The fact is this city which is so astoundingly old is also surprisingly young. In the past century its population has swollen by a factor of twenty-five. Crowding is twice what it was in 1950. It is three times the level of 1920, when the city housed barely a million people. A third of Cairenes are under the age of fifteen. Few remember the statelier ways of a mere generation ago, let alone give more than a passing shrug for ancient glories—except, that is, when it comes to inflating the aura of the pharaohs to prime the lucrative curiosity of foreign tourists.
ASIDE FROM THE odd New-Ager enraptured by obelisks, nobody in Cairo believes anymore that life began here. Other creation theories are current—Islamic ones for the vast majority, biblical ones for the six in a hundred Cairenes who are Christian;*11 and even, though rarely, secular ideas such as evolution and the Big Bang. But if Cairo is no longer perceived as the actual site of Creation, it is still, to its people, very much the center of things.
In Egypt all roads lead to the capital—which is logical, since nearly half the country’s cars and half its industry are here. One in four Egyptians lives in Greater Cairo, and many more aspire to. They have sound reason. Cairenes live longer and eat better than their country cousins. Income per person is 25 percent higher, the proportion of poor 30 percent lower, and only a third as many children under the age of five die of disease. In impoverished Upper Egypt the literacy rate is only half of Cairo’s. There are no Egyptian daily newspapers outside Cairo, and the score of dailies printed here devote scant space on their innermost pages to all that happens elsewhere in the country. Even in sports, Cairo reigns supreme. Its Ahli and Zamalek clubs have monopolized Egypt’s national soccer championship for all but two of the past fifty years.
After 5,000 years of civilization, Egypt’s political system remains pyramid-shaped. Cairo sits indomitably at the pinnacle. Its Ministry of Irrigation decides which farmer gets how much water for his crops. Its Ministry of Religious Affairs chooses who is to deliver sermons in which mosques, and what they are to say. Its Ministry of the Interior picks the mayors for all Egypt’s 4,000 villages. The president, who resides here, appoints the governors of all twenty-six provinces and the heads of all twelve national universities, four of which, naturally, are in Cairo.
Until the last century all farmland in Egypt belonged in theory to the country’s rulers. The lion’s share of profit from the world’s richest land was sucked into the capital. Even today, although farmland is nearly all privately owned, the state retains title to the 96 percent of Egypt which is desert. The decisions about what to do with this vast holding—whether, say, to sell it to investors or to hand it out to cronies of the ruling party—are largely made by the civil servants of Cairo’s 2-million-strong bureaucracy.
The city’s dominance echoes in the language itself. Misr—the word derives from the same roots as the biblical Mizraim, or Egyptians—is still the common Arabic name for the city. And just as Memphis was once confused with Egypt as a whole, to this day the name for Egypt in Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Urdu, or Hindi is also Misr.
Nor does the sway of Cairo end at Egypt’s borders. To 250 million Arabic-speakers and 1 billion Muslims, Cairo retains a mystique, a stature, a reassuring gravity that no other city can match. Sure, the imported symbols of New World monoculture flourish here: brand-burger fast-food outlets, discos, theme parks, and the rest. But, unlike many Third World capitals, Cairo has the depth to generate its own fashions. It projects its own rhythms and language far and wide. The cassette-tape call to prayer wafting over a Javanese village was most likely recorded by one of the honey-tongued Koran reciters of Cairo. The music pulsing through the heat of a Moroccan kasbah came from here, too, as did the satellite-borne soap opera enthralling a Kuwaiti financier’s air-conditioned harem.
When Arabs think of Cairo, they think of it as a repository of Arabness: the seat of the greatest universities, the largest libraries, the biggest-circulation newspapers, the most vibrant pop culture—and even of the busiest camel market in the Arab world. The million Arab tourists who come every year rarely bother with Cairo’s antiquities. They head instead to theaters, to cinemas and literary watering holes, to swanky gambling casinos and glitzy nightclubs. They go to cafés to soak up the sound of Cairene slang and eavesdrop on the latest jokes. They flock to concert halls for the toniest in classical Oriental music, and swarm street kiosks blaring the sassiest Arabic rap. They come because, worn as she is, Cairo still draws the best talent in Arab arts.
