New Digs

Things worked out well this time around and I find myself sitting in Maadi, typing from the inside of an old villa. It’s hot, and there’s a single A/C in the living room so I’m never fully comfortable. The bedroom is worse. Despite all the open windows the apartment seems unable to circulate the air, and there is no breeze outside, so the air hangs hot and heavy despite all the trees shading the neighborhood. The apartment is large though, and the living rooms and dining room both offer some comfort. At night I can sit on the roof on rugs or chairs and feel the breeze.

I’d get a fan but I’m broke for the time being so that’s going to have wait. I did need a towel since none came with the place, so I picked up a giant beach towel with an impression of a pharaoh spread across it in red and black and the word Egypt written underneath. Brilliant.

Maadi sits on the outskirts of Cairo, so much so that it was recently incorporated into Helwan, separate from Cairo’s administration. The neighborhood served as the base for the American embassy’s staff and families after WWII, and is part of an older suburb for wealthy Cairneses I think. It’s one of the most orderly neighborhoods, with sidewalks you can actually walk on and some grid like road plans. Old art deco inspired villas and apartments fill the area, all shaded under heavy foliage. Many of the villas I see that are now private homes used to be part of much larger palaces that were broken up into residencies after the Americans began exerting some pull on Egypt (more on being an American here later).

It feels worn and slightly decayed like most of Cairo. While some buildings still sit in their full splendor, others disappear under greenery. It is residential and sleepy here.

My building is located near a popular turnabout in the area, with Road No 9 just around the bend. The road is one of the main drags in Maadi, filled with little restaurants, a pub, dry cleaners, grocers, and electronics shops. There’s a McDonalds five minutes from my place on a quiet and leafy intersection.

The residents: A mix of working class Egyptians and Western expats, going about their business on the streets throughout the day. Cabs come honking down the road, their drivers gathering at the café across the way from my place, drinking tea and smoking shisha till early morning hours. Make a left and walk five minutes down the road from my place and you reach the essential end of the road; a highway overpass separating the neighborhood from the tenements of Maadi. There is large ditch in which trash burns and through the smoke one morning I watched as a young Muslim women emerged to walk to school.  Make a right and you follow the trail of commerce into Maadi’s wealthier areas. I sit at what feels like the first juncture; the starting point and end point of both sides. The metro is nearby along with an old American restaurant that serves hamburgers and American style breakfast, Lucile’s.

At night the apartment is still uncomfortably warm and at 4am the local mosque blasts out the call to prayer. I hear him clear his throat over the megaphone and then a guttural blast to Allah comes in through my windows. Roosters crow too and I walk to the bathroom to take a cold shower. It is my first night here and I realize going back to Bedford Ave in Brooklyn will be a cakewalk after this level of noise.

There’s no internet either, other than old dial up. So postings will become less frequent, but I have good space to write and a café with internet nearby, so posts will continue.

I feel comfortable here despite all this, and I already feel at ease with the area so I can’t ask for much else. The move could be one of the better things to happen to me here in the long run of this trip.