On my second day in Egypt, I energetically disembarked from my flat in Hedayeq al-Ma’adi, intent on acquiring a mobile phone. I promptly got lost. But after righting myself, I found the blue pedestrian bridge that crossed the Metro tracks, and made my way among the brightly colored kiosks and shops that comprised the market, and onto Road 9 – Ma’adi’s “main street.” Hedayeq el-Ma’adi, often referred to as just Hedayeq (Arabic for “gardens”) is a poorer section of town that sits on the northern edge of Ma’adi, a district which during the twentieth century gained a reputation as home to expatriates and Egyptians alike—the history of which I came to Cairo to study. On this particular day it was mid-September, Ramadan, and upwards of 100°F, yet I felt compelled to walk the two kilometers to central Maadi and begin taking in my surroundings.
One of the first things that struck me on that walk, and would continue to confront me over the next three months, were the sidewalks. I had been to Cairo before – about ten years earlier, to visit family. I saw then how adept Egyptian pedestrians are at sharing the streets with cars, motorcycles and bikes. So on my little venture to Vodaphone, seeing people walking primarily on the street was no surprise. Even Lonely Planet instructs visitors to “walk like an Egyptian,” and move about on the streets. What surprised me was that the sidewalks did in fact exist, and for a good part of my walk they were quite nice, yet largely unused.
I thought about how one need look no further than the lining of Cairo’s streets to see evidence of Egypt’s history and the different directions past planners had attempted to guide the country. Right here on the street, one could see the residue of alternative visions for Egypt’s future. Perhaps colonizers laid these in hopes of fashioning a lively, yet safe street life in the area. If they were part of Europeans’ intentions, had they been discarded by Egyptian’s in the 1950s (a turning point I would come back to again and again)? Did that make walking on the streets a sign of post-colonial resistance, now so embedded in the culture that it was an way of life? And was it even possible to make such a clear distinction between European and Egyptian intentions, when they seemed so often intermingled?
As these thoughts formed in my mind, I also questioned my line of thought. Perhaps I was inflating sidewalks’ significance. Yet, in the U.S. the value and safety of a neighborhood is signified by the existence of sidewalks. Could they really be that fruitless a point of observation when there is an entire body of scholarship on dirt in South Asia and beards in Central Europe? (As the sidewalks continued to resonate with me, I observed that dirt also played a key role in their maintenance, a point I will return to later.) My mind bounced around these thoughts as I passed the point where the market ended and the Road 9 officially began. Here the street widened, and more easily accommodated two-way traffic. Until now the western side of the road was primarily sand and ash, occupied by a line of parked cars. With this wider street, there were now sidewalks on either side, with all manner of traffic moving about in between.
The further south I moved, the nicer the area became, and as the shops displayed more wealth, the sidewalks also became nicer. I didn’t notice until later that the path varied slightly in front of each shop. And it wasn’t until I reached the center of Maadi, nearer the Metro station, that I observed the careful attention shopkeepers paid to keeping the space in front of their doors clean.
It took another six weeks before I realized that what I called “sidewalks” might be something quite different to many Egyptians. I had decided to make the trek to Heliopolis on one of my days off from class. Again referring to Lonely Planet, I took the Metro downtown and then boarded a rickety tram to Misr al-Gadeeda (New Egypt), as Heliopolis is called in Arabic. (I later learned that I could have stayed on the Metro the entire way, and saved myself at least an hour of travel time, but that is beside the point.) I spent the afternoon walking around the area, strolling past Hosni Mubarak’s residence, and narrowly escaping the confiscation of my camera when the secret police caught me snapping a few shots of the palatial estate. “Asafa” (I’m sorry), I muttered, and darted down the street, thankful to look like a tourist.
Along a commercial street I observed the building of a new shop, which was nearly ready for opening. One could not get close to it, however, because an entirely new sidewalk was being laid out in front. I had to get a picture of this curious bit of construction. It felt like my chance to get a few answers about why these sidewalks seemed so important, and yet underused. I watched as the workers carefully fit together octagonal red bricks, filling the gaps with fine sand.
Here it occurred to me that what I considered a walkway was actually more of an entryway. Rather than being a public thoroughfare, it was an extension of the privately-owned shop behind it. Traversing it, then, verged on initiating a business transaction, or at least piquing the shopkeeper’s attention. It made sense. After all, so much of Egyptian social life occurred in the spaces between doors, rather than behind them. Here neighbors sipped tea, cheered on their favorite soccer team, or just watched the people pass. This was where grocers displayed their freshest produce and other shops paraded special items of interest. These spaces were not so much intended for people merely passing by, as they were for more intentional meetings of shoppers, business colleagues, and friends.
My observation was only reinforced when I considered the daily labor that goes into keeping these entryways clean. It rarely rains in Cairo, yet the streets of Maadi and other areas are usually wet. The water comes from the seemingly endless labor poured into cleaning the sidewalks. One would be challenged to walk down Road 9 and not dodge at least one shopkeeper hosing and mopping the bricks or stone in front of the store. The attention is deliberate, and personal. This is not a public sanitation project. It is part of caring for a business. Foreigners are quick to describe Egypt as dirty (and when it comes to garbage collection, this is an easy accusation to make), yet one cannot deny the careful attention paid to maintaining the cleanliness of the entryway. Considering all of this work, seeing these areas as walkways underestimates their more complex role.
Egyptians don’t have an exact word for “sidewalk.” When I asked my language teacher, she referred to it as the “platform,” and seemed surprised that I was even asking. Whatever I might have observed about the use of these spaces does not resolve questions about the intensions of past builders. It does, however, speak to the multiple uses and meanings that coexist in the present.
Egyptians, particularly those in Ma'adi, seem aware that Westerners see their entryways as places for walking. How much that understanding goes the other way, I am not sure—foreigners are, however, familiar with and often quite fond of Egyptian street culture. For me, this observation offered a personal lesson on coexistence and multiplicity among the seemingly mundane. It reinforces my interest in the significance of daily life. And it makes me wonder how negotiations over the meanings of policy and other ostensibly important deliberations fail to recognize the ongoing, and unspoken negotiations that go on beneath of the feet of every Cairo resident.
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