JUAN GOYTISOLO
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burials are a hollow social act, the momentary disturbing effect of which
is diluted in inane bustle. A well-marked frontier separates necropolises
from the rest of the urban space and transforms them into ghettoes or
ghostly shrines. The price individuals pay for this shameful covering up of
death is revealed in their inner vulnerability and ostrich-like attitude to
the brutality of their condition: as in other terrains, the return of what
has been cast out insidiously contaminates the substance of our lives.
To become acclimatized to a cemetery like Al Khalifa is a healthy
apprenticeship in the course of which the neophyte gradually sheds his
worries and prejudices. Hardly glimpsed on my last visit to Cairo, it had
symbolized in my eyes ever since the most distant boundary of unhappi–
ness: the last most wretched suburb of a city whose monstrous growth
condemned its children to disputing and snatching their territory from
the deceased. After weeks of assiduous trawling, my impressions and ideas
about it were modified. The City of the Dead is a colorful, fascinating
urban agglomeration bursting with life, with districts which are ancient
and modern, humble and aristocratic: the comfortable residences of the
upper and middle classes run alongside enclaves and areas where poverty
moves one to indignation. Traditionally inhabited by families settled next
to their dead or by guardians of other people's mausolea, its population
multiplied over the last decades with the arrival of tens of thousands of
Nubians forced to abandon their lands submerged by the Aswan dam and
with a growing number of Cairenes fallen victim to the housing crisis
and the unbearable promiscuity of the slum districts . As I soon saw, a
great number of the settlers in Al Khalifa feel privileged and are proud to
live there. In spite of the insufficient and haphazard urban infrastructure -
the almost general absence of drainage, running water and, sometimes,
electric light - they enjoy a space beyond the aspirations of millions of
their co-citizens piled together in the housing blocks in the center.
If, in contrast to Qait Bey, there has been only sporadic illegal oc–
cupation of pantheons, the laws of the property market impose their
regulations in every transaction of sale, purchase or rental: speculation has
sent sky-high the prices of the new mausolea built for the bourgeoisie
become wealthy under Sadat. The concession of a lease or the safe–
keeping of a pantheon fetches very high sums, beyond the possibilities of
most families. On one of my walks through Al Khalifa I came across the
address of an estate agent, but my attempts at extracting a list of prices
from him shattered against the wall of his stubborn suspicion: although I
introduced myself as a Moroccan traveler in search of a home I was un–
successful in sweeping aside his distrust of my hidden intentions. On the
plots situated at the foot of Muqattam, it costs some 3000 pounds to
excavate an underground tomb and the land is sold by the foot, as in
