Sonallah Ibrahim | Cairo: Edge to Edge

Egyptians have grown accustomed to explaining their misfortunes, when things go wrong or when there is a crisis, by recalling that the original builder of Egypt was a pastry maker. The reference to Egypt here is actually a reference to Cairo. As for the pastry maker, many explanations have been given for the reference (some of which are quite appropriate) based on the immediate meaning of the word: that is, someone who makes pastry, the quality of which is determined by its crispness. Other explanations depend on a different use of the word, current in the countries of North Africa, from where the original builders of the city came. There, the word is used to designate someone of extreme fragility and softness. The third set of explanations seems to be very modern: they refer to artfulness, guile, and duplicity. But history books deny that Gawhar al-Siqilli, the magnificent military commander who conquered Egypt in the name of his patron, the great Fatimid caliph al-Mu'izz li-in Allah, exhibited any of these qualities. On the contrary, he was known to be a dedicated and industrious man whose integrity was never in question.

Gawhar entered Alexandria peacefully and proceeded south toward the capital that had been built by Ibn Tulun exactly one hundred years earlier, at the foot of the Muqattam hills. He set camp to the north and, on that same night, laid the foundation of the new city that he decided to call 'al-Mansuriyya' after the caliph's father, who quickly settled in it and changed its name to that which the city has carried for more than a thousand years.

Many stories have been told about this name, the most credible of which recounts that as al-Mu'izz gave his commander the order to march on Egypt, he instructed him to build "a city that would vanquish the world." But the Vanquisher (the literal meaning of al-Qahira, Cairo) never vanquished anyone but its own people, for invaders from all places and of all races succeeded one another in it. Apparently this did not affect its ability to survive and to grow and to become one of the largest cities in the world—and one of the most impossible.

Today, it is a bustling city that knows no sleep by day or by night, characterized by the dynamism of its streets, the product of its thirteen million inhabitants—who during the day become sixteen million, thus comprising one quarter of Egypt's total population. They mill around doggedly amidst packed traffic jams, overcrowded buses, and shrieking horns, beneath flyovers, between huge residential towers crowned with satellite dishes, within inhabited graveyards from which TV antennae protrude, around popular shops with foreign names, in discotheques where the young dance to the latest western songs, inside traditional hammams where naked giants scrub and roll the outer layer of skin into long black threads, near churches and mosques adorned with high minarets decked with deafening loudspeakers that overlook roofs covered with all kinds of trash, or in the open air, surrounded by piles of garbage or rummaging through them for something that might supplement their modest incomes, as others wade through the scum talking on their mobile telephones.

Two hundred years ago, the scientists of the French expedition noticed that there were no streets in Cairo, in the conventional sense of the word. Rather there were a number of alleyways describing circles and turns along which buildings mushroomed. Actually, the irregular lines of the streets betray the plunder to which they have been exposed. People would choose a patch of land on which to build, with no regard as to whether this would block the street. This led to the birth of many a dead-end alleyway.

Moreover, traffic on the streets was extremely difficult: many European travelers wrote of the thousands of pedestrians thronging narrow, meandering streets, the deafening shrieks of galloping mule-drivers, and the chimes of water vendors. Meanwhile women and children would sit, in absolute silence, in the midst of all this hubbub, risking being run over or stepped upon.

Today, despite the signs of modernity, Cairo seems not to have departed from that moment. Traffic is chaotic and the traffic policemen seem powerless to stop the cars with their hand signals, after the red traffic lights have failed to do so. The sidewalks have been invaded by showrooms for cars and small stands. Pedestrians have few designated places to cross, and when they can locate one, nobody respects it. Traffic jams are constant and are not restricted to rush hours, or seasonal vacations and feasts, but can happen at any time. Cars necessarily collide, not only because the streets are too narrow but because the lack of parking lots leads to double and triple parking, and because there are no functioning traffic lights that anyone respects, and because of the dazzling headlights that everyone uses all the time, and because of the frustrated and exhausted bus drivers who are weary of passengers, pedestrians, and life itself, and because of the drivers of minibuses who use drugs to help them deal with all these pressures so they drive recklessly and stop anywhere, and because of the youngsters who have been given cars to drive with the same recklessness and who—like the bus drivers—have no concern for what may happen to the vehicles since they themselves have never paid for them.

