The Qalawoon complex, depression and roasted chicken

We visited the Qalawoon complex which includes a mosque, school, hamam and a morestan which is a sanitarium. The Sanitarium was not open to the public but the ticket clerk let us in. It consisted of a courtyard surrounded by several cells. The cells were open and designed without a door and all interconnected (meaning that they had no third wall) by a corridor so that a doctor could circulate between them. In the middle of the courtyard was a pool which was drained empty. It was a very quiet place which came as a surprise considering the pandemonium going on outside.

The ticket clerk’s commentary was gold: “You can’t cure people while taking away their freedom, that’s why they can come and go as they please. This was the first sanitarium in the Middle East. When this was built, in the Middle Ages in Europe, they would imprison the mentally ill in a glass cube and wait for them to swell and then pop them with a needle. In Egypt we cured them by bathing them in rose scented water, playing music and reciting poetry. Of course that was back then. Now we forgot how to do this and we just give them electric shocks in the Abbaseya hospital. Also let me tell you, we used to know when a patient was cured by testing his appetite. If a patient is depressed, he won’t have much appetite, (at this point I remarked “how I wish this were true”), so we would serve the patient a whole roasted chicken, if he finished it, he was cured, if not, he would he asked to stay longer. ده اسمه اختبار الفراخ المشوية" .

I highly recommend visiting the Qalawoon complex and discussing things with the ticket clerks. They know all the hidden gems and they know which room corresponds to what. So even if this gentleman was a bit creative with his interpretation of history, without him I probably would have taken the sanitarium for a stable.

The Morestan part of the Qalawoon complex, featuring the drained pool.