C.Scapes by Maia Gusberti

C.SCAPES from maia gusberti on Vimeo.

By Maia Gusberti

C.Scapes emerged of my curiosity and will to understand more about a multi-faceted, highly controversial and contested public space in Cairo. It was realized between 2007 and 2009, when no one believed in the changes happening now since 2011, lots of them in public space.

I first came to Cairo as an artist in residence in 2006. The streets and public spaces of Cairo instantly draw my interest because of its contradictions: its ever changing multi-layered use, the spontaneous inventions, its livelihood vs. its unwritten rules and regulations, the social restrictions, the emergency law — all these complexity I couldn’t understand intrigued me to study it. It became an intensely instructive artistic and personal approach towards a city and its people I wouldn’t miss ever. While working on C.Scapes I felt diving into a topic much more complex I’d ever imagined. It opened door after door, question after question. I conducted interviews with people from different socio-economic backgrounds in Manial, Maadi, Ard el-Lewa, Rehab City, Heliopolis, Wust el Balad, etc. In the film the presence of the interviewees is indicated through their voices only. I filmed from the confines of private space; from behind windows, curtains and from rooftops, instead of filming on the streets. Initially, this choice was a reaction to restrictions on filming — but to work around the constraints, to find alternative angles and perspectives to approach public space inspired me and were finally deeply influencing and enhancing my project. My aim was a dialog between the inside and the outside, between imagination, reality and the image, between myself, the interviewees and the audience.

Rewatching C.Scapes now obviously uncovers that people in my film precisely pointed out the role of the street as a highly contested, sensible social and political space. They commented — sometimes quite direct, sometimes between the lines, on its role as a lively room, a symbol for freedom and expression and their descriptions became a barometer for the underlaying implications of control and oppression, of a paralyzed society’s hopes, demands and dreams — beneath the daily struggle in this densely populated, multi-layered, segregated city.

Many things changed since I worked on C.Scapes.— I can only talk about from a distance, after following the upheavals, some success and lots of drawbacks from afar. I only visited Cairo a single time since 2011. Egyptians reclaimed the street, reclaimed what should be public, are filming and documenting daily confrontations, struggles and conflicts with all means handy. Camera and public domain are now tools and means of negotiation and resistance of awakened, conscious and politicized citizens.

When watching C.Scapes now, I feel joy — about the liveliness and awareness of people, about their strength to take back what’s instantly theirs: the public space (and lots more). Having in mind what happened since I collected interviews in 2007/08, C.Scapes becomes a so much more complex document than intended. There are comments in C.Scapes touching me deeply, make us thoughtful, make us reflect on what’s happening … It’s the experience of the dense reality about which we’re being told — to realize: it cracked, it’s in process, people demand their space to breath —  they protest, live, even dance — express their life in the streets, in the public sphere that is legitimately and evidently theirs. C.Scapes was intended to be an ongoing dialogue between the interviewees and audience. And its interesting to listen and remember what was phrased and dreamt about aloud before the seed was planted for change …

C.Scapes  a project by Maia Gusberti

37:00 min, Video HD

Concept, image and editing: Maia Gusberti

Sound: Mahmoud Refat

Interviews, translations, assistance: Shahira Issa

Locations:Yasser Naeim & Shahira Issa
© Maia Gusberti 2009

supported by Pro Helvetia Cairo, BMuKK Austria

Video-Preview

http://www.maiagusberti.net o C.Scapes Video

more Information and texts

http://www.maiagusberti.net o C.Scapes Info

Exhibitions, Screenings

Kino im Kunstmuseum Bern (CH) 2013

Connect, Art between Media and Reality, Shedhalle Zürich (CH), 2011 
Swiss Art Awards, Art Basel, 2010 

Aeschlimann-Corti Award, Kunsthaus Langenthal (CH), 2010

Where are you, Pro Helvetia, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo 2009

C.Scapes, Stadtgalerie, PROGR, Bern 2009

Book Review: Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature

By Samah Selim

Mara Naaman, Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature: Portraits of Cairo. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

In January and February of 2011, Egyptians descended upon public squares throughout the country to bring an end to the thirty-year regime of Husni Mubarak. For those eighteen days—and on many other occasions throughout the following year—the people of Egypt wrested control of public space from the physical and discursive grip of Mubarak’s police state and reconfigured the material and symbolic spaces of their cities to express a revolutionary vision of subjectivity, community, and citizenship. Cairo’s Tahrir square—and its downtown environs—was of course the most visible and most symbolically charged center of these insurgent acts of occupation and celebration, and the whole world watched in wonder and trepidation as Egyptians struggled to forge a new and radical language of being-in-the-world.

Mara Naaman’s timely book, Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature: Portraits of Cairo, was published during that heady year (and includes a brief postscript referring to the events of the revolution). The book addresses the production of urban space in the modern Egyptian literary imagination and offers the reader an erudite and engaging analysis of four acclaimed novels that all take Cairo’s downtown as their main setting. Naaman’s exploration of the sometimes utopian, sometimes brutal and bloody history of dreams, desires, and struggles that have shaped this seminal space in modern fiction and architectural practice subtly and persistently evokes the ghost of a future become the present. The book is thus important reading for anyone seeking to understand the affective power of “Liberation Square” within the context of modern Egyptian history and cultural production.

The book includes a preface, introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. The preface, introduction, and chapter one set out the main conceptual and historical framework within which Naaman situates her literary readings. Chapters two through five each deal with a contemporary novel by a leading Egyptian author—Radwa ‘Ashur’s A Piece of Europe (2003), Khayri Shalabi’s Salih Hisa (2000), Idris ‘Ali’s Poor (2005), and Alaa al-Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building (2002)—while the conclusion, “Wust al-Balad as Neo-Bohemia: Writing in Defense of a Vanishing Public Sphere,” raises some very interesting questions about location and the relevance of national narratives to the contemporary political imagination.

In the preface, Naaman takes note of the political impetus underlying modern Arab fiction as a whole, tying this impetus to the framing and contestation of real and imagined spaces: “Contemporary Arab authors,” she writes, “have used fiction as a way of responding to crucial, and often traumatic, historical moments…where questions of political authority and power are largely enacted through struggles over public space” (xx). She then sets out the framework for her reading of her chosen novels against the background of a broad range of disciplinary and theoretical interests and concerns—urban and postcolonial studies, architecture and art history, and globalization theory:

I hope to show the way in which the notion of the modern Egyptian subject has evolved in direct relationship to the changes manifest in the space of the downtown….Ultimately I hope to show how the contested nature of the downtown—as a spectacular imitation of European modernity, as Egyptian public sphere, as a site for staging revolution, and as a modernist ruin—was and continues to be central to the notion of what it means to be Egyptian. (xxi)

Naaman goes on to reflect on Cairo as an “oscillating landscape” whose neighborhoods are situated as “allegorical spaces through which we can read the history of the nation” (xxv). Through the accumulated passage of time and the imprints of generations, streets and neighborhoods take on the phantom nature of the palimpsest; “home” is constantly rewritten as part of an uncertain yet imperative project of liberation. The downtown, she writes in a poignant assessment, “remains a contingent space, marked by traces of the past and spaces of familiarity, but never offering a sense of a secure present” (xxv).

