# A Robert Fisk article.



## MaidenScotland (Jun 6, 2009)

The other day in Cairo, I returned to The House on The Corner. That's what I called the crumbling fin-de-siècle mansion in my story during the Egyptian revolution – we actually used "the House on The Corner" in the headline. It was – and is – a real ruin, broken marble staircases, silk on the walls, a roof that sagged and shook when we ran across it, a place to watch tanks and duck from snipers, a real front line, all stuccoed windows and reeking with history and not a soul to tell you who lived there a hundred years ago. So back goes Fisk to The House on The Corner. A lot of busy young men with attaché cases were walking past. Nope. Not a clue who owned the building. Then I found an old "boab", a housekeeper down the road with just one tooth – believe me, just one – in his mouth, and I asked him who owned The House on The Corner. With his finger he made the sign of a cross on his hand, which Arabs do when they talk of Christians. And this is what he said in Arabic: "The man who lived here was Yussef Koudiam. He was a Christian man who died and went to heaven and is sleeping there."


I just loved the last line, not that the man had died but the sentiment behind it when you think of the religious divide here.


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