Cairo - diversity as wealth

Cairo is a very poor city. Not even in the wealthier neighbourhoods do we experience a quality of living in public or private spaces.
After ten days in this city, I realise what an extraordinarily beautiful apartment we live in and how well built the house is.

At first, we were shocked by how dirty and run-down are the surrounding streets, the entrance, the stairwell. For the most part, the road surface and lighting are completely missing; the entrance door can be clicked into place but not locked. It is mostly open, through lack of need and because the street cats are fed by our neighbours. The marble floor covering is only the same in a few places; the missing areas are usually filled with some kind of concrete. The railing hangs onto a staircase where large chunks have broken out, everything is full of cobwebs, waste is blowing into the entrance, thick dust is everywhere, stains from all sorts of leftovers, it seems that it is never swept here, let alone mopped. Our apartment entrance door is the old one, with a thick steel grille in front of it, but nobody needs it. There's no breaking-in here. Everything seems very safe; no one would steal from you despite the many things that we would lack.

We enter a wonderfully exotic apartment in a turn-of-the-century apartment building, newly renovated, still with the old, coloured floor tiles in the large entrance hall, lacquered floorboards, many white shutter doors and off-white walls, rooms about 3m high, every room with many doors, large windows and small balconies. A free-flowing living arrangement that can also be found in Central Europe from this period. There is no shortage of anything in this apartment. The owner has excellent taste for very good art and photographs in modern frames, some pieces of ancient Egyptian craft, candlesticks, armchairs, tables, a large divan to lounge on.

But it is cold when we arrive at this apartment. Too cold to feel comfortable. The only air conditioner is past its prime and won’t heat properly; two oil radiators are supposed to help. There are many complaints from us about this. The air conditioning expert arrives, and the instructions are clearer. On the third day it is wonderfully warm. Then the power goes out. Within about 2 hours the craftsmen reconnect the dilapidated old cables in a most adventurous way. Let there be light…

In Cairo's old Islamic districts, you can find many impressive buildings from times when Cairo was prosperous and influential: mosques, palaces, churches, villas, fountains… but almost all of these buildings are collapsing, and many have already crumbled to dust in large pieces. It's not water that does the work here. It's time: frames are falling apart, cantilevers are failing, roofs are giving up, beams are cracking, plaster is crumbling from the joints… it's very sad to watch when you've been fooled by your usual romantic gaze. So, the whole city is one dusty pile, too many people trying to live their lives, too many tuk-tuks and cars contaminating the air in the confined city streets until you can hardly breathe. There are no traffic lights, traffic signs or lanes. Everyone is looking to win their way through the chaos with loud smoking exhausts and horns, endless horns. Dogs, cats, people, children, sellers with huge grids on their heads, balancing, loaded with bread, a team of horses brings ice, a donkey gets the leftovers of the vegetables, buses squeeze past each other, both having to make the same turn, shouting, whistling, music from loudspeakers… the calls of the muezzins.

The 6-year-old is sent around the corner by his waiting mother to pick something up quickly, others play football amidst all the chaos, men enjoy their tea, the filled dumplings are taken to the neighbour, rolls of carpets are delivered on their shoulders, on a cart a father and his sons carry a converted steel roller shutter 2.5m long, against the direction of travel on the multi-lane road to the workshop. A bored son of the seller feeds the geese waiting on a stack of plastic boxes to be slaughtered. The garbage collectors layer the collected garbage on tuk-tuks, they press it into bags, hoist it onto the cart who’s back is so full that pieces fall back down the other side. They have no choice, they try.

It's hard to believe how everything works smoothly. Only once did I see two vehicles touch. Nobody bumps you or forces you to jump to the side. And alongside all this, the many different shops, the small workshops, the families settled into ruins: the workshop for mopeds, soldering missing parts, the blacksmith shop, café, carpenter, bakery, fruit seller, tailor, tyre collector, shoemaker, street food, a few chairs in the tangle, limp and torn awnings, stones blocking parking spaces, piles of garbage, cat hangouts, dogs in the dirty sand, sprinkling water to reduce the dust… endless this coexistence.

Everything in poverty and yet so rich in impressions, dirty and yet so full of perceptions, hectic and yet so full of sympathy and respect, always a smile somewhere, much is impossible and yet everything is tackled.
 
Unfortunately, in vain in so many places.

January 2026