One neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt, is so riddled with trash in the streets that it carries the nickname “Garbage City.”

At the center of the neighborhood, known as Manshiyat Naser, there’s a giant painted mural that spans more than 50 buildings. The swirl of color can be seen from several vantage points stretching over many city blocks. But it’s only from one single spot—the top of nearby Mokattam Mountain—that the true meaning of the painting is discovered: It’s in a quote from a third-century Coptic Bishop written in Arabic calligraphy. You can only read it from the mountain’s peak.

Painted by a street artist called eL Seed, known for his distinctive brand of what he calls “calligraffiti,” the project is designed to denote beauty in a place where, at first blush, there appears only squalor.

“I was wrong about the people, and wrong about the place,” eL Seed told Wired magazine. “They don’t live in the garbage, they live from the garbage, which is something totally different.”