CAIRO, Egypt -- Halloween may have originated with the Celts, but when it comes to spectacular funerary monuments and high art, it is the Egyptians who rein. The ultimate practitioners of mummification, they built enormous pyramids as tombs for dynastic kings, and created a rich array of sculptures and adornments to accompany the dead into the afterlife. Even in crowded city cemeteries tombs were often built like houses with room attached to the tomb site.
In modern Egypt, there are still places where the living and the dead coexist. In Cairo, the Northern Cemetery -- known as the City of the Dead -- is home to an estimated 50,000 people who cannot find, or afford, a traditional place to live.
Ehab Ahmed, an English-speaking Cairo native I meet in the spice market, offers to show me around this unique community. We hop in a cab from the Khan el-Khalili bazaar (40 cents fare) then climb a footbridge over a highway, which offers a good view of the cemetery and several mosques within it.
But it's on the ground that we see the details, including something I hadn't expected to find -- satellite dishes. Elsewhere, laundry is strung between headstones, a vendor sells pita bread from a makeshift stall, and two children dressed in school uniforms stop to ask if we have a pen. Even street lights have been installed.