#resident perspective

[cairobserver]

The Island of Zamalek

Nadine T. Azer Selim

I live in Zamalek, an island in the Nile that is known as one of the most prestigious areas in Cairo. In Cairo’s modern history, Zamalek has been the neighborhood of Cairo’s elite, for Egyptians and foreigners.

In brief, it is an island full of upscale houses and apartments. It has some gardens and the very unique and important Gezira Sporting Club, where the people of Zamalek go and socialize. It also has old pubs like Don Quichotte, the Cellar and Pub 28, which are fully booked every night with young and old Zamalek residents. The first schools in the area were mostly Catholic and private schools that catered to Zamalek residents.

During the Nasser era, things changed. Many public and experimental schools opened, which allowed a different segment of society to access the neighborhood. Nasser also took a big chunk of Gezira Sporting Club and built Markaz Shabab Al Gezira, the Gezira Youth Club, which serves previously excluded segments society that had no place in GSC. These efforts changed the demographics of the area, in order to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, and to contain the elite as much as possible. But the demographics did not change very much, and Zamalek maintained its ‘elite’ reputation. In the following I discuss my quarter of Zamalek, focusing on the area’s demographics transformations.

Description of my quarter

My apartment is located between the main streets of 26th of July Street and Brazil Street. It is within walking distance of the main recreational places in Zamalek.

26th of July Street and Brazil Street are very busy, and they have all kinds of shops and small boutiques. There are some antique shops; there are two local liquor shops, many currency exchange shops and many mobile phone shops. Nearby pubs and bars provide Zamalek residents with places to socialize. Two of them are very exceptional to the area, La Bodega and L’Aubergine, which are also fully booked every night. There are many small restaurants, none of which are franchised except for a Subway. The majority of the small restaurants are owned by young entrepreneurs.

Recently, many cafes claiming to be ahwa balady (street cafes) have opened in the neighborhood. They serve almost everything that is served in a ahwa balady, but the prices are much higher. Most of them are not legal cafes, however they find a way to keep them running. The owners of these shops are usually not old Zamalek residents. Outsiders are shaping Zamalek today. One important example is a family that does not live in Zamalek that once owned a small grocer right next to where I live. In recent years they managed to buy most of the shops on the street and have expanded their business, turning their shop into a coffee shop and selling household stuff in their other small shops. Nowadays, they own most of the shops in my street, and own many apartments in different buildings in the area. Not only did this family buy property but they also brought to Zamalek their lifestyle. They dress the same as they do in their district and their children play on the street. In other words, they managed to change the character of the street to match their old neighborhood. This example shows how the demographics of the area have changed, and how Zamalek outsiders have became powerful actors in the neighborhood.

There are different grocery shopping outlets in this quarter. On 26th July Street, rural people sit on the street and sell fruits and vegetables. There are also small grocery shops that have been on the street for a long time, and there is the more recently-opened Gourmet Egypt which sells imported cheese, meat, spices and semi-cooked meals. Small bazaars are held regularly on Saturday mornings, selling Makar Farm’s organic fruits and vegetables. In other words, there are different kinds of shopping outlets in Zamalek that cater to the different needs of the Zamalek residents.  

The most significant supermarket for me is Sunny Supermarket. It has been there since 1979, and in the 90s we used to shop there all the time, but then it closed for several years. It has recently reopened in the same location, which brought joy to many Zamalek residents as it reminds us all of the ‘good old days.’ Before Sunny reopened, we used to shop at some of the old grocery stores for the basics and get imported or unusual foods from Gourmet. Now, we also go to Sunny. As for pork products, which is an important shopping item to my family, we go to Uno Ambrogio in Brazil Street, or we bring it back from outside Egypt when we travel.

Description of my building and neighbors

My building is very unique, but it is a perfect example of how the demographics of the area have changed. When my parents got married in the early 1990s, my grandparents gave them the apartment we currently reside in. It is a small cozy place. I’ve lived there since I was born with my parents, my sister, and my German Shepherd.

The building consists of 4 floors, each of which has 4 apartments; it is also pet-friendly and most of our neighbors raise pets in their homes. In this building, right next to our apartment, there is also a Fair Trade craft shop.

For a long time, our neighbors were mostly upper/middle class people and we knew them all. Most of them were middle-aged couples with their small families. Some apartments were rented to foreigners, but they were never much in contact with us as they were mostly short-term rentals. It was perfect, as the building was always clean and well maintained. The bawab (janitor/doorman) of our building, a very important man, was a middle-aged Nubian man that lived with his wife and six children in the backyard. The family of the previous bawab, who died, also lives in the same backyard. They are not on good terms and are constantly fighting. Because most of their children were raised in Zamalek, some of them managed to get the address of our building on their national IDs, so they will be able to join the public schools in the area.

Over the past ten years, many of the residents of this building left for different reasons, and some of the apartments were sold to an Algerian woman. She owns two NGOs that help minorities in Egypt and North Africa. As residents left and others died, the building became more a place for offices than residents - very similar to what is happening in the buildings of Cairo’s downtown. And of course, the building today is not as well maintained as it was. My parents do their best to keep it clean and well-maintained, but it is not easy with people coming from different places and treating the building as their workplace and not their home. The presence of offices in the building has generated foot traffic that was not there when the building was exclusively residential.

The bawab, ’am Mahmoud, who was a very faithful man, passed away a few years ago and now his wife and young men have taken over his job. Since all of the old residents moved out or have passed away, his wife and children see us as part of their family. There is a unique relationship between our families. What made this relation that distinctive is the fact that they realize that we have a different culture, however, they respect it, they respect the fact that we dress differently, we are more open to things. They never judge us for being different or for coming home late. I mention this because this is the typical problem between residents and bawabs in Cairo. 

The problem is always with the people around us and the way they perceive us. I don’t have a curfew, but when I come home late the first thing my parents ask is “who was sitting downstairs?” My family has some methods to eliminate street gossip, but since the demographics of the street have changed, it is necessary to be cautious. I do not mind the methods my parents use to keep our “good reputation,” as I understand that people in my street, regardless of whether they are owners of shops/apartments or work in some of the buildings or garages, have different cultures.

We all come from different backgrounds, and even if it is hard for them to respect our differences, we have to find ways to always sustain the relationship. That way all sides will live a much simpler life, with mutual respect. And it is important that no-one forces their culture on others, even if there will always be a dominant culture depending on where you live and who surrounds you. Yet, we should all try to mingle and not allow cultural difference to widen the gap between us, because at the end of the day regardless of whether you live in Zamalek or you are just working there, we all spend so much time in the same area. Therefore we should try to keep it simple and easy and make everyone feel comfortable.

Zamalek Guardians

Although I think it is necessary to mix with people, not everyone agrees, or maybe they don’t know how. Zamalek residents have different interests. Many still want to keep Zamalek isolated and don’t want to mingle with others at all. They think of Zamalek as a gated community and think it should remain the unchanged. There is a strange relationship with the way the old Zamalek residents are connected to this island. We have the struggle of wanting to keep Zamalek the way it was, yet this is nearly impossible to achieve.  

Some residents are very positive about maintaining a certain character and image of Zamalek. They formed a neighborhood association called the Zamalek Guardians, concerned with bringing neighbors together and maintaining Zamalek. They have a busy Facebook page, and were very active during the revolution where they had emergency phone numbers to help neighbors and friends. They organize events and meetings and see member residents as a big family.

The association holds charity events in the Fish Garden in Zamalek, at which you can see the difference between the cultures of the island. Almost all of the participants who came to these events are the old-time Zamalek residents, who consciously maintain a very “European” lifestyle. For instance, you could see Ahmed Harfoush singing some Frank Sinatra and oldies, while residents ballroom dance in the park.

Others think of the association is a typical symptom of Egypt’s ignorant elite. A telling incident of this friction is when Zamalek Guardians complained and temporarily blocked the planned project of building a metro station in the heart of the neighborhood. Zamalek Guardians often complain about the students of the public schools who loiter in the neighborhood after school time. Despite these seemingly elitist complaints raised by the association, it has also been very positive for the area for creating a sense of community and sponsoring projects such as street cleaning.

For outsiders Zamalek can be seen as a last bastion of elites in central Cairo, a sort of gated community where in fact it is not. While some Zamalek residents want to believe this illusion of being separate from the rest of Cairo, we are not. The island’s culture is unique in many ways, yet it is not gated or segregated because it is in the center of everything and everyone comes through here whether we like it or not. In the morning it is very crowded, with people coming to the offices and to the schools, all from different social backgrounds. And in the evening it is crowded with outsiders coming to the neighborhood’s bars and restaurants.

Still there is something very special about Zamalek and something that feels comfortable. What Zamalek offers can not be replaced by moving to the suburbs. It is unlike any other district in Cairo.

This article is part of a short series written by AUC students studying with Professor Mona Abaza, reflecting on their neighborhoods and the city they live in. For a brief introduction of the series click here.

[cairobserver]

In the Middle of Nowhere

Salwa Salman

As I struggled to map my location, I realized how hard it was for me to say exactly where I am. I’m in the middle of nowhere. Thus, in trying to locate myself, I would have to start with other places that aren’t here, places that exist on a map or are easily recognized by a GPS. That list come to mind: 6th of October, Mohandiseen, Carrefour, Sadat City, the Monastery of St. Macarius: all locations that I refer to in the attempt to describe where I live.

A Daily Routine: the Way Back to Nowhere

I start my daily journey home after work from Mohandiseen. We—my father, our driver and me—always stop in Carrefour for some refreshments and gas, and then we start our two hour drive. After two years of this routine, employees at Carrefour always welcome us with a smile, especially at harvest times when we give them plastic bags full of guavas, lemons, mangos, and olives.

