1. The name of the neighborhood is pronounced “iz-Zawiya el-Hamra.” It is written in different ways in the literature. To avoid confusion, I use the classical transliteration throughout this book. People usually drop “el-Hamra” and refer to the area as iz-Zawiya.

2. See Singerman (1995) for a detailed analysis of informal networks in Cairo's old quarters and the political significance of these networks.

3. The literature also often refers to al-Zawiya only in the context of these clashes (Ansari 1984; Kepel 1993; Hanna 1997).

4. See, for example, Cairo's map in Seton-Williams and Stocks (1988).

5. Baladi, which is discussed further in chapter 3, is a complex concept that signifies a sense of authenticity and originality. It is derived from the word balad, which refers to different units such as a village, a city, or a country. Baladi in this context refers to the areas and residents of old popular quarters in Cairo.

6. These neighborhoods have also attracted the attention of writers such as Naguib Mahfouz, whose wonderful novels document various aspects of life in old Cairo.

7. At that time, an Egyptian pound was equivalent to around thirty-four American cents.

8. The published data from the 1996 census do not disaggregate the population by religion.

9. Relationships became familylike with some informants. So when members of my family visited from Jordan, it was necessary to exchange visits with close informants.

10. Huda and Ahmed have enacted the marriage contract, which means that legally they are married. Socially, however, they are not married (i.e., they are not

11. For a critique of these studies, see Lapidus (1979), Abu-Lughod (1987), and Eickelman (1989).

12. Because Zidane was Algerian and Muslim, people assumed that he was also Arab. No one in the neighborhood mentioned his Berber origin.

13. Until recently, social theories tended to treat space as “the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile,” while time was seen “richness, fecundity, life, dialectic” (Foucault 1980b: 70). This approach has been criticized by several authors who emphasize that space is not a mere container for social activities: “space is socially constructed” and “the social is spatially constructed” (Massey 1994: 70).

14. In this work, Foucault shows how prisoners who are distributed in space so that they can be observed without being able to see their observers internalize the feeling that they are under the gaze of power and become reproducers of their own subjugation.

1. For more on Cairo's history, see Stewart (1968), Abu-Lughod (1971), Mitchell (1988), Raymond (1993), Rodenbeck (1998), and Myntti (1999).

2. As will become clear from this brief background, history privileges the role of political leaders in the making of cities. There is very little information on the role of ordinary dwellers in the building of Cairo—or other cities, for that matter.

3. Although it was not mentioned in national newspapers, people also stated that part of the group was relocated to Madinet el-Saalam, in northeastern Cairo.

4. Relocation to construct facilities for tourists is also common in other parts of Egypt. In one village near Luxor, clashes erupted between the police and the villagers over the demolition of houses built on “land claimed by the state as archaeological sites” (Economist, January 31, 1998: 8). The villagers were to be removed “to make way for tourists. Villagers note with bitter irony that while their houses are being torn down, other buildings are going up—including, recently, a police station” (8). The confrontation led to the death of four people, and twenty-nine were injured.

5. It is worth noting that “investment companies, banks, and tourism” were the main areas of the economy that flourished during infitah (Waterbury 1983: 145).

6. For a discussion of modernity and how it privileges the visual, see Massey (1994), Lefebvre (1991), and Scott (1998).

7. The image of Egypt and how the country is viewed by others is of great importance for most Egyptians. See Diase (1996) for a discussion of the “anger” of the educated about “media programs that were allegedly giving audiences a very negative picture of Egypt” (95).

8. See Wright (1983) for a rich description of similar projects in the United States during the 1930s.

9. Negative constructions of the urban poor have been produced historically and used to justify different policies implemented by various governments. See Mitchell (1988) for an analysis of such constructions under the British colonization of Egypt. See also Wright (1983) for an interesting discussion of the poor in the United States and how they have been blamed for problems in big cities since the last century. See Mele (2000) for a discussion of the various stereotypes and negative representations of New York's poor used to legitimize the planning and restructuring of parts of the city's spaces.

10. The term used by the minister was ghawazi, which refers to female dancers but indicates that they are also willing to perform sexual services.

