of shock and stayed for several months. K was a year-and-a-half at the time.

The contrast between then and now has been quite stark. In my mind I left Egypt in one condition — a state of mourning — and so that's how I expected to find it. I know that's irrational since it's been over ten years now, but there are still small moments when I'm taken aback at how they've moved on. Before going to his grave we dropped off a friend of X's second sister and she joked, "Are you sure you don't want to come along and meet my father?" And we all laughed. Which was weird.

Since the grave itself is hard to find (they all look alike, and the back roads aren't marked) they navigate by asking around for the tomb of Abd el-Halim Hafez, a famous Egyptian singer, which is across the 'street' from their family's tomb. This is what we're doing in the video — driving around, asking strangers how to get to this famous dead guy's grave. It was actually kind of funny, like we were desperately searching for Jim Morrison's grave so we could pray for a random citizen buried next to him.

The City of the Dead itself is a sprawling necropolis on the outskirts of Cairo, and thoroughly un-Islamic. Above-ground tombs are a carryover from Pharaonic times (kind of like pyramids for the proletariat). Despite its (English) name, it's increasingly seen a lot of life as housing shortages have forced families to seek residence in the tombs. Typically a family will squat in a neglected tomb, or take over one of a wealthier family, who will pay them to look after it in their absence and to pray for those who are buried below. Sometimes the caretakers' families will be buried in the same tomb, leading to a sort of patron-client relationship that extends into infinity.

Once we managed to find the place, the woman here materialized out of I-don't-know-where, found the person who had the key, let us in, and sent for a boy to come and splash some water on the very throughly dead potted plants inside, which I think was intended as a gesture of respect for the space.

We said al-Fatiha and one of his sisters read from the Qur'an. (Sometimes the caretakers will do that, too.)

What amazes me every time I come here is how desolate it is. Cairo just doesn't do desolate. It's way too crowded.

But even with people living here the roads are usually empty and everything is quiet. Not a gentle-relaxed quiet, but an abandoned-after-the-apocalypse quiet. It's a bit eerie, and not just because it's a cemetery.

One funny thing: since the tombs weren't intended as housing, they don't have electricity. The tombs of the wealthy and famous, though, will sometimes have it because they're decorated with colored lights. Families living near those tombs might steal some of that electricity to power their own, smaller tombs, so they can have lights and a television.

I didn't take pictures or video inside their father's grave, but afterwards we went to Abd el-Halim Hafez's, which, while not exactly touristy, is "public" enough that I could. The caretaker opened it up for us.

The actual bodies are underground. The men are buried on the right and the women on the left. Or maybe it's the other way around? I can't remember. The space in the middle is an open courtyard.

The caretaker showed us how they pull up the floor to take the bodies down, then bolt it shut again. I'm kind of morbidly curious to know what it looks like down there, since they don't use caskets.

Outside again:

National Geographic did a short piece on the City of the Dead. Their video is better than mine.

Also BBC: "Tomb with a view"