Garbage City and the Zabaleen

Last week we went to “Garbage City.” Collecting garbage is a business in Cairo. Garbage collectors make a living by selling the recyclables they find in the trash. Over the past century, the Zabaleen have established themselves as the city’s garabge collectors. The Zabaleen used to be a nomadic tribe of Christians, who, unlike Muslims, could keep domesticated pigs. When several members of the tribe settled in Cairo, they found that they were better suited for collecting trash than the Muslims doing so at the time, because their pigs could dispose of the organic waste as they sorted through it for recyclables. Now the Zabaleen are the city’s garbage collectors. Like the Mafia, different areas in Cairo are controlled by different families, and there are turf wars when groups collect outside of their territory. With donations from upper class Christian communities in the suburbs around Cairo, a church was built in a huge natural cave in the Zabaleen neighborhood. The Zabaleen are often involved in fights with Muslims from other poor neighborhoods. Largely uneducated and living in absolute squalor and filth, the Zabaleen are scrappy street fighters, sometimes identified by cross tattoos on their arms.

I’m still coming to terms with the images from our visit. Trash was in piles two to three stories high—inside and outside. People of all ages sat in repulsive piles of garbage, sorting out plastic and cardboard as millions of insects swarmed around them. Children hopped along trash piles spilling in and out of houses, laughing and coughing. And despite these conditions, people seemed more happy and friendly here than any area we had visited thus far. I think a lot of it can be attributed to their excitement at seeing foreigners in a place that seldom receives visitors of any kind.

Most of all, it was striking to see yellowing posters of Jesus and the Virgin Mary hanging on peeling wallpaper above piles of garbage when all my life their pictures have been in elaborate churches surrounded by average American neighborhoods that would appear as absolutely fantastical palaces to the Zabaleen.

Mosques, some Churches, and a Synagogue

For me, one of the most significant parts of this trip has been observing the religious culture of Cairo.

Muslims are by far the majority; Cairo is known as the city of a thousand minarets because there are so many mosques. Christians compose a small but potent minority (I’ve heard 7-10% of the population). Jews are few and far between. Egypt has a rich history of varying religious movements, and Cairo presents a physical record of this religious transition. There are hundreds of beautiful mosques and churches, each with a story.

Many of the stories I’ve heard as we’ve visited these sites are charged with polemic. At the first church we visited, our Christian guide explained all the subterfuge that the church’s founder had to overcome from a conniving Rabbi turned Muslim. Another day, at a Shiite mosque with a Sunni guide, we heard stories of the Shiite founder’s mental illness and the Shiites current delusional practices of reverence. The histories of these places of worship have been rewritten to forward the religious beliefs of those telling the stories. I don’t doubt that there is some truth in the stories we heard, but almost always the presentation concluded in a way that rendered the beliefs of “the other” as virtually unpalatable.

In America, social pressure often pushes people (and conversation) towards secularism rather than religion. In Cairo, exactly the opposite is true. It seems like people are programmed to wax religious in every aspect of life. It’s jarring to go from a country where it feels like a social risk to share your beliefs, to a country where people reference God in virtually every conversation. People even brand themselves. Many Muslims have a large bruise on their forehead from frequent prayer. To some it is a badge of piety. And most Christians here tattoo small crosses on their wrists.

I’ve been asking about Egyptians’ views on recent tensions between Muslims and Christians a lot. I’m still processing through all the responses I’ve been receiving, but hopefully that will be a blog post of it’s own soon.