CAIRO — Garbage City is both famous and infamous around the world.

This area of Manshiyat Naser reeks of bitter, rancid trash from the two-story-high piles of bagged rubbish lining the streets and alleys. Amid the garbage lies a Coptic Orthodox Christian city. Storefronts and walls are painted with images of Virgin Mary, and Jesus’ face is plastered on everything from cars to clotheslines hung across alley ways.

“No Egyptian living in Egypt wants to live here,” said Amil, a Manshiyat Naser local who would not give his full name because he fears for his safety.

READ: Cave Church A Sign Of Hope In The Middle East

Garbage City existed long before its Christian residents. In fact, Coptic Christians have been the only ones willing enough to remain among the trash and help Cairo by sorting through it. The main issue seven decades later is the lack of political representation and influence caused by a growing Muslim-Christian divide.

“We live in it, built it, settled in it,” Amil added, but being “born into it” does not mean he wishes to stay in it.

After weaving through pedestrians and junk in the narrow streets, this reporter came upon a gate with no trash or bad odor.

“Do you have a cross tattoo?” the gatekeeper asked our driver — an indication of Coptic Christian faith in Egypt normally inked on either wrist.

Our driver did. We entered the jewel of Garbage City, the diamond in the rough. The place is the Monastery of Saint Simon.

Mokattam Mountain — whose name means “broken into pieces” in English — houses the largest church in the Middle East, with a capacity of up to 20,000. The church was carved into a cave in the mountain that Egyptian St. Simon commanded to move in the 10th century, proving to the Islamic government of the time the power of the Christian God.

While the Christian faith had political influence then, in today’s Egypt it does not.

“There’s a system, a poll and legal procedures. The Christian has no existence in it,” Amil said about the restrictions his religion faces.

He was one of only two people to speak about their faith on the record. In the majority Muslim nation, Christianity is a minority — an estimated 10% of the population, according to experts, and open discussion about it is taboo, especially with a foreign-based journalist.

The streets of Cairo are infamous for their speeding drivers. Few traffic regulations and crumbling sidewalks make them dangerous for pedestrians. Studies show around 7,000 people were killed in road accidents in 2021 alone due to reckless driving and poor road conditions.

“Every problem we face in the area is reflected in accidents that occur on the roads,” Amil said.

The Copts of Garbage City have been advocating for a pedestrian bridge to bring locals and tourists alike safely through the city to the monastery’s Cave Church. A collision between a car and pedestrians on Al-Sharqi Church street on Feb. 29 emboldened Manshiyat Naser residents to again push for the bridge.

“We wanted to give our opinion to make a pedestrian bridge, but no one listened to us,” Amil said. “There was an incident … where four individuals were involved and one died. Five bakeries also requested to operate, but there are no new measures for the area.”

Though Amil was not the only person to mention the pedestrian bridge and accident on Al-Sharqi Church, there is seemingly no paper trail for either.

Shady Lewis Botros, an Egyptian journalist, told the Media Diversity Institute: “There is an internal agreement between the church and the regime to ignore any news about the church’s internal issues or violence against the Copts in Egypt. The church considers these coverages to go beyond the red lines.” 

Cairo local Ibrahim, who also did not want to be identified by his full name, also mentioned the need for a pedestrian bridge, stressing that Christian persecution is real in some instances but that the main issue is the lack of political representation and influence caused by the religious divide.

“The problems we face here in this area are mainly the accidents that occur. We requested a pedestrian bridge, and of course, it's not being built,” Ibrahim added.

St. Simon, whom the monastery is named after, had the ear of the government after commanding the mountain to move. Locals say there is hope that since there was once religious cooperation within the government, there could be so again.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi swore in Egypt’s first Coptic Christian Supreme Court president, Bolis Fahmy, in 2022, in what should have lent hope to this cause. No Egyptian we spoke with, however, had heard this news.

Though the move was historical, experts said it does not level the playing field because Christians remain severely underrepresented in Egyptian institutions.

“The Christian person should have a say in the country, in everything. … Living is getting a little better, but it remains for us,” Amil said. “We demand it like any Egyptian citizen. I don’t want more than that.”

Alexa Wandersee is an American journalist based in Prague. She is currently studying for a B.A. in Journalism and Media Studies at Anglo-American University.