I remember the day I went to the Calvary Cemetery in Queens for a walk. It was days before September 11. While living in New York I always had the temptation to visit the cemetery. How many times you could see it from the freeway when the yellow taxi would drive you from JFK International Airport to Manhattan.
While traversing it I sometimes flirted on the idea of death for few seconds until we reached Manhattan. Some how the real world was there inside the grid and not in the Calvary Cemetery. Yes, I was so happy inside the vertically cemented island with my 20 square meters flat, my wife, my work, my few friends, tower records, cinemas, baba restaurant….. However, before reaching the toll and tunnel you could feel the vastness of the Calvary Cemetery embracing the east part of the island.
From the taxis’ windows either on the right margin or the left one could sense the Manhattan’s skyline always framing the view with its no so permanent silhouette. I remember during the summer I loved feeling the heat while opening the window. It was an exhilarating experience to get in to Manhattan and only to be felt in the few metropolises such as London, Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles. The cemetery added the touch of drama to the metropolis and somehow obliged you to reflect while crossing it.
Down below the ramps while in the car, you could briefly glimpse the thousands of tombs on the greenery in cohabitation with the big advertising adds, isolated few factories projecting their chimenies to the sky , storage houses and red bricked residential housing units. In other words you could grasp the energy of the city full of reality, tragedy and with a certain feeling of irony. But this vibrant view with the Calvary cemetery leading the visual sequence from the car was not the real world for me at that time. It was a mere reminder that life ends somewhere OK. But something unthinkable when you are young and enjoying the capital of the world at its full speed.
Only in one occasion I decided to walk there and get a truly dosis of inevitable facts. To get reminded that death awaits you in the corner and one day perhaps you will not be buried there but for sure below ground or in other form. As a sort of premonition with the twins at the end and two huge chimenies on my back I took this photo.
These days I live in Cairo and the drive from the freeway bridges hanging above the city reminds me New York and specially Queens. Many times Cairo brings me back to New York. Perhaps, I am writing this because I have just picked up at the Cairo Airport my good friends from New York and just drove together over the bridges of Cairo. Perhaps, because I have this image of the cemetery with the twins that I took that day and remains stuck in my brain.
“High Densities, Hong-Kong” by Manuel Alvarez Diestro
