A Cairo Story
By Emily Torjusen
...and is Cairo what you expected?"
I often encountered this question during the summer months of my internship in Egypt's largest city. Curious friends and coworkers wanted to see the image that foreigners like me had of their city, but my answer inevitably disappointed them. Truthfully, I had never explicitly thought of how Cairo would be. Some vague misguided assumptions of sand and market bazaars had crossed my mind, but in the rush to prepare I had forgotten to anticipate the experience of a new city. Still, I had been certain it would be a different world from the one I was leaving behind.
The verdant French coastal town where I had spent the last year studying was a utopia of sky and sea. Blanketed in trees, the French alps came rolling into the Mediterranean where the shoreline grew cacti, palm trees, and olive trees. Menton was a placid and beautiful town-- seemingly removed from the passage of time. But by May I had left France behind in a rush of packing and unpacking to work in Cairo for the summer.
Exiting the Cairo International Airport doors at 3:00 am to see nothing but a blur of lights against a hollow black expanse, I felt unmatched exhilaration. The contrast between Menton and Cairo was distinct from the very start. I took in the sight of the sun as it rose over a vast landscape spotted with construction. The vision of that particular wide, empty space became stamped in my memory.
That was perhaps the last time I’d experience such stillness in Cairo. The sprawling city was equipped with the modern conveniences and frustrations of any metropolis. Like a motor, Cairo never tired out. Skyscrapers, cafes, newsstands, and street vendors harmonized alongside mosques, beggars, and markets in the city streets. During soccer matches, the few sidewalks would fill with tables and chairs to accommodate fans drinking coffee and shisha in the TV's glow. Beneath the spectators' feet, an aging metro efficiently connected the city's districts - successfully transporting some of Cairo's 9.5 million residents. An intricate web of micro-buses and vans worked in tandem as pedestrians hailed them down from the streets and intersections.
Yet even with these systems in place, traffic is characteristically horrendous. With so many people en route, traffic jams fill the tunnels and streets which operate largely without traffic laws. This complex of subways, ramps, overpasses, and freeways has trained what I am sure are some of the world's most gifted and fearless drivers. They swerve, blaring their horns while speeding down the freeways only to carefully stop for el-shab. Only during the call to prayer--which emitted over crackling speakers perched throughout the city--did the cacophony of horns, shouts, and engines fade into the background.
Cairo was far from “perfection” in my Western interpretation of a seamless metropolis. Every morning, the city would wake up to a thick layer of smog from the exertions of more than 2.3 million cars. Seeping through the gaps of my window, the acrid smell would fill my bedroom and lungs daily. Heaps of trash would flow over the lots of former buildings. These heaps were occasionally burned which occasionally sent smoke throughout my classroom windows and neighborhood streets. By the end of the summer, I felt my lungs were a testament to the health reports that equated Cairo's air quality to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
Lungs aside, nothing irritated me like the sight of careless littering in the streets. A businessman might purchase a candy bar and drop the wrapper to the ground in the same breath. While the government countered this norm with teams of street cleaners working throughout the day, trash still accumulated on street corners, parks, and glittered the Nile’s surface.
This might lead some people to write Cairo off as a travel destination. Increasing environmental awareness means more tourists feel an obligation to plan travel around their own environmental principles. Although this might be an admirable conviction, it is often too easy to discount a city for its imperfections without considering the larger picture. As for me, these flaws are what ultimately made Cairo so infallible.
Particularly when addressing the topic of sustainability and ecotourism, it is best to keep reality in mind. As of 2018, 32.5% of Egyptians live in extreme poverty, which means that ecotourism and sustainability likely fall behind daily survival on their list of concerns. Tourists that choose their travel destinations based upon western expectations of environmental consciousness are ultimately doing a disservice to themselves and most of the world.
I say this because, despite lacking an official recycling system, Cairo manages to recycle most of its waste. In 2013 the UK sent 34% of waste to landfills, the US sent 54%, but less than 20% of Cairo’s collected household waste was sent to landfills.
This was all thanks to the Zabbaleen, which translates to "garbage people", a group of an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people living in some of Cairo's largest landfills. This community has supported itself by collecting between 3,000 and 9,000 tons of waste per day. The Zabbaleen transport waste to their villages by donkey, cart, or truck. Families sort and recycle 80% of the waste using plastic granulators, paper compactors, cloth grinders, and aluminum smelters to process the waste. In fact, their recycling process is more effective than most industrial systems. After they are processed, recyclables are then compacted and sold for marginal profits.
Despite the magnitude of their work, it wasn’t until the summer’s end that I learned about the Zabbaleen. From the second floor of a cafe, I saw an unveiled woman riding down the street on an industrial cart laden with cardboard. Her painfully thin horse-pulled its load alongside the cars. It was a unique sight in Zamalek. Most of the cars that inched beneath the overpass were expensive models and the area’s bars and restaurants catered to wealthy professionals and ex-pats. Seeing this woman agilely slow her horse down and leap from the cart to collect a pile of flattened boxes, I wondered what she was doing on the road that night. I later learned that like the young men who navigated the streets hauling immense tarp bags filled with trash, she was one of the informal garbage collectors of Cairo. Without them, Cairo would be completely overrun with waste in a matter of days.
As it was, Cairo was always beautiful. Especially at sunset when the transformative golden glow smoothed the city. Under its eye, the slums, trash heaps, and dilapidated buildings became a masterpiece. When I remember Cairo, I picture its innumerable cats and dogs meandering through this pleasant haze, meat cooking temptingly in shawarma shops, and cars speeding by playing shaabi music in the deepening shade. All this from beneath the green fronds of acacias, poincianas, and banyans.
Staring down over their crowns from the seventh floor, I could see everything play out in their shade. Now, it’s impossible for me to imagine Cairo without its trees; the two are as inseparable as the pyramids from Egypt. Yet trying to encapsulate this relationship between city and nature in a mere pro and con list is regrettable. No city should be assessed so inadequately.
I think traveling can be like meeting a friend for the first time. But like any friendship, judging it based on its assumed flaws is no way to start off. For me, I feel very lucky to have made Cairo’s acquaintance.
Sources