ENRICO MARTINO

Cairo, Oum ed-Dounia or “The Mother of the World”, contains not only an archeologic invaluable heritage but also the greatest concentration of Islamic monuments in the world, included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Since the dawn of history people have settled along the banks of the Nile river but Cairo is today the metropolitan area of the Middle East with the greatest density of people and a skyline of new residential complexes surrounding from almost every direction the Great Pyramids. Since the years before the 1940 the growth of the metropolitan population surpassed that of the whole country and only in the last years the increasing rate of urbanization of other Egyptians cities stabilised Cairo’s population Decades of corruption and failed policies have put in danger the glorious heritage of historical and archeological treasures but still today many Egyptians are obliged to look at their capital for work or to interact with a overcentralized bureaucracy, and these factors contributed to the transformation of Cairo into a highly polluted city with practically no green spaces and one of the worst traffic in the world, symbolizing the situation of the whole country. The campaigns calling for family planning to reduce overpopulation failed partly due to local mistrust for the any government, partly due the opposition of many religious leaders. Same happened to the law to oblige all the mosques use only one call for the prayers, producing a harmonious sound instead of the noising interference of thousands of calls, totally ignored by nearly all the mosques. Unfortunately Egypt’s communitary culture has been lost in the quest for individualistic gains and if the world is stressed by the danger of overpopulation in Cairo the limit of sustainability may be even closer. Increasing overpopulation needs more economic growth, which subsequent needing of more energy from the environment which means even more population, like a deadly snowball of self-destruction process.

With the Egyptian Revolution the Ahwa (the arabic word for coffee and coffeehouses) of Cairo resurged after many years of political repression. The international media speak often of the web generation but still today the ahwa are the prism continue to hold a significant rôle, like a prism to understand Egypt’s politic, literature and culture. Also the 2011 Revolution started at least after the killing of a young man by the police near a ahwa. The coffee houses are a historical and architectural heritage of the city, a place for business or relax speaking of politics, sport or family problems. The ahwa, born when coffee beans where introduced in the medieval Islamic Cairo from Yemen, can be a tiny hole-in-the-wall or a faded Belle Époque splendour full of mirrors. But is always a animated place where Cairo’s men socialised playing chess, backgammon or domino, reading newspapers or watching TV, drinking Turkish coffee and shai (tea) with mint or smoking a sheesha, the tradional waterpipe. Some ahwas are meeting places for particolar people, loving chess or remembering famous Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum, others are historical places like Fishawi open 24 hours a day for the past 200 years. Today Cairo is changed and everybody is just too busy, but the ahwa still resist as one of the last defenses of Cairo’s soul.