“They just come here to pick us up any time they have a job for us and pay us after we are done,” says labourer Habu Isah, who has worked on construction sites for years.

And Kano resident Habu Shamsu agrees, telling the BBC: “I think it more encompassing and I like the way it flows.”

An explosion ripped through Private Habu Sadiq’s eyes.

Across the Nile at Medinet Habu — a mortuary temple for the pharaoh Ramses III built around an even older temple to Amun-Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god — a team of American archaeologists and mostly Egyptian stonemasons have been countering water damage since the 1990s.

Humans unintentionally caused another noticeable change in recent years: Pigeons have come to roost all over Medinet Habu, streaking the walls with their acidic droppings, which damage the stone.