Naaman uses the Arabic term “Wust al-Balad” (center city; downtown) throughout the book rather than an English translation to signal the iconic status of this particular space in modern fiction as well as national history. She weaves a careful account of the area’s dramatic architectural and political history into her literary analysis of the way in which the four novels inscribe questions of agency, identity, language, critique, and nostalgia in spatial terms. The famous history of Khedive Isma‘il’s new city, Isma‘iliyya, or “Paris on the Nile,” and the great Cairo Fire of 1952 (during which furious crowds burnt a large chunk of this new city to the ground) are thus both major leitmotifs that recur at key points in the book. Naaman’s description of the process by which the novels’ characters engage in revisionist “mappings” of these histories in space is thus also an apt description of her own critical method (7). The bulk of this critical method is presented in the book’s introduction, “The Urban as Critical Frame,” and covers a broad cross-section of works and authors: the Cairo School of Urban Studies; Gwendolyn Wright’s work on French colonial design; Chicano border studies; and the work of Timothy Mitchell, Arjun Appadurai, and Sabry Hafez on (respectively) colonial modernity, global flows, and the “new novel” in Egypt.

At times, Naaman’s theoretical framing sits uneasily with her evocative and subtle readings of the novels themselves. Naaman closely follows a certain strand of postcolonial studies that proposes a spectacular, Western-authored (colonial) modernity as the presumed antithesis of a kind of authentic or antediluvian local identity and where points of contact or relationship are somehow inevitably defined by suspicion, corruption, or violation. Isma‘il’s new city is offered as “a spectacular imitation of European modernity,” a place that has “internalize[ed] the gaze of the West” (xxi, 1). In such a place, the circulation of capital takes the primary form of staged spectacles of consumption and public entertainment (the lavish department stores, clubs, and cafés of Cairo’s rich). Modernity then becomes an ontology: a fixed and external object (of desire or refusal) rather than a social habitus shot through with contradiction and struggle. The notion that “Egyptians [were] mere spectators in the staging of their own modernity” leads Naaman at times to problematic culturalist readings of political events (Timothy Mitchell quoted in Naaman, 12). For example, the Cairo Fire of 1952 becomes “a debate over what it meant to be modern” rather than a violent rejection of the political and economic structures of a collapsing colonial regime (16). She further argues that “the ‘Urabi rebellion of 1881-2, the revolution of 1919, the workers’ protest in 1946, and the fires and subsequent revolution in July 1952” were all a result of “the Khedive’s complete indifference to the older districts of Cairo (in terms of their architectural and infrastructural neglect)”—or more simply put, to “colonial modernity” (23, 32).

Naaman’s capable and sensitive close readings, however, point to the limits—if not the inadequacy—of this theoretical staging to describe and elicit the rich and complex texture of the novels themselves in their reflections on agency, identity, and loss in the modern Egyptian context. In chapters one and two (“Specter of Paris: The Staging of Cairo’s Modern City Center” and “Reconstructing a National Past: Radwa ‘Ashur’s Revisionist History of Downtown”), Naaman beautifully captures the way in which both the urban-architectural and the textual function as narrative acts that produce legibility and meaning for subjects and readers alike. She further builds on this insight in the next chapter, “The Indigenous Modernism of Khayri Shalabi: Popular Intellectuals and the Neighborhood Ghurza,” by elaborating on Michel de Certeau’s poetics of walking as a form of pedestrian enunciation and Jonathon Shannon’s exploration of modernity and musical improvisation in Syria. In her reading, the palimpsest of the city—the downtown and its “shadow thoroughfare[s]” (77)—is metaphorically composed by the active handling or use of its material structures (‘Ashur’s narrator, The Gazer, “re-members” the downtown by walking its streets and visually summoning its ghostly monuments) or by the continual crossing and re-crossing of porous, shadow borders inscribed into the urban landscape (Salih Hisa’s celebration of multiple social identities and languages; The Yacoubian Building’s crumbling vertical hierarchies). Ultimately, the book’s greatest strength lies here: in its compelling, engaged, and almost tender attention to the materiality of urban space as a lens that brings a whole history of collective desire, aspiration, and struggle into focus through the medium of fiction.

Toward the end of the book’s final chapter, “The Nation Recast through a National Bestseller: Alaa al-Aswany’s Ode to Downtown Cairo,” Naaman tentatively suggests the possibility of claiming this history-in-fiction as a living portrait of the imagined nation—“a master-narrative” as she puts it, “for the Egyptian experience” (167). Meanwhile, the resurgent “neo-bohemian” public sphere of the downtown that she describes in the book’s conclusion has once again metamorphosed into a fully insurgent space of struggle and contestation (169). In this moment of exhilarating and dizzyingly unreadable futures, Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature does an admirable job of underlining the ways in which “a reworking of the past vis-à-vis our cities is an important part of the process in determining who we are (and want to be) in the present” (176).

Samah Selim is assistant professor of Arabic literature at Rutgers University and the author of The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt 1880-1985 (Routledge, 2004).

[This review was originally published in the Spring 2012 issue of Arab Studies Journal. For more information on the issue, or to subscribe to ASJ, click here. This review was also published in Jadaliyya]

Parallels Exhibition and Workshop

By Farah Shoukry

In the midst of Old Cairo, Darb 1718 hosted Module Designers’ Parallels exhibition and workshop. Parallels is the first workshop in a series to follow under the umbrella of Strawberry Fields Forever; an optimistic name for a developmental experimental project that aims to reach out to the community.

Yasser El Quessney, the principle architect and mastermind of Module Designers, is co-operating with Walid Taher in order to recruit interested parties to share their knowledge on parallel development. 

The exhibited artwork of mixed media art was expressing the perception of Parallels in different notions. Whether an installation,  a quotation,  photography, audio, video, mono-print or collage.  The architects, graphic artists and interior designers of Module Designers explored their artistic talents on their way to reach out to the community.

A dialogue on parallel development, art, architecture, urbanism and sustainable agriculture,  has been initiated by the honorable guest speakers who joined us on Saturday April 6. Mohamed Elshahed, behind Cairobserver, enriched the participants with an insightful perspective on Cairo behind the scenes. Muhammed Radwan, the enthusiastic ICE-Cairo Space Manager,  talked about the ICE initiative and the efforts made to empower youth to start their own green market business. Elshahed and Radwan stressed upon the importance of mapping and documenting various initiatives working in the developmental field to allow for collaboration as many initiatives share similar goals and interests. The following session was presented by Mohamed Salah and Ahmed Refky, the wonderful brains of Shagara NGO which works on the plantation of rooftops. The team shared their vision on green sustainable communities and discussed the technical methods used to implement the Shagara vision. Moreover,  Prof. Ahmed Rashed, Head of the Architecture Department at BUE, shared with us the “Taking Leave”, student architecture competition that has been implemented with a revolutionary spirit. 

The fruitful Parallels workshop acts as a momentum and inspiration to set up a Co-Work space in Fakharany Village, Qasr El Shame3, right next to the Darb 1718 Center. Keep an eye open for the next workshop, “Multiplicity”, to be announced soon upon organization.

