An Elegy for My Cairo

The chaotic inclusiveness of downtown Cairo, imperfect but vital, is being replaced by curated order. Downtown used to be ours—crowded, yes, but not staged.

Talaat Harb Square in downtown Cairo. (Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)

I left my home in Maadi, the leafy Cairo suburb along the Nile, and ordered a taxi downtown. Destination: Felfela, the classic Egyptian restaurant, serving ful, ta’amiya, and other staples, that has been a fixture in downtown Cairo since 1959. The act itself felt ceremonial, as if I were returning to a site of pilgrimage. The car slid onto the Ring Road, skirting the ashwa’iyat—those dense informal settlements that have long framed Cairo’s uneasy modernity. I thought of my book Arab Modernism(s) and the persistent tension between vision and improvisation, between state ambition and everyday survival. From the elevated highway, the city looked like a palimpsest of failed promises and stubborn resilience.

We entered downtown through Qasr al-Aini Street, approaching Tahrir Square with a caution that felt less about traffic and more about memory. I was dropped off next to Hoda Sha’arawy Street, home to Felf…