By Nigel Ryan The decrepit, the seemingly tumble-down, the almost but not quite falling apart at the seams, these are relatively common sights in Cairo. But the ruinous, the totally uninhabited because sufficiently unstable to deter even the most veracious of squatters, this is a surprisingly rare condition in the city though by chance -- and it is purely by chance -- it is the condition afflicting the building next door to the house in which I live. It is not that I selected the place because of the ruin, the ruin just comes with the territory though it does, it is sometimes nice to think, lend a certain character to the place. And there are times, it must be admitted, when I feel fondness for the ruin. At dusk, at day-break, glimpsed through the window in that putative half-light that has yet to resolve shadow into solid, it is possible to think of the building as an elaborate folly, as a piece of 18th century picturesque. Fantasies can be indulged in. One can picture it covered with ivy, or other creeping plants. In more extravagant moments one can even imagine it as a miniature Gormenghast, though in the harsh light of day the ever-present danger of total collapse makes such a conceit impossible. It is also inhabited by particularly unpleasant dogs, the kind of animals one can never imagine having been domesticated, however many generations back. They snarl, and screw their faces up, inordinately proud of the canine teeth they seem intent on endlessly displaying. These are the dogs that last week ate my cat, which might explain the current hostilities between us. It is possible from the garden of the house (garden is perhaps too pastoral a description for what is, until now, little more than a heap of rubble though there are plans, less for greenery than for something a little more Zen) to access the ruin, which boasts rather more domed bathrooms than any one has a right to expect. I have rattled through the building, curiosity having got the better of any fear of falling masonry, and the truth is that it is uninhabitable though there is ample evidence that someone was keeping chickens in two of the half rooms until fairly recently. The first floor comprises a long corridor, off which are single rooms, many of them still numbered with blue and white metal plates, which suggests that the complex was a sufficiently well established building to have merited postal addresses. Navigating the interior is a difficult process: internal staircases have collapsed, necessitating a great deal of ungainly scrambling. Doors have to be pushed open, a difficult task given the amount of debris that lies behind them, and then the debris has to be clambered over. And beyond the ruin, though inaccessible to those who are less sure-footed than a mountain goat, lies a vaulted mausoleum, again in ruins -- such are the vanities of ambition -- though listed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities. This particular monument I have known about for some time: several months ago it was possible to enter the mausoleum via an impressive stone doorway that lies in front of the house. A broken sign attached to the entrance of the mausoleum still announces one digit of what was probably a three digit number listing the site, still carries, beneath the dust, the name of the Supreme Council. And perhaps the officials of that organisation do occasionally check on the condition of the monument though the last time I attempted to pass through the doorway I was stopped by an elderly gentleman doing that finger wagging thing that elderly gentlemen do. There is a kind of tut tut, a vague waving of the hand, and a failure to make eye contact. And there is no point in arguing. You are standing on a losing wicket: any suggestion that the site is public, is, indeed, a tourist attraction of sorts, would be redundant. No one visits the place, no one has visited it for years, least of all, the suspicion grows, the organisation charged with its preservation. When the building was accessible without encountering the finger wagger it presented a peculiarly sorry sight. The marble capital of some long lost column lay on the floor doing nothing beyond looking old. Quite what it was doing there is anyone's guess. The place has no columns, with or without capitals. But there it was, sitting in the dust, a vague temptation, perhaps, for any one searching out an elaborate doorstop though it would not be the most obvious place to look for such an item. The mausoleum also boasted cupboards, an odd feature given its original purpose, the elaborate wooden doors hanging from their hinges and presenting yet another temptation for those intent on acquiring things antique. It is an odd thing to come across a place quite so neglected. It must once have been surveyed, once have been thought worthy of regard and is now abandoned, left to fall apart. But then there is so much that was once in the public domain until recently that has slipped quietly out of view. Simply flick through a copy of the hefty volume, produced just over three decades ago by the Ministry of Culture to mark the millennium of the city's founding, and pride of place, among the copious illustrations, is a triptych by Hieronymous Bosch that was once in the Gezira collection. Now it is difficult to lose a triptych, difficult to misplace an artefact that at today's prices would be worth rather more than a small fortune, but I have yet to discover where it is. So what hope a monument with a broken sign.