As a minor example, take belly dancing (or, as practitioners prefer to call it, Oriental dance). A quick survey of Cairo nightspots finds performers of a dozen nationalities: Lucy at the Parisiana, Katya at the Andalus, Suzy and Yasmina at the Versailles, Bushra at Casino al-Maw‘ad (which translates as The Rendezvous), to name a few. Among these tinseled, gyrating houris are Russians, Americans, Lebanese, Germans, Tunisians, and even the occasional Israeli star. Of course, the native dancers claim that no one can feel the music as they can. The foreigners are too skinny, not generous enough in shoulders and hips. Their studied technique lacks the effortless control that makes or breaks a star. Nor does anyone, yet, make the money that top Egyptian performers do. Such sums rise to a reputed $10,000 a night—enough to pay the annual wages of ten traffic cops, and another reason why Cairo is the undisputed belly-dancing capital of the world.
Glitter of a different kind draws another sort of fan. All the fabulous treasure of Tutankhamun—including, among other things in solid gold, the young king’s sandals and toe- and finger caps, his scepter, face mask, and coffin—comprises a minor fraction of the 100,000-odd objects displayed at the Egyptian Museum. The jewelry of Queen Weret, unearthed just south of Cairo in 1994, looks sparkling new after 3,700 years underground. Her anklets—in alternating bands of coral-colored carnelian, sea-blue lapis lazuli, and sky-blue turquoise clasped with gold in the form of cowrie shells and lions—evoke the exquisite taste of the court at Memphis. But Weret’s funeral trousseau, complete with a purple amethyst the size of a soap bar, must compete with dozens of other cases overflowing with jewelry from the royal tombs of Saqqara, Giza, Abydos, and Tanis. Room after room of sculpture in granite, porphyry, diorite, and marble give the lie to claims that ancient Egyptian art is formulaic or dull. A lonely-looking statue of an Assyrian king, brought by invaders of the eighth century B.C., only high-lights the talent of the Egyptians. Its crude proportions project brute force, whereas the Egyptian statuary all around seeks to inspire not fear but respect for wisdom and refinement. Old Kingdom reliefs of dancing girls and pleasure excursions under the influence of wine and the narcotic lotus make one wonder whether man’s subsequent 5,000 years of travail have produced any advance in the quality of life.
Even small items of everyday use show a brilliant simplicity of design. Among the oldest objects are flawless drinking vessels bored out of the hardest stones. A delicate pair of sandals woven from palm fibers echoes the sleek curves of the 4,700-year-old solar boat housed a few miles away by the Great Pyramid at Giza. A toy bird carved from wood in 600 B.C. is, uncannily, shaped like a jumbo jet, down to its aerodynamic wingtips. The funerary portrait of a wealthy Memphite matron of the second century A.D., complete with earrings, necklace, and elegant coiffure, is the very picture of a Cairene society hostess in the 1930s.
The poets of ancient Egypt waxed at length on the charms of their capital. In one papyrus a traveler dreams of the city as he floats downstream to meet his beloved. The river is wine, he says, and Memphis a chalice of fruits set before Ptah, the God Who Is Beautiful of Face. “The like of Memphis has never been seen,” declares a text from the New Kingdom (1560—1080 B.C.). It goes on to extol the city’s full granaries, its pleasure lakes dappled with blossoming lotuses, and its confident community of foreign merchants. The scribe enthuses over the amusements on offer at Memphis, such as a show of lady wrestlers or the sight of nob
lewomen relaxing in their gardens.
The Thousand and One Nights, that ancient kaleidoscope of stories within stories, also singles out this city for praise (perhaps understandably, because, though the work evolved out of Indian and Persian originals, much of it was composed here during Cairo’s medieval heyday). In one tale, a Jewish physician treats a man in Damascus who relates the story of his life. The narrator describes how as a youth, in the great mosque of Mosul on the banks of the faraway Tigris, he listened entranced to his father and uncles talking after Friday prayers. They sat in a circle, he relates, enumerating the marvels of distant lands. Then one of his uncles said, “Travelers tell that there is nothing on the face of the earth fairer than Cairo.” And his father added, “He who has not seen Cairo has not seen the world. Its dust is gold; its Nile is a wonder; its women are like the black-eyed virgins of paradise; its houses are palaces; its air is temperate; its odor surpassing that of aloewood and cheering the heart: and how could Cairo be otherwise, when she is the Mother of the World?”
