Cairo Life

[Deleted]

onlyMark posted this elsewhere, but I will post it here because of its excellent images of Cairo by day and night. This is the Cairo that I have seen on all my trips there.

[onlymark]

A-ha!

Anyway, the city in that video looks somewhat different to the 'gritty reality' that you no doubt have also seen. This one is a bit long but it can be flicked through if necessary. It shows how the older part of town is, more real life people, the normal day to day people rather than the wealthy shopping malls. I really enjoy walking down these streets but the sheer volume of the noise and amount of people make me wimp out after a few hours and retreat to the calmer, quieter areas where I can mentally re-group.
How it is to live in it is beyond me, yet millions do in Cairo and many cities around the world. Here is not so unique.

[Deleted]

Oh damn, I was trying so hard to forget the gritty reality!

[onlymark]

It looks to be filmed mostly around the Khan el-Khalili market, especially as there seems to be the same western woman appearing a few times. But it does show that even at the tourist market you only have to duck round a corner and see how different it is to the sanitized tourist video versions that seem to paint a rosier picture of the city. And that area is quite well off compared to some.

[Deleted]

I doubt if they could have filmed in the super grittiest parts, at least not openly.

[bjd]

I prefer the second video. Not many women around, are there?

Is the fact that so many men are dressed in traditional clothing related to the location where the video was shot?

[onlymark]

Not many women, no. But then a rule of thumb is that the more Muslim the area, the fewer the women are out on the streets. This area is quite relaxed though as it is at/near one of the main tourist places, even though the market is a traditional one from centuries past and still used by the locals.
The proportion of women you see is fairly average for most places in the city.

The traditional clothing you see has various spellings of its name, as you would expect when Arabic script is translated into what we would be able to read. That causes many navigational problems here actually as the street names have a different spelling depending on which map you might be looking at (plus the fact that many street names have changed over the years depending on who is in power, so older folk call it one thing whilst the youngsters call it another).

Anyway, the traditional clothing worn by the men is called Gellabiya. An all-in-one garment reaching to the ankles. Women also have the same thing but a lot more fancy.
For eons Egypt was an agricultural nation and this mode of dress was worn by farmers/labourers. Nowadays it is still worn by them, but 'city boys' wear western clothing and it is also gradually dying out in the countryside.
But many farm workers have over time come to the city to work. They keep the traditional dress, as this is the way they've always dressed. They pass it on to their children as it costs too much money to kit them out in western clothes.
A standard Gellabiya costs but a few pounds (1 Euro = approx 8 LE Egyptian pounds). So for 20 pounds or so you can have one.

The problem is class.
When you wear one you are instantly known as from the working class, and probably originally from a village out of the city in the recent past. You are not a sophisticated city dweller, nor do you have an important job, and neither do you have money. You will never see the middle and upper classes wearing them (unless they have a point to make about something).

[onlymark]

Oh! To answer your question - the poorer the area the more men you will see in traditional dress. So, yes, it is directly related to the area.
If you go round where I live (obviously a wealthy area in comparison), the only people wearing them don't live here. They are the gardeners, maintenance men etc.

[bjd]

Thanks, Mark. What about the Muslim Brotherhood people? Do they wear traditional dress or do they try to stay invisible?

[onlymark]

Wearing traditional dress is invisible. So is wearing western clothes. You don't notice it normally anyway, unless you go to somewhere, say, an executives office and you see someone with a gellabiya and he turns out to be the CEO. Then it looks wrong and you'd normally assume he's the tea boy.
The Muslim Brotherhood just blend in as normal people, you'd have no idea.

[bixaorellana]

Wow ~~ throngs and throngs of people. And when you consider that most of the people in the second video are men, and that females make up more than half the human race, think how many more throngs of people in Cairo we didn't see in the video.

The first video is fun, but the second one gave me a good feel for what it must be like there. Thanks for the commentary, Mark, it really enhances watching the video.

[onlymark]

Just to give a balanced picture, we started with a somewhat rosy view of the city (though true in its own way) that some of us 'live' in, then we saw the more day to day way of how the majority of the population live (probably about 16 million or so), lastly there are those at the bottom end of society.
This video is quite overdramatised, it comes in three parts but only this first part is relevant. If you try and ignore the hyperbole from the journalist it does show a group of people called the zabaleen who are commonly known as the worst off here.
Quite if they are 'forced' to live there, I am sceptical.

Every large city has its good areas and bad areas for living, this is just a view of how it is in Cairo. As I said, it's not a unique city (apart from how many people live here).

[Deleted]

No offense, but my office is trying to send me to Cairo for two days at the end of the month, and I am resisting like hell.

[onlymark]

Then revert back to video number 1!
If you do end up here and have a bit of time then let me know.

[onlymark]

I'll make sure I'm out of the country.