"Expat Heaven"

If you look for information about Maadi in the Lonely Planet Guide to Egypt, as I did a few weeks before we left Ithaca, you will find it’s literally not on the map for the same reasons that guidebooks to New York City don’t say much about Greenwich, Connecticut; Chicago guidebooks mention Winnetka and Lake Forest only in passing; and the authors of Washington, D. C. guidebooks don’t devote many pages to the tourist attractions in Bethesda, Maryland. If you graze in Cairo, The Practical Guide, however, a guide not for Anglophone tourists but for Anglophone residents and potential residents, you’ll find Maadi at every turn. You’ll find information about Maadi bookstores; the local cycling club (I’m an avid cyclist but I value my life too highly to get on a bike in Cairo); Maadi real estate (to lease or buy); medical care in Maadi; Maadi gyms; and Maadi shopping. In the section about neighborhoods, the authors have this to say:

"Maadi is expat heaven, very suburban, very expensive, very American. Some people love it and never leave it; other would not be caught dead living there. Malls, ugly high-rises, and heavy traffic alternate with tree-lined streets and lovely villas. Excellent schools, good shopping, some decent restaurants, not much nightlife, very community and family oriented. Impossible street naming system involving the apparently random assignment of random numbers. The Metro into town is great. (99)"

The Cairo Maps supplement to the Practical Guide has an overview map of metropolitan Cairo on the opening pages. The overview map shows the page numbers of the detail maps that will follow. For the most part, they show a continuous grid of boxes, extending from the lower right (southwest) to the upper left (northeast), like a half-finished scrabble game filling in on a diagonal. The southwest corner is Giza, the area that borders the pyramids. The northeast is Heliopolis, home to the Egyptian President and many of his ministries. The most upscale shopping and housing in Cairo is in Heliopolis and Nasr City, the adjacent district. A few squares in the southeast corner, unconnected with the rest of the grid, as if placed there by a scrabble player who did not understand the rules, show you more or less where Maadi is.

If Deborah and I had come to Cairo for a two month stay before Hannah was born we would probably be living in Zamalek, “the in-town expat heaven” (99). Because we arrived with a four month old baby and a non-Arabic speaking daddy we are living in Maadi. The air is cleaner than in central Cairo (Cairo has some claim on the dubious honor of world’s most polluted city); the streets are leafier; the crowds are smaller; the streets are quieter; it’s easier to cross the street. This last may sound like a minor point but the absence of traffic lights in Cairo shocks a first-time visitor, even one who has been warned. To cross the street, you edge out, anticipate a gap between cars, and walk confidently across one lane, betting your life that oncoming traffic will slow down slightly. Drivers in other lanes expect you to pause between lanes as you wait for the next gap. So far I’ve tried it on a few of the quietest, most residential streets of Maadi, on a few less quiet streets, and in a few hair-raising roundabouts. I’ve seen old women, schoolchildren, families cross three or four lanes of fast moving traffic. I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to do that, even alone. My natural caution about stepping in front of moving vehicles is significantly heightened when my baby is strapped to my chest.

Our apartment in expat heaven has more square feet than our house in Ithaca. It is one of six apartments in the building: each takes up an entire floor. We have four large bedrooms (one set up as a study, one more or less empty), a big eat-in kitchen, a spacious living room and dining room, a grand entryway, two full bathrooms, and closet space to die for. We have two balconies. We pay rent that would be exorbitant for most Cairenes (it’s not cheap for us) but is not necessarily high for the neighborhood, or for the diplomatic staff and international business people who seem to live around us.

Our apartment was still being remodeled the day before we arrived. The wall between the kitchen and dining room was taken down. I suspect there had been doors between the living room and dining room which were also removed. Marble counter-tops and backsplashes were installed throughout the kitchen. The entire place received a paint job that, when it comes to detail work, would qualify as slapdash if you had hired your teenage children and a few of their friends to do the work. The kitchen has no drawers, only cabinets, and, as part of the renovation, the cabinets had wood-grain contact paper pasted onto all the exterior surfaces. We have a new refrigerator and a far-from-new gas stove and washing machine. The landlord dropped off a television set about a week into our stay. If we actually want to watch something on the TV we’ll have to buy a satellite hook-up. For the time being, we poach wireless internet from our downstairs neighbors when they are not using it (the wireless service can only serve one computer at a time). The apartment has parquet floors which were varnished the day before we arrived. (This made for an aromatic first night. Fortunately, we had been warned by our downstairs neighbor). Most of the furniture alludes to the styles of French imperialism. The pieces are well worn, reasonably solid, presumably part of the furnishings that belonged to the landlord’s parents when they still lived in one of the upstairs apartments. A few pieces—the better bed and its bed-side tables, the dining room set—seem to be Scandinavian modern.