After hearing this description, the storyteller says, he passed the night sleepless with longing. As soon as he came of age he traveled abroad with his merchant uncles; as soon as he could, he slipped their caravan and ran off to Cairo. And that was the beginning of his story.
* * *
*1 On is the biblical version of a name ancient Egyptians probably pronounced “Yunu.”
*2 Other accounts say Horus was born before Osiris’s death—or even identify him as Osiris’s brother. Still more versions add a long chapter to the myth, in which Seth captures Osiris’s body again, chops it up, and scatters the parts over Egypt. Isis then wanders high and low to find the bits and make her lost lover/husband/brother whole.
*3 The mythical imagery of ancient Egypt endures in surprising places. For instance, the U.S. $1 bill transmits such snapshots of early Cairo as the victorious Horus in eagle form and the Benben pyramid surmounted by a sunlike eye.
*4 Skeptics, of course, may note that the modern dead intend to face Mecca, not the sunrise.
*5 Some historians may dispute the reckoning of forty-six dynasties, insisting that, instead of being categorized as two dynasties, the Roman and Byzantine eras should be divided into more distinct periods—such as the Julio-Claudian, the Flavian, etc.
*6 This epithet seems to have transferred to Memphis as a whole from the name of a Sixth Dynasty pyramid built at Saqqara for the pharaoh Pepi I (c. 2250 B.C.) The full name for the tomb—and for the adjacent palace and worker settlement that would have thrived during his reign—was Men-nefer-Pepi, meaning The Beauty of Pepi Endures.
*7 Potiphar is most likely a Hebraization of the Egyptian Pa-di-ef-Ra, meaning He Who Is Given to (the sun-god) Ra—undoubtedly an appropriate name for a servant of God.
*8 Such as the gorgeous 140-foot barque intended for Pharaoh Cheops’s journeys in the afterlife. This oldest boat in the world is preserved intact in a museum by his pyramid at Giza.
*9 They called the town Misr al-Fustat to distinguish it from Misr al-Qadima, or Old Misr, which was then the name given to fading Memphis. Misr was the ancient Semitic term for Egypt; hence this new capital, like Memphis, shared its name with the country as a whole. Fustat was most probably an Arabization of the Greek fossaton, meaning a moat, perhaps because the Arab army had camped “beyond the moat” of the Byzantine fortress.
*10 Constantinople, seat of the Byzantine emperors, continued to outshine Cairo for some time, but its star waned rapidly after the Crusaders betrayed and sacked the city in A.D. 1203 and 1204.
*11 Most of Egypt’s Christians belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church—whose name, like Egypt’s, stems from the old name for Memphis, Hikaptah, House of the Ka of Ptah.
Chapter Two
DEAD CITIES
Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them.
—Hosea 9:6
These people regard the span of life as a very short time and of little importance, and instead devote themselves to the long memory bequeathed by virtue. This is why they call the houses of the living mere hostels for brief sojourn, but give the name of eternal abodes to the tombs of the dead.
—Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, first century B.C.
THE NILE IS a well-mannered river. It flows out of Africa at a stately but firm three miles per hour. Nine days out of ten a countervailing wind blows down from the Mediterranean. The arrangement might have been designed expressly for pleasure cruising in the low-slung, lateen-rigged feluccas that can be hired by the hour along the Cairo Corniche. The current tugs them downstream. The wind, which in springtime brings a whiff of Delta orange blossom into the city, tows them back. This soft Nile breeze is so reliable that the Egyptians’ hieroglyph for traveling south or north simply pictures a boat with its sails full or furled.
But sometimes—in April especially—the wind changes ominously. Brewing up from east or west, it sweeps the desert, blustering into the city. Stifling hot and teased with whirlwinds, the sandstorms counterpoint the river, serving to remind Cairo that even as the water of life flows through its center, death lurks at the edges of the valley. Cairenes need reminding. The city’s ceaseless urban racket casts an amnesiac spell. It is easy to forget how close the utter empty silence of the desert lies.