Lessons from elsewhere: Leipzig by Ali Alraouf

Postcards from Revolutionary Cairo

By Jonathan Guyer

I was in Marrakesh two weeks ago, which is teeming with tourists of all stripes, decked out in tank tops and short shorts. Coming from Cairo, I found the swaths of high school groups, families pushing strollers, and long lines outside museums to be a bit of a shock. We don’t see these folks in Egypt anymore. The outside world’s perception of Cairo as a dangerous battleground has devastatingly affected tourism.

The idea of my postcards from revolutionary Cairo is to re-think Egypt’s tourism industry—the new historic sites here that people across the world must see for themselves. I’m not advocating for war tourism or the fetishization of blight (as a Detroiter, I’m all too familiar with what has so aptly been called “ruin porn”). Rather, I intend to depict sites that Cairenes see everyday and would want to send to friends outside of the country. 

Postcards almost always play off of the tourist’s imagination rather than the local resident’s appreciation of “attractions.” While paying homage to the colonial, Orientalist posters of the early 20th century, I hope to tease out the tensions and contractions of marketing contemporary Egypt. The burnt out National Democratic Party building and the half-built Nile Ritz Carlton are vistas as essential to Cairo’s skyline as the pyramids. 

Jonathan Guyer is a Fulbright fellow researching political cartoons in Egypt and associate editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. He blogs at Mideast By Midwest and tweets @mideastXmidwest

Bulaq: the struggle over a neighborhood

كتب علي محمد احمد

هندسة عمارة- بوليتكنيكو دي ميلانو

لقاء مع نائب محافظ القاهره عقب قطع أهالى بولاق لطريق الكورنيش

رسائل

خرج أهالى مثلث” ماسبيرو” فى عدة وقفات أحتجاجيه حتى قاموا بقطع طريق الكورنيش فى أخر وقفه و ذلك بعد أستمرار تجاهل مطالبهم خلال الوقفات الأولى.

تقوم المحافظه بالتفاوض مع ملاك الأراضى ( المستثمرين ) لمحاولة أصدار قرار أستيلاء على جزء من الأرض لبناء 64 برج لأهالى ماسبيرو لتسكينهم بها, و صرح نائب المحافظ بأن عملية بيع الأرض تمت بين الأهالى و المستثمرين دون تدخل من الدوله و أن دور المحافظه يقتصر على التنسيق من أجل توفير مسكن بديل للأهالى.

أكد أيضا نائب المحافظ أن هناك مخططات موضوعه لتطوير المنطقه و تحويلها الى فنادق و مبانى أداريه و غيره.

عرض 

مثلث ماسبيرو هو ذلك المثلث الذى تتكون أضلاعه من شارع 26 يوليو فى المنطقه الواقعه بين قنصلية أيطاليا و كورنيش النيل مرورا بمسجد أبو العلا و الضلع الثانى شارع الجلاء فى المنطقه الواقعه بين قنصلية أيطاليا و فندق هيلتون رمسيس مرورا بشركة أسكندريه للتبريد و المدرسه الأرمينيه و الضلع الثالث طريق الكورنيش من الفندق لوزارة الخارجيه مرورا بمبنى” ماسبيرو”.

يخترق المثلث شارع أبو طالب الممتد من شارع الجلاء حتى ظهر جراج الخارجيه موازيا لطريق الكورنيش, و بمجرد دخولك الى شارع أبو طالب تجد الكثير من المشاهد التى تجسد أهمالا متراكما يتمثل فى الحاله المتدهوره للمبانى و السيارات المنتشره فى الطريق التى يعمل بعض من أهل المنطقه على أصلاحها من أجل الحصول على قوت يومهم و ليس لدي أغلبهم ورش خاصه فقد يضطر الى المبيت فى كثير من الأحيان داخل أحد السيارات ليوفر ثمن الذهاب الى مدينة النهضه ( أحدى الأماكن التى وفرتها الدوله كبديل لأزاحة السكان عن بولاق) , فى شارع أبوطالب يمكنك أن ترى وجوه أرهقها العمر و لكن أبدا لم يهزمها, بعض من هؤلاء السكان رحل أبائهم من النوبه القديمه و أستقر بهم الحال عند ساحل بولاق ( الميناء القديم للقاهره ), و لم يكن يخطر ببالهم أن أجيالا قادمه سوف تتعرض لشبح التهجير و لكن هذه المره فى قلب العاصمه و ليس من أجل مشروع قومى ولكن من أجل بناء فنادق و منتجعات و مونوريل و أطماع مستثمرين.

بولاق بشوارعها و حواريها و أهلها جزء أصيل من قلب القاهره و نسيجها العمرانى القديم و هي حلقة وصل بين شبرا و السبتيه و رمسيس و القاهره الخديويه وهذا النسيج التاريخى هو دليل على الوجود و على البقاء

موقع المثلث و المنطقه المخطط أزالتها داخله

من يملك 

هناك بعض المبانى فى المثلث ملكيتها ثابته أو على الأقل غير متنازع عليها مثل : القنصليه, وزارة الخارجيه, مبنى الأذاعه, الفندق, مجموعه من العمارات فى حاله جيده على شارع 26 يوليو و الكورنيش, و المدرسه الأرمينيه.

و بالطبع فأن محل النزاع هى بيوت أهالى المنطقه الذين ليس لهم سند فلا هم فندق و لا وزاره و لكن الدوله تتعامل معهم على أنهم ملكيه عامه يمكن التحكم فى مصيرهم حسب هوى السلطه.

قامت الدوله ببيع هذا الجزء من الأرض منذ عدة عقود لمستثمرين من السعوديه و الكويت بالأضافه الى شريك مصرى هى شركه تدعى ماسبيرو لا أحد يعلم من يقف خلفها, و برغم من أن الدوله لا تملك الأرض و أن أهالى المنطقه يملكون عقود للأرض ترجع الى بدايات القرن الماضى و تنتمى لأجدادهم و لكن الدوله أتمت صفقة البيع و قامت بوضع مخطط لتطوير المنطقه فى أطار مخطط القاهره 2050 و قامت بتوفير مساكن بديله للأهالى على أطراف القاهره بمدينة النهضه و تم تسجيل العقود بأسم المستثمريين الجدد و ربما هذا ما تم أستغلاله للتحايل على العقود التى يمتلكها السكان حيث أنها تنتمى لعصر قبل أن يتم أعتماد نظام التوثيق فى الشهر العقارى و غيره , و حتى تضع الدوله السكان الذين رفضوا مغادرة منازلهم أمام الأمر الواقع قررت حظر الترميم و التنكيس للمبانى حتى يتثنى لهل الأستيلاء على العقارات التى تسقط بفعل الزمن و يصبح الساكن أمام الرحيل للنهضه أو المبيت فى العراء, و لما كان أنهيار المساكن مسأله وقت لقدمها فكان حظر التنكيس و الترميم هو الحل السحرى للأستيلاء أولا بأول على أجزاء من الأرض مقابل مبلغ زهيد و شقه فى النهضه بأيجار أعلى من ااموجود ببولاق, و تكون هذه ورقه ضغط على السكان فى حالة أظهار عقودهم تثبت أنهم قد تنازلوا , و أمام أبتزاز الحكومه لم يجد البعض مفر من الذهاب للنهضه و لكن الغالبيه صمدوا و ظلوا فى منطقتهم و أصبح الوضع الجديد أن الدوله بائع و المستثمر مالك و أصحاب الأرض الأصليين متطفلين بل عائق أمام تطوير قلب القاهره فى حين أن بولاق ملك أهلها و القاهره ملك سكانها و ليست ملك مستثمر أو مسئول

