Cairo master plan threatens ancient City of the Dead

In the morning mist, black-clad women and grim-faced men gather at Cairo’s centuries-old Sayyida Nafisa cemetery.

But they are not here to bury their relatives. They are here to exhume you.

“This is a double trauma,” Iman says, sobbing as she leads the proceedings.

“First, my mother, my mentor, passed away last year. Now I am digging up her fresh body and the remains of my grandparents, putting them in sacks and driving to rebury them in new graves in the desert.”

Iman’s story is not unusual. In the past two years, the location of several thousand tombs in historic Cairo, a Unesco world heritage sitethey have been swept away. They include some in the famous City of the Dead.

The Egyptian government is clearing a wide area to make way for new main roads and flyover bridges, which it says will improve traffic flow in the sprawling and congested megacity, home to some 20 million people.

These will also connect the heart of the capital with a new administrative one being built 45 km (28 miles) to the east, a landmark mega-project costing billions of dollars.

The developments come as part of an effort to modernize Egypt. Since President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2014, official figures show a total of 7,000 km (4,350 mi) of roads and some 900 bridges and tunnels have been built across the country, with military contractors carrying out much of it. from work.

Authorities insist that none of the many recorded monuments in this ancient part of Cairo, some dating to Arab conquests in the seventh century, are being damaged and that due respect is being shown to the most important tombs.

“We cannot do anything to damage the graves of the people we admire or against the monumental areas. We build bridges to avoid this,” said President Sisi. “We must not give a chance to those who want to tarnish our efforts.”

Its officials say that the affected graves are mostly from the last century and that compensation is being given.

However, there has been public outcry over the loss of valuable architecture and unique cultural heritage at six historic cemeteries where Egypt’s notables have long been buried, often in elegant marble tombs engraved with Arabic calligraphy.

Royalty, renowned Islamic scholars, poets, intellectuals and national heroes have not been left to rest in peace.

With his white hair and professional camera, Dr. Mostafa El-Sadek becomes a distinctive figure searching the rubble of demolished cemeteries with young volunteers. He is a distinguished obstetrician and college professor turned tomb raider.

“I am very sorry to see the tombs of historic Cairo being removed. We can learn our history from the cemeteries,” says Dr. Sadek, who is trying to salvage tombstones and other artifacts. “This is priceless. I believe that these treasures must be saved.”

He tells how this month he caught a glimpse of a stone slab built into a demolished wall containing engravings in Kufic script, an early style of Arabic calligraphy, while searching the Imam Shafei cemetery across the street from Sayyida Nafisa.

His group carefully removed the tombstone and discovered that it bore an inscription of a woman named Umamah, dating back to the 9th century.

“The stone was looking at me and I was looking at it. It wanted me to release it from the wall!” says Dr. Sadek imaginatively. The tombstone has now been handed over to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in the hope that it will go on display in a museum.

Under successive Muslim caliphates and dynasties, Cairo’s dead have been buried in this part of the city, under the low-lying range of the Muqattam Hills.

In the past, each wealthy family had their own walled estate with a mausoleum set in a lush garden. Outbuildings were sometimes added to accommodate visiting family members and were otherwise home to caretakers.

With morticians and gravediggers and their families, and later, tens of thousands of poor Egyptians, coming to live among the tombs, the City of the Dead in particular came to house an unusual community, threatened by construction.

Some residents have already accepted government offers to move into rented apartments built on the outskirts of Cairo.

“Unfortunately, Cairo will lose a very precious heritage,” says Galila el-Kadi, an architect who has studied the City of the Dead and its inhabitants since the early 1980s, as well as other historic cemeteries.

She does not accept the arguments of government ministries about a new master plan for Cairo.

“They don’t know what the meaning of heritage is, what is the meaning of history,” he complains. “This is an environment that all the rulers of the past have preserved in ancient times and also in modern times.”

Property developers have long eyed this prime property and over the years Ms Kadi has used her research to organize conferences, lobby ministers and file petitions to try to protect cemeteries.

This time, even an outreach to Unesco has been to no avail, though the agency has expressed concern that grave demolitions and road construction could have “a major impact on the historic urban fabric” of the area.

The remains of Queen Farida, the wife of King Farouk I, who was overthrown in a 1952 coup, were moved to a mosque after her tomb was destroyed.

Also toppled was the tomb of Abdullah Zuhdi, the 19th-century calligrapher whose exquisite works adorn Islam’s two most revered mosques in Mecca and Medina.

There have been some limited victories, such as a recent campaign to save the tomb of the great 20th-century Egyptian novelist and intellectual, Taha Hussein, after his grave was marked with a red “x” for demolition.

However, conservationists point out that the integrity of the area is being lost because the remaining tombs and monuments will stand alone below or be surrounded by new paths.

“They are creating isolated islands, separated from each other,” says Ms. Kadi.

Now, he is devoting his efforts to building a database of photographs and maps of the area.

“It’s a very bad feeling, but me and my team, and all the people who care about heritage, all we can do now is preserve the memory of these places,” he continues. “That’s the only way to pass it on to future generations.”

Back at the Sayyida Nafisa cemetery, Iman remains distraught as she digs up her relatives.

She describes how a letter was sent to her family asking them to act quickly after the graves were demolished.

“This is a desecration of the dead. I used to find peace of mind visiting my mother buried here with my grandparents,” he says. “When I was sad, I would come here and talk to her. Also, my mother’s last wish was to be buried here with her mom and her dad.”

The latest round of construction affects 2,600 private graves. In addition to the emotional stress, many families complain that the compensation they are given is not commensurate with the financial costs.

“My grandfather chose to be buried next to this Muslim saint and paid $100,000 [£80,700] in 2019 for this private burial space of the Sayyida Nafisa Mosque,” says a woman at another grave, asking that her name not be used.

His family was given a new 40-square-meter (431-square-foot) burial site of much less value, some 55 km from Cairo.

She says that her feelings of sadness and bitterness about what is happening to her grandfather’s plot are overlapping with despair at the scale of the destruction.

“These cemeteries are so rich in architecture and art,” he adds, gesturing around. “The government should not demolish them. It should turn them into open-air museums.”

All photographs subject to copyright.