FOR FOURTEEN centuries the district of al-Khalifa has marked the city’s meeting with the desert. Half tumbledown houses, half tombs, al-Khalifa nestles between the towering walls of the Citadel and the grander natural bastion of the Muqattam, the 650-foot-high desert cliff that closes in the valley from the east. The district is known for its many famous graves, for its prison and its colorful criminals, and for the even more colorful comic parade—complete with transvestites and parodies of politicians—thrown together every year in honor of one of the Prophet’s great-granddaughters, who is buried here.
It is also known for its Friday street markets. One of these, Cairo’s chief emporium for pets and exotic animals, stretches along a shambling track that forks toward the Muqattam cliffs. The commerce begins with creepy sea creatures—tubfuls of scrabbling, antennae-wagging lobsters and crayfish, whose keepers shout their Arabic names: “Gambaree! Istakooza! Istakooza hayyaa!” The crowd quickly thickens. Soon small boys thrust out liquid-filled plastic bags, out of which peer lazily curious tropical fish. Glass-walled tanks parked in the roadside dust restrain dense coils of land snakes and water snakes and frogs and lizards. A tiny green chameleon hangs by its tail from a black-cowled crone’s little finger, its two-toed feet groping daintily at thin air. Stacked nearby are a caged mongoose, a weasel, hamsters, and a pansylike bouquet of Siamese kittens. Next door an angry monkey rattles its chain. Feathered creatures follow: Congolese parrots in party colors, trays of squeaky orange fuzzballs that are day-old chicks, parakeets, mynah birds, and a bevy of hawks crammed all together and lunching on scraps of raw, crimson meat. Next to them a spook—a giant and scruffy old stuffed owl that is missing one ear. But suddenly a fearsome eyelid flips open and glares contempt. A small girl screams.
Dogs of every breed yap and whimper. The birds chirp and coo, the cats meow, a donkey hee-haws lusty indignation, and the seething crush of people, excited by all the animal frenzy, haggles and cajoles and backslaps with almost demonic vigor. A motorcyclist cleaves wildly through it all, looking like the devil himself in a leather balaclava helmet, revving and tooting his horn. An occasional sonic boom shifts the dust and shoots free pigeons into flight; it is from the nearby quarries blasting ever deeper into the limestone cliffs.
Over all the mad music there echoes a persistent rapping, chipping noise. This steady percussion seems to beckon from an alleyway leading uphill, away from the crowd and toward the cliffs. A dozen steps away from the market an eerie quiet falls, as if someone has flicked a switch and extinguished Inferno. The alley opens onto a bright desert of ocher walls, rubble, and yellowing tombs. A spent syringe lies on the ground beside a fallen head-stone. Far up above, clapped against the cliff face like a lunat
ic prince’s sand-castle, the long-abandoned monastery of a heretical dervish order glowers.
The only sound now is the rhythmic chinking noise. It grows louder and the rhythms link, run in unison, and then separate again. A feral cat saunters through a gap in a wall where someone has daubed “God is Great” in blue paint. It wanders into a wide yard littered with lumps of stone. On the far side three figures armed with hammers and chisels chop at a great coffin-sized hunk of rock.
This scene of primitive industry is absorbing—evocative, like a distant echo of the very beginnings of the city. How many millions of times, one can only wonder, have men like these gone through the same simple motions—positioning the wedge, swinging the mallet, dragging and levering heavy blocks of limestone—at this very spot? After all, the many Cairos have not once paused from cutting away at the quarries that edge the foot of the Muqattam, not since the ancients learned to carve out their stone; to shape it and haul it off to build walls and temples and above all, tombs, those innumerable monuments to the dead of all ages which enshrine the memory of the many cities that have risen, flourished, and fallen here down to our own times.
THE QUARRYING began 5,000 years ago, soon after the unifying pharaoh Menes founded the city of Memphis just across the river from here. By the time of the Third Dynasty, four centuries later, the limestone of these cliffs had become the building material of choice; when anything was made to last, it had to be in stone. The other primal element at hand—the creamy silt deposited by the Nile—went into the making of bricks, the use of which was relegated forever after to ephemeral things such as houses.