As we cross the Cairo-Alexandria desert gate, access the toll road, the image gets quite surreal. The endless road penetrates the beautiful flow of brown and yellow sand, where every now and then a gated oasis comes into view, with green promising lands behind high gates, most probably with western names or ones that match some Orientalist imaginary of a desert dream. There are also scattered settlements, informal poor markets, small cafes, state land reclamation projects, small farms, and abandoned vacant lands all adding a different taste and color to the whole picture. There is also a growing presence of military tanks and police vehicles along the Cairo-Alexandria desert road. This has increased significantly since the military took over the project of developing the road four years ago, having owned the road for 50 years as a business interest.

Ironically enough, we are soothes at the sight of Wadi el-Natrun prison, as then we know that we will shortly make it home after this exhausting ride. Across the highway our villa, with its sandy color, appears as if it was a part of the desert land on which it stands. We cross a narrow unpaved street where there is a camp of the oil and gas company Petrojet, and another of Hassan Alam, a construction and real estate developer. Next is a small mosque that we built parallel to our villa. Although this part of the desert was planned neither according to the visions of the state nor a private real estate company, the people who occupy the land still divided themselves into three residential areas; first, the closest to the road, where our family’s villas stand. Here my grandmother, two uncles, and my immediate family each have a villa and cultivate plants on a piece of land. Then five kilometers of vacant land, and then another residential area, with smaller villas, where a small population of twenty families resides, including our driver’s family. The third residential area is linked to St. Macarius, where the monastery’s workers live, manage, and reclaim a large piece of land outside the monastery.

The piece of land we occupy was empty until we arrived, however over time it was transferred from the ownership of the Egyptian Military, to the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, then to a retired employee in the Ministry of Agriculture, and finally to us. The residents mostly bought the land from an employee of the Higher Committee for Agrarian Reform who managed to transfer more than ninety feddans to his sons, as lands to be reclaimed. However he also managed to sell the land before the legal period using informal and fraudulent contracts, and that left the new landowners in a legal dilemma.

Home

Am Saeed, our land worker, opens the forged iron black gates to a green garden where my parents and I grow organic fruits and vegetables, proudly calling ourselves the “organic gardeners.” We mainly grow lemon, mango, and olive trees (with which we lately managed to produce virgin olive oil). However, due to the lack of farm workers in this part of the desert, and our lack of experience in selling our products, we always end up paying a lot just to maintain the agricultural part of the land, instead of using it for profit.

The garden entrance leads to a small circular decorative flowering area in the middle. On the left, there is a small house covered with two palm trees and an avocado tree where our farm workers live. On the right there’s a spice garden, then a small parking lot. The garden design is divided into two different areas; the house entrance area with its curved landscapes, where we plant colorful baladi flowers and have our spice garden; The back entrance area with an agricultural landscape without the same decorative classical feel of the entrance area. Also, the back entrance of the house is designed in a more rural style with a small deck and a wooden door leading to the kitchen. The exterior of the two-story house is covered with beige porcelain that gives the house a luxurious appearance, dark wooden arched windows and a huge circular balcony, while the back entrance is rectangular and much less luxurious.

A half circular marble porch leads to another high forged black gate. Inside, the first floor is full of classical antiques, paintings and French furniture, small statues, and tapered columns with decorative carved millwork caps. Meanwhile the second floor is furnished in a more modern style with an open kitchen, plain columns and a glass dome ceiling designed to add more natural light.

These distinct styles coincide with the public and private aspects of the house: the elaborate areas where the family usually hosts guests; and the private areas, which are more simple and practical. This reflects, in my opinion, an inner conflict between the desire to replicate a landlord legacy in a different time and economy, and the new class structure that does not privilege the ‘old elite’ anymore.

My mother’s family used to own agricultural lands and factories in Hawamdiya. However, in the wave of the 1952 revolutionary change, the family lost most of their possessions and even those who managed to find their way into the King’s army were denied any title in the new military reform until later in the 1960s. The 1952 Egyptian revolution marked the beginning of an era where the relatively less privileged family members, who failed to find their way into the new social order, were caught between social classes, with a distorted sense of self-representation. Although the family enjoyed managing their lands from their luxurious homes in non-rural Giza and Zamalek, they always insisted that they have a rural base that entitles them to owning agricultural lands. Accordingly, even a small land of a few feddans represented an opportunity to revive a landowning memory, if not a legacy. Ironically, history never repeats itself and even the very attempt to replicate an identity resulted in a very different form of living, one would think that a desert is a blank page, where they would rush to fill with imaginaries and symbols, but the desert does have its own rules, and by transforming the land one also transforms oneself.

The Monastery Experience

Networking, socializing and the simplest daily consumption activities can be quite a process when one lives in the middle of nowhere. A trip to the nearest supermarket takes about twenty minutes and Sadat city, the nearest satellite city, is about forty minutes away from home. Two months after my family and I moved to our new house, we built solid relationships with our neighbors at the Monastery of St. Makarius, who became our main suppliers of dairy products. Soon enough my parents were invited to enter the Monastery, and fathers at the Monastery became the main family resort whenever faced with difficult decision or family problem. I’ve learned to call our friends at St. Makarius by the name of father Abuna, and since then I’ve read a lot in the Bible. We always enjoy having discussions and exchanging information about our respective religions.

Sometimes I find it ironic that our social life is now reduced to socializing with the desert fathers who, in the middle of the desert, have built their utopian village away from the noise of the city. We’ve moved from Alexandria, to Maadi, to Mohandiseen, and then to the desert searching for a place that we can call home. We were never good with the class performativity, as I like to call it, for me the city has always been a theatre where people are forced to perform a class script in order to fit in. Though people usually inherit these roles and reproduce them in desert societies, in my case, after a couple of years of moving into the desert we’ve built solid friendships with families and peasants who work the lands around us without paying attention to social differences.

The relationship developed with people who come to pray in our small mosque, sheikhs and fathers at the Monastery of St. Makarius created a new sense of tolerance and acceptance that I believe lies in the intersection between both Christianity and Islam. With every passing year the constructed concepts of the ‘other’ fades away and a new understanding of beliefs and religious identity is formed. The desert fathers are different, away from the conflicts of the city, its mosques and churches that are now involved in the production of hatred and the construction a devilish image of the ‘other.’ The harshness and emptiness of the desert has forced us to collaborate and to communicate.

Why would one choose to abandon the city to live in the dead desert? “The silence of the desert means so much more than the noises of the city,” my friends at St. Macarius would say. My mother also has her own theory. “Here we’re a part of the earth to which we belong.”  

This nowhere experience has developed new ways of self-representation, that makes me realize the indifference of urban networks and social relationships that arises in the chaos of the city. That is why although other forms of networking and socializing take place in other locations around where I live; for example Sadat city, Carrefour, 6th of October, and so on, one can hardly connect to a pre-constructed place once one experiences the joy and ecstasy of carving their own place out of nowhere, although it might still reflect the imaginary of a past self.

This article is part of a short series written by AUC students studying with Professor Mona Abaza, reflecting on their neighborhoods and the city they live in. For a brief introduction of the series click here.

[cairobserver]

Orabi: Cairo’s Hinterlands of Reclamation

Nermin Dessouky

Hardees have agreed to deliver to my house, and I am celebrating. At the same time, a foreign friend of mine just called and said, “guess what, I saw the big red letters of your neighborhood from the airplane, and wow you literally live in the middle of nowhere.”

I know that sounds strange, and no I do not live in the middle of nowhere, I live in a gated community. It is, however, a special case of a gated community where fast food delivery is not possible.

In 2004 my family relocated to our current house in the “Ahmed Orabi Association” near Al Obour city, reachable via the Cairo-Ismailia Road. I used to live in Heliopolis, but my parents aspired to move to a big house outside the city. Living in “Orabi” is completely different to living in other new cities like New Cairo or 6th of October, because Orabi was never intended to be a residential area. It was established as a gated reclamation project in 1978 by a group of military men who wanted to make a modern agricultural community. The plan was to divide the place into two parts: in the back, there was to be large plots, eight feddans each, intended for agriculture. At, the front on the hill, smaller plots of land around 2000 square meters intended as the residential area for landowners. The plan was that every member in the community would own a small plot for their house and a big plot for an agricultural project. The infrastructural services were designed to serve an agricultural community, so there was both irrigation water and fresh water, only offered for a limited time daily. There was an erratic electricity network and no sewage system. Somehow during the last twenty years, Orabi managed to attract different categories of people, some of whom approached it as a land reclamation project, but others were interested purely due to the fact that it offers big areas of lands that cannot be found in other residential areas.

My family and me are one of the survivors who managed to live in Orabi for eleven years despite the lack of services. To be fair, the services had developed a lot in those eleven years. Now we have a small supermarket, a bakery, a hairdresser and a pharmacy, reachable by car in five minutes. Sometimes they offer home delivery too. Golf City Mall also opened ten minutes away by car too. I can remember the first time McDonald’s agreed to deliver to our house. It felt like the queen was coming to visit, we were all standing and opening the door wide before the delivery guy even knocked the door. We now have a landline and Internet, which was not available for more than four years when we moved to Orabi. The electricity is still a mess; one thing that I have learned is to prepare the candles whenever there is a strong wind or rain because the electricity is definitely going down.

Our house is on a land plot of one feddan, part of a bigger plot of eight feddans. We have a swimming pool, garden, squash hall, billiard table and a garden with enough vegetables and fruit trees to satisfy our own needs. But we only use such facilities when we have visitors. All my relatives love coming to our house, but I have noticed that visiting a place is completely different to living in a place. This always makes me wonder why the idea of having a garden is so desirable in Egyptian society. I believe that the media has a big role in shaping the lifestyles that Egyptian families aspire to imitate. It’s always transmitting a picture of the perfect Egyptian family eating breakfast every day in the garden, while in reality this is rarely the case. This interpretation derives from watching my own family and our neighbors, where the garden is always perceived as a good view, but not part of the daily routine.

