In Cairo, everything happens at street level. The oppression of heat is mirrored in the oppressive complexity of the streets, in the endlessly austere and ramshackle buildings that border them, in the myriad alleyways that run between them. However, like water running effortlessly between huge boulders, the people of Cairo flow through these streets with near-frictionless ease; the result is a near-constant sense of motion, of deliverance, activity, hustle; people making their way, however they can.
On a recent trip to Cairo I stayed in an apartment block approximately half an hour from the centre of the city. I was dubious at first, but my friend and I soon agreed that the location was a perfect way to start and end our days; the madness of downtown was lessened out in the peripheries and we could walk the streets relatively hassle-free. Our room was on the 7th floor of a towering block of hazy brown in the Sheraton district, just one of dozens peppered, like every other building, with dusty, cable-strung AC units.
The huge, brooding weights of the blocks are startlingly different to the way housing is constructed in the West, if not exactly in form, but in number. The blocks could be seen as Brutalist masterpieces if situated in London; here they sit side-by-side as a raw practicality, populating the outskirts of Cairo with an endless sea of huge, dusty brown cubes. From afar they seem intimidating, blank, even though the open windows, curtains, and random dashes of colour from drying clothes gives some hint to the human presence that is their reason for being. Even so, the life within these blocks seems studiously squirreled away, hidden from the bustle of the street behind shutters and the mirrored veneer of closed windows.
Approaching these monumental buildings, however, a vibrancy at odds with their brutal exterior becomes apparent. At the base of the unflinchingly brown ten storey blocks, colour, activity and the hallmarks of a working community all begin to emerge, their scale becoming suddenly human. People walk calmly to and fro; fruit vendors and small shacks selling crisps, drinks, cigarettes and chocolate stay open all night with their wares perpetually on show, and people relax in cafés, shops and small businesses, with everyone seeming to know everyone else, at least on some level. We could appreciate this scale; though still packed tightly together, there was more of a sense of space here; room, and time, to think.
Unlike the tight, winding sprawl of streets we navigated elsewhere in Cairo, the streets between these blocks retain an element of order, while still being totally unique, shimmering with the endless detail of dusty marble floors, tiles, small shop-fronts and potted and carefully watered plants. They divide the ordered grid of the blocks like nameless Manhattan streets, long corridors of space slicing the regimented blocks apart, leaving just thirty feet between them. The space is at once close and yet somehow cosy beneath the towering, cable-lashed walls.
Between these blocks the quality of the sun changes, becoming something in its own right. It is not just a communal drenching, but instead filtering down through the structures, illuminating hanging towels, accenting the AC units, and alighting on the various products the vendors have on show. In contrast, the coolness of shadow then becomes that more inviting, more serene; ode to the scale of the buildings the alleyways remain in this shade most of the day, and retain a degree or two of coolness when compared to the exposure of the roadside.
The bakers were easily the humblest, friendliest people we met. They charged us next to nothing for the delicious breads that we ate each morning, huge hoops drizzled with a thin sweet glaze and sesame seeds, smaller rings that had been snipped with scissors and stuffed with date paste, and small, bite-sized “pizza” breads that had a scattering of olives, sun-dried tomatoes and seasoning over their light, fluffy bases. We remarked at their calm, unphased attitude, their honesty and humbleness coming as somewhat of a relief after the sometimes tricky interactions experienced elsewhere.The first café we visited ripped us off, charging what we immediately clocked as far over the odds for two Turkish coffees and two bottles of water. We negotiated a small decrease in price with a local who spoke some English, but we were never going to leave the place happy with the amount we’d paid. The following days we explored elsewhere in the blocks, and found a small place that gave us good coffee, mint tea and shisha for fair prices. And, like the bakers, we felt an appreciation upon each return visit.
We visited a portable food stall in the blocks, where we were given Shwarma wraps with pickle, fries, and a home-made tahini and chilli sauce, all made by a friendly local. It was night, but the streets were thronged with people; we learnt quickly that the concept of an early night in Cairo doesn’t exist. We were immediately seated on colourful plastic chairs and introduced to the people who sat round chatting, smoking shisha, and drinking various essentially cold drinks bought from the café nearby. The football was displayed on a huge outdoor screen, watched adoringly by huge crowds of enthusiastic followers that jumped up in tentative elation whenever the ball approached the other team’s net.
We ended our nights sitting on the steps of our apartment block, drinking and eating snacks bought from an intensely bright corner store, reminiscing about the day.With the mornings comes a beautiful sense of peace, before the true heat and activity of the day begins. A delicate, angled sunshine greeted us as we walked between the buildings, the Islamic call-to-prayer ringing ominous and serious from undisclosed locations, bouncing between the blocks to hang, like the heat, everywhere in the air. We started our days in this way, wandering through the alleys, relishing the calm, finding endless points of interest, seeing how the people that lived and worked here carried out their daily activities. We remarked on our last morning at how often this was the most pleasant, relaxing part of our days, sitting in a small café on the edge of a block, chatting, drinking mint tea and soaking in the morning like locals.
People come to Cairo for the sights, for the tourist attractions, for the energy. But in those things it is easy to be swept along, hustled out of your money and your attention. In dwelling in the periphery, where people simply live their lives away from the tourist traps, we found a microcosm of everything that Cairo can be; all of its adventure, intrigue, mystery, all of the bargaining, all of its hospitality. Cairo is a place of extremes, of light and dark, of energy and of sloth, of mystery and raw practicality, all of them jutting upwards, like the calling towers of mosques, above the everyday work and activity of the city. In the latticework alleyways of Sheraton we found a place where we could witness the city’s entire spectrum at a pace more of our own devising; all of it seen, in the end, from a cosy stoop at the base of just another block.