“City of the dead”

Now a very  macabre information: from the many millions of the population, a couple of thousand of them  – some say there are like 100.000, other say triple that number – live in two of the graveyards of the city, at the east side of the city.

These two graveyards are known under the name of “City of The Dead”. In the old cemeteries, where noble families buried their dead 100 years ago, people live. Big families live their life there. They fight for survival in those conditions which are worse than fights in the in jungle. Nobody knows how many kids are born there or how many people are dying of starvation, diseases or criminal acts from their brothers of suffering.

They don’t have id papers or properties. The first ones which hidden there were the criminals and the robbers. Then poor people came from the country side hoping they will get a better life in the capital, abandoning their dirty huts in the desert. At the beginning, the authorities didn’t know, then they ignored them and today they allow tourists to enter in the City of the Dead on their own responsibility. They just pretend they don’t know and they don’t see anything. We refused to visit that place knowing that the main activity is robbery, in the day light.

From those people paid criminals are picked, though however fascinated of Egypt we were we didn’t desire the supreme sacrifice. In the graveyard there was neither water nor electricity. Anyway they wouldn’t have had money to pay for it. However many of them don’t have that even at that houses at the surface. Everybody dresses all in black, both women and men cover their faces, but not because of the religion… It’s said that when they learn how to walk children learn how to hold the knife in their hand, not to eat, but to fight.

I don’t even what to know how life is there.