11. The language is similar to that used around the middle of the twentieth century in the United States that emphasized “sanitation, ventilation, privacy, and order” in the construction of public housing (Wright 1983: 232; see also Mele 2000).

12. Projects with similar objectives are well known in other countries such as Brazil, where officials assumed that “human ‘recuperation’ would follow physical rehabilitation” (Perlman 1982: 229).

13. National newspapers emphasized that the relocated population consisted mainly of working-class Egyptians. Each person who was interviewed was questioned by the president and the journalists about his work and about job opportunities that were available in al-Zawiya al-Hamra.

14. A title that Sadat acquired among others, such as the Hero of Victory, the Hero of Crossing (in reference to the crossing of the Suez Canal in the 1973 war), the Hero of Peace, and the Hero of Democracy.

15. It is worth noting that after a few months, both newspapers stopped publishing anything against the project. They both stressed its positive impact on people's life and reported on Sadat's visits to the area. In mid-1981, however, al-Sha‘b started attacking the project and used it to argue against the government's attempts to remove other parts of Bulaq.

16. Although part of the relocated population used to occupy the state land (hikr), the ownership rights were blurred over many years of residency in the area, and house “owners” got compensation regardless of their ownership status. A law was issued to strip ownership from the people and give the Governorate of Cairo the right to decide on the compensation offered to people.

17. The chants of the demonstrators are documented in Abdel Razaq (1979: 81–82). I translate some of them here:

1. He [Sadat] wears the latest fashions while ten of us live in one room.
2. Thieves of the infitah, the people are hungry, not comfortable.
3. It is not enough that we wear sackcloth, they also want to take away our bread.

18. The emphasis on wide streets as signs of modernity in the new location cannot be missed here.

19. Recently, the new governor of Cairo revived the idea of investing in the

20. In 1997, a conflict erupted between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the residents of Bulaq who lived near the ministry, which relocated its building to Maspiro in 1992. The ministry was trying to “beautify” the area by removing some of the houses that surrounded its building. It was offering compensations and/or housing options in other parts of the city, but residents of Maspiro refused these offers and decided to go court to cancel an administrative decision that confiscated their land for “the public good” (al-Hayat, August 7, 1979: 1).

1. An Egyptian pound is worth around thirty-four American cents. There are one hundred piasters in one pound.

2. The number of apartments in the block varies depending on the number of bedrooms in the individual unit. For example, blocks with one-bedroom apartments have twenty units (four on each floor), while blocks with two-bedroom apartments have ten units (two on each floor).

3. There are many who believe that Sadat did not know about these small and disliked units. He thought, as people emphasize, that all the units were two or three rooms.

4. If the deceased is a relative, a friend, or a neighbor, it is customary to wait for at least forty days before the wedding (often with little or no festivity) takes place.

5. Some families tried to get larger housing units by bringing relatives from the countryside and presenting them as residents of the housing unit. People also claim that some of those who had connections with the Egyptian bureaucracy managed to get a larger apartment when the family size was considered large.

6. Throughout this book, I avoid using the word adaptation, a common word in studies of relocation. This is motivated by my desire to avoid the passivity, conformity, and unidimensional connotations of this word. Adaptation is defined in Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary as “the act or process of adapting: the state of being adapted” and as “adjustment to environmental conditions: as a: adjustment of a sense organ to the intensity or quality of stimulation b: modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment.” Rather than simply viewing these spatial practices as adaptation, I aim to show their complexity and how they transform and shape individual housing units and the project at large.

7. A monolithic definition of modernity also tends to be assumed in studies of urban housing in Egypt (see, for example, Steinberg 1991; as-Safty 1987; Hassan 1985).

8. In this regard, I disagree with some writers who have seen in this distinction a dichotomy that corresponds to a rigid differentiation between a powerful

9. Officials promised, as reported in daily newspapers, that families who arranged their apartments “quickly and nicely” would be given E£ 10. Sadat also donated some furniture to two needy families who were not able to furnish their apartments.

10. Women also felt sorry for me because I was living away from my family, a role they all volunteered to fill. They also thought that my apartment, which was owned by the American University in Cairo, was not a good deal. Since the apartment was furnished, we tenants did not have any claims on the apartment in the long run; the owner legally had the right to evict us whenever he or she wanted. The fact that the place was furnished also limited my choices in displaying my social distinction.

