Had you asked me when I first moved to Egypt whether I’d ever wear a shirt stolen from a dead person, I would have recoiled and questioned your sanity. Or if you’d asked me the street price for an Egyptian tortoise or Vervet monkey, I would have shrugged in bewilderment. Then again, I never thought I’d ever be doing most of my shopping in a cemetery, or bargaining for used clothing and endangered animals.

Shortly after graduating from college, I decided to move to Cairo, Egypt to study Arabic as well as to spread my wings and live abroad for a few years. In the process, I discovered a market and a way of shopping that defined my experience as a whole.

In the massive urban sprawl of Cairo, there are five major cemeteries that were at one time located on the outskirts of town. But because of the rapid expansion of Cairo over the last few decades, these cemeteries have slowly become more and more central.

Due to housing shortages, overpopulation, and the rising cost of living, today the cemeteries have become home to over 5 million of Egypt’s urban poor. They have migrated there in droves, usually taking over in squatter fashion, grabbing the free real estate before someone else can move in, and making the tombs of the dead into residences for the living. These vast tracts of overcrowded cemeteries that lie along Cairo’s Moqattam Hills have become known collectively as the “City of the Dead,” a mysterious, unknown, and foreboding place for both foreigners and Cairenes alike.

As one passes by the tombs made into houses, you see children dressed in threadbare clothing standing in the doorways and playing in the garbage-strewn streets. You notice the creative use of cement coffins inside the tombs that serve as everything from ironing boards to dinner tables, from benches to beds. Laundry lines crisscross the spaces, strung up between gravestones, and television antennas are propped up on the low, flat roofs.

Tourists and local residents gather at the “Friday Market” to do some bargain shopping.

Although some of the earlier residents have illegally spliced wires from nearby mosques and run electric wires to their tombs, most residents do not have the luxury of lights, TVs or telephones. And since people living in the tombs are technically illegal squatters by Egyptian law, there is also no sewer or trash service. Piles of garbage are on every street corner, while some alleys run with raw sewage. The chief source of income for these people is a large market that occurs every Friday morning, open to all who have something to sell, with no vendor fees or laws to regulate what is sold.

Shopping in the suq al guma’a or “Friday Market” in Cairo’s City of the Dead is an event that draws tens of thousands of Cairo’s poorest every week to a place where they can both buy and sell almost any kind of junk, trinket, or treasure, at a price that they can all afford. It also occasionally draws one or two Western-weary, slightly adventurous, financially struggling Arabic students, such as myself. Even on my meager student’s stipend, I could feel like a king for a day.

As I jump off a minibus, which slows down only slightly to allow the frantic passengers to simultaneously jump on and off, I find myself at the front entrance of the infamous Friday market — a large unpaved street that winds for about a mile (1.6 km) through the tombs of the now inner-city graveyard. I am at once hit by smells, sounds and images that are almost overpowering — a motorcycle stacked with dozens of camel legs sits beside huge buckets filled with goat, donkey and sheep entrails. Large pails of cow liver and raw fat sit in the sun, while women and men with blood up to their elbows yell back and forth bargaining with potential buyers over the din of the crowd.

“Liver! Stomach! Intestines!” a black-clad woman shouts as she pushes her way through the crowd, carrying a dirty plastic bucket atop her head swarming with flies.

The mass of people is so thick that I am herded into one direction or another almost against my will, and have to step between vendors to get my bearings. This is survival shopping at its best, just as it’s been in this part of the world for thousands of years. Success at finding a good deal here depends solely on one’s aggressiveness, bargaining capability, and craftiness, as opposed to your credit limit, as it is back in my hometown of Washington, D.C. It’s also a refreshing lesson in honesty, as both the seller and I can be completely honest about our intent to fleece the other for all he’s worth.

I pause by the merchants who have spread out their small blankets in front of them to display wares they have picked up out of the garbage or stolen off the streets during the past week — piles of broken toys, smashed remote controls, old plastic container lids, coils of wire, pieces of a computer, here and there an old watch, a magazine — all for a price that even the poorest of the poor can afford. Most of the merchandise is actual bona-fide junk, such as innards of long-outdated typewriters, dented hubcaps, old bed springs, a piece of twine, a broken phone receiver — that they are hoping someone, somewhere has a use for. The vendors start their prices out by sizing you up visually: if you are well-dressed and look like you have money, the price starts high.

“Does this work” I ask, pointing to an old VCR with a smashed display panel.

“Yes, it works,” the man says, brushing the dust off of it with his sleeve.

“Can I test it?” I ask. He looks around at the mud and cement walls along the street and shrugs. I forget that there are no electricity outlets for miles around here.

“I’ll take that alarm clock there for one guinea,” (about US$ 0.20) I say.

“Are you kidding?” He laughs, “It’s worth more than four!”

“Two guineas,” I say.

“By God, I wouldn’t sell it to my own mother for that!”

I wave my hand and feign walking away.

“Wait!” He says, “May God curse you, take it for three” and shoves it in my hands.

“I can buy a new one for only three and a half!” I counter, and we continue this until a price acceptable to both of us is finally agreed upon, and we both part grinning to ourselves at our shrewdness. Never has shopping been so exiting.