Cairo's largest Coptic Christian community, known as the Zabbaleen, fear worsening conditions under Egypt's new Islamist-led parliament.
For decades, the Zabbaleen have been Cairo's unofficial trash collectors and have been subject to hard living conditions.
Coptic Christians make up 11 to 15 per cent of Egypt's population. Known in Arabic as 'the garbage collectors,' the Zabbaleen are one of the largest concentrations of Coptics in the country and have made a living collecting, sorting and re-selling recycled material collected from Cairo's trash for decades.
Nearly eight generations of Zabbaleen have lived this way, harvesting garbage from Cairo's streets and businesses. Using donkey carts, and more recently pickup trucks, they transport mountains of refuse back to their communities in the hills to be sorted and eventually sold.
Father Samaan Ibrahim is head of the Samaan Church, which presides over the Zabbaleen's 'garbage city.' Built in the 1970s, the church has supported many of the social services that are vital to the Zabbaleen people.
Like many in Egypt, Samaan is uneasy about the future. Sectarian attacks have increased over the past year and conditions in the community have not improved even after the fall of Hosni Mubarak's government.
"We are awaiting the new constitution that we might expect something good for us in it…. especially the article concerning building churches in Egypt," he says.
The newly elected Egyptian parliament will select a committee charged with writing a new constitution for the country. The questions remain as to whether Egypt's centuries old law limiting the construction of new churches and making repairs to existing ones will even be considered by the committee.
"We're waiting to see what's going to happen," Samaan says.
The Zabbaleen are a community of Coptic Christians estimated to number between 60,000 and 70,000 people. Their largest settlement is located on the outskirts of Cairo in a kind of squatter town known as Moqattam Village, named after the rocky outcrop that forms the city's geographic high point.
Part of a wave of immigration following droughts that put an end to the Zabbaleen's subsistence farming lifestyle in the 1940s, the predominantly Christian community settled on the edge of Cairo for its low cost land and relative religious freedom.
The Church of Saint Simon the Tanner – the largest church in the country – was built in 1975, carved into the cliff face of Moqattam mountain during a period of loosened restrictions. Under Egyptian law dating back to the Ottoman Empire, the building or repair of churches is outlawed.
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