Mobility used to be my biggest problem with living in Orabi. Walking is not an option here, with its vast land plots and its street grid plan. The only visual diversity one encounters while moving around Orabi is the height and shape of the walls surrounding each plot, sometimes you can’t even see the house built there because it is located at the back of the plot. The perspective from the street is narrow with walls on each side and a never-ending road. Even if you decided to walk, you would only encounter some stray dogs and maybe other wild animals that live in the uninhabited desert. There is no kind of public transportation here, so if you are helpless with no car you will have to walk to the nearest gate, which takes around fifteen minutes (and back in 2004 you could have actually walked the whole way without meeting a single car). The gate is open to the Cairo-Ismailia Road, so from there you can wait for a microbus or a car to pick you up. Basically turning eighteen and learning how to drive was my ticket to surviving life in Orabi.

 The Community

Getting to know people took a lot of time in Orabi, due to the lack of any common spaces where you can meet other people. There is a small club, but it was empty all the time until six years ago, when they opened a bakery and a supermarket inside the club, so people started visiting it just for the sake of grocery shopping. Our one-feddan plot is part of a bigger cluster of three other plots. Each of them contains a house, but the three other owners use their houses only on vacations, so basically there are no neighbors. My mother got to know some other people through taking some lessons in the mosque. We call them our neighbors but it takes us not less than five to ten minutes’ driving to reach them, so I am not really sure that we can call them that. Over time, I met some friends at university, who I later discovered live here, and the same happened to my brother at school. What I have noticed is that, out of the neighbors we are friends with, we did not initially meet in Orabi, but met through other places first. Which for me is a translation of the lack of any kind of community interaction spaces.

After 2011 things really changed and a Facebook group was formed for Orabi residents. The number of residents started rising and rising. Suddenly we discovered that there were a lot of people, but the walls of each plot were hiding all signs of life. The positive spirit of Egyptians after January 2011 touched the community too, and an event at the club was created for all residents. In this meeting we got to know a lot of other residents, discussed a lot of Orabi problems and tried to figure out solutions. I remember discussions on how we want Orabi in 2020, how to beautify Orabi, and what kind of community work can we achieve here.

Orabi is also divided into two communities: the landowners and the laborers (mainly farmers). Some of the farmers have lived here for over ten years. Due to the lack of transport, the landowners of provide a living place for the workers, allowing them to bring their wives and children too. One can find a pattern regarding workers, where the male farmer maintains the land and his wife is the housekeeper. I could not find population statistics, but I believe that the number of laborers is higher than the number of landowners, simply because not all the landowners are living there but all of them hire laborers to take care of the land.

After some of these community meetings some residents decided to start literacy classes to educate the workers. Those classes were met with a lot of support from both the residents and the workers. Residents volunteered to take classes on how to teach literacy, got accredited, and started teaching the workers. The workers started bringing their kids too, so another phase was launched to teach literacy to the laborers’ children. The project has been running successfully since then, and I can clearly say that this project is the only thing that provides me with a sense of community inside Orabi.

I believe that Orabi will never develop enough to be a real neighborhood. We cannot blame the urban designers or the planners, because it was never intended to be a real neighborhood. You can easily note that by looking through its maps, the planners were dealing with a land reclamation project, and all they did is divide the desert into longitudinal strips in a typical farming pattern, adding a few spaces to provide the lands with the minimum services needed to help run their projects. But the interest in real-estate transformed Orabi to an interesting area for residents because it offered relatively big plots of lands compared to other new cities.

Living here has changed my lifestyle a lot. I have learned how to accumulate all my needs, outings and appointments that take place in Cairo into one or two days of the week (avoiding a one hour trip to Cairo as much as I can). My sense of what is close to me is entirely different to people living inside Cairo. I consider residents of New Cairo, Obour, and Shorouq as my neighbors, while in reality I need twenty five minutes’ driving to reach them. One thing that I have noticed about myself is that I never regard Orabi as my neighborhood. The walls of my house are the border of my neighborhood; other than that I am surrounded by desert and high walls, so there is nothing to get attached to. That’s why I was surprised when my class was interested to visit Orabi, I didn’t really understand how it could be worth visiting for an urban sociology class. The Class Visit As my Urban Sociology AUC class usually take walks in different urban spaces, one day they decided to take a walk in Orabi. As someone already living in here I did not expect to have such a fresh perspective. I already know the city, the streets, the services and everything. What I did not expect are the different reactions of my class, so the walk was less about noticing what is there and more about what people perceive to be there. From the second the AUC class stepped out of the bus something was different. There were a lot of people waiting for them. Maybe in other places this is not weird, but for in Orabi you rarely see more than four people clustering together. So seeing a lot of people and photographers welcoming my class made me realize that the community were really keen on presenting Orabi as perfectly as possible. The only problem about presenting it as a “perfect community” was how my classmates and the Orabi representatives each had completely different understanding of the idea of what that is.

“It is huge!” Standing atop a hill to observe the place with a bird’s eye view, my colleagues kept repeating this. As an architect, I can relate to how choosing a bird’s eye view to present a project is a common trick to give a lasting overwhelming impression on any project. From this hilltop, Orabi lands were stretching as far as the eye can see. That was the first time I got to realize how big it is. Because of its repetitive grid, I always perceived as one monotonous, duplicated pattern rather than a huge city with different structures. But intentionally or unintentionally, the tour guide had chosen hilltop as our first stop in the tour, so that the students could perceive how big and unique this community is.  

“But where do you hang out?” a colleague kept asking. It takes less than five minutes of driving to realize that there is nothing more than the long gridded streets and high walls from each side, raising the question of where is the common space in this community. I talk about the club as a common space, but it is an empty club. I always give different reasons to this phenomenon: the club is empty because there are not enough activities, or no good services, or even no residents, but I guess none of these is the real solid reason behind the empty club phenomenon. What I am starting to notice is that these types of places for interaction are not really welcomed by the residents, because they basically do not add anything new compared to what residents have in their own plot.

In our search for privacy, we are attentive to any type of groupings. This is obvious when you observe how a group of kids hanging out in the streets raises questions and resentments from the Orabi community. We have our bike days and our other social events, but it needs to be organized in advance, as haphazard groupings draw attention. This is because the idea of a pedestrian life is not applicable in Orabi. The community also resents the idea of allowing people from outside Orabi to enter or to use the club, even though it is abandoned most of the time. This common to all residents of gated communities, seeking privacy and so-called security. “You live in a very weird community.” That was the last and final comment of one of my colleagues. As a resident I cannot deny that Orabi is different to any other place. As a resident I always thought that it is different because of the big lands, the lack of infrastructure, or other reasons, but until the class visit, I never realized that this was intended.

This article is part of a short series written by AUC students studying with Professor Mona Abaza, reflecting on their neighborhoods and the city they live in. For a brief introduction of the series click here.

[cairobserver]

Sheikh Zayed City: Mehwar, Hyper One, and Life on the Ambiguous Edge of Cairo

Omar Omar

It is almost four in the afternoon, and I follow the signs towards the 26th July Corridor Road, known as the ‘Mehwar.’ I drive past the boutiques and foreign banks in Mohandessin, and then take the ramp and watch as Mohandessin thins out, giving way to the popular district of Ard el-Liwa. I begin to see the Ring Road intersection, with various flyovers connecting highways together. Finally, this concrete mess gives way to an elevated highway with green pastures on either side. This order of transition, from downtown to peripheral slum to open countryside all gives a strong sense that I am ‘leaving’ the city of Cairo. Except that I am not leaving the city. Just a few minutes away begins Sheikh Zayed City where I live.    

Locating Sheikh Zayed  

The naming of Sheikh Zayed City indicates the economic and political links, perhaps even dependency, between Egypt and Arab Gulf countries. Sheikh Zayed City, commonly considered part of 6th October City although technically a separate entity, is a satellite city that was first developed in the 1990s through a grant given by the government of the United Arab Emirates. When I first visited Sheikh Zayed City in 1998 to see our new home under construction, it was in the middle of nowhere. I was struck by the sense of distance, and the vast emptiness of the surroundings. Today, Sheikh Zayed City is a much busier place. Empty desert has given way to chic shopping spaces and villas. Once empty streets are now congested with vehicular traffic on a daily basis. This transformation, which occurred in a few, short years, has been nothing short of spectacular.

[A statue of United Arab Emirates Sheikh Zayed adorns one of the city’s main squares.]

Sheikh Zayed is divided up between compounds, gated communities, freestanding apartment blocks, and individual plots of lands designated as residential, which are then sold to individuals who develop them independently. The city also includes a Cairo University satellite campus. The urban status of Sheikh Zayed is ambiguous; it is at once a city, and a peripheral suburb, yet it is also an integral part of Greater Cairo. It was envisioned and planned as a city. However, due to its distance from central Cairo it evolved as a peripheral suburb. Furthermore, it is integral to Greater Cairo because of the sheer number of commuters who travel between central Cairo and Sheikh Zayed in both directions on a daily basis.

The first landmark encountered upon arrival to Sheikh Zayed is Hyper One, a large hypermarket that caters to the shopping needs of the relatively affluent residents of Sheikh Zayed/6th October areas and beyond. Hyper One also acts as a useful point of reference, and the surrounding square is a transportation depot where people arrive on government-run coaches, or microbuses, to transfer to smaller serfis cars (a shared taxi) that operate exclusively within Zayed. In addition to Hyper One, there are several markets in Sheikh Zayed, which would typically feature fruit and vegetable sellers, bakeries, supermarkets, and a few other shops, which may be of convenience to local residents.

The houses and the residents

There are several affordable-housing areas consisting of drab apartment blocks. Although initially designated for lower-income residents, their re-sale values continue to climb up. The current occupants of these apartments vary significantly. There are middle-class occupants in some units, while laborers renting bed-space with as many as a dozen people sharing a single apartment occupy other units. In addition, there are significant contingents of Syrians who moved to Egypt after the start of the war in 2011.

[Perpetually incomplete residential buildings dominate the urban landscape.]

