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| The city of the Dead, one of the entrances. |
But Europe is not the right criterion when it comes to metropolis.
Usually immense, crowded and extremely chaotic, these realities present a fascinating phenomenon :
there are no boundaries establishing what is alive and transforming and what is not.
Walls, empty buildings, dusty cranes, bruised cars, rooftops, sidewalks, bridges..
Everything rejects the concept of function and adapts to the everchanging situation, nothing is defined and therefore forbidden, everything can be mangled and given a new shape to fit into the alive chaos.
Cementeries are not spared,
and el-Arafa necropolis in Cairo is the perfect example.
El-Arafa is a 7oo years-old city inside the city, spreading below the Islamic Citadel and it is thought to host around 80,ooo (alive) residents.
The cementery was inhabited since the very beginning because the tombs needed a constant maintenance and families started to grow around the first guardians.
With the passing of time, in addition to these families, new arrivals increased the alive population of these tombs that started to be seen as a shelter for homeless, poor and persecuted people.
But the necropolis, as a part of the alive anarchy of Cairo, didn't accept a static and passive urbanization.
On the contrary, the City of the Dead asked to its inhabitants a new life : nowadays wandering around this oasis of quietness one couldn't avoid to spot the presence of an entire community, dedicated to its own daily life.
Old men sipping tea, veiled women bargaining with the pita seller, young children chasing cats in the narrow streets, young boys riding motorbikes overloaded with undefined items, shisha smokers discussing in the shades of centenary trees and, so far, the best fruit markets of Cairo.
Definitevely, the best allegory of life that I have ever seen
(and experienced).