من يعد

كن الوعد الأول هو أعادة تسكين أهالى المنطقه فى مدينة النهضه على طريق الأسماعيليه فى كتل خرسانيه فى الصحراء, بعيدا عن مدارس أطفالهم و أماكن عملهم و بعيدا عن محلات وسط البلد التى تمدهم بقطع الغيار و لوازم الحرف و الأعمال المختلفه من أصلاح سيارات و غيره, و أيضا بعيدا عن مختلف وسائل المواصلات فبولاق محاطه بمترو جمال عبد الناصر و موقف عبد المنعم رياض و العديد من وسائل المواصلات الخاصه ,و يترتب على هذا الأنتقال فى بعض الأحيان أخراج الأطفال من التعليم لعدم القدره على تحمل أعباء المواصلات و فقدان الأهل لوسيلة كسب الرزق المتمثله فى الورش المختلفه فلا يوجد من يقصد النهضه لأصلاح سياره مثلا.

الوعد الثانى بعد الثوره كان الأستجابه لرغبات الأهالى بعدم التهجير و بحث اليات أيجاد بديل ( حيث أن هولاء الأهالى حاليا ليس لهم صفه و هناك مالك اخر للأرض ), و تم التوصل الى بناء 64 برج على قطعه معينه من الأرض لم يتم تحديدها و أن كان الأهالى أقترحوا أرض شركة الأسكندريه للتبريد ب 22 شارع الجلاء و هى غير مستغله حاليا مع أستمرار تنفيذ مخطط التطوير من جانب الدوله و المستثمرين المجهولين على باقى الأرض, و أذا كانت الحكومه تنكر ملكية الأهالى للأرض من الأصل و تنكر أنها طرف فى عملية البيع فلابد من أن المستثمر قد أشترى من طرف ثالث !

الوعد الثالث و الأخير حتى الان عقب أحداث قطع طريق الكورنيش الأخيره و هو أعطاء المحافظه مهلة 3 أشهر للأهالى حتى تنظر فى قانونية وضع الأستيلاء على المساحه المطلوبه لبناء الأبراج و أن المحافظه فى وضع المنسق بين الأهالى ( المالك الحقيقى ) و المستثمر ( المالك الحالى ) حتى لا تتعدى على حقوق المستثمرين

أرض شركة الأسكندريه للتبريد على شارع الجلاء

من يستحق 

مفهوم أن يكون طموح السكان هو ال64 برج فهو بالنسبه لهم أستحقاق أفضل من أن يجدوا أنفسهم فى الشارع أو فى مدينة النهضه فى صحراء لا يعلمون عنها شيئا و لكن الغير مفهوم أن تبارك الدوله بأجهزتها هذا الأستحقاق و أن تبارك مخطط تطوير يقوم بأزاحه مواطنين من أماكنهم و تكبيدهم متاعب يوميه أكثر و ليس مخطط لتطوير معيشة السكان أنفسهم و توفير حياه أفضل لهم فى محل أقامتهم.

أرض بولاق أستحقاق أصيل لأهل بولاق و أستحقاق أصيل لنسيج القاهره العمرانى و التاريخى لا يجوز أزالته و لكن يجب حمايته و ترميمه و بقاءه كجزء من ذاكرة المدينه, حق تحديد المصير أيضا أستحقاق لأهل المنطقه فلا يجوز لأحد التقرير بالنيابه عنهم بل دور الدوله هو حمايتهم من أطماع الرأسماليه و حمايه نسيج القاهره العمرانى القديم من خطر الأزاله, يجب توفير مسكن ملائم لأهل المنطقه على هذا النسيج و ليس فى أبراج. حق تقرير المصير هذا يجب أن يكون ناتج من حوار بين الأهالى و متخصصين و هذا يأخذنا لدور المحليات الغائب عنه التمثيل الحقيقى للمواطن.

القاهره تستحق أفضل من مخطط القاهره 2050, و تحتاج الى تطوير حياة سكانها الحقيقيين الذين هم دينامو الحياه اليوميه للمدينه و لا يستحقون التهميش, القاهره لا تستحق محو ذاكرتها المعماريه و تحويلها ألى دبى جديده تتنافس فى رؤيه النيل و أهلها يصارعون من أجل مأوى و لقمة عيش, قلب القاهره يريد أن ينبض من جديد بتحسين أوضاع سكانه و ليس بدعاوى تطوير زائفه, و كورنيش النيل حق لمواطنى العاصمه لا يجوز حرمانهم منه فى أنفاق حتى يتثنى لقاطنى الفنادق الأنفراد به بعيدا عن أنظار الماره

لا تحتاج القاهره الى أبراج زجاجيه و مجتمعات مغلقه جديده فى قلب المدينه لخدمة شريحه معينه تريد أن تنعزل عن باقى المجتمع وتنفرد بالنيل حتى تتحول فى النهايه القاهره الى مجموعه من الحواجز و الأسوار نتحرك بينها مثل الأقزام.

تساؤلات 

هل حل المشكله فى توفير 64 برج أم الحل هو النظر فى جذر المشكله ؟

هل يجوز قلب الحقائق حتى يصبح الأهالى هم المتطفلين وقطاع طرق و هم من يثقلون بطلباتهم على كاهل الدوله ؟

ما المقصود بمراعاة السلميه فى التظاهر السلمى ؟ السلميه تشترط توافر حكومه محترمه تنظر فى مطالب المواطنين من أول وقفه أما مقابلة الوقفات بمبدأ الكلاب تعوى و القافله تسير يفتح الباب على مصراعيه للتصعيد و تخطى حدود السلميه حتى لأيصال أصواتهم.

ما هو دور المحليات و المتخصصين ؟ و ما هى حدود دور المسئول فى أتخاذ قرارات مصيريه تخص حياة المواطن ؟

لماذا لا تخرج الدوله ممثله فى المحافظ أو أيا من كان بمنتهى الشفافيه لتعرض علينا الطرف البائع للأرض هل هى الدوله أم الأهالى ؟

هل من المنطقى وجود مخطط لتطوير المنطقه لأستخدامات أخرى دون وجود نيه لأزاحة السكان ؟

هل من المنطقى أن تنكر الدوله ملكيه الأرض للسكان فى يوم من الأيام و تمنع تنكيس و ترميم المبانى و تعطى مقابل مادى من أجل نقل السكان الى مكان أخر و يكون الطرف البائع هو أهالى المنطقه و ليس الدوله؟

ما المقصود بكلمة تطوير هل هو محو ذاكرة منطقه و تغيير قلب المدينه على الخريطه, أم عمل مشروعات تنمويه تصب فى تحسين معيشة سكان المدينه اليوميه ؟

أذا لم يتم الأجابه عن هذه الأسئله بمصداقيه و شفافيه و وعى بخطورة ما نقوم به من أجرائات على المدى الطويل تؤدى الى طمس معالم المكان الذى نعيش فيه, فلنودع القاهره و لنرحب بعاصمه جديده كرتونيه, فالحلقه بين المواطن و المسئول و بين الدوله و المجتمع مفقوده, و ما بولاق الا حلقه فى سلسله متصله لمحو ذاكرة أمه بفصل المكان عن الزمان.

