{"id":805,"date":"2012-03-17T01:38:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T01:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2012-03-17T01:38:21","modified_gmt":"2012-03-17T01:38:21","slug":"weekly-photo-challenge-unusual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=805","title":{"rendered":"Weekly photo challenge:  Unusual"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Death is something I hate thinking about, let alone writing about.\u00a0 But when choosing photos from Egypt in 1942, there are so many whose subject is death that I will inevitably have to consider them.\u00a0 I selected this image which, since my childhood, has always turned me cold but curious, simply because of the caption my father wrote beneath it:\u00a0 <em>Dead City, Cairo.<\/em>\u00a0 Until last week when I was researching the cemetery near the pyramids (see my entry for the &#8216;Contrast&#8217; challenge), I never knew that Dead City was a cemetery.<\/p>\n<p>Today there are about half a million people living in the City of the Dead due to Cairo&#8217;s exploding population. They live in the tomb buildings as slum-dwellers and have no electricity or sanitation.\u00a0 However, some good people are growing micro-gardens in the Dead City complex which give the residents a way to produce some food for themselves and sell the surplus at the markets.\u00a0 Tomatoes and strawberries, mint, aubergines and peppers are popular and grow well because of their shallow roots, not in soil but in a layer of minerals laid on top of the sand.\u00a0 Read more about the project here:\u00a0 <a title=\"Dead City microjardins\" href=\"http:\/\/www.abitare.it\/en\/liveinslums\/the-microjardins-in-the-city-of-the-dead\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.abitare.it\/en\/liveinslums\/the-microjardins-in-the-city-of-the-dead\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The building in the foreground is in the Mamluk cemetery.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the mausoleum of Sultan Al-Ashraf Barsbay, built in 1432 AD.<\/p>\n<p>So through blogging I&#8217;ve learnt of three unusual things:\u00a0 Dead City is actually a city built for the dead;\u00a0 half a million people are living amongst the dead;\u00a0 a few others care enough to start vegetable gardens here and improve the lives of poor cemetery dwellers.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_806\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-806\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/worth.id.au\/wish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/dead_city_cairo_blogsize.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-806\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/worth.id.au\/wish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/dead_city_cairo_blogsize.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"927\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/dead_city_cairo_blogsize.jpeg 690w, https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/dead_city_cairo_blogsize-207x300.jpeg 207w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-806\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dead City, Cairo, 1942<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Death is something I hate thinking about, let alone writing about.\u00a0 But when choosing photos from Egypt in 1942, there are so many whose subject is death that I will inevitably have to consider them.\u00a0 I selected this image which, since my childhood, has always turned me cold but curious, simply because of the caption &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=805\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Weekly photo challenge:  Unusual&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[4,5,6,39,68,30,7,8,10,23],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwii","category-wwii-photos","tag-1940s","tag-215th-battalion","tag-black-white","tag-cairo","tag-dead-city-cairo","tag-egypt","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaweek2012","tag-unusual"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}