Is it enough just to say you have been somewhere? A part of me would have been content to have stepped off the plane, taken a deep polluted breath and got back on again saying "Well, now I've been to Egypt, tick that one off the list" but it's not enough to have just been somewhere, I need to experience the place, absorb the culture, the atmosphere.
I don't know what I expected coming to Cairo, palm trees, desert, things to photograph, a place stuck in the past. The reality is something quite different, it's the past living alongside the present, I wouldn't say in harmony but definitely coexisting. The first month was testing, the five am call to prayer from the megaphone right outside the window and the constant hassle from street hawkers.
Mohandeseen was a concrete maze of high-rise apartment blocks flanked by an over-pass which forked into two grey rivers cutting through the district leaving two wedge shapes, our apartment was in the wedge closest to the Nile but we were still a good 5 minutes walk and a busy main road away. It was a six story, 50s/60s Egyptian building, a grey rendered cube with a balcony on each level, the living room and one of the two bedrooms opened out onto the balcony which looked out across to the mosque and the street below, when we moved in on the fifth of January, noone had cleaned the apartment in five months, the landlord intended for us to move into the first, not the fifth floor apartment but one look in that dark and cramped ground floor flat was enough for us to barter over the phone for an hour for the other empty space the doorman, Mohamed kindly showed us.
This area of Mohandeseen was supposed to be a middle class area populated by expats and well off Egyptians but there were very few westerners and the streets were littered with rubbish. Men and boys in traditional galabayyas sold fresh oranges and bananas, another tomatoes from carts drawn up in front of the mosque across the street, their donkeys chewing on the off cuts from root vegetables. The mu'ezzin crying out the call to prayer from the mosque each day happened to be tone deaf, the long tones at the end of each passage a quarter of a tone out of pitch, at first we were highly amused by this but it soon became more like torture. If we were lucky we'd sleep through the 5am call and I would try to leave the apartment before the next, around midday. I walked the streets of Cairo, from Mohandeseen to Downtown, walking the 30 minute trek across the island of Gesira, along the overpass to Midan Tahrir.
I don't know what I expected coming to Cairo, palm trees, desert, things to photograph, a place stuck in the past. The reality is something quite different, it's the past living alongside the present, I wouldn't say in harmony but definitely coexisting. The first month was testing, the five am call to prayer from the megaphone right outside the window and the constant hassle from street hawkers.
Mohandeseen was a concrete maze of high-rise apartment blocks flanked by an over-pass which forked into two grey rivers cutting through the district leaving two wedge shapes, our apartment was in the wedge closest to the Nile but we were still a good 5 minutes walk and a busy main road away. It was a six story, 50s/60s Egyptian building, a grey rendered cube with a balcony on each level, the living room and one of the two bedrooms opened out onto the balcony which looked out across to the mosque and the street below, when we moved in on the fifth of January, noone had cleaned the apartment in five months, the landlord intended for us to move into the first, not the fifth floor apartment but one look in that dark and cramped ground floor flat was enough for us to barter over the phone for an hour for the other empty space the doorman, Mohamed kindly showed us.
This area of Mohandeseen was supposed to be a middle class area populated by expats and well off Egyptians but there were very few westerners and the streets were littered with rubbish. Men and boys in traditional galabayyas sold fresh oranges and bananas, another tomatoes from carts drawn up in front of the mosque across the street, their donkeys chewing on the off cuts from root vegetables. The mu'ezzin crying out the call to prayer from the mosque each day happened to be tone deaf, the long tones at the end of each passage a quarter of a tone out of pitch, at first we were highly amused by this but it soon became more like torture. If we were lucky we'd sleep through the 5am call and I would try to leave the apartment before the next, around midday. I walked the streets of Cairo, from Mohandeseen to Downtown, walking the 30 minute trek across the island of Gesira, along the overpass to Midan Tahrir.
The bridge over the Nile to Downtown looked out over the restaurant boats and the noisy feluccas parked, awaiting customers on the river bank. Blairing from loudspeakers, the feluccas played oriental Egyptian chart toppers to the point of distortion. As I walked down the steps and off the bridge onto the corniche, every other man along the promanade asked me if I would like a ride in one of these deaf traps, I pretended not to speak English "mish kallim engleesee". I've learned that the best way to enjoy the sights of Cairo is to stick some headphones in and use this as an excuse to ignore every tout who tries to entice you to a papyras museum/felucca ride/tour. If you look like you're not Egyptian then the enterprising locals will just keep coming and for me with a camera around my neck, I'm just asking for it.
The felucca boats are very popular with local couples, they seem to me to be something like a fairground ride, with their neon lights and flashing coloured bulbs and the loud music. Although, in Islam, men and women aren't supposed to even hold hands together if you're not married, I witnessed dozens of young couples flirting whilst looking out over the Nile from the bridges or riding the noisy feluccas.
On the corniche, by the steps down to the boats there were men selling drinks, some sold bottles of 7up and Pepsi with coloured plastic beakers and straws, others sold what looked like hot apple cider which they had cooking in a dirty old pot over a gas camping stove. I couldn't be sure of what this brown liquid was as I didn't want to risk trying it for fear of the repercussions.
Taxi drivers, motorcyclists, and everyone else on the roads use their horns constantly, I have seen push bikes with the bell rigged up to ping everytime the front wheel goes round, many drivers have installed police style sirens and loud speakers so they can shout at each other and this racket carries on without really letting up 24/7.
Some of the fruit sellers, the ones that like to cycle around the neighbourhood with their carts use megaphones to inform the residents of the great deals they have, there is also the rag and bone man with his megaphone shouting "bekya!". They say the city never sleeps but is it given the chance?
The felucca boats are very popular with local couples, they seem to me to be something like a fairground ride, with their neon lights and flashing coloured bulbs and the loud music. Although, in Islam, men and women aren't supposed to even hold hands together if you're not married, I witnessed dozens of young couples flirting whilst looking out over the Nile from the bridges or riding the noisy feluccas.
On the corniche, by the steps down to the boats there were men selling drinks, some sold bottles of 7up and Pepsi with coloured plastic beakers and straws, others sold what looked like hot apple cider which they had cooking in a dirty old pot over a gas camping stove. I couldn't be sure of what this brown liquid was as I didn't want to risk trying it for fear of the repercussions.
Taxi drivers, motorcyclists, and everyone else on the roads use their horns constantly, I have seen push bikes with the bell rigged up to ping everytime the front wheel goes round, many drivers have installed police style sirens and loud speakers so they can shout at each other and this racket carries on without really letting up 24/7.
Some of the fruit sellers, the ones that like to cycle around the neighbourhood with their carts use megaphones to inform the residents of the great deals they have, there is also the rag and bone man with his megaphone shouting "bekya!". They say the city never sleeps but is it given the chance?