But the most amazing thing is the attitude of the people themselves, who seem indifferent and unwilling to stop this cancerous development of the city or to safeguard its order and its cleanliness. Some say that this is a typically Egyptian attitude: not the filth and the thick skin, but the ancient history of centralization due to the existence of the Nile and the rigid irrigation system. The irrigation system is synonymous with central organization, where everyone submits to an absolute power that alone holds the reins of initiative and possible action. This situation has created a general atmosphere of dependence, laziness, and passivity, and has thwarted the potential and incentive for initiatives.

Until my early teens, my father and I constantly moved from one house to another, from one neighborhood to another, in a relentless search for some form of stability, in harmony with our constant economic deterioration. Hence together we rolled down from eastern Abbasiya with its bourgeois atmosphere, where respectable civil servants lived, to the city's edge, near Bab al-Futuh, one of its ancient gates. Our house was exactly on the edge, at the end of the tramway shed, facing a Jewish school that was adjacent to a convent school with a skating rink. Beyond that was an indefinite area that led to the British army camps and the Dominican monastery—the refuge of Father Qanawati, one of the unique personalities in modern Egyptian history—and an open space that was used for the celebrations of the Prophet's Birthday. There was a flower vendor a few steps away from our house, then a square named after the king, who would pass through on various occasions in a red car: the royal color.

More important than the king was Urabi, the owner of the famous cafe in Husayniya. He had been one of the well-known fitiwwa (initially a bouncer-type, whose main occupation was the protection of the people of his neighborhood in return for their money, respect, and submission) at the turn of the century before he retired and opened a water-pipe cafe, frequented by notable personalities such as Naguib Mahfouz, who may have started his journey of ascent right here; a long journey that later took him to al-Fishawi cafe in the heart of Fatimid Cairo, then the Opera cafe on its edge, before he moved to the heart of the modern city.

As for the heart of the old city, it started after a walk down the narrow Husayniya Street, at Bab al-Futuh. Between this gate and Bab Zuwaila extended the city's center of economic and commercial activity during the Ottoman period. However, Husayniya was never marginal; its important role began during the eighteenth century thanks to two kinds of inhabitants: the Sufis, who belonged to various Sufi orders that were established around the mosque of Sheikh al-Bayumi, after his death in 1770; and the butchers, who settled in the neighborhood after the construction of a new slaughterhouse to the north and whose profession and weapons qualified them to lead the resistance against the French occupation.

But the edge of Husayniya is where I discovered the various scents of life. The smoke of boilers and ovens in the early morning would reach me as I walked indifferently to school, treading a colorful pebble pavement just like those in the Azbakiya gardens and the Zoo. Orange fruit and jasmine huddled over the walls of villas. Musk and amber prepared by a sheikh clad in a brocade caftan: he dips a reed pen into his mixture and etches obscure signs on the bottom of a gas lamp, in a futile attempt to read the future. The smell of old books that shakes my very being to this day every time I come across a similar smell—I used to follow that smell from one street to another, searching for an obscure shop that sold old paperback books teeming with the heroes of the time: the honorable criminals and the nice thieves who took from the rich to give to the poor.

And then the scent of woman.

I must have been five or six. We used to have a dark, elderly cook who covered her head with a white kerchief and chain-smoked all day long. My father used to allow her to smoke in his presence and was deliberately casual with her, which upset me. One day she appeared with another, younger woman enveloped in the usual black milaya, her face covered with the traditional burqu' that revealed the eyes and was suspended with a shiny brass disk over the nose, covering the mouth with a net-like fabric. There was a beautiful, mysterious feminine scent that emanated from her. Did she have a dark blue bottle of Soiree de Paris, or did that belong to my mother? A mysterious conversation took place between the three of them during which the woman's white, young thigh was uncovered, all the way up to its soft, shaven end. The strange thing was I could not remember the details of her face, but I recalled her thigh as I fondled the remains of torn books (which I had most probably torn), among which was a novel, with a red glossy cover. For some reason, their conversation disturbed me: was it my father's undivided attention toward this woman, or was it the revelation I witnessed?

I remember how, upon my father's orders, I happily accompanied her (the presence of a child with a woman bestows legitimacy on her movements) to her house in Husayniya, enjoying the mysterious scent that emanated from her with the burqu' covering her face and the milaya tightly enveloping her body, accentuating its roundness. I hurried by her side, deliberately close to her in order to enjoy her scent to the utmost. That was how I came to penetrate into Husayniya through a maze of narrow alleyways, some of which still harbored the remains of the ancient gates or the broad, stone benches built in front of shops for the owners to sit on and deal with their clients' business. What characterized this trip, however, was that the usual smells of mud, filth, and olive presses were overtaken by my companion's smell.

