Feature: In Cairo's cemetery slums, poverty erases bondary of life and death

In a quiet autumn afternoon, 75-year-old Um Mukhtar was cooking pasta for her grandson with a small gas cooker in the yard.

Just as simple and shabby as her cooking tools, the yard with a big tree provides nothing but a roof for ten people. At the only decent corner in this yard stand two tombs, making the "home" different from any slum in this country.

"We live among the dead simply because we cannot afford buying a home," Um Mukhtar said.

On the south-eastern border of Egypt's capital Cairo, a large cemetery was built at the foot of al-Muqattam hill in A.D. 641 by Muslim commander Amr Ibn al-As, who founded Egypt's capital of al-Fustat, now known as the Old Cairo.

This cemetery has been home to the living and the dead alike for decades.

Um Mukhtar is one of some five million Egyptians, according to official statistics, who live here due to chronic housing shortage in Cairo, a city with 25 million population.

Owners of the tombs allow families to stay in the graveyards without charge as they can guard and clean the tombs.

Those families hope the government and the owners of the graves won't drive them away, since they pose no harm to the graves and the areas.

For them, poverty has erased the boundary of the living and the dead.

"I moved from Upper Egypt 22 years ago with my husband and five sons to seek a better living. We settled here as temporary residence and planned to rent or buy a home when our condition improves," she said.

"But our plan hit a brick wall all of a sudden when my husband died two years after we moved here, then I have to feed the family by myself," the lady said as she rested her back to a tombstone in the graveyard's garden.

"The plans to move to an apartment vanished with time and this place has been our permanent home for more than two decades," she said.

All happy families are like one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Those small yards of the cemetery bear millions of sad stories, while life of the living people is still tough every day.

Egyptian tombs generally look like small houses with a vast yard or a garden. The dead bodies are buried traditionally in separate basements covered with removable stone slabs.

Um Mukhtar used part of the yard to set up a shabby kitchen, a living area covered with plastic sheets, and a tiny bathroom. Her poorly equipped bedroom, which she shares with three grandchildren, overlooks two tombstones.

"I have been working as a house cleaner, while my sons work as construction workers. What we earn can barely cover our food expense amid hiking prices of all commodities," she said.

The old lady and her sons also earn money through taking care of tombs, digging new graves, or selling roses to visitors paying respect to their deceased beloved ones.

"I still remember when we first moved here, I suffered many psychological problems sleeping among the dead, but this is not a matter all now," she said, smiling, adding that "all my sons have got married and have kids, but only two of them live with me while others live in neighboring graveyards."

"Time has made us get used to everything here," Um Mukhtar said.

"For us, living at the graveyard is better than homelessness," Fathi, Um Mukhtar's youngest grandson said. "The tombs here are large with private gardens, a rare thing in many residential areas across the capital; we also have electricity and tab water."

The 25-year-old father of two said that the place is ideal as they are already constructed and they do not have to pay for it.

However, he complained that pollution, garbage and lack of proper sanitation systems, as well as stray dogs make their already tough life even harder.

He said that he hope the government would relocate them, saying "I want my kids to start their life with hope, not with death." Endit