At Home in the City
Review by Sheryl Ga Feldman
Cairo: City of Sand
Maria Golia
AUC Press, 2004*
232pp
Cairo is dun-colored. Silted over with dust and sand. The first three weeks I lived there, all I could think of was opeing a powerwash business.
But, as I went out walking, I soon found myself absorbed, like yarn in a sweater, by the humanity of the city. You breathe it. I've had locals tell me that when they're distressed, they rush out to the street to draw in comfort.
"A city as casually occupied as a family living room," is how Maria Golia, author of City of Sand puts it.
Of the three best known books about Cairo today - Cairo: City of History (2001), Cairo, The City Victorious (1998) and Cairo: City of Sand (2004), the last one best conveys and explains this feeling.
Golia, a "long-time resident of Cairo," writes with warmth, intelligence and intimate knowledge of the place. She trips gracefully through its history, providing just enough information for a reader to hinge themselves to the city's 1400 years, while tucking in notes on the Cairene character. Speaking of the people's accomodation to the absolute rule of the Fatimids (969-1168), she notes:
...the Egyptians were resigned by tradition to 'remain patient under the king's banner, whether a tyrant or just man" and to attend prayers whether conducted by a pure man or a libertine.' This attitude, so patently Egyptian, amounts to the tacit acceptance of the gulf between the state's interest and those of the people, an attitude that persists to this day.
Her presentation of the today's physical city is a miracle, given the extemporaneous nature of its development. Through her words, we can see the hand-constructed marble faced apartments rising next to eroding villas. We even understand why an infinite number of brick buildings have rebar sticking out of their top story, as if the repel attacks by alien invaders. And she explains the appearance of brank new, complete-but-for-the-people cities on the desert fringes of Cairo.
"It is a city of paradox because it thrives on its ruins," she says, "these days so defiantly that people rebuild not for posterity but as if to hasten decay and so to rebuild again."
Her explanations of Egyptian Islam, education, politics, marriage, gender relations and common phrases are not only entertaining but like water for the thirsty visitor who really wants an answer to the question: "Why do they do that?" She doesn't shrink from gossipy facts about some of the country's leaders past or present, describing Anwar Sadat, a past-president, as "parrt fabulist, part tyrant, mingling childish delight with palm chafing calculation."
Gossip, incidentally, is a delicious occupation for Cairo's "dust warriors." It's a city of "sixteen million agony aunts where everybody has problems but the best ones are somebody else's."
The book reads like it was written in the corner of busy living room by one of its most insightful and elogquent homebodies. Look forward to it.
Posted January 2010.
*The AUC Press Site sells City of Sand only in the Middle East; for others, it's available through Amazon USA & UK as well as Barnes and Noble, Waterstone's, etc.