نعم للتطوير لا للتهجير.

لقاء مع أهالى بولاق

صوره من مخطط القاهره 2050

جميع الصور لمنطقة بولاق من تصوير كاتب المقال على محمد احمد

Concepts in city branding

المراجع المختارة Selected References

Anholt, Simon . 2009. Places: Identity, Image and Reputation. Palgrave Macmillan.

Dinnie, Keith . 2011. City Branding: Theory and Cases. Palgrave Macmillan.

Florida, Richard. 2008. who’s Your City? Basic Books: New York.

Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of Creative Class. Basic Books: New York.

Frank. 2009. Place Branding: Glocal, Virtual and Physical Identities, Constructed, Imagined and Experienced. Palgrave Macmillan.

Kotler, Philip. 1993. Marketing Places. Free Press.

Moilanen, Teemu and Rainisto, Seppo. 2009. How to Brand Nations,Cities and Destinations: A Planning Book for Place Branding.

Destruction Alert: Villa Ispenian

Last month a historic villa from the early twentieth century with unique architectural eclecticism and which was filled with antiques and a rich art collection was looted and destroyed. Below is an article by Nevine El-Aref which first appeared on Al-Ahram Weekly on February 8, 2013.

Safe as houses? Not under the MSA

The luxuriously furnished villa of Kevork Ispenian on the Pyramids Road was looted and destroyed despite being on Egypt’s heritage list. Nevine El-Aref mourns the early 20th century edifice

At the Giza Plateau end of the Pyramids Road, near the Mena House Oberoi Hotel, the neo-Islamic villa of Kevork Ispenian stands wretchedly, its Mamluk and Ottoman features revealing the extent of the damage to this beautiful, historic house.

The destruction is over; the house stands in ruins. The garden, once laid out with an immaculate lawn and decorated with rare species of plants and trees and graced by a ceramic mosaic fountain, is now embellished with lumps of limestone and fallen bricks; littered with Mamluk mashrabeya (wooden lattice work) that formerly covered the windows and balustrades. Rubble and rubbish are scattered over the ground among the dead trees and palm trunks.

The house itself is in no better condition; on the contrary it is in a terrible state. Heaps of rubble and sand are piled on the floors, making it hard to tread on and walk through the rooms. Parts of the walls and decorated marble rails and slabs were scattered all around, while wooden doors engraved with foliage and geometrical decorations and beautiful mosaics that once decorated the arcades are broken and missing.

“What a loss!” Ahmad Al-Bindari, a researcher and photographer at the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT), told Al-Ahram Weekly sadly. He went on to say that the villa, constructed and designed by architect Charles Aznavour in 1935 as a rest house or weekend retreat for the Armenian father and son team of Kevork and Paul Ispenian, both collectors, was a great piece of heritage and its loss was tragic.

As befitted the house of collectors, several Mamluk and Ottoman artefacts, including those belonging to French architect Ambroise Baudry, were woven within its interiors. Baudry moved in 1871 to Egypt where he spent 15 years, during which he received many commissions, both private and royal. He constructed the Matatia edifices at Ataba in Downtown Cairo, which was demolished during the 1990s. In 1873 Baudry was given responsibility for the decoration of the interior of the salamlik (men’s quarters), the façade and the marble staircase of Khedive Ismail’s palace in Giza.

Baudry built a very distinguished residential villa for himself in Abdel-Khalek Tharwat Street in Downtown Cairo, which he decorated with authentic Mamluk and Ottoman artefacts. By the turn of the 20th century, Ispenian had bought Baudry’s genuine collection along with others when all the villas in Abdel-Khalek Tharwat Street were demolished and replaced with huge apartment buildings as part of a plan to convert the area into a commercial and residential zone.

According to Al-Bindari, the Ispenian Villa stayed in the possession of the Armenian family until the 1960s when it was then sold to the Abdel-Nour family, who in their turn sold it to the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA), now the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA). Meanwhile, the house contents were put on Egypt’s Islamic and Coptic Heritage List after that the house was abandoned. The doors were sealed in red wax, meaning that it was forbidden to enter and whoever stepped inside and removed the wax would be subjected to the law.

“I used to visit the house every now and then, but I have only seen it from the outside,” Al-Bindari told Al-Ahram Weekly. He added that during his tour of office he had grown fond of the house and its distinguished architectural elements, and had even invited his friends to come so he could show them its wonderful design. “But sometimes the wind doesn’t blow the way we want,” he said. Last spring, when Bendari went for his usual visit, he found the Ispenian Villa was not the one he used to admire. The iron gate lay on the floor, broken in two pieces. The structure was partially demolished, and the house and garden were a total mess and in the worst possible condition.

Al-Bindari was told that the house, like many other monuments and archaeological sites in Egypt, had been looted during the January 2011 Revolution when security in the country was almost non-existent. However, he told the Weekly that there was no way of knowing for certain what had happened or how the destruction had come about.

“Whoever stole the contents knew what he was doing,” Al-Bindari insisted. “It was systematic. Everything from the ornamented roof, the ornamental screens, the marble floors and even a historic column supporting the balcony have been stolen. They took their time and took everything apart.”

Bendari pointed out that the condition of the villa was not unusual by any standards. “These things happen all the time because of negligence,” he said.

So what did happen to the villa? Why was it possible for it to be subjected to so much looting and destruction? Is it the property of the antiquities department or not? If so, where is the new antiquities law and its amendment? Why is it not being implemented? One of the law’s articles is one that prohibits any encroachment and destruction of archeological sites and a prison term for offenders.

Mohamed Abdel-Rehim, head of the Islamic and Coptic monuments section, told the Weekly in a telephone interview that the building was not on the Egyptian antiquities list and that the villa was still owned by Abdel-Nour family. It was not a historic house which must come under the jurisdiction of the Historic Buildings law affiliated to the Giza governorate, nor did it come under the antiquities law or the MSA. He insisted that the building was not a listed monument.

Meanwhile, archaeologist Ahmed Taha, an inspector at the Giza section of the MSA, laid all the blame for neglecting the building on the Tourist and Antiquities Police (TAP), who failed to protect the house even though there is TAP station not 10 metres from the Ispenian Villa. He also said that during the tenure of former MSA minister Zahi Hawass there was a project to convert the historic villa into a museum for Islamic art, but no steps were taken to implement the plan. Taha’s statements are verified by an MSA official, who required anonymity. The official said that the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Bab Al-Khalk was stored in the Ispenian Villa while the museum was under lengthy restoration. Some objects from this collection are now on display in the MIA while others were transported to MSA storage rooms in the Salaheddin Citadel.

Mokhtar Al-Kasabani, professor of Islamic monuments in the archaeology department at Cairo University, who was the MSA consultant for Islamic monuments during the Hawass tenure, also supports Taha’s statements. He says the house is an MSA property and should come under the new antiquities law and its amendments.

The empty 30 feddan plot neighbouring the Ispenian Villa is owned by former minister of tourism Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour, who was willing to sell it to the MSA for a mega development project.

