Cairo - Metropolis of miracles

MSNBC (Susan Hack - Conde Nast Traveler)
MSNBC Print Display format

This is a really excellent commentary on modern day Cairo. It introduces you to a world that you will never see as a swift pyramids-and-museum visit to the metropolis. It moves beyond a description of the city itself and takes the reader on a voyage into the impact of politics and religion on the inhabitants of Egypt. Highly informative and very enjoyable.

One day last February, near Cairo International Airport, I saw hundreds of people gathered around a tree beside an army watchtower. The crowd spilled into the road, stopping traffic, and drivers got out of vehicles to ask one another what was happening. "Has there been an accident?" I called out from my car to a man on the curb. "No," he answered. "It's something strange. They say a tree is talking."

I was surprised but not very, for many Egyptians embrace the supernatural. A thirst for miracles first sprang from the Nile; its annual flood enabled civilization to take root in the desert. The river's gift was not entirely reliable, and years of either low or excessive flooding could lead to famine, military weakness, and the collapse of dynasties. The completion of the Aswan High Dam and Lake Nasser reservoir, in 1970, finally guaranteed Egypt year-round water, agriculture, and electricity. Yet life in the thirteen-hundred-year-old capital remains far from secure.

Sprawling east and west from the Nile's green banks, Cairo today is a city on the verge, both megalopolis and village—a patchwork of modern high-rises, nineteenth-century palaces, garbage piles, shopping malls, herds of sheep, thousands of mosques, pharaonic ruins, and mile upon mile of informal brick housing seemingly held together with wire and string. Swelled by immigrants from the countryside, Cairo's population has tripled three times in the past half century and now exceeds 16 million, the largest urban agglomeration in Africa.

See the above page for the full story.

If you read it on the top link, it is arranged over seven pages. The Print Display link will automatically launch a Print dialogue box, but just click the Cancel option and you will be able to read through the entire article on a single page (without photographs or adverts).