Ashraf Sadek<\/p>\n
Cairo<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Cairo Central Morgue, or Mashrahaat Zeinhoum, is the final stop for bereaved families to search for their missing loved ones. Each hour, dozens of weeping and perplexed Cairenes enter the facility to search hundreds of cold metal drawers containing whole or disfigured bodies.<\/p>\n
They are looking for an identification mark that could help them recognise whether the body is of their missing relative for whom they have been searching for months. They, helped by doctors and technicians, clung to whatever small details they can recall about the bodies of their loved ones to identify them. These may include a golden tooth, a scar, or metal plates from previous accidents.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people go missing in the Greater Cairo Area each week and their family members come to the ill-equipped morgue to search for their bodies, or reclaim the remains, Amm\u00a0 Gouda, a park attendant said.<\/p>\n
“He is not among them. Alhamdullah (Thank God),” Shaker Hassan said as he came out from the main morgue in the Sayydah Zainab district of Cairo.<\/p>\n
Hassan, a street vendor, is searching for his 7-year-old son, Salem, who disappeared on May 9.<\/p>\n
“On that day, Salem went out on an errand, but did not come home again.<\/p>\n
That was the last time his mother, sister, and I\u00a0 saw him. \u00a0He never came back since then,”\u00a0 Hassan said, while standing outside the building, which makes passers-by shiver of fear even on a hot summer day.<\/p>\n
Since then Hassan, sometimes accompanied by Salem’ mother, has visited the morgue every week or so, hoping to gather some information about his son, or recover his remains.<\/p>\n
“If there is no body, then Salem is still alive and not dead,” \u00a0Hassen said with a relief.<\/p>\n
What adds to his dismay is that the police could not find Salem, or unravel the mystery behind his disappearance.<\/p>\n
They (the police) could not determine if Salem was killed by a car, kidnapped by a gang, or still alive,\u00a0 he said, adding that he searched the emergency ward of almost every Cairo hospital for his missing son but has not find him yet.<\/p>\n
“The police and prosecutors told me to look for his body at the Cairo Morgue.<\/p>\n
If he is dead, then all that I want are his remains,” Hassan said, adding that his wife, Om Salem, was going insane.<\/p>\n
“Hundreds of people go missing in the Greater Cairo Area each year and many new corpses are being brought in daily,” Dr. Omaniya Kamel, a medical examiner,\u00a0 said.<\/p>\n
“Some of the bodies are totally unrecognisable,” Dr. Kamel, who works with the Ministry of Justice, said, adding that morgue is also frequented by people from other nearby governorates to see if the bodies of relatives who disappeared in Cairo had been found and brought to the facility by the capital police.<\/p>\n
Hamada el-Atwabi, from Menufia Governorate, said that he came to the morgue to claim the body of his younger brother, Adel, who died in a car accident on the Ring Road about a week ago.<\/p>\n
Dr. Kamel, who refused to be photographed, said the police send bodies of people killed in road accidents, domestic violence, or just died on the street to the morgue everyday for autopsy to determine the cause of their death.<\/p>\n
She said that it would be better if photographs of the corpses were taken and shown to the relatives who come to the morgue looking for their loved ones rather than giving them the traumatic experience of seeing the bodies by themselves.<\/p>\n
Some people faint, some people feel sick and vomit,\u00a0 some people cry hysterically and others just flee out of the building even before looking at\u00a0 the corpse, Dr Kamel said.<\/p>\n
“People can not bear the scene of disfigured bodies, burnt faces, severed body parts, and beheaded corpses,” she casually said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Kamel, 38, said that she refused to be photographed or talk about her family life because she did not want her neighbors to know about her daring profession as a medical examiner.<\/p>\n
“Until today, the Egyptians do not appreciate the valuable job of a forensic doctor, or a police doctor, whose main job is serving justice,” she ruefully said in her office, whose air is charged with the strong stench of death and high pitches of wails by the grieving and shocked people waiting outside the four-storey building.<\/p>\n
She said that conditions inside Zeinhom Morgue, which was built for a maximum capacity of 200 bodies, need to be improved urgently.<\/p>\n
Because of lack of space and drawers, bodies are piled on top of each other in several empty storage rooms of the building.<\/p>\n
Some times, it is left to the relatives themselves to remove the bodies, unfold the blood-stained white cloth in which they are wrapped to check their faces, and then put them back on top of each other without proper order or respect for the dead.<\/p>\n
Dr. Kamel said that unidentified persons — whose bodies are beyond recognition — are usually laid to rest at the nearby al-Imam Al-Shafie cemetery, where unknown people are buried for free.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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