The souk is no more

[onlymark]

As part of my walking around bits of Cairo series I had intended to visit on Friday a lesser known market. Most who visit the city know of and go to the Khan el Khalili market as it is just near the centre of the city and a famous tourist destination with a wide range of goods for sale.
Dotted around though are lesser known ones and visited only by the locals, lesser known to visitors but well known to those who live here.

In any large city you seem to find a place where all the knock off goods appear for sale, where counterfeit and new but faulty ones are sold for a ‘special cheap price’.
The one in Cairo is not far from the Citadel at a place called (and everywhere has various names) Souk El-Gomaa, Joma'a or the Tunisian market or just El-Tunsi.
The first two names refer to the day of the week, Friday, when the market occurs. The second two refer to the area inhabited by many Tunisians and strangely enough refers to the bridge that takes the dual carriageway road over it.

This is the market in full swing –




More info about it in this article –
www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=16093

The road the market is underneath and at the side of often forms part of my route out of the city each morning. I have mentioned before that I live about 20km outside the city (I did do a photo essay on my estate one time) but travel in and out every weekday morning to take my wife to work Downtown, an area in the very centre. I vary my route out depending on local traffic conditions and have a choice of three or four ways I can return home.
For the last week or two I’ve been using this route as my favourite one is suffering from roadworks and a second one has had numerous speed bumps (sleeping policemen) installed. This route links me directly with the ring road and although longer has the advantage of fairly fast open dual carriageways –






Just to digress slightly, unless they are major undertakings the more minor roadworks tend to take place in the middle of the night and are usually completed before the traffic builds up the next day. The day before yesterday I noticed that at the El-Tunsi bridge there was a gathering of equipment and I then expected that at some time soon there’d be a bit of an overhaul of the road. Mentally I was preparing myself to pick another route out.
Yesterday on my return I hit a queue of traffic just before the bridge and we were all directed off and around the area. Roadworks methinks, hope it doesn’t last too many days.

I was right and I was wrong.

Due to safety concerns and as a road calming measure, probably instigated by an Austrian team of consultants currently advising the Ministry of Transport here on how to ease the chaotic traffic and high number of road accidents and deaths, a series of speed bumps were being installed on the section of the road approaching the overpass above the market and the first part of the overpass itself.
These were apparently completed overnight.
Unfortunately, as is normal, no warning signs were placed before them.

Several locals, not being aware of the new hazard, ended up having accidents, but minor ones.
Until –
One car with three occupants, probably doing an excessive speed early morning when traffic was relatively light, no doubt hit the speed bumps too fast, lost control and broke through the barrier on the overpass, plummeting into the market, landing on a coffee house and bursting into flames.

Where the two men are leaning on a new piece of barrier, this is where the car broke through –




The market then caught fire –




Causing the whole area to go up in flames –












The three occupants of the car were killed but fortunately, even though there were many injuries, no others.
I hesitate to think what would have happened had it been a Friday morning.
The road was open again this morning and that is how I managed to grab a few shots of the road and market before the Police moved me on.
So, no report from there then.

www.egyptiangazette.net/news-9706-Cairo%20market%20fire%20blamed%20on%20car.html

www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/least-3-killed-cairo-market-blaze

www.thedailynewsegypt.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=120183&catid=1&Itemid=183

[bixaorellana]

Good grief! How big are the speed bumps, to cause a car to go that badly out of control? It's a miracle that only the people in the car were killed. I guess the fact that it's mostly cement or adobe construction there kept the fire from being any worse. That loss of stock and venue has to be a terrible hardship for the vendors who used that market.

Completely fascinating report and excellent pictures. I really enjoy your dispatches!

[onlymark]

The speed bumps are normal size, say 20cm or so high. It's more the speed at which they were hit, the mechanical state of the car, doziness of the driver etc. Normally when traffic is light many cars will be doing 100 - 120 kph along there.

The first picture, where the market is working is actually taken looking back on the opposite side of the road to the later ones. The market stretches under the overpass and along both sides.
The later ones are taken looking away from town, the second one showing an area called Mokattam on the left which is a hill where last year(?) several large blocks of stone fell off crushing and killing many people in the 'slum' area. The area where the Zabaleen live, the rubbish collectors -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabbaleen
In the distance in the same photo are large buildings in an area called Maadi where I did an initial report of walking down Road 9.

