Susana Galan



As if Cairo did not exist. Wustel-balad eh? Located barely 40 km away from downtown Cairo, New Cairo strives unashamedly to distance itself –economically and socially, but also affectively– from the once-city victorious. The lack of public transportation connecting the urban area with the suburbs in the desert facilitates the geographical detachment of this satellite city, which has grown devoted to the needs and whims of its wealthy residents, turning its back to the Egyptian capital and its history. The dirt, noise and disorder associated with the city, especially since the political upheavals of 2011, are declared off limits in the luxury housing developments and the gated communities that proliferate in the desert landscape. And what better way for New Cairo to further remove itself from the past than to reimagine downtown as a series of shopping malls?

In the last years, the area has seen the multiplication of shopping centers, many of them located along the main artery of the 5th Settlement, Road 90. Among these, the Cairo Festival City Mall and its adjoining residential community and business district present an unrivaled example of the securitized and sanitized “mall-metropolis” (Backes 1997: 4). Flanked by metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs, this 168,000 m2 shopping area eloquently promises “more safety, security and leisure” by deploying an “aesthetics of security” aimed at mitigating visitors’ urban fear (Passavant 2009: 96). The “exclusivity, privacy and luxury” assured by the upmarket shops can be best enjoyed during weekdays, when the cleaning personnel outnumbers customers and the mall acquires a ghostlike character unmatched by any other spaces in the city.

These other spaces –aka wust el-balad and the rest of Cairo’s neighborhoods– are present at the Cairo Festival City, if anything, by omission or indirect allusion. As in rhetorical descriptions of the ‘city’’s “state of the art buildings, which serve as the safest and most distinguished entertaining ones amidst a healthy environment” or through the announcement, in January 2013, of the establishment of a power substation to serve the project “with the aim of confronting all unexpected electricity related risks.” Needless to say, the dilapidated buildings at risk of collapse, the health-threatening levels of air pollution and the recurrent power cuts –all unavoidable aspects of living in Cairo today– are the backdrop against which these discourses are articulated and the circumstances under which these privatized communities appear as appealing escapes for those who can afford them.

The mall-as-downtown is nowhere better illustrated than in the Downtown Mall. With its 44,000 m2 of retail shops and restaurants, its outdoor lake and surrounding manicured landscapes, the complex aspires to become “the New Cairo City hub.” To make up for its unimpressive features –which resemble any average shopping center in the world– the mall regularly organizes events to celebrate seasonal festivities and, from time to time, ostensibly attempts to recreate Egyptian traditional scenes. Last January, the Downtown Mall organized a moulid, complete with children’s attractions and a repertoire of baladi figures, from the erk sous vendor dressed in folkloric attire carrying his copper container decorated with plastic flowers to the rigala bita3 al-hummus in their galabeyyas, and the stands of dora mashwi and batata mashweya covered with khayamiyya tablecloths of bright colors. The staging of this scenario –which presents as spectacle the well-known smells and tastes of wust el-balad– is reminiscent of Timothy Mitchell’s (1988) description of the Egyptian exhibit at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris. The then-celebrated imitation of medieval Cairo in the French capital has been replaced today by an imitation of baladi downtown Cairo just a few kilometers away from the exotic 'other.’ In a curious switching of roles, it is now the street vendors and not the Khedive Isma'il –viceroy of Egypt from 1863 to 1879– who become the protagonists of the exhibition, their presence reclaimed by children and adults vying to take pictures with them.

[Downtown, New Cairo. Images by Ian Alan Paul]



Besides being spaces of conspicuous consumption and leisure, the shopping malls of New Cairo play an increasingly important role in the economic and professional activity of the area. It is not by chance, therefore, that the Downtown Mall and the Cairo Festival City Mall hosted the 7th and 8th edition of the Employment Fair organized by The Employer Magazine in February 2013 and October 2014, respectively. Described as “the largest employment event of the year,” the fair provides a space for major Egyptian and international companies to interview –and hire– fresh graduates and middle management personnel. This choice of location seems only logical given the fact that many private universities –among them the American University in Cairo, the German University, the Future University and the Canadian International College– have (re)located to this area. The American International School in Egypt has gone even further and has built a new campus in Cairo Festival City, right next to the mall.

The migration of (most of) the American University in Cairo from Tahrir Square to its new campus in the desert has profoundly affected wust el-balad. The “feel of the area” has changed now that upper-class students rarely venture to downtown (Naaman 2011: 174). Instead of strolling down Mohamed Mahmoud St. to Costa Coffee or Cilantro, the 'AUC kids’ now hang out within the securitized premises of the university or at the neighboring Meeting Point shopping mall. And even the university bus that regularly drives students between the New Cairo campus and Downtown Cairo has a stop at the Downtown Mall. As students and professors note with remorse, the connection between the student body and the political events taking place in Egypt –which crystallized during the January 25th Revolution on and around the midan– has been severed. While student protests and detentions mark the beginning of the 2014 academic year in state universities, the political turmoil is hardly noticeable at AUC, where the poor performance of the bus service is for the time being the only –occasional– catalyst for collective action.

This increasing spatial segregation exacerbates the “social polarization” of society (Kuppinger 2004: 42) and ultimately contributes to the disintegration of wust el-balad as a socially heterogeneous space and a symbolic place in the collective imagination of Egyptians. Abandoning this space is akin to obliterating a “generative past” (Lefebvre 1991: 120) for the promise of a sterile future.

References:

Backes, Nancy. 1997. “Reading the Shopping Mall City.” The Journal of Popular Culture, 31(3):1-17.

Kuppinger, Petra. 2004. “Exclusive Greenery: new gated communities in Cairo.” City & Society 16(2): 35–61.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell.

Mitchell, Timothy. 1988. Colonising Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Naaman, Mara. 2011. Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature: Portraits of Cairo. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Passavant, Paul A. 2009. “Policing Protest in the Post-Fordist City.” Amsterdam Law Forum 2(1): 93–114.