We chose the building in part because we could reserve the apartment before we even got here, thanks to the good offices of our friend Michelle who has been in Cairo since January and lives downstairs with her husband Tamir and their almost two year old son Tal. She learned an apartment in the building was coming available; put us in touch with the landlady (who administers the building with her brother); gave us negotiating tips; vouched for us to the owners; and kept us posted on the progress of the renovations. She also stocked the kitchen with bottled water, eggs, baby friendly laundry detergent, and bread. She lent us towels the night we arrived. The landlady supplied us with two new sets of sheets, two pillows, two bars of soap, dish detergent, and some basic kitchenware. She charged us for all of the stuff she bought at Carrefour but not for the plates and tea mugs she brought from her own apartment. We had to stock the rest of the kitchen (in minimalist fashion) during our first week. This was an adventure in itself. This is endemic to Cairo; all basic tasks are adventures.

With population estimated to be over 20 million Cairo ranks among the world’s largest cities. So far, I imagine that Cairo is sort of like Los Angeles if you doubled the population, removed the ocean, the mountains, the sidewalks, the freeways, the traffic lights, the zoning, the smog control initiatives, and the organized collection of trash. And narrowed all the streets. And reduced the scale of all the buildings and moved them much closer together. And most people drove with their headlights off most of the time, even at night. And if Los Angeles had a built environment that included layers of history dating back for 5000 years.

I can’t say I have much of a sense of Cairo as a whole city. I haven’t spent enough time anywhere but Maadi. Indeed, there is much of Maadi I haven’t seen. When I’ve left the neighborhood, it’s always been in a car with someone else driving (you would never catch me behind the wheel in this city). Normally I have a good sense of direction; if I’m paying attention I can usually retrace a route after I’ve been there once. But when I get into a car in Cairo I get lost very quickly.

Maadi, particularly our neighborhood, reminds me of some of the older, residential sections of Tel Aviv or Miami Beach. The buildings are similar in age and scale. I see a similar combination of luxury and seediness, although the luxury is less elegant and the seediness is more profound. When I walk on the quiet street called Road 21 from our building to the Community Services Association a few blocks away, I pass apartment buildings that are five or six stories high. Most have walls around them. Many have security booths: small wooden booths that resembles phone booths or ticket booths at college football stadiums. They have a guy sitting inside or, more often, in front, perhaps talking on his cell phone, possibly drinking tea, usually wearing a semi-automatic weapon. Some of buildings in the neighborhood (but not on Road 21) are official: the UN Drugs and Crime Office; the Embassies of Mexico and South Africa.

I usually pass someone who is washing a car (a car he drives, not one he owns) and someone who is watering something. I was particularly struck by this on the Thursday after we arrived, which was the day our building and much of the neighborhood had no water. I walked to the CSA, where they did have water, a blessing for anyone who wants to wash his hands or use the toilet. By the time I walked home at about 3:00 p.m. water had been restored and the hoses were being used in numbers. The cars on these streets are newer and shinier and bigger than most of the cars one sees in Cairo. Many are SUVs or Mercedes. If I’m walking after school I might see drivers ferrying schoolchildren

If I walk for a few blocks in the other direction I find myself in North Africa. As Tamir said when he walked us around the neighborhood, “you are now leaving the colony and entering Egypt.” After I cross a three lane street (terrifying) I come to a roundabout where a dumpster and an adjoining pile of trash provide lunch for a donkey harnessed to a watermelon cart and steady meals for the many cats who roam the streets. If I am bold enough to sidle around the dumpster I come to Tamir’s favorite pita bakery. (It is the also the favorite of Abdu, the building manager who took me there another time). The bakery is a shack, perhaps 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep, that opens onto the street. The bread is piled on a table and on racks, fresh from the oven. You pick out the ones you want and pay in very small bills. (Everyone in Cairo hoards small bills.) If you walk straight through the roundabout you can find shops where Tamir purchases bulk goods: rice, lentils, dried herbs. Further along is the vegetable souk, where Abdu took me. (Tamir offered to take Deborah and me to the souk during his tour of local food outlets but we declined because Hannah was strapped to my chest and we weren’t ready to take Hannah into the crowd).

Abdu and I entered the souk after passing through a narrow alleyway, several blocks long, paved with dirt. The market goes on for blocks. Women leaving the souk really do carry heavy loads on their heads. I saw Eels in bathtubs. Entire legs of lamb. Live chickens. Abdu stopped to buy me a drink at a kiosk. I had no idea what I was drinking. Abdu watched me sniff and take tentative sips while he quaffed his in a few gulps. The language barrier limits our communication but it was clear he was amused. I called Deborah on my mobile phone and asked her to ask Abdu what I was drinking. It was sugar cane juice. Abdu was shopping for dinner. He bought okra at one place. He looked at the chickens but decided on lamb. The butcher had the meat out on a circular wooden butcher block. He hacked off a few pieces and put them in a plastic bag. A man hanging around the butcher stand shook my hand and welcomed me to Egypt. At our last stop, Abdu bought a kilo of tomatoes and asked the seller to put them in the bag with the meat. Deborah told me it sounded like the ingredients for classic Egyptian cooking. On the way home, Abdu asked me in his limited English if we had souks in the United States. I tried to explain (without any Arabic) that some cities have farmers’ markets but they are usually small and they may only be open once a week and most people shop for food in big indoor stores like Carrefour. What seemed to really strike Abdu was the once a week part. When I told this story to Deborah she said, “ the real answer to the question is ‘no’.”