Snippets of Cairo’s Friday Market

Background

Souq al-Goma’a, the Friday Market, is one of the largest in Cairo. It’s just south of the Citadel, sandwiched between the southern City of the Dead (the rather macabre Hammer-horror name given to the Mamluk-era cemeteries) and a poor neighbourhood called Khalifa.

It stretches further than the eye can see, under the Autostrade, along some abandoned train tracks and another parallel road. Tens of thousands of Cairo’s poorer residents (and the curious) descend on the market to buy and sell… well, pretty much anything you can name.

It’s said that much of the stuff on sale at the market is stolen, and that pick-pocketing is a real problem. There are certainly crowds enough for it. But to be honest, the only thievery I’ve ever seen is by the police, who routinely extort baksheesh from the taxi drivers who stop to pick up customers leaving the market.

Scene 1

The southern cemetery sprawls haphazard to our right, dull brown and faintly menacing. It’s 9.00 am, and people are already shuffling amongst the tombs, paying their respects to the dearly departed. We whiz past, and screech to a stop on the flyover next to a long line of parked cars.

My taxi driver cheerfully overcharges me, but I don’t mind. We’d had a cool discussion about our favourite mosques in Cairo, and he didn’t once ask whether I was: a) Muslim; b) Married; or c) A Manchester United Fan. Small victories are important here.

Grinning, he wishes me luck. I push my way down the concrete steps, into the fray.

Scene 2

Stalls cluttered with clothing of all shapes and sizes are jammed collar to cuff along each side of the street. Stubbly, ferret-eyed vendors are screeching at the milling crowds through crackly megafones, but no-one is paying attention. Everyone is too busy trying to stay on their feet.

A young guy in jeans and striped shirt is balanced atop a truck, trying to drum up business by beating seven shades of arrhythmic shit out of a plastic barrel. It‘s hard to tell whether he‘s having a fit, or locked in a trance. Perhaps it’s both.

An old man in beige galabaya somehow manages to force a passage through the throng, whilst balancing a glass aquarium on his head. A young peasant girl swathed in black is selling fish from a bucket of ice. They look about as fresh as her grandmother, perched gimlet-eyed behind her.

Scene 3

Small hawks glaring out of wire cages, next to a stall selling apples. Cruelly positioned, directly below the raptors, are cages of fuzzy hedgehogs. They are all hunched up into protective balls. Over the way, a pigeon has broken into a tortoise cage, and both bird and owner are all a-flap. The trilling of hundreds of brightly coloured budgerigars almost drowns out the noise of laughter and frantic haggling.

For a country that‘s 95 % desert, it makes sense the most popular animals are the fish. Whole families stand spellbound before grubby glass tanks filled with tiny, speckled goldfish. A raven-haired young girl shyly picks out the exact three tiddlers she wants. (10 LE the three.) The owner then spends the next 10 minutes trying to scoop these three particular fish out of a tank containing dozens, using a fine meshed children’s fishing net.

(In case you are wondering, $1 is approximately 5.5 LE. The hawks go for about 35 LE, the tortoises around 65, and snakes for as little as 10!)

Scene 4

Rattle. Slap-slap-SMACK! The grizzled old man has a face like cracked leather, and three lonely, yellow teeth. He slams the cup onto the table, and lifts it to reveal the dice beneath. He’s wearing an ancient, maroon leather jacket and a thick black galabaya. Bright red and purple shell-suit trousers peak out the bottom.

Rattle. Slap-slap-SMACK! This is a gambling game, where the punters stake money on the dice results. Three teenagers are playing. One looks like a proper wideboy, with gelled black hair and a scar running from cheek to lip. The others seem like street kids, slouched ragged in dirty tracksuits, nascent sores around their mouths. Their eyes flash bright with gambling fervour. Crumpled one LE notes are being quickly flicked back and forth. The boys are winning.

An older, mean-looking man with a toothbrush-tache is also playing. He stakes his money and collects if he wins, but takes his stake back if he loses. I wonder if he’s a cop, and this is the pay-off for allowing illegal gambling to take place so openly. I decide against asking.

Rattle. Slap-slap-SMACK! Nearby is a stall selling shiny new spanners, screwdrivers, and other boys’ toys. It’s being run by a fully veiled woman. Rattle. Slap-slap-SMACK! An alarm is going off at a stall selling clocks. The shrill beeping doesn’t stop, cutting through the background roar of the crowds, and the rattle-slap-smack of immorality. For some reason, I feel I’m in a warped, ultra-surreal version of Blade Runner.

(I couldn’t take a photo of people gambling, which is why the picture for this scene is entirely unrelated.)

Scene 5

Row upon row and stack upon stack of wooden wicker chicken crates. We’ve moved from Blade Runner to The Matrix. People prodding, poking, inspecting eyes and beaks. Kids wandering around, live geese casually slung over each shoulder. Other boys carry a canvas bag. Like nervous flashers, they furtively open-it-shut-it to reveal the birds within. We are right under the bridge, and the acoustics are strangely distorted. A rumbling, squawking swimming pool.



Scene 6

Someone is stumbling around with a sky blue porcelain toilet on his head, splotched rust brown in worrying places. He’s like a bizarre parody of an ancient Egyptian god. Something along the lines of Uranus, god of defecation and decomposition.

This area of the market is much quieter, a bewildering and eclectic mix of antiques and junk. There are stalls selling corroded metal pipes… locks… broken computer monitors… dead plastic. Scavenged crap, waiting for someone to give it a new lease of life.

Faded Louis Farouk furniture… battered gramophones… the fragments of a once-grand train set… disconsolate violins bereft of their strings. The remnants of glories past, fading into obscurity.

It seems fitting this section backs right onto to the City of the Dead.

Scene 7

It’s started to rain. A dull, depressing drizzle worthy of London. The better prepared vendors chuck plastic tarps over their wares. Hurrying past the dog pound, the barking has grown louder, and the smell of leather and desperation more intense.

I’m heading down the train tracks towards the Citadel, the floor thick and spongy with rubbish. It’s difficult to distinguish this from the scavenged goods spread out on the floor for sale. Broken toys… calculators… phone cases… empty shampoo bottles.

I dive into a shack for a cup of hot, sweet tea. A snotty nosed girl in dirty pink pyjamas, fat gold ear-ring in one ear, whines until her mother gives her the dregs of a cup. She has the brightest eyes I’ve ever seen, so black they shine. She’s beautiful. The tea shuts her up. Her mother notices me smiling, and smiles back.

Outside the shack, the rain is coming down harder. A well manicured man in polished shoes squats on the ground, sorting through cassette tapes and bundling them into thick plastic sacks. Strips of tape spill out the cases, like tangled intestines.

Cassette tapes spilling their guts into the rain. People buy this stuff. Find a use for it. In some ways, it’s very sad. In others, it’s humbling.

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