In this beautiful braided essay for Granta, Wiam El-Tamami mines conflicted emotions about modern Cairo, Egypt, as she remembers the city before and after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.
My father would tell stories of his daily stroll as a student from his home to Cairo University among peaceful, tree-lined avenues. Of his adventures with his siblings: sneaking into the cinema, the sandwiches they would buy at a street stall afterwards, all for a few piasters. The family had eight children and humble means, but still managed to live well and eat well and share much of what they had with others: my grandparents’ small home was always open, the table always laid, the rooms always filled with innumerable guests.
When my parents finally returned – my mother in 2000, my father in 2010 – they returned to a different place than the one they had left behind: a country disfigured, a city almost unlivable, choked with traffic, ear-splitting noise, unbreathable air and 20 million people jostling for space. A country mired in corruption and repression and simmering with discontent – on the cusp of boiling over. Just months after my father’s return, the country erupted into revolution.
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