66
PARTISAN REVIEW
place symbolic offering of a loaf and a jug of water next to their tombs.
The sepulchres that jostle in the neighborhood of the Al Qadriya
district merge imperceptibly with wooden pavilions destined for family
leisure and brick-built houses bristling with television aerials. The inhabi–
tants of these mixed areas hang out their washing to dry between
memorial stones and stelas, little children play at perching on top of
them, hens peck around them, and the sight of a goat tied by a leg to
the cenotaph of some
ulama
-
whose
chahid
is crowned with an
emblematic turban - does not shock too greatly. The sepulchres, like the
houses, tend to be ochre in color; but there are also plenty of lemon
greens, and I have spotted some yellows, whites and oranges (only blue is
rigorously excluded). Whoever zigzags amongst them hoping to lose
himself discovers at every turn the remnants of previous visitations: rabbit
hutches, pigeon lofts, flocks of sheep, a taxi waiting for its driver to have
lunch, insolent Dodges and Volvos, a broken chassis. On the roof of a
three-storey building, an extravagant advertisement of Canada Dry
broadcasts the virtues of refreshment to a vast assembly of corpses. (Can
the multinationals have decided to extend their range of influence into
the after-life?) The house-facades of those who have been on the
pilgrimage to Mecca are brightly painted: naive drawings outline the
boat or plane in which the owners traveled, the odd camel or palm tree,
the black canopy hanging over the Muslim sanctuary of the Kaaba. At a
bend in the street, fifty-odd people are celebrating with
yuyus
and ap–
plause the wedding of two children from the macabre: the bride is also
sporting her Pronuptia model, and a taxi will not fail to take her and
her husband for the compulsory photograph of the happy couple in
front of the Hussein mosque
(I
can already imagine the comic sketch
sweeper in his customary choreographic stance, energetically scattering
the dust!).
The images of destitution in the poorest parts of the cemetery are
quite similar to those I observed beyond its walls in the course of my stay
in Cairo . The shops selling State-subsidized goods - oil, soap, beans,
lentils, etc. - are under continuous siege from the mass of people who
subsist thanks to official ration coupons. At the entrance to the mosque
of Sayida Nafisa, the giving of alms to the needy by benefactors who
sometimes come from smart residential areas in Mercedes provokes a riot:
a flurry of women wrapped in black veils falls upon the driver encharged
with distribution, they jostle each other; one of the women in mourning
falls stunned to the ground in the midst of the uproar, but quickly picks
herself up, like a footballer who realizes that his pretence of injury has
not drawn the referee's attention and that the game is going on without
him. As a general rule, the inhabitants of Al Khalifa manage to endure