As a member of the committee who was in charge of the project, Kasabani said that the whole site in this prime area overlooking the Giza Plateau was earmarked to be transformed into a resort for tourists. It would include a small museum of Islamic art, a motel, bazaars selling replicas and souvenirs, a cafeteria and a bookstore for archaeology and art books. A parking area and a cinema would be also built as part of the complex. However, Kasabani said that regrettably the revolution had put the plan into jeopardy and it had been abandoned. The villa, he went on, was looted during the revolution and some of the mashrabeya and the mosaic fountain that once decorated the garden were missing.

“The current government and the MSA don’t care enough about Egypt’s history and its culture,” Kasabani told the Weekly. He added that a few months ago a contractor damaged the Ottoman warehouse and grist-mill of Madash-Merza in Boulaq Abul-Ela, and that even though he was caught red-handed he was set at large with a fine of only LE500. This contractor, he said, returned to Madash-Merza and resumed the demolition, and nobody moved a finger to save this great Ottoman monument, not even the MSA. Now he had built the first floor of his new building. What made things worse, Kasabani pointed out, was that all antiquities crimes were no longer prosecuted under the new antiquities law and its amendments which had priority on the court roll. Instead, they came under the usual criminal law, according to which a case can take years to be solved.

Kasabani suggests that to protect and rescue Egypt’s cultural and antiquities heritage, the MSA might be converted into an Independent Egyptian Authority affiliated directly to the president’s office rather than a ministry within the government echelon.

Muhammad Ali Street and the shifting symbolism of Cairo’s cityscape

[the arcades in Muhammad Ali Street.]

By Joseph Ben Prestel

For many passers-by, the Southeastern edge of Ataba Square might be marked by the hustle and bustle from a myriad of shops selling electronic gear, household amenities, and other essential goods for everyday life. In this neighborhood with buildings packed densely next to each other, the view up Muhammad Ali Street is surprising. As if unimpressed by its crowded surroundings, the street runs for about two kilometers straight towards Sultan Hassan Mosque. Looking up from Ataba Square, the dome of the mosque is visible at the very end of the thoroughfare. This perspective bears witness to the building initiative that Cairo went through in the second half of the nineteenth century, when Khedive Ismail (1863-1879) ruled the country. Yet Muhammad Ali Street dodges the “Paris on the Nile” narrative often used by travelogues and guidebooks to describe this period. Instead, the street carries a multiplicity of meanings that have been attributed to the urban environment over time. Allusions to it associate the street with a range of topics, from nineteenth-century Paris to Egyptian folk music.

Construction of Muhammad Ali Street was completed between 1872 and 1874. The street was part of the large urban renewal program under Khedive Ismail, whose aim was described by his minister of public works Ali Mubarak as making “the streets and buildings ready for the expansion of trade, to align the cityscape to the prosperity of the country.” Whereas Ismail’s building spree focused mainly on new quarters of the city, such as Ismailiyya or the area around Bab al-Luq, Muhammad Ali Street was one of the few interventions in the old part of town. The street was designed to provide an important shortcut between the eastern and western parts of the city. Prior to its construction, Cairenes had to cross at least five other neighborhoods in order to get from the then thriving quarter of Azbakiyya to the citadel. After 1874, Muhammad Ali Street offered a direct connection between these two centers of urban life. With a width of twenty meters, the new thoroughfare meant a tremendous intrusion in an area in which streets had up until then not been wider than six meters. The project required cutting through two kilometers of densely populated neighborhoods. According to some statistics, the construction of the street resulted in the destruction or partial destruction of about 700 buildings. A few structures on Muhammad Ali Street still show traces of this process today. In order to make way for the new street, the front part of the fourteenth-century mosque of Qusun was destroyed. The remainder of the building, however, was left intact and only a new facade was added, leaving behind evidence of the demolition process. With its unique view, its arcades, and a boulevard-like width, Muhammad Ali Street represents to some scholars a prime example of the kind of intervention that urban historians associate with late-nineteenth-century Paris. To them, the street is merely a Cairo version of the famed Rue de Rivoli in the French capital. Often, such accounts deplore the present state of the street, implying that Muhammad Ali Street lost some of the grandeur it held in the past.   

[Screen shot from the movie Sharia al-Hubb (1958), in which the street and its arcades are depicted.]

Yet the symbolism of the street was never reduced to a seemingly apparent allusion to Paris. Instead of turning into a mark of French-inspired urbanism, Muhammad Ali Street soon acquired an ambiguous reputation as a center of musical entertainment. As early as 1880, police reports warned that it attracted dubious women from the entertainment industry. At the same time, brass bands such as the Hasballah group started settling on the street. By the middle of the twentieth century, Muhammad Ali Street was well known as a center of Egyptian folk music. The street appeared in numerous cultural productions, such as the 1945 movie Sharia Muhammad Ali. In the 1958 blockbuster Sharia al-Hubb starring Abd al-Halim Hafez and Nagwa Fouad, the street serves as the backdrop for a story of social ascent. Through his musical talent, the poor Abd al-Munem finds his way to love and fortune, ultimately moving from Muhammad Ali Street to the opera house. The movie, which opens with a long shot of the street, exhibits Muhammad Ali Street as the place where musicians live, gather, and are contacted by potential customers, such as the hyped-up foreigner “Christo” who hires Abd al-Munem to teach music at a club for young ladies. According to studies on female dancers in Egypt, the entertainment industry on the street began to decline in the 1970s. Yet scholars  were still referring to the street as a center of folk music into the 1990s. In his Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt, Walter Armbrust wrote: “Muhammad ‘Ali Street is famed as the street of traditional entertainers. Even today, when most of the entertainment business has moved to Pyramids Road in Giza, or other newer glitzier neighborhoods, Muhammad ‘Ali Street is thick with shops selling lutes and other musical instruments.” The number of music shops might have dwindled further since the publication of Armbrust’s book in 1996, but the name still conjures images of Egyptian folk music. Three years ago, a Cairo-based TV station produced a program teaching belly dance under the title Sharia Muhammad Ali.

 It might be  a telling irony that this street, which some historians like to refer to as Cairo’s Rue de Rivoli, is popularly known as a center of Egyptian folk music, thus linking characters as diverse as Eugène Haussmann and Nagwa Fouad. To the superficial observer, none of these references are immediately apparent. Today, Muhammad Ali Street is packed with furniture shops. Rather than recalling lutes or nineteenth-century Paris, it appears more like a place where you would buy an armchair along with a three-piece suit. Looking at Muhammad Ali Street from different historical perspectives illustrates that there is more to the streets of Cairo than meets the eye. Instead of one essential meaning, its history reflects the multi-layered symbolism attached to streets, squares, or buildings. Despite the intentions of political groups or planners, the meaning of these urban spaces can hardly be fixed.  

The Revolution Added Two Years: On Cairo

The severed branches of local government

by Aaron Jakes

Sometime in the middle of last March, while I was still living in Cairo, I was working at my desk when I heard a noisy argument outside my window. The street in Zamalek where I lived was home to about a dozen little shops, along with a small café and a cafeteria, and I had long since learned to tune out the shouts and clamors that punctuated the busy working day outside. So I didn’t take much notice of the altercation or the more subdued commotion that followed for the next couple hours. When I headed downstairs and into the street a bit later, I was immediately struck by the brightness of the afternoon sun and by a queasy feeling that something was out of place. The cause of these unexpected sensations, I quickly discovered, lay before me in a pile of logs, neatly stacked next to the curb. Those logs were all that remained of the trees that had formerly lined the entire block.