The building activities on plots of land zoned for residential use vary significantly. As property owners build on their own initiative in the absence of an overall municipal system or vision, they build at their own rate and as they wish. The result is the antithesis of a neighborhood where there are only a few finished occupied homes surrounded with empty lands or houses perpetually under construction. Empty lands and homes under construction are usually occupied by a ghafir who acts as a guard to deter squatters. The ghafir will usually move in with his wife and family, who may then engage in various forms of casual labor in the area to generate additional income separate from the flat salary the landowners pay the ghafirs. The ghafir and his family typically live in the house itself or perhaps a makeshift shack constructed on the land. Although ghafirs constitute a significant part of the local population and serve an important function, they are not imagined as ‘residents’, nor do they register as such in the area, making it difficult for them to send their children to school. They are at best posited as interim residents whose relations with the area are marginal and ambiguous.

Gated communities are an integral part of Sheikh Zayed City. They are in many ways self-governing entities, with their own security apparatus, in lieu of state police, and their own rules and regulations, which are instrumental to maintaining control and order. Gated communities consist of villas, townhouses, and apartment blocks. Depending on size, price, and the level of amenities on offer, there is an economic hierarchy amongst compounds. In addition to compounds there are stand-alone villas, arranged in clusters, solely for residential use. Owners design and build on their own initiative. Given the high price of land, many property owners have opted to maximize the built-up area at the expense of including a garden on their plots. While new satellite cities are associated with open and green spaces, many homeowners cannot afford to reduce the size of their home for the sake of a garden. As a result, many stand-alone homes are equivalent in size to small apartment buildings, as many owners incorporate in their design several apartment units spread over several floors for their offspring, ensuring that the traditional structure of the extended family can be perpetuated in the desert. Finally, there are stand-alone apartment blocks in areas, which were initially designed for low-income families and young shabab. Due to market mechanisms, property values of many units in such areas are now beyond the means of low-income families or the newly married.

The social world of Al-Rabwa compound

Al-Rabwa is a gated community, and access is permitted only for owners and their guests. It was developed in the 1990s, making it one of the earliest compounds in the area. The compound (like other developments, such as Mayfair and El Rehab) was marketed in Gulf countries to white-collar Egyptian expatriates for whom compounds were a familiar concept. I recall the early promotional literature promising an international school, a mall, a health club, a golf course, all situated within an idyllic green setting. The school never materialized, and a mall was built but never utilized, but the developer lived up to their promise of large swathes of green spaces between the homes. Many of the buyers who purchased homes in the 1990s believed that they were buying an investment ‘for the children’, or perhaps a home to use as a weekend getaway.

Like most compounds, Al-Rabwa is highly secured. There are several dozen security guards who man the entry points and conduct patrols. They are, in a sense, the bawabs of satellite cities. Maintaining security is an explicit dimension of the guards’ job requirements. Unlike bawabs they do not act as moral guardians who keep residents in check. They are working-class men who come in on a company bus, and work in rotating eight-hour shifts. The guards are anonymous fixtures in this suburban setting. For example, while there is always a security guard in the kiosk near my house, the guards are always changing, thus preventing the possibility of becoming familiar with them.

Al-Rabwa has a club which functions as a social hub of sorts, although with the advent of other spaces for recreation nearby, its popularity has declined in recent years. In recent years residents prefer to drive out of the compound for nearby privatized social spaces and shopping destinations. Women (stay-at-home housewives) maintain active social agendas, and hold coffee mornings, and lunches for each other. Although the majority of residents are clubhouse members, not enough residents frequent the club on a regular basis to at least ‘recognize’ each other. Many residents go to the mosque on Friday to pray, but at most will talk for a few minutes after prayers are over.  

Religious lessons are also very popular among residents of the area. There are several weekly religious meetings, or lessons, at which a popular preacher is invited to talk. The venue is rotated each week amongst households to volunteer to host the lesson. These lessons are also spaces for people to socialize and renew old friendships. Residents of Rabwa, and indeed, of other gated communities, engage in local politics by attending annual meetings held to discuss and decide on matters of concern to the community. For the most part, these meetings do not usually go well; there are always accusations of graft, incompetence, and nothing substantial is ever achieved. There is a Facebook group where residents can share information and raise matters that they believe are of importance to other residents on the compound.

Transport and mobility

Most households in Al-Rabwa have at least one car. It is simply impossible to function without a car, as not only are there great distances to travel, but the only alternative would be to walk all the way to the compound gate, then try to flag down a microbus or a serfis. Flagging down a taxi on these roads is not an option, as you would have to go outside the compound walls and the taxis are rare here. Given the relative isolation of the compound, it is unlikely that there would be empty taxis available for hire driving around. For this reason it is very important to ‘know’ several taxi drivers to call them in advance in case of an emergency. Within the compound (where you can find significant distances), residents usually drive. Only workers, and maids and drivers walk. The only exception is when residents take a walk for recreational purposes or for exercise.

Major roads and highways surround Sheikh Zayed City. The 26th July Axis (the Mehwar) is to the south and the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road to the east and the north. The Mehwar is roughly 20 kilometers long stretching from central Cairo before intersecting with the Ring Road on the edge of Mohandessin, followed by the long stretch towards Sheikh Zayed/6th October City. The Mehwar is the most important road providing access to those two satellite cities, and is subject to significant congestion at peak hours. There is no metro link and very few public transport buses; everyone must use private transportation or semi-public transportation (microbuses). Within the area, residents, particularly those in compounds, must rely on private means of transport. The city is laid out in such a way that getting from one compound to the next can be a hassle. An inconvenient layout of parts connected by shoddy roads is very characteristic. Roads get properly paved only after the occupancy rates rise in their surrounding area. Because construction deadlines either do not exist or are not enforced, some areas have very high numbers of unfinished homes, which often means that surrounding roads will remain in poor conditions for the foreseeable future. There are vague plans to link the Cairo Metro to Haram Street, but in practice this is too far to be of any real convenience to Zayed residents. The government also announced recently that an over-ground metro from Lebanon Square in Mohandessin to 6th October would be inaugurated in 2017. These plans however remain as pronouncements in the press with no real information or timelines made public. Part of the transport problem is alleviated where people from Sheikh Zayed park their cars around several meeting points and take a special bus to their place of work or study, as I have been doing since 2010 using the American University in Cairo’s bus system.

Commuting is one of the most difficult aspects of living in Sheikh Zayed. Our access to the rest of the city is regulated by the Mehwar, which becomes congested at regular intervals throughout the day. Thousands of workers commute from other areas of Greater Cairo to the Sixth October City Industrial Zone. Motorists do not adhere to safety protocols and as a result, accidents are very common, creating hold-ups several kilometers long. On days I need to go into the city center, I make sure I am on the Mehwar by three in the afternoon at the latest to avoid ‘rush hour’ which in reality rarely subsides before eight in the evening. The majority of the events and outings I attend are in Zamalek, Downtown, or Mohandessin. Trips to places such as Nasr City or Heliopolis are rare, as I would have to contend with at least another hour of traffic inside the city center. The unpredictability of the commute due to unanticipated delays means always leaving home hours ahead of a scheduled meeting or appointment. Now in my sixth year as a student at AUC in New Cairo, I have come up with many coping mechanisms throughout the years to balance my class schedule, a bus service which has steadily deteriorated over the years, and to make enough time to study, socialize, and rest.  

As a freshman enrolled at the American University in Cairo, I was assigned a schedule that saw me finish at 4.45pm two days a week, and at 12.45pm on another two days. On days in which I had to take the 5.15pm bus, I would arrive home at around 8pm. Mid-way through the R13 bus ride, as our route was called, I would take a look at the people around me, and find them sleeping in uncomfortable positions, using their bags for support. Some would have blankets or pillows for neck support. One could easily mistake us for passengers on some red-eye flight over the Atlantic. But no, the Ring Road was our Atlantic Ocean, and instead of traveling between two continents the bus would begin and end its journey in the same city. Because of the distances involved in getting from one area to the next in Cairo, I also made a decision to be friends with people who either lived in my area or were in Mohandessin or Zamalek as seeing them would otherwise be a hassle. Knowledge of traffic conditions is mediated through my use of Bey2ollak, a smartphone app that allows me to see which roads are congested and which are clear. Checking Bey2ollak before I go anywhere is as essential as wearing my seatbelt. I am so acclimatized to using the app that even when I am not in Cairo I sometimes find myself absent-mindedly checking traffic conditions. Planning my life around traffic is essential to my existence.

Spaces of consumption

Conceptions of public space differ greatly in this desert extension of Cairo. Being in public here means being in privately owned spaces of consumption. No description of Sheikh Zayed City can be complete without discussing Hyper One, a large hypermarket situated at the first entrance into the city, on the 26th July Mehwar highway. Opened in 2005, Hyper One was the first major development of its kind to open in Sheikh Zayed. Prior to 2005, Sheikh Zayed had no major supermarket and very few cafes, and population levels were still very low. Hyper One, a two-level supermarket, sells everything, from electric appliances to furniture to fish. It is an adaptation of the American supermarket, and can be likened to Wal-Mart, the large American chain known for its affordable value-for-money products, with a large appeal for ‘middle-America.’ Whereas previously Egyptian shoppers did their purchases at specialized vendors or shops embedded in the urban landscape, the hypermarket, when it first appeared in Egypt, allowed shoppers to combine several trips into a one destination shopping experience. At Hyper One, not only can shoppers buy meat, vegetables, and fish, but also televisions, jeans, and DVDs. The shopping experience is very much geared to Egyptian, Arabic-speaking customers. Most advertisement and price tags are in Arabic. Multiple banners, hanging from the ceiling in the hypermarket, proudly advertise Hyper One as being ‘100% Egyptian.’ A section selling ready-made hot food is very popular, offering grilled meats, pasta casseroles, Egyptian vegetable stews, as well as other options. The food is familiar, unpretentious, and to the typical Egyptian palate, very satisfying. 

