1 - 7 March 2001
Issue No.523
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 1 - 7 March 2001 Issue No.523 |
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Urban development
Summer holidays in our family were always a big affair. The three-month adventure started very early one morning after a sleepless night. The first hurdle was making it to Cairo station in time for the 8.00am train to Alexandria, where we would board a ship bound toward France or Italy. Usually, having hurried so much, we would arrive in time to be treated to the spectacle of passengers disgorging from the night train, and wait endlessly in the cafeteria surrounded by all our luggage. I can still see my grandmother in her camel-hair coat and her crocodile pumps and matching handbag, standing up every five minutes to make sure that our train had not come and gone unnoticed.
I loved the smell of the station, especially that of the semit, hard-boiled eggs and duqqa that people bought from the vendor and stashed in their bags for a later snack on the train. We were not allowed such delicacies, of course and I knew that any demand for food would provoke the appearance of the Huntley and Palmer's tin and a distribution of dry biscuits.
Our father sat at a different table with numerous clerks from his office, giving his last instructions while sipping coffee. Eventually the porter would announce the train and claim our luggage, an occurrence that always seems to take the entire family by complete surprise. The noise of the smoking engine added considerably to our confusion and it was only by miracle and with much help from the various heavily tipped attendants that we ever managed to settle in the right compartment.
Now this memory is going the same way as other landmarks of my childhood. The long arm of development has reached out to Bab Al-Hadid and is preparing to transform it into a Gargantuan shopping mall.
Who in his right mind could have hatched such a scheme?
A climate of indifference and, one would believe at times, downright hostility to our built heritage has helped change the face of our city in a few short years. Meanwhile, developers have thrived. Unbeknownst to many, more damage has been caused by efforts at "development" than has been brought about by time and neglect combined.
There seems to be no limit to the number of mammoth five-star hotels raising their ugly towers across the cityscape. Invariably they have been built on land recently reclaimed from an ancient palace or a quaint colonial villa. Do we really hope to ever fill these exorbitantly expensive monstrosities with tourists? Is our sole ambition to cater to thousands of millionaires afflicted with extremely poor taste?
Slowly but surely, ugliness has taken over our lives, becoming the trademark of our streets. Many tourists now avoid Cairo and Alexandria altogether: too crowded, too dirty and altogether too unattractive, they say.
Was Cairo ever described as Paris on the Nile? Under the circumstances, the memory of such a portrayal is rather laughable, but the powers that be see fit to answer criticism with more destruction, to accommodate another skyscraper, another mall. Unable to innovate, we are content to copy, simply adding to a cheap, basic 1950s design our own bit of unattractiveness, embodied in the choice of an unfortunate colour, a particularly grotesque shape or a total absence of harmony.
Our most highly paid architects may be well meaning, but they are uninspired and chronically lacking the most elementary aesthetic sense. And with shabbiness winning the day around them, how can we blame them?
One look at the incongruous Arcadia shopping mall towering over poor people's dwellings in Bulaq, or the incredibly awkward structure serving a similar purpose on Talaat Harb Street should convince the most lenient of our citizens of how sadly beauty-challenged we have become in our architectural endeavours.
And since we are on the subject of malls, who exactly dreamed up the need for them? Do they have a purpose other than to provide a venue for idle young men and women in which to indulge in their favourite pastime, namely loitering? Wouldn't a sporting club, a youth centre or a park make more sense? Are there any people in a mall actually doing more than window shopping or riding the escalators? Why would people foolish enough to venture in, and wealthy enough to afford the goods on display, want to buy expensive gadgets they can pick up on their holidays for a few cents, liras or pesetas? Has any tourist been seen divesting him/herself of foreign currency in one of our numerous "department stores"?
While our upright citizens are too apathetic to complain about the despoliation of their space, they are not adverse to spreading rumours of doom and destruction, peppering their bits of gossip with the traditional Egyptian sense of humour. A mischievous friend called me yesterday: "Have you heard?" she giggled. "They are selling the space between the Sphinx's paws to a fast-food chain."
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