The Cave Churches of Samaan el Kharraz, St. Simon the Cobbler, at Mokattam, Cairo

February 26th., 2008

Our visit to the cave churches necessitated rising with the first call to prayer at 5 a.m. to get down town to the Y.W.C.A., the ladies of whom were our guides to the churches. We drove to the Mokattam hills through Garbage City, the city of Cairo’s garbage dwellers and the only access to the churches. Back in 1969 the governor of Cairo, decided to clean up by moving all the garbage collectors, with their ramshackle donkey carts, right out of the city and placed them at the foot of Mokattam. They pick up and take the garbage to their homes for recycling. There they separate it; discarded food for their pigs; the rest they sift and sort; some they sell to dealers. This provides an income for meagre necessities, but few luxuries. However, every Egyptian, including the poorest, has a TV dish on his roof and a cell phone. The former city dump was transformed into the Al-Azar Gardens, which we had previously visited with members of the Y.

Venturing into the Garbage City is quite an adventure, as the “streets” are unpaved, rutted and very narrow with no sidewalk, some so steep that the donkey with its loaded cart needs a helping hand from its master. They’re congested with men, women and children, carts, and now some run down vehicles, that look as though they had been rescued from a dump. Everywhere there is evidence of their faith, as their houses and shops are decorated with crosses and pictures of the Virgin and Coptic Saints. There is a rich aroma of rotting garbage, which clung to our clothes when we got home.

The garbage collectors were first ignored by the church. In fact the priest sent by the patriarch to serve them went, like Jonah, in the opposite direction. But in 1972 a Bible School was opened for the children and from that simple beginning has grown the church, with a school to teach literacy and a clinic for the sick. There is a Canadian connexion to this, in that Rebecca Atallah, the Quebecois wife of Ramez Atallah, the general secretary of the Egyptian Bible Society, teaches in this school. Some of the children came up to us, and spoke to us in French.

The church became well established, but had no where but the open air in which to worship. Some were in the habit of climbing up the mountain to caves in order to pray over the city in quiet and stillness. This was where they were told by the Lord to start to build the church building. The first was of corrugated iron, with no roof. Later they decided to use the caves and a natural amphitheatre in the side of the mountain, and they now have, not one, but four magnificent churches, each distinct in their own special way.

The largest and most spectacular is the amphitheatre, which seats 10,000, perhaps more, with an overhang of the cliff face over the front few rows and the sanctuary, behind the iconostasis, the screen with icons on it, behind which the liturgy is usually celebrated. This church was finished in the mid 1970’s and dedicated by Pope Shenouda III, to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Simon the Cobbler, patron saint of the Mokattam. His story I wrote about in January. We were told that every Thursday evening it’s packed with people singing hymns and praising God. They use modern visual aids, with a huge screen.

There are also other churches underground, St. Mark’s, St. Bola’s, and the one we attended the Sunday liturgy in, whose dedication I don’t know. I found St. Bola’s and the church we attended more intimate than the larger churches. In that church there was no iconostasis. Usually the liturgy is celebrated behind closed doors, but it may be a trend now to do it in the open.

The remarkable feature is the carvings in the cliff face; sculpted by a Polish artist, Mario, married to an Egyptian (no one knew his last name.) This is an on going project, though we did not see him at work, being Sunday, but I saw new ones since the last time we visited four years ago. Some had also been painted. They tell the story of Jesus, and Biblical references are also carved in Arabic and English. The one that moved me the most was that of the Resurrection.

After the liturgy people were reluctant to return to the city and picnicked outside the churches, in spite of its not being too warm. Boys played football on the road, even though it wasn’t level ground. We were invited to lunch with the priests, though we weren’t told in advance, and we had taken sandwiches, thermoses for coffee, and a large bag of oranges, I thought to feed 5000; but all that was provided and I noted an orange tree baring fruit in their garden.

Living in Maadi, one of the more desirable parts of Cairo, one doesn’t see too much poverty. Going to Mokattam was truly an eye opener. It was a moving experience to see what had been done with so limited means. The people of these churches, like St. Simon the Cobbler, are nobodies, in the eyes of this world. But their gifts had been multiplied. The churches and the carvings are such a marvellous monument to their faith. What a lasting witness to their compatriots and to the world! The ladies of the Y told us that when Bill Clinton came to see them, his jaw dropped and he said that he had never seen such faith in America. I haven’t either in Canada. I call them a Wow! experience (folk in St. George’s, Lowville, who have attended the School with the Vicar, will know what I mean) and consider them a ‘must see’ to any visitor to Egypt, who still believes in miracles.