ancient cities

100 Cairo, Egypt
City already includes a growing number of lowerclass
residential areas.
Urban Spaces
Urban lives and cultures in Cairo, like elsewhere,
take on many forms and expressions, which are
constituted by dynamics of historical context,
class, gender, age, urban regions, and religion or
religiosity. The following illustrates four spatial,
social, and cultural contexts to provide impressions
of this vast cultural cityscape.
Midan Tahrir (Liberation Square), the former
Midan Ismailiyah, the heart of Khedive Ismail’s
modern Cairo, still marks the core of Cairo. The
recent history of this square represents many transformations
in the larger cityscape. In the early
1980 Midan Tahrir was an immensely busy traffic
node that included Cairo’s central bus station. A
small bridges system allowed pedestrians to traverse
parts of the square above the busy streets and
intersections. Bordered by the Egyptian Museum
to the north, the Nile Hilton to the west, and the
ubiquitous Mugamma building to the south, the
square symbolized the political and economic
complexity of Cairo, indeed Egypt, while simultaneously
it was in the firm grip of the masses who
maneuvered the square to ride buses, conduct
bureaucratic works, and shop. Starting from the
late 1980s the square saw a frenzy of construction,
spatial change, and experiments done largely with
the aim of getting the masses off the streets and
indeed ultimately off the square. For most of the
1980s, Midan Tahrir was an ever-shifting construction
site as the long-awaited Cairo subway
was built. Simultaneously, the bus station was
moved and removed, split up and resplit. The final
solution was that several smaller terminals were
set up in the vicinity of the square that now require
passengers to walk longer distances for connecting
buses. As Islamic militants in the early 1990s
started to attack tourist locations, the parking lot
in front of the Egyptian Museum became a security
issue. In this context, lower-class citizens no longer
were simply a crowded mass but a security issue;
their spatiality became politicized. The experience
of Midan Tahrir symbolizes two dynamics: the
city’s attempt to organize and control transportation
and the lesson that ultimately it is impossible
to control large public spaces and the masses that
inhabit them. Along with other factors, this lesson
triggered the government’s decision to relocate the
museum, a central element in Cairo’s touristscape,
to the more controllable outskirts of Cairo, where
the Grand Egyptian Museum is currently under
construction for $350 million.
El Tayibin (an ethnographic pseudonym) is a
small, low-income enclave in the middle of a centrally
located upper-middle-class neighborhood.
Once an agricultural village, El Tayibin was
engulfed by the colonial city decades ago. The
community consists of an assortment of older village-style
housing and newer, very small apartment
buildings located on alleys too narrow for vehicular
traffic. The residents, many of whom are
descendants of the earlier peasant residents, are
part of Cairo’s vast lower class. Men engage in a
variety of jobs, including car mechanics, itinerant
vendors, lower-level civil servants, janitors, taxi
drivers, newspaper vendors, and public sector
workers. Many younger, unmarried women work
low-paid industrial or sales jobs to assemble costly
dowries that include refrigerators, semiautomatic
washers, and stoves, among other items. Once
married, most women stop working, as their meager
salaries do not add much to the family budget,
considering the expenses of transportation, clothes,
and child care. Yet many women contribute much
to the household’s finances, or they stretch resources
by providing services to others (sewing, haircutting,
beauty services, child care). Some women
keep chickens, ducks, geese, or goats. For some this
is a way to provide meat for their families; for others
this is a source of extra income if they sell eggs
or animals for meat. The alleys of El Tayibin from
early in the morning to late at night are full of
people and activities as residents, like in similar
communities, negotiate their lives and needs in the
context of limited resources and space.
The CityStars Mall, located in the supersized
Stars Centre entertainment complex, is a recent
addition (2005) to Cairo’s glamorous mall scene.
Located in Medinat Nasr, the mall includes 550
stores of local, regional, and global brands, an
indoor theme park, and a 16-screen movie theater.
For those weary of the crowd, dust, and noise of
the city, the mall even includes a bazaar (Khan el-
Khalili) section, which offers high-price arts, kitsch,
and Egyptiana. Numerous food courts include
local (“Fuul Tank”), regional (Fattoush, Lebanese),