This smell accompanied me long after our journey of descent carried me to the north, when for the first time we crossed the Nile, to be closer to the university. Here again we were immediately on the edge. Our house had a spacious garden on a street full of similar villas, but that was only the facade: the back yard of the house overlooked a popular cafe in the heart of Dayir al-Nahiya Street, the name always given to the main street in Egyptian villages. The city had started expanding and was already consuming the villages. From that side came flies and the smells of filth, mud led meat from the grill of a kufta vendor right beneath our bedroom window. But the front entrance of the house led to the Urman Gardens, full of plants and flowers. Further along was the University.

Hence one was showered with an array of scents, all the way from the Urman Gardens to the University auditoriums on the opposite side. During that time, it was usually the daughters of bourgeois families who could afford to pursue their university education, and it was quite easy to sniff the most splendid perfumes inside and outside the auditoriums, especially at the Faculty of Arts cafeteria. Other than that, the university was boring and invited absence. From the Faculty of Arts cafeteria the road was paved to the exciting world of adulthood, and eventually to the famous Citadel prison, across the Nile, in the opposite direction of course.

Neither ascent nor descent were related to my next move—after a brief stop in Zamalek—to the utmost east of Cairo to the suburb known as Heliopolis, built on the edge of On, the oldest pharaonic city in Egypt. I was still at the edge, at the meeting point between a popular neighborhood with rural origins (discernable in the intertwining alleys) and a bourgeois neighborhood with well-planned avenues lined with trees, villas, and buildings not more than three or four stories high.

The natural way for any writer to begin the day is to grab pen and paper or to sit at the computer—if, like myself, he is very modern. But many Cairene writers prefer a more pragmatic beginning, capable of uplifting the creative powers: Tahrir Square is their point of departure. The importance of this square does not lie in the fact that it constitutes the center of the city, or that it is surrounded by strategically important buildings. The importance of the square lies in the fact that it leads, just a few meters from the underground Metro station, to the cafe where the Nobel writer Naguib Mahfouz was accustomed to sit, every morning, to read the papers and have coffee. This is also the only cafe in the area that has designated a dark corner, with a curtain, where one can order beer. Just a few steps away begins—or ends, depending on the direction one is taking—an ancient street that during the monarchy witnessed the drunken soldiers of the British occupiers and their allies, the aristocratic night clubs, the high society ladies, and the most luxurious stores for clothes, furniture, and jewelry, before it came to carry the name of Talaat Harb, the pioneer of national industrialization during the thirties and forties. Now the many shops that line the street contain the scum of imported goods beside bottom-of-the-line local products, the result of drug-money laundering attempts. But this is also the street that used to harbor the Riche cafe.

This cafe, of Greek ownership and atmosphere, was the meeting place for intellectuals during and after the sixties. In the mornings it would be filled with retired judges and distinguished civil servants escaping their homes and their wives' reminiscences about the long lost years, to have some coffee and cake as they reminisced about their own lost years.

The ritual of breakfast would be repeated at midday as journalists and artists awakened. In the evening, beer bottles and Egyptian brandy would appear and the place would be packed, especially on a specific day of the week, designated by Naguib Mahfouz for an open discussion with his friends and admirers. At least, this used to be the case. For here we are remembering the golden age of this cafe, during the sixties and seventies, when it used to bustle with the most vital literary debates: committed literature, social realism, and the absurd, when small literary journals, some of which never saw the light (or did for a short while) would be concocted at its tables, when film scripts and plays would be discussed in small groups, and when many were taken to detention camps or prisons because of a word or a joke recorded in a secret report, written at a neighboring table.

This place, that has received every single Egyptian or Arab writer or artist, witnessed glorious days during the sixties and seventies, before alcoholic beverages were deleted from its menu under the pressure of fundamentalism. But the disappearance of alcoholic beverages did not affect the legitimacy of the place, which during recent years has witnessed some historic events, the latest of which was the meeting of around one thousand intellectuals after the armed attack on Naguib Mahfouz, and their decision to organize a march in protest, which did not materialize because the police, always on the alert, besieged them, detained some, and dispersed the ranks of those remaining.

More than once I deserted my home city, where I experienced the long and short ends of freedom. More than once I left it, embittered, enraged, determined never to see it again. More than once I abandoned it, haunted by its Citadel with its minarets, only to return again, meek and humble. To this very day, I cannot explain my inability to live in any other city on the face of the earth.

from Cairo: Edge to Edge
Translated by Samia Mehrez