So we are in Cairo for a week at the moment, doing lots of touristy things and generally having a bit of a break from work. We have seen the pyramids, mosques aplenty etc, but perhaps the most effecting experience was what we did today on our day off. A few of us took a cab to the city of the dead. It is an ancient cemetery that has become a city in and of itself, a part of cairo, yet very separate. The whole area is surrounded by high walls, and the people live among the graves, using the mosaleums as houses and the graves as tables. Cairo has a huge housing problem, one that is only growing as the population of 17 million grows, about a million of whom live in the city of the dead, called in arabic muqabara, meaning simply the cemetery. These are the poorest who have been pushed out even of cairo's other slums. That said, we felt very safe throughout our meandering walk. IT was even a welcome break from the constant and overpowering hassling from vendors and locals marketing just about everything that you find in the touristy sections of Cairo like Khan alkhalil. We were the only westerners around, and while the was a couple times when children followed us asking for money quite vociferously, they were often shooed away by the adults, who as often as not had a smile and a sabah alkhaier (good morning) (and unlike the rest of Cairo, not followed by some wily marketing scheme.) As we walked out, a driver pulled over and gave us a brief but heartfelt rant about how the rest of Cairenes and he governement don't know or care about this place, and he described it as a habs. We thought he was saying bread at first (hobz) and were confused, but realized later that habs meant prison.