Four Walls: Egypt’s Poor and Disenfranchised Struggle to Find a Voice in Post-Mubarak Egypt

In their hesitation to criticize the government and express their community’s needs, residents of Cairo’s City of the Dead seem to exist several universes away from Tahrir Square.

by Yasmin El-Rifae

We recently visited the area of Cairo known as the “City of the Dead,” or “el-Ma’aber” (the graves) in Arabic. For decades, people have lived on the grounds of this cemetery, in rows of cardboard shacks, facing a high fence marking the edge of the cemetery. Behind them are thousands of graves.

“It’s a sin to live on top of the dead, we will all be punished for this. But what else can we do?” one woman told me.

“My neighbor and I have both gone to apply for government housing at least three times,” another woman named Om Mohamed said.

“They keep telling me to come back, they never give me a reason or an explanation why. I am not greedy, all I want is one room, with four walls, for me and my children,” she said.