Living with the dead

Cairo is morbid. They- and there are quite a few of them, littered around the grey Nile- are living with the dead, making a living out of the dead and also, recession or not, slowly dying themselves. It's probably a transitional model whose finer points may remind one of a regular Mahfouz novel. But it is happening. The pyramids, the great Egyptian ode to death, are imposing and awe-inspiring. Covered in sand and dust, they are the motif for the entire city. What is more disturbing is its strange-if not a harsh ironical- manifestation into a modern dystopia. The city of the dead is called by various names, slightly altered now and again and sometimes even meant to denote the city of Cairo in its entirety- as if the various names would somehow dissolve the reality of its existence. But it refers specifically to a wide arc of burial land outside the Citadel, close to the famous Khan al khalili market, that is also home to at least "two hundred thousand people". I am quoting our eccentric, Anwar Sadat-loving taxi-driver here, because there was no way I could verify this with anybody else in Cairo. The tourist guides refused to speak of the place and, well, it wasn't very easy to make ourselves understood to anybody on the streets. However, he was rash enough to take us into this modern valley of the dead and indeed the sight wasn't worthy of being advertised on Amazing Cairo. It's a cemetery- replete with new tombs and rusty gates, dusty lanes, graffitied walls, wrinkled women, disabled children and cobwebs living on or around the tombs of dead people: a grimly contrasting view against the Oreintal corpulence of belly dancers and self-indulgent architecture.(I couldn't find a mention of this place in their wikipedia entry either). Their attempts to 'hide' the place is quite pathetic as it stretches shamelessly and is quite the eyesore for being situated in the middle of hot tourist spots. It reminded me of Dharavi- as you fly out of Mumbai.

By what strange habit of continuity (or merely post-Infitah poverty?) have the thousands been reduced to a caricature of their land- living along with the dead? As the Sphinx alleged, people have stopped asking it to impart the wisdom of the ancient world that it contains. If that is true, the answers will have to remain buried in the sand.