{"id":18554,"date":"2012-04-30T12:36:08","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T08:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=18554"},"modified":"2012-04-30T12:37:48","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T08:37:48","slug":"do-books-matter-in-contemporary-cairo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/do-books-matter-in-contemporary-cairo\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Books Matter in Contemporary Cairo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Soor el-Azbakeya (The Azbakeya Fence) is Cairo\u2019s oldest book market. The market played an important role in Egypt\u2019s cultural and intellectual life for roughly hundred years, from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. But, since 1990, the booksellers have been juggled around four times. Now, they\u2019re on the verge of a fifth eviction.<\/p>\n

Do traditional\u00a0booksellers still matter to contemporary Cairo?<\/p>\n

It was reportedly the 1850s and the 1860s when Mamluk-era buildings were demolished to make way for the Paris-inspired Azbakeya gardens area, around which cafes and theaters sprang up. The ruling classes gathered there, and booksellers followed, collecting around the Soor el-Azbakeya.<\/p>\n

According to Youm7<\/em><\/a>, in the late 1800s, booksellers would sit near the Azbakeya fence and sell their wares in the shade of the old Opera House. Youm7<\/em> quotes Azbakeya bookseller Harby Hassan Mahassab as saying that, before the official market, booksellers would stroll though the coffee shops and sell their texts to drink-sipping intellectuals.<\/p>\n

Al Ahram<\/em> quotes Leslie Lababidi\u2019s Cairo Street Stories<\/em> as saying that, in the 1920s, booksellers stretched out their books along the Azbakeya fence, but were often chased away with water hoses.\u00a0According to the local booksellers, the Soor al-Azbakeya was nonetheless frequented by literary figures like Tawfiq al-Hakim and Naguib Mahfouz.<\/p>\n

Bookseller Mohamed Ahmed told Al Ahram<\/em> in 1998<\/a>: \u201cBook vendors used to roam the streets downtown and then get some rest at the Azbakiya fence. Police would chase them down in the days of King Farouk. It was only after the 1952 Revolution that vendors were given permits to sell books at the fence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1971, the Khedival Opera House burned down, but the booksellers hung on until the early 1990s, when they were evicted to make way for the city\u2019s first metro line. For six long years, the market was in \u201ca desolate area at the foot of the Moqattam Hills,\u201d according to Al Ahram Weekly<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When in 1998, they were moved back to Azbakeya, \u201cMany people wore broad smiles,\u201d the Ahram Weekly<\/em> reported. \u201cWhy not? The garden\u2019s fence was once again to serve as the site of Cairo\u2019s most famous second-hand book market.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of its move back to the Azbakeya fence, novelist Gamal al-Ghitani told the Weekly<\/em>: \u201cAzbakiya has greatly affected my career. More than half of the books in my library are from here. As a young man, I used to save money and go to the second-hand book market every evening to browse for valuable books.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven now, browsing through the old, rare books of Azbakiya is a special treat for me. I was one of those who fought for the return of the vendors to their original site. This was only an expression of gratitude for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But more metro lines were built, and the booksellers were moved twice more, most recently in 2009. Over the years, the Azbakeya booksellers also came to depend heavily on the trade they did each January at the Cairo International Book Fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2011 fair was canceled and the 2012 fair saw considerably fewer patrons. Now, the nearby Emad al-Islam service complex wants to expand its factory, school, and clinic into the market area where the Azbekeya booksellers currently reside.<\/p>\n

Vendors told Ahram Online<\/em> and the Egypt Independent<\/em> that they\u2019re not averse to moving, but that they\u2019d like a decent location with some aesthetic value where they could stay awhile.<\/p>\n

Bookseller Alaa Abdel Haq told the Egypt Independent<\/em>:<\/a> \u201cPeople come to visit us from all over the world looking for our old and rare books, hoping that they will find a great place where Arabic literature pioneers were raised, but they come to find the wall surrounded by street vendors and piles of rubbish.\u201d<\/p>\n

But do the Azbekya booksellers now matter just as a historical site, as a place for internal and external tourists? Or can they \u2014 in the right location, with the right twist \u2014 still remain a vibrant part of the city\u2019s literary landscape?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY: It may be Cairo’s oldest book market but heritage is no protector from increasing development<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":18555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,124,80,235,482,5],"tags":[2693,2692,378,18300,5782,5263,18291,1542,4706,2144,6237],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}