Buyers include anyone from a working mother buying food for her family on a weeknight to young men looking for a relatively affordable hot meal on the go. Small populist touches, such as servers giving waiting customers small bites of food as they wait in line, can be read as ploys to simply keep customers happy, and can also be read as ways in which Hyper One presents itself as an authentic, Egyptian-friendly experience. Access to the food section is regulated by printing out a token, the number of which will then be displayed on an electronic board over the food counter. This fusion of a decidedly Western practice of regulating and controlling customers in the context of an Egyptian food counter is yet another indicator of how the global has been adapted to the local.

Hyper One, with its bright lights, small ice-cream stands, and excess of consumerism on display, is also a space for socialization and recreation. Entire families, from the grandmother to toddlers, go together not only to do the family shopping, but also to be exposed to new products, sights, and sensations.

Another reason behind Hyper One’s popularity is the presence of a mosque on the parking lot grounds. Friday mornings and early afternoon, previously quiet time at the shopping destination, have been re-constructed as times to socialize, shop, and perform household errands following Friday prayers in the parking lot. Across various societies, urban life has been organized around the nexus of the market, and the place of worship. Whether it is a church and market fair in a small European town, or a temple surrounded by a bustling bazaar in Thailand, there is a strong correlation between religiosity and shopping. In this context, the mosque in the parking lot of Hyper One is only one manifestation of this familiar and global nexus.

In most Egyptian cities, the larger mosques are usually adjacent to a market or a busy commercial area, and form what can be termed a ‘mosque-market complex.’ In Cairo, this is certainly true of the major mosques, which are usually adjacent to a market or busy commercial area. In Sheikh Zayed City, the traditional and familiar mosque-market has been re-organized into a hypermarket with a large mosque attached to it. Whereas in the traditional mosque-market, the former was always the centerpiece and the latter organized around it, Hyper One has inverted this model and is the centerpiece, serving as one of the most visible and distinguishing landmarks of Sheikh Zayed City.

Hyper One was also instrumental in transforming the opposite square into a busy transportation hub. Located on the first entrance/exit into Sheikh Zayed City, Hyper One benefits from excellent access and visibility. Over the years, increasing traffic to, from, and between Sheikh Zayed City, 6th October City, and central Cairo has resulted in a significant increase of traffic. Whereas at first traffic was organized in a spontaneous manner, the local municipal authorities have created a dedicated space for microbuses to load and unload passengers in an effort to de-congest the square itself. The square underwent a re-design process that lasted several months; at the end of this period, the square was remodeled and decorated with palm trees decked out in brilliant lights, and an elevated black platform was constructed, bearing the name ‘Hyper One Square.’

Over the last few years, there have been a number of new recreational spaces in the area. Moving away from the set-up of the traditional street, Sheikh Zayed has a number of what can be described as ‘open malls’, or essentially stand-alone buildings usually with an open-air inner plaza with a number of restaurants, boutiques, banks, clinics, and even art galleries.

Americana Plaza is one such integrated recreational-commercial complex, featuring an IMAX cinema and a multi-screen Cineplex, perhaps a dozen restaurants, a gym as well as a number of boutiques, is a very popular hangout for teenagers and young adults. Situated right across from a row of bland-looking affordable housing apartment blocks, Americana Plaza mainly caters to customers who will probably spend north of LE 100 on dinner and a movie.  Strictly speaking, it is not a mall, but rather an enclosed pedestrian area. Access into Americana Plaza is through a number of checkpoints, meaning that in practice, visitors are vetted and can be denied entry by security staff and management. Americana Plaza, which opened in 2012, was an instant hit with multiple demographics. Pre-teens and teenagers attending private international schools in Cairo West make up a large part of the visiting clientele, particularly on weekends. Americana Plaza is popular not only due to the various amusements on offer, but because it is a semi-public space, it affords visitors, as well as the families whose children visit on their own, a secured space to be in ‘public’.

Arkan is another space nearby, which boasts several restaurants and even a licensed bar, which is more popular with trendy young and middle-aged professionals. The popularity and success of these venues has attracted residents from other parts of Greater Cairo, a trend which would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.  The newly opened Galleria 40, with it’s Starbucks, bespoke gilded interior reminiscent of First Mall, and art gallery venue, signals an attempt to appeal to an even more affluent market segment.

Dwarfing all these shopping and leisure spaces is the Mall of Arabia, which has more variety in terms of shops and dining options, and therefore has wider appeal. Everything, from small Egyptian stores to big chains of H&M and Zara are present. In the large central food court, diners can choose between dine-in sushi and takeaway Chinese. A large Spinney’s supermarket is located at one end of the mall. The mall’s proximity to both Sheikh Zayed and Sixth October City, as well as it’s proximity to the highway, makes it possible for teenagers, young adults and residents with no car to access it. The abundance of options for recreation and leisure in Sheikh Zayed means that today, it is no longer a dull, peripheral suburb, but a vibrant and popular area, for those who can afford its lifestyles, capable of holding its own against that other ‘new’ city, New Cairo. There is something of a friendly rivalry between Zayed/6th October residents living west of central Cairo and the New Cairenes living to the east of central Cairo. Each side takes pride in believing their ‘side’ of Greater Cairo is better or has a livelier recreational scene.

As for me? I’ll take Sheikh Zayed any day of the week.

This article is part of a short series written by AUC students studying with Professor Mona Abaza, reflecting on their neighborhoods and the city they live in. For a brief introduction of the series click here.

[cairobserver]

Toktoks, Maadi and the Social Divide

Doaa Kaddah

Where am I from?

I am from Maadi, but not just any Maadi, my dear!

I am not from the new and tainted version. I am not from the circle of ‘wannabe’ ma‘dawaya that moved in two or even ten years ago. Poor souls… they want to be just like us!

We take pride in our town and we hate intruders. Didn’t you read the endless articles that emphasize how special we are? Didn’t you read how proud we are of the fact that only in Maadi you can find a ‘brown,’ ‘white,’ and ‘Asian’ person in a bar? How about the pride we take in our nameless but numbered streets? How about the fact that outsiders get always lost? How about our beloved Road 9—where all of our favorite hangouts are—that has everything we consume: our image, our sense of self, our politics of exclusion that we take for granted as being part of declaring our ‘love’ of the town.

From the Heart of Sarayat al-Maadi

I am from the heart and soul of Sarayat El-Maadi, born and raised, second-generation ma‘dawaya. In case you don’t believe me, follow me through my family’s mansion. If I take a right after I leave the building, I will return to my childhood memories, where I would—and occasionally still do—jog, walk my dog, and ride my bicycle. Sarayat El-Maadi is not only the visible remains of my childhood, but also of the British colonial design and vision of what constituted a ‘modern’ neighborhood. Maadi`s nostalgic past might be fading away in some parts, but in this quarter, its past and present imagery is securely maintained. The greenery that surrounds the entire district; the luxurious residential villas; the high-end cars parked along Sarayat`s famous narrow—and to many people disorienting—streets; local and foreign residents walking their chihuahuas, Italian mastiffs, great Danes, golden and chocolate retrievers; are all supposedly the hallmarks of what makes this district unique.

However, if I were to take a left after leaving the building and walk for less than a minute I would find myself in a distinctly different social space that is much more socially diverse as an urban fabric. The streets are relatively wider, the cars are louder, and the social background of people on the streets is substantially more mixed. Thus, it is safe to assume that although there is no actual physical segregation of the different districts of Maadi, it nevertheless does not eliminate the invisible yet palpable barriers that indicate the social segregation of the town.

My apartment

My apartment is in a residential compound. After living for several years abroad, my mother was kind enough to allow me to move into the apartment that I inherited from my late grandfather. Unlike other gated communities in deserted and distant locations (New Cairo and Sixth of October), this compound is located in the center of Maadi, adjacent to the railway line that separates the ‘old,’ ‘original,’ and nostalgic Maadi from its ‘new’ and ‘tainted’ counterpart. Further up on the land where my building now stands, there once stood an experimental public school. I can still recall the peculiarly shrill voice of a gym teacher with a loudspeaker calling out students’ names to reunite them with their parents after school. The land was later sold and the school was relocated to another district in Maadi. If I were to take an educated guess about this transition, I would infer that this location and its potential for a lucrative investment attracted elite investors to transform the land in order to be compatible with neoliberal desires and the aspirations of potential buyers. Consequently, through the abolition of an initiative premised on a sense of collectivity, and the creation of another physically and socially segregated space based on exclusionary politics, history repeats itself over and over again.

Have we forgotten that the very past we glorify was at the expense of fellow Egyptians who were treated like slaves? What about the continuous glorification of our colonial past?

Anonymity

Aside from the family members neighboring me, social relations with my immediate neighbors are summed up by short and pleasant greetings when we accidentally run into each other. I have very little social interaction with people in the other buildings on the same or adjacent streets. I have tried several times to smile at the people I meet, look into their eyes and acknowledge their presence. Their reactions are relatively similar to the confused and fearful glances I perceived in Munich’s subway. I reached the conclusion that presenting oneself as distantly as possible is the norm, while seeming warm and approachable would indicate that something must be seriously wrong with you. Therefore, in many ways, Georg Simmel’s (1971) text Metropolis and the Mental Life helped me understand why the manner in which the people of Schwabing in Munich and those of Maadi Sarayat present themselves to strangers are extremely similar to one another. I had left the hochnäsig (German word for snobbish) attitude of my neighborhood, only for it to be waiting patiently for me in Munich.

However, during the revolution, there was a vast change in the manner in which social relations were maintained. During the eighteen days of the revolution, my brothers were acquainted with the people of the district for the very first time through the organized neighborhood watches (informal, locally-organised guarding of neighborhoods during the security vacuum of this period). For my brothers, the nature of the social relations with the neighborhood were transformed from shallow greetings to a deep sense of familiarity and trust. I was not fortunate enough to experience this sense of belonging to neighborhood and neighbors since I am neither a man nor was living in the country at the time. The purpose of stating this story here is to briefly demonstrate how it took extraordinary events to deviate from the social relations that had been established as the norm. However, once the revolution and the nostalgia associated with it started to fade away from the memory of many people, the individualistic blasé attitude (Simmel, 1971) was reconstituted once again as the norm.

