A walk through Downtown Cairo

Sometimes when I am walking in Downtown Cairo I let my eyes wonder up to the faded architecture, to the black telephone lines that section the clear sky. The sounds of car horns, street sellers and energetic Arabic conversations wonder up with me. Nostalgia exists here. It floats above the maze of people, the garbage piled streets, the assault course of cars, barefoot children and the sticky eyeballs of men with narrow minds who sit in narrow streets.
It is in the cracks, the humble edges, where you find your love for downtown Cairo. In the closed spaces of bodies moving together you find your unspoken hate.
I move awkwardly and quickly. The separation of the street and the road is undefined and the stench of garbage mixes with the smells of Zalabia, Shisha, pollution, Koshari and Sherwerma sandwiches, they infuse your hair and stick to your skin.
I feel a strange awareness of my own presence, the way the lines of my body attract assumptions that contrast with the undefined atmosphere. Every face we pass turns to me. A boy on a bicycle with a tray of flat ‘baladi’ bread balanced on his head zigzags around us, turning as he does to see my face he shouts back at me ‘sakalans’, the bread tipping dangerously.
I notice that people here do not walk, the crowd is floating and people float with and within the crowd. I have not yet mastered the float. I wonder how Nadim is not fazed by all of this. My eyes follow him; I see each brown street pass behind the outline of his face in the periphery of my focus.
Down each street are new lines of stalls selling fake branded clothes, sounds of shouting and the ripping open of plastic clothes packaging, people beating boxes to draw attention to their stalls. The sellers are ranting with red faces about their low prices throwing t-shirts and jeans into the air.
As we pass them they direct their furious roaring at us, we are careful not to become prey by mistakenly stopping to check something or even glancing at them. I feel compelled to join the crowds surrounding them, cheer for their energy but we keep walking, the shouting still heard in the distance.
It is easy to still be caught up in craziness even when I walk here everyday. I want to stand still and look more closely at the people, hold the moment for a while and try to understand how what was and what is exists together in this dysfunctional equilibrium. These streets require a dynamic pace, one that makes the lights cast from shops blur and collide around us.