1 million people live in ancient Islamic cemetery

ANSA ^ | 2008-12-09 | Cristiana Missori

[forkinsocket]

.

[philled]

1 million people live in ancient Islamic cemetery

Not surprising considering millions of Islamists still live in the seventh century.

[rfp1234]

Efforts to raise taxes on residents met with stiff opposition.

[JennysCool]

One for the list?

[Oratam]

The neighbors are quiet.

[NathanR]

This thread is useless without pictures.

[Ueriah]

People are dying to move in.

[annalex]

1 And they came over the strait of the sea into the country of the Gerasens. 2 And as he went out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the monuments a man with an unclean spirit, 3 Who had his dwelling in the tombs, and no man now could bind him, not even with chains. 4 For having been often bound with fetters and chains, he had burst the chains, and broken the fetters in pieces, and no one could tame him. 5 And he was always day and night in the monuments and in the mountains, crying and cutting himself with stones.

6 And seeing Jesus afar off, he ran and adored him. 7 And crying with a loud voice, he said: What have I to do with thee, Jesus the Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not. 8 For he said unto him: Go out of the man, thou unclean spirit. 9 And he asked him: What is thy name? And he saith to him: My name is Legion, for we are many. 10 And he besought him much, that he would not drive him away out of the country.

11 And there was there near the mountain a great herd of swine, feeding. 12 And the spirits besought him, saying: Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. 13 And Jesus immediately gave them leave. And the unclean spirits going out, entered into the swine: and the herd with great violence was carried headlong into the sea, being about two thousand, and were stifled in the sea. 14 And they that fed them fled, and told it in the city and in the fields. And they went out to see what was done: 15 And they came to Jesus, and they see him that was troubled with the devil, sitting, clothed, and well in his wits, and they were afraid.

16 And they that had seen it, told them, in what manner he had been dealt with who had the devil; and concerning the swine. 17 And they began to pray him that he would depart from their coasts.

(Mark 5)

[SunkenCiv]

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[apillar]

In fact, it’s so popular that people are just dieing to get in...

[RichInOC]

They can’t even afford to die? Now that’s poor.

[ReneeLynn]

It’s real estate to die for.

[Fred Nerks]

CITY OF THE DEAD.

"Egyptians dont call the sprawling cemetery at the eastern edge of Cairo 'City of the Dead.' Only Westerners do. Cairenes prefer to call it simply the arafa, the cemetery,. But what better name than City of the Dead to describe the four-mile-long walled necropolis that now houses thousands of families and countless small businesses? Video stores, car repair shops and tile factories line the main arteries of the cemetery, and cramped buses deliver hoards of commuters at the end of each work day. Furniture makers ply their craft inside tombs and streams of uniformed children parade to and from school, stopping for a quick soccer game between the cenotaphs. The arafa is a necropolis turned metropolis, where the needs of the living have far outpaced the sanctity of the dead. Here, survival takes precedence over superstition, and the impact of overpopulation and overcrowding wears a human face.

The cemetery is filled with refugees from Cairo's housing shortage who became homesteaders in a landscape of tombs and mausoleums. Today, some 50,000 people live in tombs while between 500,000 and a million more are cramped into tenement houses where tombs once stood. These people staked their claim in the cemetery when no place else could absorb them, and subsequently they came to prefer the silent company of the dead to the harsh conditions of urban living. Many claim they wouldn't leave even if they had the chance. Today, tombs that were designed to house a single family teem with bare-bottomed children, chickens and goats. Soccer balls fly where the relatives of the deceased used to pay their respects every week, and tattered laundry floats between the cenotaphs, obscuring the names and prayers engraved on weather beaten surfaces. Where horse-drawn carriages used to deliver weekly visitors, sooty buses honk their way down paved roads, and on a once contemplative lane between the tombs, a Friday junk market overflows with the refuse of modern society looking to be reborn.

[nralife]

http://www.satellite-sightseer.com/id/6983

[NathanR]

See the post 13 above. Also you can follow this link.

http://childrenofthealley.blogspot.com/2008/03/city-of-dead-cairo.html

[Fred Nerks]

So, the mohammadans overran and plundered Egypt, and now they are living in the tombs of their ancestors?

[Irene Adler]

While I was teaching on the university level, I knew an Egyptian woman professor fairly well. She and her family were Catholics. She once described looking at a house to purchase in town that backed up on a cemetary. She said that she would not purchase a house in such a location and that people in Egypt and the Middle East would NEVER choose to live near a cemetary, and also that cemetaries in the Middle East would have a high wall around them in areas that were near housing. She kept saying, “It’s a cultural preference.” I attributed her preference to the tradition of the dead being “unclean” and the related practice of burying the dead very quickly. She was quite vociferous about this belief in the Middle East so this article puzzles me.

[bigheadfred]

Don't let the article puzzle you. It is "dead" on.

She is/was just full of sh**

I don't see no high wall around these tombs and there are what, 15 million people living next to them.

Culture my a**

[Ken H]

Why are people making jokes over this? It's a grave situation!

[wildbill]

Same thing goes on in the United States. Except they are called Democrat voters.