Off a main road in the oldest part of Cairo, past a wall of concrete bags, then piles of neatly-stacked tiles, in a small mud-walled building, Ismail - locally known as Abu Kamel -  throws simple, elegant terra cotta pots on a wheel he turns with his feet.

The clay still comes from Aswan, 879 kilometers ( 549 miles ) upriver, and his assistants still work the water in and the bubbles out with their bare feet. Ahmed is the fifth generation to work out of this shop.

He lives and works in what is known as the Potters' Village, a narrow stretch of poor and degraded land along the road leading away from Cairo's Old City of Fustat.  Colorful displays of imaginative prodcuts line the roadside, along with piles of smooth stones, green crystals and bereft housing.  Down the lanes, children chase one another; old men sit and young men shoulder bags of cement. 

Beautiful as the potter is to watch, and elegant as his pots are, they are  not where the money is. 

Walk  past  his potting room and through the small corridor of the mud-brick building, a workspace the size of a gymnasium, fantastically lit by beads of light which filter through the rough, metal roof, opens up.

Here the crew produces finely polished granite and aggregte tiles for some of the best hotels in Egypt.  A cutter proudly demonstrates his way with a circular saw, another takes us around the corner to show off the polishing machine, recently equipped with a flow of water so he no longer has to swallow the dust.

What with the concrete dust everywhere and blacksilt from the old refuse burning kilns still covering some of the crates stacked in corners, the environmental implications for the villagers, first, and the whole city next are not hard to figure.

Neither is the poverty or lack of infrastructure.

The good news is that City of Cairo decided to take action.  The bad is that they decided to move the whole village out of sight and mind, a plan which would have completely undercut the potter's traditional business, a good portion of which comes from sales to tourists visiting Cairo's nearby Old City,  as well as disrupting a community which traces back a thousand years.

Fortunately, the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS) and Italian Embassy  got wind of the proposal and, in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism, Cairo Governante and the people of the village themselves, came up with a plan to install contemporary kilns and new housing on the hillside right above the existing village.

Rosy domes of the new houses now bubble across the bluff above the village.  But it's still a case of so near yet so far.  The move in date keeps receding.

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