| View from the Citadel
People often struggle to define the heart of a city, but with
Cairo it’s easy: the heart is the city; each paving
slab, each building, each person a muscle fibre in the living
organ. An imperceptible beat saturates the city – a
rhythmic force quietly drawing in and pumping out the lifeblood
through its watercourses, alleys and streets, sustaining visitors,
dwellers and onlookers; their every footprint, placed carefully
on the dry, sullied and dusty pavements supported by and sustaining
the cadence, like two people bouncing in time on a trampoline:
the beat gets stronger, louder. Moving the eye higher, the
pulse distorts, fading, and smudges into the yellow skyline,
the energy dispersing and dissipating.
Every heart has an involuntary strength: from conception to
death it pumps, relentlessly feeding the body through innate,
metrical contractions. Cairo is a heavy force, the core of
the Nile Valley and its Delta, supporting life in an otherwise
vast and barren wasteland. The swollen, infinite city survives
as a permanent memory of historic supremacy, a jumbled mix
of religions, where medieval and modern seamlessly meet, and
where the traveller and rural migrant can be revived, refreshed,
before being spat out along the country’s dusty arteries.
Leaning against the weathered walls
of the Citadel, the great Mosque casting a shadow behind,
the city is laid out as if a mirage below. Desert yellow tinges
the megalopolis, blurring the vast landscape of buildings
into the distant pyramids, into the glittering desert, and
into the brown air that hangs heavily above, before breaking
quietly into blue. Towards its centre, the confident lifeblood
of the River Nile divides the city in two, its branches separating
right from left, east from west, and fellaheen from Bedouin.
Indeed, juxtaposition defines Cairo: dense conurbations punctuated
with brightly flowering, fertile green space; ancient bazaars
squeezed alongside marbled shopping malls; Islamic rooftops
set against modern skyscrapers and grimy slums. It’s
more than ancient and modern, desert and city – the
city’s very essence is contradiction, held together
by collective acceptance.
Hot, waterless air, heavy with
pollution and mildly sweetened with the strawberry scent of
Shisha, carries the relentless voice of the city up towards
the Citadel. Periodically, the piercingly evocative azan will
erupt against the ever present backdrop of purring traffic.
Out of time, each muezzin’s call to prayer echoes and
overlaps the other, as if reaching out to the periphery of
the desert, and is followed by the sustained, soft Arabic
chant of thousands praying. At other times, the nearby cajoling
shout of ‘Maalesh Maalesh’ overtakes the traffic’s
tune, reminding you of the healing nature of the city. Grievances
are aired, and forgiveness granted in the blink of an eye,
a heartbeat. Arriving for the first time, Cairo’s ocean
of sound can be calming, enveloping the stranger in a reassuring
blanket of ceaseless noise. Returning from a quieter place,
its inexorable beat can wear you down.
The largest city in Africa, Cairo
has been described as bigger than even itself and, looking
down, it’s easy to see this, as it consumes the desert
and reaches far beyond its natural limits. Underfoot, the
ground is broken, dry and crumbling. The once solid earth
reflects Cairo’s decay, as shattered infrastructure,
palpable pollution and absolute poverty gradually but mechanically
devour the city. It’s an existence at odds with the
preserved antiquities living in the city, where men lay, preserved,
thousands of years old, keeping the city alive with their
unique pull on the tourists.
As the air leisurely thins and
cools, the colours of the city change. The ashen yellows diffuse
into moonlit pinks, chocolate browns, and the city becomes
alive with light, and a different sound. The rhythmic beat
quickens – as if in response to the waning temperatures
– the traffic dies away, and the pavements pound with
people. The Mosque behind, no longer humming with tourists,
worshippers and touts, breathes its own sigh of relief, the
towering minarets calmly reflecting the day’s last glow.
Away from the city, the skyline dances with light, reflecting
the shape of the Pyramids for travellers who have made it
their pilgrimage to behold Giza.
The great heart of the city contracts,
increasing pressure in the vast melting pot of cultures in
its last breath before night fall. Leaving the citadel, listening
to the city, my own footprints resonate, falling in time with
its beat.
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