CAIRO, Egypt (AFP) — Twenty years after burying him, Egyptian architect Ahmed el-Meligui was forced to exhume his grandfather’s remains from a historic Cairo cemetery that is being partially razed to accommodate the growing mega-city.

“Death itself is a tragedy. Here, you are reliving that tragedy all over again,” said the 43-year-old, who had 23 other relatives also removed from their family tomb, located in a sprawling cemetery known as the City of the Dead in Old Cairo.

Since 2020, thousands of graves have been demolished at the UNESCO-listed World Heritage site, one of the oldest necropolises in the Muslim world. It is the latest piece of Cairo’s history to be torn apart as authorities aggressively remake parts of the city, a longtime cultural beacon of the Arab world.

The Egyptian government says the cemetery’s destruction is necessary to build new roads and bridges that they hope will improve traffic in the congested, densely populated capital, home to around 22 million people.

But it is a painful ordeal for families like Meligui’s, whose 105-year-old family tomb, built in traditional Islamic style with grand wooden doors and a spacious courtyard, is slated for demolition.

“I had to separate the bones of the men from the women,” the father of three said, describing an Islamic burial custom.

“The most heartbreaking moment was when I found the shroud of my grandfather, who raised me, torn and tattered. The bones fell down and I had to gather them up from the ground,” he said, holding a photo of his maternal grandparents and their four children taken more than 50 years ago.