There and Back Again 9: Cairo

During the Roman Empire Cairo wasn’t much of a place. It was overshadowed by Alexandria, downstream on the Nile Delta, founded by Alexander, the capital of the Ptolemies . Boy howdy have times changed! As the capital of Egypt today, Cairo is a classic example of urban sprawl. Traffic is just about impossible; it takes an hour to drive anywhere; mass transit is only to be adventured if you can read Arabic fluently and are male. The air pollution, as you can see, is notable. We were with a party of Americans, and we unanimously agreed that we would never, ever, dare to drive in Cairo. Just watching them on the road made us faint and weak.

The authorities have been wrestling with the urban issues for years. A new administrative center has been built, far out in the desert, to be connected to the urban center by mass transit. Suburbs sprawl north and south. Gigantic and glorious museums have been erected. The general plan is to get all the residents out and leave Cairo’s central core to the tourists. This has been successfully done in Carcassonne, Barcelona, and Sarlat-la-Canede, so why not here? But until the work is complete (the Grand Egyptian Museum is a decade late now and still counting to opening day) Cairo is not a fun town.

But how beautiful some of the bits are! Look at the dome on that mosque! Or this, a mosque in the central marketplace at night. You could write a novel, with this image alone.

A great book about modern Cairo and its issues is THE BURIED, by Peter Hessler. This focuses on the period of the Arab Spring, in the late 1990s, but Cairo doesn’t change easily. This is its blessing, and its curse.