Immediately to the right of the later pictures are what look like a number of unfinished buildings. This is the very southern edge of what is known as the City of the Dead, a vast area initially a graveyard/cemetery but in recent years has become a place of occupation to house the vast number of the growing population -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_the_Dead_%28Cairo%29
www.touregypt.net/featurestories/city.htm

On pictures 5, 6 and 7 the industrial buildings to the left of the fire damaged area house the central Cairo slaughterhouse where hundreds of thousands (probably) of animals are killed every year - at festival times the smell in that area makes you wonder if the cemetery occupants, the dead ones, have died a lot more recently than you thought.

In the first picture, this is looking back towards Cairo and is looking back towards the Citadel built by Salah al-Din, you know him as Saladin, in the 12th Century AD.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Citadel
To the right of the large tree in the centre of the photo, but a long way behind it, there is on the horizon a small dome which is the main mosque in the Citadel, of Mohammed Ali, built between 1830 and 1857 -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosque_of_Muhammad_Ali

One of the things I enjoy about Cairo is the fact that if you suddenly dropped in anywhere from a parachute you'd be tripping over interesting places.

[bjd]

The British army had a base in Maadi during WW2. At the time it was a separate town quite far from Cairo.

[spindrift]

I wasn't expecting such tragedy when I started off reading this thread. I was admiring the market and wishing I could visit it then suddenly, Pouf...an accident leading to devastation. I'm so sorry for everyone involved. Lucky you could stop long enough to take the pictures.
ITN or the BBC should give you a job as Our Roving Reporter. Well done Mark.

[onlymark]

Correct. But I think it was mainly a NZ camp. I keep meaning to see if I can find the plaque in the second photo, it's on Fouad al-Awwal Square.
My father was based for a short time in Cairo at the end of WWII as well. But being RAF he wasn't with the hoi polloi.

Maadi, on the outskirts of Cairo, was the New Zealand Army's base in North Africa during World War II. Of the 76,000 who passed through the camp, 29,000 died, were wounded or ended up missing in action.

Also in Maadi in 1913 saw the construction of the world's first solar energy power generator by Professor Frank Shuman of New York.
Note the pyramids in the background and the bewildered local lad -






When I first arrived there was actually no Police. But one soon arrived and started, understandably, hustling the sightseers away. I see many accidents here as well and always I'm torn with the morality of stopping and looking or moving on and not being 'ghoulish'.

OnlyMark, AnyPort News, Cairo.
Back to the studio for the weather report.

[bjd]

Well, my parents were Polish and in the part of the army under British command. My mother was in Maadi -- that's how I knew the name.

[onlymark]

The Polish soldiers were largely forgotten in the mix of all things. Shame really as they were some of the fiercest and suffered disproportional losses.

[Deleted]

Excellent report, Mark. I completely understand how even the smallest speed bump could send a car off the road in Cairo. I have taken enough Pijo 504 taxis where I could watch the road through the rust holes to know how many cars are just accidents waiting to happen.

[onlymark]

Did you notice all the new taxis when you were last here?

[Deleted]

Yes, I did, and it was a big relief!

[imec]

Great report but really sad Mark - I loved hanging at the old Battha souk in Riyadh - not sure if it's still there.

[hwinpp]

Looked like a 'hot' eviction at first and missing signs are a problem here as well.

[onlymark]

There was a rumour that it was a deliberate fire set to clear the land for a developer. But it was more gossip than anything, there really was a car crash. What made it worse I suppose is that there are many LPG powered cars here, and it was one of them. So it would've probably exploded very badly.

[bixaorellana]

Jun 23, 2010 13:18:17 GMT onlyMark said:

My father was based for a short time in Cairo at the end of WWII as well. But being RAF he wasn't with the hoi polloi.

Our dads may have crossed paths. My father was a USAF ferry pilot. One of his routes was England/Cairo/Karachi. While googling that, I came across this entry, which you may enjoy for the photos. It would be nifty if any of it pertains to your dad.

Jun 23, 2010 13:18:17 GMT onlyMark said:

When I first arrived there was actually no Police. But one soon arrived and started, understandably, hustling the sightseers away.

There is no real smoke in your photos, so surely it had happened a good while before you got there. I'm surprised the road is not far more clogged.

This already interesting thread keeps getting even more fascinating. Wonderful history and background, Mark!

[onlymark]

The road isn't clogged because of the early hour, apparently it was later.
The link I'll scour through but on an initial look there does seem an overlap between when the man who wrote the log was there and my father. Maybe our fathers did meet somewhere there as mine flew cargo planes, the old DC3 Dakota, and he went from there to India to train Ghurka paratroopers.