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How I remember it, with some writer's licence. All photos from the trip.
The Cities of the Dead are a community of shacks built among Mamluk tombs. Looking back, it’s not hard to imagine what kind of poverty would lead someone to set up there, and how they might react to a European with hard cash, but I didn’t imagine it then. It was recommended as a curiosity in the guidebook. Years later a missionary would tell me how dangerous it is.
I wandered in to have a look. A crowd of excited children were satisfied with photos. A five-year old and his sisters wanted me to come with them. So I did. They took me past tombs and to a bare hut with a tin roof. Their mother welcomed me in and the 5-year-old read me his English book about the moon and the stars. Only he spoke any English. Looking back, I realise from their dress that they may have been Christian, the poorest and most downtrodden of Egyptians. They all wanted photos, individual and group. I knew I should get them prints: but how? I had already put films in for two-day developing and needed to leave the next day when they were done. Then the Dad arrived.
What upset Dad, finding this strange man taking photos of his wife and children, was that they hadn’t included him. He wanted me to himself. He shooed his family away and struck poses with a pot plant.
I took my leave, promising at least to myself, with no way to explain, that I would find a way to get prints to the family. It was a few years before I tried, and I don’t know if it worked. An older man approached me.
- Why you come here? Is the Diss here.
- The diss?
- Is City of Diss. No good place. Why you go to the Diss?
- I seek the living among the Diss.
After that pseudobiblical quip, he took me by the hand, Egyptian style, and led me out to safety.
True danger did not arrive until the next day.
Click for what happened next.
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