I think it is worth mentioning the social relations maintained with people who do not reside in Sarayat el Maadi, especially the guards of the compounds. Due to the ‘unnatural’ location of a gated community within the city, the performativity of the guards reflects the pressure imposed by the management of the compound to maintain a sense of security in its residents. For instance, the guards all have walkie-talkies, and no-one is allowed in without the consent of the residents. When a friend that the guards are not familiar with is parked down the street to pick me up, they are instructed to go as soon as possible and ask why are they parked on the street. In a more extreme form of securitization, it reached a point where there was a temporary ban of all deliverymen using the elevators. When I expressed my discontent with this policy to the manager, he stated that this is for our own good since a deliveryman once harassed a resident of another building. This horrific rule is fortunately no longer in place, but it does not in any way change the wishes of many of the residents.

On numerous occasions, when I am walking down the street I would find them meeting together with other security personnel in adjacent buildings, talking, laughing and drinking tea. However, it seems that my presence would trigger an unconscious reaction to stop their conversation, as if to acknowledge me as one of the ‘masters’ of the street. It is as if their entire subjectivity is erased and they are reminded that they are supposed to only exist at my disposal. The purpose of describing these incidents here is to demonstrate that everyday social relations—that reflect the class structure—with non-residents is part and parcel of how the entire imagery of Sarayat El Maadi is maintained. If they are here in el Sarayat, it is because their job is to be here. If their job requires them to enter the compound—for example delivery men and domestic workers—then it is again only due to their job. Furthermore, another reason I described these events in detail is to highlight how securitization discourse and gated communities go hand in hand, regardless of how near they are to the people they intend to deter.

Should I still however delude myself that I have individual agency in all this, that counters this hegemony, by smiling and greeting strangers and acquaintances as I walk by?

Different Modes of Transport in Maadi: to Toktok or not to Toktok?

There are many ways of getting to, from, and around Maadi. For most of us, it involves private transportation, but there are also various forms of public transportation: taxis for those who can afford it; the metro as Cairo’s main arteries; microbuses (privately-run, but quasi-public because they are so cheap and essential) as the cities capillaries. All are common throughout Cairo, but the presence of toktoks (a motorcycle rickshaw) in Maadi seems to be exceptionally disturbing. Loud, swarming through our ‘cleansed’ spaces, and lacking the docility and obedience expected from members of the ‘working class,’ these ‘mechanical cockroaches’ infiltrate the heart and soul of Maadi and shatter everything we have been working so hard to build and maintain. What exactly is being shattered and why is it uncomfortable for the toktoks to be seen in Maadi were the driving questions behind my interest. Another reason was in relation to the peculiar location of a gated residential compound within the town of Maadi. It got me to reflect on the fact that there is no actual physical segregation of the different districts of Maadi, but there are still invisible yet palpable barriers that signify the social segregation of the town. Consequently, it came as no surprise to me that there are several signposts—as in the picture above—surrounding the ‘high-end’ areas in which the toktok is believed to be out of place. It is as if the signs stand in place of physical barriers, signaling the types of vehicles and social subjects that are free to roam around, and those that should be excluded and unseen in certain social spaces.

[”Toktoks are prohibited from Maadi, violators fined LE 1500 instantly.]

But if we put aside for a second the toktok’s controversial mobility and focus on the cause, rather than the consequence of this vehicle, we might see how the emergence of the tokok serves a great need, where its functionality is useful to those who ride it and drive it. The need for this vehicle arose from the hardship of everyday struggles to make ends meet. The staggering unemployment rate, the poor infrastructural development of roads and transportation, and the failure of the educational system, all contributed to the vast diffusion of imported toktoks, as an affordable and effective means of transport, throughout the city (Russell, 2013). Furthermore, unlike the mainstream rationale that blames the toktok for traffic congestion, without the low cost of the ride that makes it affordable to the vast majority of Egyptians, the mobility of workers to their destination would come to a staggering halt. Thus, if we speak in economic terms, the productivity, efficiency and the effectiveness of the ‘cycle of production’ that we keep hearing about on the news would not keep turning without initiatives like toktoks. Furthermore, if we think of the types of people that do not want the toktok to be seen in the affluent areas of Maadi, we will most likely conclude that they are the very same people who have domestic workers (national and international), security guards that secure their expensive properties, janitors that clean their ‘proper’ and luxurious vehicles, and several other individuals, all of whom belong to the social strata that depend on the toktok. Therefore, not only do we, as the bourgeois class, dictate the manner in which the working class perform their docility to us, but we also dictate the terms of their commute. As if erasing their entire subjectivity for our disposal is not enough. We have to make sure that everything they represent, that we secretly loathe, is not included in our perfected framing of our beloved Maadi. Thus, privileged ma‘dawaya don’t seem to want a daily reminder that there are ashwayat (informal areas) surrounding the ‘cleansed’ spaces of Maadi. The toktok should be left in the ‘back,’ in Dar el Salam and el Hadayek: areas that, as Janet Abu Lughod (1987) would describe, are physically close yet socially distant at the same time. It seems that the physical closeness of these spaces needs to be handled with firm disciplinary and surveillance mechanisms in order reestablish the desired social separation, but at what cost and to whom?

A week ago, my mother took a picture of the police as they found a toktok and took its driver to the police station for interrogation. Through conducting preliminary ethnographic fieldwork, I have seen with my own eyes the manner in which police officers and men in civilian clothes treat the toktok drivers. The violent and aggressive approach with which they take their keys, the manner in which they make them feel like they add up to nothing, the strategies of domination and control that are premised on humiliation and dehumanization struck me to my very core. I still can’t shake off how one toktok driver in particular was standing, what his body language is signaling: a feeling of powerless and of complete subjugation, especially since I know that the police would never dare treat me in the same manner.

As a member of the ‘untouchable class’, I wondered, to whose benefit is this treatment useful and necessary? Is it useful for the police to have a source of extra income from extorting, harassing, dehumanizing and exploiting the fragile status of the toktok drivers? Everybody wins, right? Isn’t this the cost of maintaining ‘our’ clean and beautiful Maadi?

Cleanliness and Contamination

Unlike what one would assume, the toktok has everything to do with describing my quarter. The romanticization and nostalgia of Maadi are continuously reproduced at the expense of those who are deemed unfit to be among us. The toktok is a reminder of what we intentionally pushed from visibility so that our mental imagery is left intact, unquestioned and unchallenged. Toktoks are a reminder that there is nothing natural about our physical and social segregation and the everyday language that normalize it: homa bee2a w e7na el nodaf! (They are dirty and we are clean). So yes, I am a proud ma‘dawaya, but not through the dehumanization of others, in which we distinguish ourselves from ‘contamination’!

 References

Abu-Lughod, J A 1987, The Islamic City- Historic Myth, Islamic Essence and Cotemporary Relevance, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 12, 2, pp.155-176.

Rusell, M (2013) Egypt (Nations in Focus): New York: ABC-CLIO Publications

Simmel, G (1971) ‘The Metroplis and Mental life’. On individuality and social forms. Ed. Donald N. Levine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp.324-339.

This article is part of a short series written by AUC students studying with Professor Mona Abaza, reflecting on their neighborhoods and the city they live in. For a brief introduction of the series click here.

[cairobserver]

Life in Cairo: The View from Masakin al-Gam3a

[The view from my window over the Ard Afra7, with one of the narrow streets in the background, winter 2014.]

Masakin al-Gam3a, between Cairo University and Behoos Metro stations, near Kobry Sarwat and Boulak al-Dakrour

Jim Logan

A row of plant-pots and oulas was blocking cars from entering the street. I should have known something was wrong then. But the arrangement was no match for us, two pedestrians. Even motorcycles could pass between the obstacles. We walked more than halfway along the street before I noticed anything.

I spotted the chairs first. Like the ones at wedding venues and community centers at home in the UK - with metal frames that come to a semicircle at the top, and cushions on the seat and back. Lined up against the walls of the houses at either side of the street. Next, I heard the voice. Somebody was half-talking, half-singing into a public address system that I couldn’t make out from here. The Qur’an.

I stopped. “Moe, we can’t go this way.”

“Why?” Mohamed asked.

“Look,” I said. A little further down the street, the chairs snaked away from the houses and swung around in a semicircle, so that they were now in lines perpendicular to the buildings. The two lines were much closer to each other now, and formed a narrow corridor protruding from the entrance of one of the houses to the middle of the street. The chairs that made up the corridor were occupied with solemn-faced, middle-aged men. This was someone’s funeral.

“3ady,” Mohamed said, “it’s fine,” striding onward, turning sideways so as to slip between two very closely placed chairs, and making it to the other side.

I hesitated. Surely not? I didn’t know the person who died. I’m wearing trainers, jeans and a rucksack. Surely, I should turn round now, go back to the main street. I should take the next street down. I shouldn’t cut through private funeral proceedings, should I?

Mohamed beckoned me from the other side. Nobody had noticed him passing through. Surely that was because he was Egyptian. He has saidi blood, no less, so his skin, hair and eyes are dark. I have hair that has been bleached blonde by the sun since I moved to Egypt three years ago, and eyes that have turned blue-green. I’ll stick out a mile if I try and wiggle my way through. “Yalla,” Mohamed beckoned. “3ady 5alis.”

I held my breath, and stepped to my left, opting to circumvent as many of the chairs as I could instead of squeezing myself between them as Mohamed had done. I looked at the ground as I moved, making eye contact with nobody. I made it.

“Mish ana 2ultilak?” Mohamed said, “3ady.” “Didn’t I tell you? It’s fine.”

That was in Bulaq al-Dakrour. The Street of Life, to be precise. That’s not the street’s real name. Just what Mohamed, my flatmate, and I call it. Because it doesn’t host only funerals. All manner of events take place in that narrow street, including engagement parties, wedding receptions and baby showers. A person’s birth, his death and everything in between are marked in some way in that street. The Street of Life.

