The inner courtyard of the Sahrij medersa glows with the green of its central pool. |
To begin our walk, we needed to reach the starting point at Bab Fettouh, the city's main eastern gateway. This proved to be a navigational challenge in its own right. We blundered through numerous wrong turns and blind dead ends, but picked our way across the old city by occasionally begging directions from helpful locals.
As we neared Bab Fettouh, we were surprised to emerge into a wide field, a sight very out of place within the old city's walls. The field doubled as a trash dump which, to our further surprise, overlapped considerably with a cemetery. At first, the apparent irreverence for the tombs (so at