11. In some cases, residents on the ground floor created new entrances for their apartments, turned the area in front of them into a small garden, and formed a unit that was totally separate from the rest of the block.

12. My discussion here should not be understood as denying any interest from male family members in the housing unit. In fact, men also inspect their housing units, and a husband may start a fight with his wife if he feels that she is not taking good care of their apartment. He is socially supported in this case, and the woman's duty in taking care of the housing unit is reinforced through direct interference from her family and in-laws.

13. Only a few openings were made by the original designers to allow peopleaccess to the roof. To drill a hole in the blocks with no access to the roof, people have to negotiate with the residents of the fifth floor, and if the latter refuse, as is the case with Um Hassan, no one can use the roof. In other cases, people have agreed on drilling the hole and have cooperated to raise poultry on the rooftop.

1. Sha‘bi, as will be discussed later in this chapter, is derived from the word sha‘b, which means “people” or “folk.” It indicates authenticity and rootedness and is linked with many positive qualities, such as cooperation between neighbors, respect for traditions, and willingness to help those in need.

2. It should be noticed that while most of the neighbors of this young woman are from Upper Egypt, the group in Bulaq includes many families who immigrated from Lower Egypt and who consider themselves Fallahin as well as others who consider themselves urbanites.

3. Eshash al-Turguman is viewed by its people as part of Bulaq, and they define themselves as Bulaqis. Other Egyptians tend to separate it from Bulaq and

4. People still refer to their own hara when they want to distinguish themselves from others or when they try to show their closeness to those who used to live in the same hara.

5. As a woman from New York who was visiting her son in Texas explained to me in Austin's airport, “It is the smell of bread and other foods that give a place a ‘homey feeling.’” Even though all her children are grown up and live outside New York, she still finds herself compelled to cook and bake pastry on a regular basis. She often gives what she bakes to her neighbors. What is important for her is the smell that cooking gives to the house.

6. My usage of the term capital draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984), who differentiated between economic (or material), social (connections within the group and relationships with others), cultural (information and education), and symbolic (accumulated distinction and prestige) capital.

7. Women also used to shop in government cooperatives in other upper-class neighborhoods around their area such as Garden City (Early 1993).

8. Al-balad refers to different localities that range from the whole country to a city, a town, or a village.

9. What is considered by government officials and some writers as “lack of privacy” (Rugh 1979: 20) is seen by the people as closeness that facilitates cooperation and creates solidarity. See chapter 4 for more on the theme of privacy.

10. For more on gam‘iyyat, see Hoodfar (1997) and Singerman (1995).

11. This is also one of the main reasons for people's unwillingness to live in the new communities and cities that are constructed around Cairo.

12. I find people's attitudes toward mountains very interesting. Mountains are feared and associated with danger. People could not believe it when they saw pictures of Lebanon and Jordan that show houses constructed on the top of mountains. I believe that this attitude is largely related to the fact that their experience of mountains is limited to the Egyptian media, which tend to present them as shelters for wild animals, thieves, and fugitives.

13. In a few cases, when the family could not get rid of an ‘afriit that inhibited their apartments, they sold these apartments with a big loss to move into another unit. Such an ‘afriit emerges usually in the bathroom and can be pacified through thinking of God (but without verbally pronouncing his name) and reciting a special prayer to protect the self against being possessed by it.

14. Many parents do not allow their daughters to enter el-masaakin without being chaperoned by a family member.

15. One way in which women contest these ideas is through songs that describe how capable and experienced they are. Even the phrase tarbiyyat masaakin is subversively used in daily conversations to indicate how skillful and strong they are.

1. After beating a female relative (usually a sister or a wife), especially if that happens for what is considered a “trivial” reason, the male relative apologizes to her, offers her tea or a cold drink, and often gives her some money to compensate for the pain he caused her.

2. The notion of privacy has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature on the Middle East. Aside from the dichotomy between outside (public) and inside (private) and its relation to Islam, little attention has been devoted to the meaning of privacy and how family members, and not only women, construct and negotiate notions of privacy.