Two of the neighborhood shopkeepers were standing together across the street, so I wandered over to ask what had happened. Earlier that morning, they explained, a large branch had fallen from one of the trees, damaging the hood and windshield of a car parked on the street. When the car’s owner arrived a short while later, he flew into a rage and demanded compensation from the proprietors of the shops nearest to the car, alleging they were at fault for failing to care for the tree. They argued back and eventually resolved the dispute by paying him a token sum, but once the disgruntled car owner had driven off, they gathered a meeting of the other shopkeepers. The trees, my friends explained, were the property and responsibility of the Governorate of Cairo, but it had been years since the city government had sent anyone to clean or prune them. It had therefore fallen to the small commercial establishments on the street to fill the void of basic municipal services, even in this most affluent neighborhood of the city. The shop owners had loved the trees and enjoyed the canopy of shade they provided. But the day’s events had convinced them that the cost and liability of upkeep were more than they could bear. With some reluctance and an awareness that they were breaking the law, they cut them all down.

I have found myself thinking a great deal about those trees in the months leading up to this week’s referendum on the fiercely contested final draft of Egypt’s new constitution. Since the drafting began, debates have raged over the religious identity this document assigns to the state, over the privileged status it reserves for the military, over the rights it does and does not protect, and over the balance of powers it describes between the different branches of the national government. But despite the breadth and intensity of the struggle over both the text of the draft and the process by which it was written, all sides have overwhelmingly focused on the central state that governs the nation as a whole.

In this context, there has been very little discussion of the seemingly mundane articles dealing with provincial and local government. But as my colleague Mohamed Elshahed recently argued in a fiery posting on his blog Cairobserver, these articles fail to address in any adequate fashion the problems of urban and local governance that affect so many aspects of people’s everyday lives. The issues, of course, extend well beyond the erosion of basic services that led my neighbors to take matters into their own hands and chop down some trees on our block. Indeed, as Elshahed and others have argued, the highly centralized and profoundly undemocratic structures of governance below the national level have played a central role in driving forward a process of rapid, haphazard, and devastatingly uneven urbanization across the country. The corruption, incompetence, and institutionalized impunity of provincial governors and local officials, moreover, played a crucial role in the pillaging of public resources and the unplanned allocation of land in both urban and rural areas under the Mubarak regime.

Read more »

Revolution, political transformation and urban space in “Ezbet El-Haggana”

[Initiative of cleaning the area’s entrance by young residents of neighboring districts in partnership with young residents from the area.]

Based on fieldwork conducted in March 2011, this article presents a snapshot view of the period immediately after the start of the revolution and how those events and political shifts affected the residents of one of Cairo’s ‘ashwa’eyat (Informal urban areas). The article first appeared in ArchiAfrika Newsletter in July 2012.

By Hassan el Mouelhi

“‘Aish, horreya, ‘adalah egtema’eyah”

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians kept on chanting (Bread, freedom, social justice) in the main squares all over Egypt for 18 days. People from different classes, different education levels, and different generations were there. Things are changing! And tomorrow will be better! This feeling was spread between Cairo inhabitants, especially the youth, regardless where they are living.

Relation to government: Police is a part of “El-H’okouma,” meaning, the government. Youth in Ezbet El Haggana (referred to as EH in the remainder of the article) developed a negative relationship with the police (fear, mistrust, hate) because they feel discriminated against only because of where they live. During the last 3 months of each year (when police officers are expected to meet their quotas in the number of arrests), it is advisable not to go outside the EH area alone late at night. If someone from EH was stopped by the police somewhere in Cairo, and was asked to show his I.D., and they recognized that he is from EH, chances are high for him to be treated disrespectfully, even if he had not done anything wrong. Two youth told me their stories with the police in the streets outside the EH area: when two young males were stopped by police and asked to show identification, the one with his place of residence in Heliopolis was set free, while his friend with a place of residence in the strangely named KM 4.5 (kilo arba3a we nos, the official name of EH) was arrested. The police give the youth of EH special treatment based on the perceptions of this particular part of Cairo.

When residents moved to KM 4.5 or EH area, they often refused to officially change their addresses as to avoid hassle by the authorities. This was the case with Mohamed El Fallah, who moved to KM 4.5 from El-Wayly (a historic district) nearly 12 years ago. Mohamed’s ID still lists El-Wayly as his area of residence.

As a reaction, this level of discrimination has caused the youth of EH to develop a feeling of hatred towards the police in general. The youth here were happy after the defeat of the police on 28^th January and their draw back and disappearance from Cairo streets, as this meant to them that they were free of the systematic discrimination that was part of their daily life. From their point of view, they thought that this was one of the most positive consequences of the revolution.

‘Ashwa’eyat image in Egyptian Media:

Through the semi-structured interviews, I tried to find out what the residents of the area think about different recent Egyptian films that discussed life in “’Ashwa’eyat.”  Ashraf said: “such crimes or illegal immoral activities like drug dealing and prostitution are shown in the movies as if we are all like that. While in reality, yes they exist, but spread in different streets, and in a very personal individualistic scale.”

Interviewees agreed that films and other media propagate negative attitudes towards places represented on the screen that they identify as “home.” Khalifa commented on how the media shows Ashwa’eyat residents as criminals and drug dealers:“We have bad people in our area, but in a certain small spot, not everywhere!”

[During the celebration of the revolution, March 2011]

Revolution and political transformation:

It was clear from my interviews with residents that they started to feel empowered after the revolution, feeling that their future might be better, hoping for more justice, especially social justice.

Ezbet El Haggana follows “Madinet Nasr” in the parliament elections. Madinet Nasr, in contrast with EH, is a formal planned district for middle-high class residents, known for its sufficiency of services. Parliament candidates usually start their campaigns in EH giving promises for providing more services to the area, more job opportunities and improving the quality of life in the area. In addition, those candidates who do not belong to the area distribute money and food bags to buy the votes of poor residents. Residents confirmed these practices continuing during recent election campaigns when politicians hire local middlemen to buy votes of the area’s most vulnerable residents.

EH residents are vulnerable to vote buying because of their desperate economic situation. Nagwa Raouf, architect, Emaret El-Ensan foundation- Founder/President board of trustees, witnessed drastic changes in the behaviors of the residents and the way they deal with corruption in the early days of the revolution. She commented on the first days of the revolution and its impact on the area: “…there is a lack of money in the area, because most residents earn their money on daily bases in the field of construction, which has almost stopped during and the days after the revolution till now (March 2011)”

The general economic recession, and especially in the field of construction that followed the revolution was reflected on the whole EH community. But it wasn’t only those working in construction who were affected. Mahmoud, a 25-year-old café waiter originally from a village in “Fayoum,” commented on the costumers of the coffee shop where he works:“The revolution is a disaster, everything in the country stopped, no work and no police. The coffee shop is suffering, as for the customer who was used to drink 5-6 cups of tea a day before the events, now, he drinks just one, if he comes at all! The truck owners who were used to have 5-6 transfers per day, now, its only once or even nothing!”

