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I was a child when
I first discovered Cairo, one morning when I had travelled from my native Upper Egypt
on the famous midnight train. I stayed with my aunt on my father’s side, who lived
in the Fostat quarter [name of a city founded in 641 by the Muslim conqueror Aman
‘bn Al ‘Ass] on the outskirts of Old Cairo. The air was filled with an acrid, penetrating
smell from a nearby tannery.
On the first evening, I went to the nearest mosque, dedicated to the memory of an
extremely pious man named Sidi Abdul Saoud. From an adjoining house came the sound
of women’s voices, cries, and beating tambourines, merging into a kind of incantation.
I could not resist. Trying not to be noticed, I slipped into the courtyard of the
house.
A group of common women, clad in long black dresses, were dancing in a circle, keeping
pace with an increasingly quick, breathless beat. Their bodies merging into a single
whole, their hips rocked by a movement they could no longer control, projected an
irresistible sensuality.
A young man with hair as long as the women’s and wearing a tight gown was standing
in the middle of the circle and beating the rhythm with small cymbals. Some of the
women dancing around him were playing tambourines.
It was a zar ceremony–a ritual held to remove a spell. The women had gone into a
collective trance to expel from their bodies the demons that had possessed them.
It had become so intense that some had collapsed and lay prostrate on the ground.
The young man leaned over each one and whispered mysterious words into their ears
and revived them.
I shall never forget that scene. It unexpectedly introduced me, as if I were a trespasser,
into the very heart of Old Cairo.
If you take the road that today leads from Fostat to the international airport, you
come to the foot of the great plateau and the overlooking Citadel built by Saladin
in 1176. The impregnable silhouette of this symbol of power abutting the Moqattan
hills rises above the capital and keeps watch over it day and night. When Bonaparte
entered Cairo in the last days of the 18th century, it was here that he installed
his artillery. It was from here that he shelled the rebellious poor neighbourhoods.
Before the time of the illustrious French general, the Citadel was the place where
the Turkish governors representing the Sublime Porte were inducted in great splendour.
It was here too that Mohammed Ali, seeking to take the reins of power in the early
19th century, invited all the Mameluke lords to his son’s wedding–and then had them
slaughtered to the last man.
One of the Citadel’s gates leads to the Fatimid city, in other words the original
Cairo, Al Qahira, founded by Gohar the Sicilian, who commanded the troops of the
dynasty that conquered Egypt in 975.
The jewels of the Muslim city can be found there: Al Azhar University and the Al
Hussein mosque, surrounded by dozens of other mosques that are lit up and come alive
at night, calling to one another with the ebbing and flowing of the vast Cairo crowd.
During Ramadan, the month of fasting and of feasting together, circles of believers
chant praises to their Creator in harmony. And mystic brotherhoods from all over
Egypt meet to sing and dance their love of God until dawn.
I never tire of weaving my way with friends at night through the latticework of streets
and alleyways in this neighbourhood where the soul of Cairo never sleeps.
Anything can happen on Al Batiniya Street. The first time I innocently turned down
this street, at nightfall, a man came up to me and asked if I wanted some oil. I
politely turned him down. “It is top quality,” he insisted. Why on earth should I
want to buy oil I didn’t need in the middle of the street? But I was intrigued by
the gaze of that man who, while talking about oil, seemed to have something else
in mind. When at last I figured out that he was talking about hashish, I ran away
as fast as my legs could carry me. But that did not keep me from noticing other young
people seated behind little tables offering passersby the same sort of oil.
All that happened a long time ago.
This first visit to Cairo was followed by many others. For a long time, I dreamed
of living in the Al Ghourieh quarter. The severed head of Touman Bey, Egypt’s last
Mameluke sultan, was hung over the gate to this neighbourhood after the Ottoman Turks
killed him in the 16th century. A year earlier his father, Sultan Al Ghouri, had
been killed resisting the new conquerors. The quarter has borne his name to honour
him ever since.
Al Ghourieh’s elusive charm lies, I think, in the omnipresence of the past. The weight
of history can be felt in each narrow street and, even more so, in the faces of the
people who live there, which express, often unconsciously, the tranquil certainty
that this has always been and always will be their home.
I really discovered this neighbourhood when I visited three artists who in the 1970s
represented the creative genius of Egypt’s common people: the blind composer Sheik
Imam, the poet Ahmad Fuad Negm and the lute-player Muhammed Ali. In their public
performances, these three men dared to voice the anger of the poor, the outrage of
students and the dreams of a better life that were embodied in those days by Ho Chi
Minh and Che Guevara.
They lived in a shack that seemed in a state of imminent collapse. You had to be
very careful where you put your feet. You might be invited to have a cup of tea,
but certainly not a dish of grilled chops. Instead you had to settle for the smell
that wafted in from a nearby stall.
Such a neighbourhood can hold a strange attraction. Something in the close-knit fabric
of the buildings, in the vibrations of the passing crowd, excites the imagination.
You can almost guess what the interiors of the houses look like, enter the alcoves,
share amorous embraces, follow the silent gaze of women behind the musharabiehs.1
Fortunately, the women now go out into the street, often draped in wide black veils
that are supposed to conceal their bodies from intrusive eyes but actually emphasize
their shapely curves. There is a language in the undulations of the female body that
I never tire of learning.
Al Ghourieh leads into a street named after Al Hakim Bi Amr Illah (“He who governs
by divine decree”), the illustrious Fatimid caliph whose mystic personality has always
baffled historians. In this street you can enjoy all the scents of the East, from
perfumes to medicinal plants. Here traditional remedies for most known physical and
psychological ailments can still be found.
This street crosses another world-famous thoroughfare, Khan Al Khalili Street, where
tourist coaches pour forth their passengers all year round. Here, Egypt’s most skilful
craftsmen display a dazzling array of hand-made products in gold, silk, glass, wood,
copper and ivory. All kinds of things are for sale–even dresses for belly-dancers.
A visit to the celebrated Al Fichawi cafe, where they provide you with a royal hookah,
is a must for anyone who wants to claim they really saw Old Cairo. This coffee-house
is a microcosm of street life, an endless stream of newspaper vendors, shoe-shine
men, beggars, street peddlers–as well as poets, novelists and journalists of every
stripe.
Lastly, this neighbourhood was long the home of Egypt’s national glory, our country’s
first Nobel Prize-winner for literature, Naguib Mahfouz. His best-known novels take
place in this spellbinding maze of narrow streets and dead-ends, where the heart
of the city beats and is haunted by his larger-than-life personages. From the immense
fresco of characters in his novels, why am I tempted to recall only the futuwa? They
were men who, with panache, masculine generosity and efficiency, enforced a certain
order, even a certain justice, in their neighbourhoods. They formed a sort of people’s
police who stood up for the needy and the weak in the name of a chivalrous code of
honour.
Today, they have disappeared. And with them, a whole world–that of Naguib Mahfouz
himself–which gave Old Cairo its soul is disappearing from our lives.
As you will have guessed, I am unconsolable.
1. In Arab architecture,
balconies closed by latticework allowing one to see without being seen.
I never tire of weaving my way with
friends at night through the latticework of streets and alleyways in this neighbourhood
where the soul of Cairo never sleeps. Anything can happen on Al Batiniya Street.
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