We don’t live in The Street of Life. But we do pass through it every day. We live in Masakin al-Gam3a, the Cairo University residences. Masakin is a small gated community. It’s not a gated community in the same way that Uptown Cairo and Madinaty are gated communities, but it is encircled by walls. It’s home to lower-middle-class Egyptians, mainly, but there are Sudanese, Libyans and Syrians, too. It’s close to Kobry Sarwat, not far from Saft al-Laban. I give all those details because it’s in a weird, in-between place that only taxi drivers know well. I usually tell people it’s between Behoos and Cairo University Metro stations, and that elicits a half-hearted nod of recognition. If not, I tell them it’s in Giza, and that suffices. I have been told that it was one of the first compounds to be built in Cairo. It belonged to Cairo University. I think it was home to teachers and other members of staff, who rented apartments at prices below market rate as part of their deal with the University. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was privatized in the ‘90s. Tenants were allowed to purchase the units they were staying in, and the rest went to market.

Life in Masakin is very different from life in Bulaq, I imagine. In Masakin, people keep themselves to themselves. The entrances to the compound are guarded, for a start. The two main entrances are staffed by hired security guards. The entrance I use is smaller and has no guard, but is secured by the owner of a car repair workshop. The workshop-owner-cum-security-guard never speaks to anyone. He never even makes eye contact. Sometimes, I think I have come close to meeting his gaze, so proclaim a “salaamu 3leyko,” only to be embarrassed when he gives me no reply at all. The guard has even trained those around him not to speak or to make eye contact, either. Only very occasionally have I managed to make someone sat beside him greet me, and invariably it has been someone whose face I have not recognized. A newbie. The only reason I know that the guard has the power of speech at all is that he once told me the entrance was closed for the night and that I’d have to go the long way round.

In The Street of Life, by contrast, people sit and talk to each other on chairs, cardboard boxes or concrete ledges on the sides of the houses. Children play with footballs or marbles. A street parallel to The Street of Life is even busier with people. It is narrower, and has less traffic. It is not paved with asphalt but with those hexagonal - or pentagonal? - paving stones that you get on quite a few pedestrianized areas in Cairo. It even has little ramps every now and then, making it difficult for traffic to pass. In that street, people leave the doors to their buildings - almost all of which have families homes on the bottom floor - wide open.

In Masakin, in other words, spaces are clearly delineated. The border between inside and outside is clear. In Bulaq, the relationship between spaces is much more complicated. Dynamic. What surprised me on the day of that funeral in The Street of Life, for example, was that the street stubbornly remained a public space, even when bearing witness to the most private of events. In preparation for an engagement party recently, people living in the street raised a banner that read “Ya masa2 al-istighrab. Kullina wa7id, mish aghrab.” “Oh, night of wonder. We are all one, we are not strangers.” Bulaq’s mantra.

Most people who live in Masakin travel by taxi. They use the entrance closest to the Cairo University Metro station. There is not much life outside that entrance at all. It opens onto a street with a wall running the length of it. It has almost no shops at all, rather, more compounds, such as the one for students. It is only ever busy twice a day, when kids attending schools in the street are either arriving or leaving. It is a street to pass through. Nothing more. Masakin-ites leave the street in tuk-tuks bound for the Metro or, more often, by hailing taxis. Women, especially, prefer taxis over tuk-tuks.

Bulaqis travel together. I’m not saying that they never ride private cars. Indeed, The Street of Life is full of them. “Shuft? Dol aghna minina,” Mohamed often remarks. “See what I mean? They’re richer than we are.” That said, tuk-tuks and other forms of public transport - vehicles that work like mini-buses, but are trucks with benches in their load boxes, I don’t know what we call them in Arabic - are ubiquitous. In fact, the space at the bottom of the bridge that links Bulaq to Sudan Street on the other side across the railway lines, Kobry 5ashab, is set up for receiving those who have crossed and moving them closer to their final destination. There is a crowd of tuk-tuk drivers who point at as many passers-by as they can, saying “Tabe2? Tabe2 wa7id?” “Tabek? One to Tabek?”

[A candidate addresses Boulakis in a tent erected in the main street ahead of elections, complete with live video broadcast, October 2015.]

Masakin-ites do their shopping at stores inside the Masakin. On the bottom floor of the apartment blocks, at the front, and in the raised alleyways between the blocks, on the side, are a handful of supermarkets, two pharmacies, a woman’s beauty centre, a makwagy, a hardware store, a barber’s, a fruit and vegetable stand, and a bakery with bread, konafa, and even ful and t3miya that you can cook at home at the weekends. The supermarket I use is called City Market. It’s one of the larger stores on the front of the buildings. It’s run by devout Muslims. They close the supermarket to pray, so, sometimes, if I need only basic stuff, I go next door, to the smaller supermarket. Otherwise, I wait.

Bulaqis shop on Kobry 5ashab, or in the street. The bridge is a hybrid public-private space. It is not just a right of way. It is also a small center of enterprise. Merchants line both sides of the bridge, leaving only a narrow passageway up the middle. The same merchants are in the same spots every day. They are so sure of their right to the space that they leave their stands there, unattended and empty of goods, overnight. At the Sudan Street end of the bridge, a woman sells olives and mish, a very strong type of cheese, from buckets. Her stand is my least favorite. It is the first one you reach after climbing the stairs. You pass by it, breathing deeply from the climb, and instead of inhaling the oxygen you so desperately need, you inhale the dizzying smell of mish. To add insult to injury, the owner of the next stand fills her buckets with live fish. Next along is - dead and ready for cooking, al-7amdu lillah - chicken. Then come dates, stationery, frames, taps, torches and radios and old, collectible coins and notes. At the Bulaq end of the bridge are two women without stands. They sell mint and coriander. The woman selling mint smiles and waves at me every time she sees me because once, a while back, I bought from her.

After the bridge on the Bulaq side is the main street. Although the street is very wide, almost all the space is used. Bulaq used to consist of small fields, divided by small irrigation channels that lead away from larger canals. The main street was once one of the larger canals, and was paved over only when more and more small landholders sold off parts of their fields to those looking to build homes and Bulaq began to grow. Now, the street is lined with buildings at least 8 floors high. Each building is entirely different to the next in terms of design, but the bottom floor of every building is home to commerce. And each and every store spills out into the street by a good few meters at least. Coffee shop and internet café owners, mattress store owners, carpenters, sellers of peanuts and lib, sellers of bulbs, of paint, of fruits and vegetables, bakers, butchers, and fish barbeque-ers all employ the street. Even streets like The Street of Life are open for business. These narrower streets were once the smaller irrigation channels dividing each field from the next. The buildings in these streets are lower, at maybe four floors, max. There is slightly less commerce that goes on here than in the main street, but the front of every fourth building or so is occupied by a barber, a makwagy, an electrician, or the like.

When things go wrong in the Masakin, people communicate by written notes. For example, at one time, there were multiple problems with the pump that provides all the even-numbered apartments in our building with water. Even before the problems arose, there were notes in the stairwell on all floors which read: “Min fadlak, ighla2 mifta7 motor al-maya b3d al-ist3mal, 7arasan 3la 3dm itilafho w 7arasan 3la geybak. Shukran.” “Please switch off the water pump after use, in order to prevent the pump being damaged and in order to save you money. Thank you.” Anyway, at that time, the pump kept failing. They kept telling us what was wrong, how long the problem would last and when and how it would be fixed through notes in the stairwell. The guy who was responsible for looking after the pump was too old - I saw him in the stairwell once and he was whiter than the white walls - and wasn’t doing much about the problems so, one day, according to a note in the stairwell, there was to be an emergency meeting. I told Mohamed to attend. He didn’t. Since the time of the meeting, there have been almost no problems. I don’t know if that is thanks to the meeting or not, because the apartment we live in always had an issue with water, anyway. The switch for the pump in the kitchen was detached from the main circuit, so we had to wait for someone else in one of the even-numbered apartments to turn the pump on using their switch. “Why are we living with animals who don’t shower?” I would cry on days when waiting for water would make me late. I fixed the problem when I called an electrician, who reattached our switch to the main circuit. That was around the same time at which the meeting was held, so I don’t know if it was me who fixed the problems in the apartment or them. Anyway, it is very rare now that I turn on the pump and get no water. On the majority of the days on which that does happen, the problem is that the building’s main switch, which is in the stairwell on the third floor, has been turned off. On those days, I put on my ship-ship, go down two floors, and turn it on. Thankfully, there’s now a note above the switch: “Bilriga2, 3dam ighlaq mifta7 al-motor…” “Please, don’t switch off the pump…”

The Bulaqis are much more prone than Masakin-ites to working together to fix problems and change spaces. For example, the space underneath Kobry 5ashab used to be a dried canal full of rubbish. One day, I found that the rubbish had been covered in a flat layer of soil, and the space had been occupied. There was now a small park, with potted plants, a Ping-Pong table and chairs and tables. Don’t quote me on this, but I think that it was Bulaqis who pooled resources and gave their time and sweat in order to improve the space, not a governmental body. Anyway, the old canal has changed again since then. A large section of it has been fenced off and converted into a parking lot. Some parts are collecting rubbish again. Some parts have been ‘privatized,’ in that they now host businesses. At the bottom of the stairs, next to the tuk-tuks, is a new café. It boasts a widescreen TV, mounted to the wall that separates it from the railway tracks, and, according to a large sign with the magic symbol and two little words - or one little word? - Wi-Fi. The colors of the café’s section of the wall, red and white, and a painted Al-Ahly shield mark it as a space for football fans. I have no idea how the Bulaqis chose who would inherit and profit from the space.