[Amir fel Tahrir: Amir, 21, from Ezbet El Haggana area, sharing in the demonstrations in Tahrir square, Feb 2011]

Sustaining changes in attitudes:

Nagwa told me some stories that show how this community could confront problems, based on their solidarity and good communal relations:

1.     Gas tubes got to be very expensive (50 L.E. each) while normally it costs 10 L.E!  This led some youth to face this phenomenon, and they gathered the empty tubes from the neighbors, gathered 10 pounds from each of the neighbors, rented a car, and went to the main storage, paid 5 pounds for each, and 5 pounds for the car rent, and returned and distributed the tubes on the neighbors again.

2.     The quantity of bread produced by local bakeries was not enough of because of flour shortages. Flour for local bakeries, which is subsidized by the government, was sold to private bakeries for maximum profit. Some residents decided to face this policing bakeries and preventing owners from selling subsidized flour to private bakeries. Inhabitants pressured local bakeries to meet the demand for bread by negotiating additional work shifts.

3.     young residents initiated street cleaning campaigns resembling what happened in Tehrir Square. It was repeated in different EH neighborhoods, and was joined by children.

When cleaning the streets, 17-year-old Sara experienced some difficulties because of the stigma associated with the act of collecting garbage. Eventhough she was cleaning her community some of her neighbors, particularly older generations, made light of her activity. She wondered “… are they used to live within garbage, and can not live with a clean street?!” Her group of friends supported each other until they completed the task. 

Some links were established with neighboring richer communities. Cleaning the entrance of the area was arranged by “Al Seddik” mosque youth NGO located in “Massaken Sheraton” which is considered part of Heliopolis, a middle/high class district. On Friday 4.3.2011, about 150 boys and girls, aging from 16-26 years old gathered from different surrounding districts (Heliopolis, Nasr City, Al Rehab, El Tagamo’).  They swept the streets, removed garbage, and painted fences. Youth from both genders from districts of varying economics worked together, made friends, exchanged stories and perhaps established for themselves a newfound community of active citizens. 

Another resident, Ashraf spoke of the impact of the revolution on the attitudes of the daily labor. It happened just after some weeks from the start of the revolution and inspired by it, the concrete workers had a protest, asking for raises in daily fees from 60 to 65 L.E; it took them 2 days to get what they asked for. Hany (20 years) said about the revolution:

“…We want to eliminate corruption (Ezz, Adly, Shafik). Finding a job needs connections, and treatment in Police station was unfair. It will take some time, change won’t happen overnight.”

Three of the young residents accompanied me to Tahrir Square on one of the large Friday demonstrations in March 2011, a couple of weeks after the stepping down of Mubarak. They were proud of being there and of taking part in the process of changing the political reality of Egypt. I knew from them that they (among others) wanted to go to Tahrir Square again for other demonstrations. However, by late March 2011 the media had started to use terms such as “looters” and “thugs” and they were afraid of being mistaken for criminals, only because they live in KM 4.5 (EH). This shows that the mistrust problem between EH residents, especially the younger generation, and the government is still unresolved.

To conclude, the Egyptian scene in the last year following the revolution has witnessed monumental change in Egyptians’ aspirations and dreams. This has had a felt impact on the behaviors and attitudes of Egyptians in urban spaces, particularly previously disadvantaged residents such as those from EH. Their awareness regarding their right to the city has increased. The question now: How can this newly found right to the city be secured through the subsequent political process?

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Hassan el Mouelhi is an architect, Emaret El-Ensan foundation board member, DAAD scholar and PhD student at Technical University in Berlin, Habitat unit. This article is a part of Hassan’s ongoing PhD research.

Ali Alraouf: Critical reflections on walls

Walking, harassment and the urban geography of two Maadis

By Nadine Hafez

In Cairo it often feels like you have no choice when it comes to your transportation: You’re either driving and stuck in traffic, or you’re in a cab and both you and the driver are stuck in traffic, or you take the metro and you’re stuck in a whole other kind of traffic. So for someone like myself who likes to walk, I try to seize any opportunity that presents itself to walk the streets of Cairo. I live in Maadi and study in Cairo University. So my route back home is usually Cairo University to Maadi by metro and then home inside Maadi a pied.  

But walking in Cairo doesn’t come without its challenges. Every girl and woman in Cairo faces the reality of sexual harassment – primarily verbal – on a daily basis and Maadi is no exception. During my walks, however, I’ve come to notice an interesting phenomenon: The harassment starts and stops at a certain point in Maadi; a street that acts like a switch that turns the harassment on and off.

I’ll try to first quickly sketch a pedestrian map of my walks and a basic structure of Maadi. Maadi is divided into two camps, Old Maadi and New Maadi. We usually take Road 9 as the starting point. The other end of Maadi would extend a little beyond Nasr Street. The fine line that separates between the two is Road 216: Road 9 to Road 216 is Old Maadi, Road 216 onwards is New Maadi. On my walks, I cross the entirety of Old Maadi from Road 9 – where the Sakant metro station is – to the end of Road 216 and turn right onto Al Zahraa road to head home. It’s at that specific turn that the sexual harassment begins.

[The fine line dividing old and new Maadi, shown above is the intersection of 216 Street and al-Zahraa Road.]

It seems that there is a relation between the architecture of the different parts of Maadi and the sexual harassment we’re subjected to and it runs deeper than just sexual harassment. Old Maadi is a comfortable space i.e. it’s comprised of low residential buildings and villas as well as many foreign embassies between which the spaces are generous; enough to host a garage, a backyard and ample distance to avoid any trespassing on the next door neighbor’s privacy or peace of mind. In there, property is respected by all, because the boundaries of each individual’s or family’s property are very clear. New Maadi on the other hand is much like many other areas in Cairo: condensed residential buildings, scores of stories high and barely any space for parking let alone backyards. The lines that separate my property from yours are very blurry: any one can park in this spot on this street or that in front of any building any time of day.

In reference to sexual harassment, my theory is that one of the factors contributing to its widespread nature is a certain understanding in a large sector of the population’s mentalities that women are property not citizens, i.e. their bodies are public property. It’s why certain people give themselves the right to trespass my right to walk the streets in dignity; his right is superior to mine given the difference in citizenship status.

Accordingly, where property is respected so am I and vice versa. Architecture doesn’t only reflect our decisions and social design; it is also sometimes reflected in our behavior because it’s a two way relationship.

This phenomenon is therefore not a reflection of the relationship between male and female citizens in Cairo only, but also of the relationship between citizens and property and consequently between them and the city. We suffer from something I call valueless ownership. We don’t care to preserve our property as much as we do to maximize the benefits and pleasures obtained from them. Despite the fact that property would need to be preserved in order for you to benefit from it, we’ve reached a point of depreciation of value and a focus on ownership that is blind to anything else.

We thus treat the space of the city we navigate on a daily basis with its function only in mind: it’s no more than a geographical roadmap for citizens to reach desired destinations in order to enhance certain relationships, or get to work and support ourselves financially, or visit the mosque or church or any other ends, the city is always the means, almost never the end in and of itself.

Perhaps if the city does become an end in and of itself, if we care to preserve it as our public property and manage to draw the clear lines between what is public and the private property of every individual in Cairo the women and men of Cairo will have safer, better streets to walk.

Critical notes on Egyptian public buildings

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