The City of the Dead

                 The name itself is fascinating.            

   
                        The City of the Dead

                        The Cairo Necropolis          

                                  El Qarafa.

Today, a city-within-a-city of Cairo, the City of the Dead is inhabited by a remarkable mixture of those wishing to live near and venerate ancestors, refugees from the earthquake 1992, those forced out of their homes by urban renewal, and of course, the poorest-of-the-poor.

The astonishing city began as an elite family’s living compound and burial ground built by an invading Arab commander in about 642 AD. As still can be seen today, the streets were wide, gated mausoleums elaborately constructed, and as always, sacred places of worship were plentiful. 

Other migrating tribes eventually began to bury their own dead within the beautiful and highly regarded area. The first actual inhabitants were the custodians and mystics who venerated and cared for the wealthy noble dead and family mausoleums.

Those who  could not afford stately mausoleums constructed crypts marked by cairns of stone or brick just below the ground's surface so  generations of entire families could be interred together. 

Interestingly, it was not the custom for husbands and wives to be buried together, but women were placed in one area, and men in another of the crypt.

As centuries passed and Cairo became more urbanized, those who chose to live among their ancestors, peasants and farmers fleeing the ravages of nature, and the desperate with no other options, became permanent citizens of the area as it exists today: The City of the Dead.

As I walked the streets with the Egyptian driver hired to guide me (safely) through, I was struck by the enormity of the area as well as the practicality of living where there are no taxes, rent, or mortgage payments.

Automobiles, motor scooters, a smattering of shops, and clothing worn, were evidence that there are citizens of this city who do not appear as desperately poor as I had imagined. Of course, I was not in the vicinity of “Garbage City,” the poorest quarter of the City of the Dead.

Clothes hanging to dry next to departed’s marker, children playing their unique games, dogs scavenging in the littered streets, and the merchant doing business out of his corner vegetable stand, generated one of my more absorbing encounters while in Cairo.

                                          All living with the spirits of ancestors.

A Metaphor of Life?

                           Traveling into the Sahara Desert can bring unexpected insights.

I thought I was just camping out in the desert for the long weekend, discovering, along the way, the wonders of the Egyptian side of the Sahara with a group of my fellow teachers.   

Well, yes. I did indeed camp out, but also came upon the unexpected on several levels.

We traveled in two 4x4s and it soon became apparent, when our driver kept looking back over his shoulder, that all vehicles are not created equal. His apprehension was well founded, as the engine of the other vehicle had less power, eventually quit, and had to be restarted by its stronger fraternal twin.

Oh, oh. A wee sense of a bit of vulnerability began to take hold.

To make a long story short, the obviously weaker and less enhanced vehicle eventually became solidly stuck in a remote area of the deep desert sands on the second day. Wouldn’t you know it.  In trying to help stuck-truck out of its predicament, the sturdier vehicle itself became mired in the endless sand.

So there we desert-greenies are, during the hottest time of the day, stranded who-knows-where, in the Sahara Desert.

Our drivers, in what I have recognized is a typical Egyptian trait, followed a process of performing the same task over and over again, vainly attempting to dislodge both vehicles via an endless ritual. For an hour and a half, in the baking sun, they pushed, pulled, and shook the vehicles in a futile attempt to dislodge them from their desert cavity. 

In the meantime, we Sahara newbies were reassured by the crew, “Don’t worry! Everything is under control! We have a GPS telephone. We can call for help!”

When inevitably, a driver was sent up to the top of the surrounding ridge to call for much needed assistance---guess what?---no communication via satellite.

As I am here writing this piece and not being memorialized in Cache Valley for my sense of misguided adventure, we were eventually rescued by the desert mounties.

Internalizing the unforeseen episode on the long ride back to Cairo, it occurred to me how much the experience was a metaphor of the potential of Egypt as a country, and in a surreal way, my own life. 

My impression of  Egypt, as a country, is one on the cusp of greatness; so much potential for being a capable power on the world stage.  Yet the land and its people are also so mired in the toothless ghosts of past history and religion, that they have hamstrung themselves from progressive contemporary  greatness. Egypt, in effect, continues to mummify itself.

Desert drivers in their traditional garb, digging through the desert sands with their cupped hands in a vain attempt to foil the stubbornness of modern machinery. 

Astonishingly, they eventually made it work.

Likewise, can the potential of my own inner excellence still evolve at this age and stage of my life?  I have had all the tools: upbringing, personal health, modern technology, and a fundamental know-how for accomplishment in the course of my existence.

However, like the drivers in the desert,  how many times have I replicated the same ineffective rituals and behaviors that resulted in  meaningless outcomes?

Then again,  perhaps my personal history and all the lessons I have learned---or not learned---even at this late stage--- are ‘alright,’  as well as  ‘all right.’ 

In the end, the place I am today is the place I am supposed to be. 

Somehow, I have made it work.

Let's talk about all those accents...

Hey, American regional accents? No problem: Southern, Mid-Western, New Yorker, even a New Joisey accent are all easily grasped due to years of cultural acclimation. 

So here I am in Egypt, undergoing orientation with a group who have more-or-less the following accent patterns:  Canadian, Welsh, Scottish, various dialect areas of England, New Zealand, Australia, and South African. 

Then there are those mixed language patterns of the native French and Egyptians who learned their English in London, the Dutch English speak, and English speakers who have country-hopped so often their accents are not pure Welsh, Australian, etc, but rather a conglomeration of many.

Complicating the self-perception of being the low IQ old lady in the group because I am constantly asking the person next to me, “What did he just say?” or "What are we supposed to do, now?”  is the tinnitus (ringing of the ears) I presently enjoy thanks to an all-too-rapidly
                                                                                    aging body.

The solution on a practical level?  Of course. Sit in the front of the room so as to hear e-v-e-r-y word and hope that in a month or so, I will have acclimated to the various speech patterns.

A deeper personal reflection on the experience?  I am suddenly extra-ordinarily cognizant of the Egyptian and foreign students who will be sitting in my classes. Imagine understanding scholastic instruction in the various accent-ese described and then my own American one thrown into the mix.


Many of these kids will be astonishing one day. The future leaders of their country and in key professions of the world.

I am also struck by the participation of the educator world-citizens in my professional circle, who are amazingly adept at absorbing multiple cultures---sometimes termed as "tourist teachers."

However, the term is too simple, too trite...just not enough somehow. Two or three years in Hong Kong or China, then off to Abu Dhabi, Brazil, Nepal or some other such place. True global citizens as compared to my miniscule 37-year teaching experience in the snow-globe called Utah.

I wonder if I would have taken another path on my personal journey through this lifetime, if I had known what I know today... if I had just known.

Endings and New Beginnings

This sultry night is my fourth being in the land of the lotus flower, pyramids, and of course, the wandering Nile.

Preparing for the grand Egypt adventure included some pretty incredible groundwork: eating all the salt and vinegar potato chips I could lay my hands on and drinking a good-golly posse of vanilla flavored milk; welcoming in the dawn with my animal friends who lazily nibbled their favorite tidbits as we lounged on the deck; and there was memorizing the close scents of Chris, Veronika, and beautiful little Mira as we hugged tightly and voiced our farewells.

Shifting, shifting, shifting...

As mullahs chant from their minarets, masses of men dressed in  white gowns and crochet skull caps bow endlessly like see-saws; women drenched in heat-absorbing black, fluttering like sails as they wait patiently for their men to complete the holy ritual; and all the while, western Christmas lights are twinkling and flashing in windows and streets in celebration of Ramadan.

What a wonderment Cairo is at this moment.