Cairo Review of Global Affairs Lessons From Past
The subconscious side of Cairo
Photo courtesy of Sydney Wise
CAIRO—Outside my hotel in Zamalek, the island neighborhood in the heart of the Nile that straddles the bank areas of downtown Cairo and Mohandessin, I wait on the street for Abduh. He's the driver who will be taking me to orientation at the American University in Cairo, where I'll exist working every bit an assistant editor at The Cairo Review of Global Affairs (the university'southward quarterly journal) for the side by side half-dozen months.
It's not a short drive from Zamalek to New Cairo, where the American University in Cairo is located. Abduh and I exit Zamalek, take the 6th of October Bridge over the Nile, and make our fashion through Tahrir Foursquare and Wasat al-Balad before downtown Cairo finally sneezes usa out onto the highway leading to the university.
Downtown, yous run across the Cairo that foreigners tend to imagine, for better and for worse. Information technology's dwelling to the "old world" part of the city glamorized in Western movies, such every bit Khan el-Khalili , Cairo's nigh famous souk, or market. It's true that when you go to tourist-frequented places like the Khan, it's non uncommon to see blonde foreigners—guilty equally charged—taking pictures of tables total of jewelry and lanterns, and pointed brick archways that, although they crumble in places, are made all the more beautiful by the history that their erosion evokes.
But, if you stop obsessing almost capturing the parts of a place that you lot think will wait best on your Instagram feed, and pay attention instead to the sights that seem commonplace—the streets, for example—you'll learn a lot about Egyptian society. Walking through the streets of downtown Cairo, you feel like you have no choice but to move with the crowd. In it, ii worlds collide: some men vesture tailored suits, others wearable traditional jalabiyas , linen dresses that graze their ankles.
Women in high heels and pencil skirts cross Tahrir Foursquare with iPhones pressed to their ears. Others wear niqabs and clutch their children by the paw. You lot run across a stand on almost every street selling shawarma, a sandwich that, here, typically runs y'all $1.60. Only, you lot also see newly constructed bakeries selling French pastries.
That these different identities tin can exist in one place is a testament to the sheer size of the Cairene population. In the beginning of February, just one month after I arrived, Egypt's population reached 100 million. Cairo itself, the virtually populous city in Africa, has swelled to about 21 million from less than 3 1000000 people in 1950.
The truth is, the city's resources can only adequately respond to and so many people. Equally Khaled El-Husseiny, a spokesman for the Administrative Uppercase for Urban Development, which oversees much of the evolution of New Cairo says , "There are traffic jams on every street, the infrastructure can't support the population, and it'south very crowded." Not everyone can alive downtown; these people need somewhere to go. They've found a home in New Cairo.
Driving with Abduh from downtown to New Cairo, I feel like I'm moving through a time warp. With each mile, the beige rectangular buildings get more ornate. Residences become larger horizontally rather than vertically, and the usually direct metal balconies twist and turn their wrought iron detailing into a more than romantic mode.
Hither, information technology's a little more difficult to find a shawarma sandwich for $1.60, but you'll take no problem finding a croissant or cappuccino. All you lot have to do is visit one of the shiny malls that take been constructed for Egypt'southward middle and upper classes, with global retailers such as Mango, H&Yard, and Zara.
The hour-long drive to New Cairo is an exhibition of idealism. The city extension is billed as an escape—billboards for new developments with names such as "Catalan," "Paragon," and "Menorca" advertise oases sheltered from the crowds, racket, and pollution of the old city. Even the American Academy in Cairo has been a function of the exodus; information technology relocated its housing, administration, and the bulk of its classes in 2008 from Tahrir Square to its New Cairo campus, a sprawling labyrinth of arched, pale brick buildings and palm trees that elegantly combines tradition and innovation.
The malls and villas jut out confronting a landscape of sand and dirt. A mile of desert may pass between beautiful developments, or a brand-new building will sit side by side to a sewage pit. Evolution companies tend to call back ambitiously, often beginning construction on residences that they don't have the money or skilled labor to end.
Ahmed Zaki Abdeen, who heads the New Administrative Upper-case letter Visitor (i of the giants of New Cairo development) told Reuters that his visitor "[needs] very extensive financing and the state doesn't have money to give [them]." Buildings that fall victim to this trap remain unfinished, uninhabited, or any combination of the two. Skeletons of apartment buildings stand black above the desert, shells of an ideal laid blank for passersby to spy inside.
Ultimately, comparing old and New Cairo, ane is reminded that location and social class are siamese twins. With and then much desert to develop at its disposal, Egyptian gild has been able to craft the future of its dreams—and it seems similar it is dreaming of wealth.
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Source: https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/03/12/a-side-of-cairo-you-wont-see-on-instagram/
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