Revolutionary Road

Haram Street, the Cairene boulevard famed for its late-night entertainment and tourist traps, was most recently used as the title of a film that broke records at the Egyptian box office. A heaving avenue, it is the main artery joining Cairo’s sprawling metropolis to the Giza pyramids. The journey from the pyramids to Tahrir Square says something of how much—and how little—Egypt has changed since the revolution. As a resident of Haram Street, I am well acquainted with the purveyors...

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Remembering Cairo

There is a story from the Mubarak era about a Cairo shopkeeper who had a portrait of each of Gamal Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak decorating the wall of his shop. A passing tourist asked the shopkeeper about the portraits and he replied, “The first led the 1952 revolution, the second led Egypt in the 1973 war and the third—he is the father of Ala'a, my business partner.” This tale reveals as much about the Egyptian sense of humor as it does about the rising discontent that swept th...

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