In a garbage-strewn block at the borders of the City of the Dead, it was eerily quiet as I wandered amid domes of old tombs, darkened by tottering high-rises. Then a whistle rang sharp overhead. I could make out a flag waving high over the alley and the hand that waved it: it belonged to one of Cairo‘s pigeon farmers.
Hurrying back down the path, I climbed up some rubble to the top of a crumbling wall. There were two of them up there, just boys, leaned up over the fence at the edge of a rickety tower, affixed to the narrow brick building by long wooden poles like the hundreds of similar bird towers dotted all over Cairo. As the whistling continued, a pigeon cloud shot over the alley and I caught one of the pigeon farmers’ eyes. He waved a friendly wave and I motioned to the tower. Shouting, he invited me to let myself up.
At the top of the climb up the barely lit stairwell, I was greeted with the boy’s grinning face. He held up a hatch through the roof as I joined him at the base of a ladder that led to the wooden tower, where I was greeted as warmly by his brother – and a breathtaking view of the twin mosques at the foot of the Citadel.
The boys said their father had passed on the art of pigeon rearing, and their father’s fathers before him. Seen not as mere rats with wings, pigeons have long been prized in Egypt for their tender meat. Hamam mahshi (pigeon stuffed with spiced rice, spit-roasted) is cherished in Egypt, and perhaps has been since the days of the pharaohs. Long a pastime of the richest, pigeon rearing, racing and trading now looks something nearer to a lifeline for Cairo’s poorest. Countless rickety wooden towers now cap the concrete high-rises surrounding the city.
As the older boy busied himself waving the flag, the younger was opening a series of hatches. When a feeding cell opened, the pigeons would flit out at once, bursting into the air. Whe the hatches were emptied, the boys would look out over the fence with big smiles and affectionate eyes, whistling or pointing out birds in their flock. Yes, they affirmed, they knew each one by name.
From a dozen more stilted towers around us more boys and men waved flags of their own, as if competing.
I emerged from the bottom of the stairwell to darkness and heard their strange whistles above on the walk down to the mosques.
