JUAN GOYTISOLO
THE CITY OF THE DEAD
"The city rules over vast territories and fertile lands, is brimming with inhabitants
and can be proud of its beauty and splendor. A meeting-point for travelers and itiner–
ants, a place for weak and strong, where you can take your pick
oj
men who are foolish
and wise, serious or light-hearted, complaisant or stupid, humble or noble, blue–
blooded or plebeian, unknown or famous . Its citizens pound back and forth like the
waves of the sea, hardly fit into its seemingly narrow confines, though they are broad
and capacious. It enjoys eternal youth and is ever watched over by the star of good
fortune. "
-Ibn Battuta,
Description of Cairo
With a look like that of the scrawny, furless, grimy, whimpering cat,
abandoned in the gutter amid the rapid procession of legs and the deaf–
ening noise of traffic - whose squalid corpse we shall fatally stumble
across hours or days later, the victim of some vehicle's brutal power or of
a more insidious form of urban aggression - from his precarious perch on
the inhospitable road island of pavement slabs and stones, alone in the
flux of implacable chaos, the old man's hazy, almost veiled gaze runs
over the metal walkways packed with people, the human tide rushing to
attack the buses, the pedestrian army confronting the din of screeching
engines, the incessant bustle of an entire people that, with efficient econ–
omy of movement, takes advantage of the scarce space conceded to
bodies to rush frantically after the usual places of rest or activity, calcu–
lating perhaps like the abandoned animal, through bleary eyes and shad–
ows, the reprieve it greedily enjoys, the breathing space destiny has
granted to its precarious existence in an agglomeration where sidewalks
have disappeared, the ground is crumbling everywhere, drivers respect
neither lights nor policeman's whistle, a megalopolis cruel to the infirm
and the aged; a city without pity, master, his eyes tell me, eyes now
blurred as they meet with the insistence of mine; merciless, that's right,
bjdun rahma.
Why did I communicate for a few moments in silence with that old
man, that particular old man before plunging in turn into the river of
cars and selfishly abandoning him to his uncomfortable refuge? It all