In The Street of Life, Boulakis have laid out water bowls every few meters for the cats that dart up the street from each open door to the next. They have made the bowls permanent features by fixing some of them into the ground with concrete. One day, they pulled up the last street you walk through to get to Masakin from Kobry 5ashab. I mean they pulled up the asphalt. I was impressed to see the difference in height between the first step of the buildings and the foundations of the road. For the three days it took for them to replace the asphalt, you had to clamber up onto a step that reached half way up your thigh if you wanted to visit the supermarket on the corner. Anyway, on the third day, I woke up and found the street cleanly paved. It looked nice. Again, I think it was Bulaqis who funded and carried out the whole operation.

“That was definitely government,” Mohamed told me.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I’ve read about how local communities come together in these areas to pull off even large-scale projects. They built an on-off ramp to the Da2ary somewhere near Maryouteya, I think.” The truth is, I don’t know.

I wonder, do the differences in relationships between spaces in Masakin and Bulaq lead to differences between the personalities of Masakin-ites and Bulaqis? Has life in the Masakin changed the way I relate to others? At least once a fortnight, I worry that it might have done.

“I can’t hear you,” I said.

“…,” Mohamed replied.

“I still can’t hear you.”

Mohamed strode from the kitchen into to his bedroom and slid the bedroom window shut with a slam. He stomped from his bedroom to mine, and slammed the window in there shut, too. The din subsided ever so slightly. “I said, I wish it had been a funeral, not a wedding.”

“Oh, right, yeah, of course. Sa7. M3leesh.” We Masakin-ites like our quiet. And most of the time, we get it. But at least once every fortnight, the Bulaqis unceremoniously shatter it. Outside the window of our apartment, just over the wall of Masakin, is an ard afra7. An open-air venue for wedding receptions. Every two weeks, Mohamed and I come home to find the apartment invaded by the pounding electronic beats of sh3by music and a DJ equipped with a voice robotiser. The sound is so loud that even in our kitchen - which, small and on the ‘inside’ of the building, the room furthest from Bulaq, and which I had always found cosy and imagined to be impenetrable - we can not hear each other without leaning to shout in each other’s ears. This goes on until 2am, at the earliest.

“The funerals are loud, too,” Mohamed continued, making charades-like actions while he spoke in order to get his message across. “But at least they’re over quicker.”

He’s right. Bulaqi funerals wind down long before Bulaqi weddings. For us Masakin folk, a Bulaqi death is preferable to a Bulaqi marriage.

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Arial Unicode MS"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-134238209 -371195905 63 0 4129279 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS"; border:none;} p.Body, li.Body, div.Body {mso-style-name:Body; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS"; color:black; border:none;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS"; border:none;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} -->

*This article is part of a short series written by AUC students studying with Professor Mona Abaza, reflecting on their neighborhoods and the city they live in. For a brief introduction of the series click here.

[cairobserver]

Resident Perspective: Salah Salem

Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods. Share your views on Cairo, fill the survey by clicking here.

Where in Cairo do you live?

Obour Buildings, Salah Salem Street. Belongs to Heliopolis district.

List the most positive and the most negative aspects of living there.

Positive: a garden between every two buildings, good cleaning services (trash, sweeping floors), good transportation (buses, and 2 new metro stations are now nearby "Stadium & Book Fair"), garage for every building, safe, has a nearby long avenue for walking, running, cycling, etc.

  Negative: Loud traffic, not enough services (almost all of them are shopping stores), hard to form close neighbors because of the many companies and mostly-elder population, no nearby hospital or clinic.

How do you move around Cairo (modes of transport) and what would you like to see different regarding the future of transport in the city?

Ordered by frequency: - Walking - Metro (after the new metro extension for the third line) - Public buses - Microbuses (unofficial buses)

How does your district fit within Cairo? What would you like to see changed in that relationship between your neighborhood and the city?

Connected through transportation but isolated because it doesn't provide services to Cairo. Maybe shopping stores and that's it. So no need to really come over except if you work in an office here.

What are your top complaints about Cairo and what would you suggest to solve those problems?

1- Traffic: I think we should stop encouraging owning cars by all the projects focused on them like expanding crossovers or widening streets by removing sidewalks. Instead we need to make it even harder for people to get to their destination so they know that this is not a city designed for cars, this is designed for humans. We need wider sidewalks, bike lanes in main avenues, more metro lines and public transportation and less solutions for how to make car the center of the city. Also startups related to traffic like bey2ollak, wasalny, and others concerned with Cairo should team up to offer a reliable and safe carpooling service.

2- Losing Heritage: We need smarter solutions to saving our heritage. Stop bearing poor people because they live close to a monument, and start embrace them and teach them to use the monument to boost their business.

3- Harassment This is becoming ridiculous. There's no point of making a street better if I don't feel safe walking in it. We pick streets and roads based on safety first then anything else. So harassment is making Cairo a lot smaller for us because many streets are not a choice.

What do you like the most about Cairo and what are your favorite places in the city.

1- Many historical places: You almost have a monument for every major historical event that happened in Egypt here in Cairo.

2- variety in services and unofficial markets.

Do you relate to the historic heritage of your district or of Cairo in general? Do you think you have a good sense of history of the city? Would you say you are have “civic pride” or are proud to live in Cairo?

Yes I do, please note that most people taking this survey will have a sense of responsibility toward the city to fill it. So don't count on the percentage of "yes" you get from that survey as a representative of what citizens of Cairo really think.

Do you understand how the city is governed/managed? Do you think your community/district would be better or worst if residents from the community/district were involved in local government (محليات)?

No I don't, I have no idea who is responsible for what and I have a hard time finding answers.

In the context of Cairo, what comes to mind when you think of these keywords?

Public Space: No where.

Green Space/Parks: only ticket gardens, no gardens integrated with the streets.

Gated communities: Many, even if there's no actual gate. and that's in both expensive districts (new cities) and poor alleys where they consider those alleys part of their private homes.

Museums:  Egyptian Museum needs more labels on the monuments, no affordable guidebooks for Egyptians to buy and not enough security inside, monuments are kept in bad displays and can easily be sabotaged, cleaning staff are irresponsible. The Islamic Museum is always closed, the same with Agricultural Museum. The Coptic Museum is the best kept museum, nice displays, nice lighting, everything is labeled, the tour makes sense and organized chronologically, good staff. Abdeen Palace is good but security is strict and sometimes forbid access to rooms that are supposed to be among the tours. I wasn't allowed to take photos of the palace from outside.

Unplanned districts: I think they should be embraced instead of being treated as ticking bombs.

Downtown: Been there only once, don't feel safe going there because of Tahrir square tension.

If you could move to another district in Cairo where would you move to?

I have no idea. The problem is that nice districts to live in don't have enough services and maybe that's the reason they're still nice.

  *If you would like to tell us about where you live and share your views on Cairo, fill the survey by clicking here.

[cairobserver]

Resident Perspective: Madinet Nasr

Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods. Share your views on Cairo, fill the survey by clicking here.

Where in Cairo do you live?

Nasr City. Intended to be widely spaced, for the elite. Ended up being densely urbanized, full of cars, with barely any passages for pedestrian usage.

List the most positive and the most negative aspects of living there.

Positive: The urban fabric is easy to understand, thus you're less likely to get lost. There are a lot of close-by services, so you don't really need to get out much.

Negative: There are a lot of gardens, which are poorly maintained, all gated off from the community instead of embracing the community. The streets are too wide to provide space for cars, making the thermal environment rather hot in summer. Buildings were intended to be with basement garages, that ended up being workshops or cafeterias that bestow a wide range of noise at odd hours throughout the day and during weekends. Buildings are extremely ugly, with barely any rhythm in style or shape. Ceilings are low and do not offer decent ventilation for indoor spaces. Most buildings are higher than was initially planned, which results in a dense community of massive number of cars, and a skyline that is cramped with horrid architecture.

How do you move around Cairo (modes of transport) and what would you like to see different regarding the future of transport in the city?

I use a car. I would much rather use a bike to a close-by metro station that can help me move around the city and enjoy the weather and sun. Maybe during summer, i would more likely park my car to the metro station, but i would definitely want to drive a lot less and save time wasted in Cairo traffic.

How does your district fit within Cairo? What would you like to see changed in that relationship between your neighborhood and the city?

My district is far but well connected within the city. I would like a stronger connection via metro lines and/or tram lines.

What are your top complaints about Cairo and what would you suggest to solve those problems?

Traffic: we need decent public transportation, plus on a broader scale providing job opportunities outside of the capital (decentralization). Harassment: social awareness and strict laws set to allow women to move around safely. Noise: I have no idea what can solve this problem except general decency, but it's killing me!

What do you like the most about Cairo and what are your favorite places in the city.

I like Muizz Street the most in Cairo and older Cairo spaces such as Darb 1718. I also love Nile cafeterias and spaces that provide seating in-front of the Nile, i would love it if it were public open spaces, not just private paid for spaces. (Club 33, leftbank-Zamalik & Platform-Maadi).

Do you relate to the historic heritage of your district or of Cairo in general? Do you think you have a good sense of history of the city? Would you say you are have “civic pride” or are proud to live in Cairo?

I am extremely proud to be living in Cairo, that's why I want it to improve.

Do you understand how the city is governed/managed? Do you think your community/district would be better or worst if residents from the community/district were involved in local government (محليات)?

Yes, and I would believe people's involvement can actually change a lot.

In the context of Cairo, what comes to mind when you think of these keywords?

Public Space: Markets such as Ataba, or Boulak where people are free to use their space as they will and intersect with different lives from all over the city.

Green Space/Parks: Parks stranded away from the community with gates and tickets, like those of Nasr City.

Gated communities: An inevitable response for people who have the means to close off from the intolerable city.

Museums:  What comes to mind is the Egyptian museum with poorly maintained artifacts, with barely any description.

Unplanned districts: Places full of potential and capacity for improvement.

Downtown: A misguidedly-utilized district in Cairo, that can be maintained with much more respect in regards to its history.

If you could move to another district in Cairo where would you move to?

I would move to a gated community such as; Rehab or Madinaty.

  *If you would like to tell us about where you live and share your views on Cairo, fill the survey by clicking here.