3. The word khas means among other things “private” or “personal,” while ‘aam means “general” or “public.” These two words, however, do not have the same connotations implied in the Greek distinction between the polis or the public domain and the private domain of the family. Among certain social groups, the Arabic word khususia is increasingly acquiring a meaning that is similar to the English word privacy. But this meaning is still far from being universal and is absent in al-Zawiya al-Hamra.

4. As mentioned in chapter 2, the distribution of the housing units proceeded on the basis of the number of rooms that the family used to occupy in Bulaq. It was only when more than one nuclear family shared the same unit that each was given a separate apartment. Some families managed to acquire more than one unit by bringing a relative from the countryside. Abu ‘Abdo, for example, brought his mother-in-law from Upper Egypt when he heard about the plan to relocate them. He then appealed to the local authorities and managed to get an extra one-room apartment because his family was large and his mother-in-law was staying with them.

5. Various studies suggest that segregation is class based. While rich families can afford, as Tucker (1993) argued, to keep women at home, economic needs frustrate the attempts of the poor to keep women secluded.

6. This has been reported in projects in other countries. See, for example, Shami (1996) for a discussion of an upgrading project in Jordan.

7. In some cases, young women secretly go out with a boyfriend or a Wancé to some of these local attractions, especially the zoo and el-Qanatir.

8. Khimar is a garment that is considered the “true Islamic dress.” It covers the upper part of the body, including the hair, the neck, the shoulders, the breasts, and the back.

9. Similarly, Halla's male siblings immediately blame her work when she refuses to serve them food late at night or to iron their clothes.

10. The same tendency was reported in other public housing projects in the United States and England (see Jacobs 1961).

11. It is important to note that these hopes remain more an ideal than a reality. Not many mothers have the time and power to keep track of their children's movements, especially those who have only male children.

12. Due to this fact, my data on the coffeehouse are based mainly on accounts of young men and their parents.

13. These coffee shops (qahawi) are better called tea shops because few drink coffee while most drink tea.

14. Few married men can afford to go to the coffee shop because they work most of the day, often in two jobs.

15. A notable recent exception is Deborah Kapchan's wonderful study (1996) of women and the market in Morocco.

16. This is one of the main reasons why women avoid wearing golden necklaces, which are easy to snatch, and choose bracelets instead.

1. Muslims represent about 88 percent of al-Zawiya's inhabitants, as was mentioned in the introduction.

2. I use the word promise to highlight the fact that although religion is very important in forming a collective identity, it has to compete, as will become clear later, with other forces that shape people's daily life and struggles.

3. This is not only true of this particular group. The state discourse continues to use similar negative constructions when officials and planners discuss ‘ashawi‘ at (unplanned or random areas). These areas are depicted as cancer cells, devilish expansions, and “factories for breeding terrorism” that should be surgically removed (see al-Ahram, August 1993; al-Haya t, April 17, 1993; al-Gumhuriyya, April 22, 1993; Hanna 1993).

4. This was confirmed by the Minister of the Interior, who explained that the land was owned by the Governorate of Cairo and was designated to be used to build the Animal Feed Factory and a mosque for its workers. The Christian man bought it from another Muslim person in the area and acquired legal documents that proved his ownership of the land (Al-Akhbar, June 21, 1981: 3).

5. Christian informants emphasize that the land was legally owned by ‘Aziz. Similarly, Milad Hanna (1997) wrote that the Christian man acquired documents from the court that proved his legal ownership. According to him, the Animal Feed Factory, with the support of the ruling party, managed to get an administrative order from the Governorate of Cairo to use the land to build a mosque.

6. In January 1998, president Hosni Mubarak issued a decree that granted governors the authority to make decisions related to the repair and maintenance of churches. The power to license the building of new churches, however, is still retained by the president (see al-Ahram Weekly, January 29-February 4, 1998).

7. According to the transcripts of the public prosecutor, Jama ‘at al-Jihad was the active group in al-Zawiya during these clashes (Ansari 1984). People, however, refer to these activists as al-Sunniyin.

8. One Christian informant emphasized that the police were supportive of Muslims and that Sadat was to be blamed for these clashes. He told me that his family and relatives always say, “May God send Sadat to hell” (Allah yighimu).

9. The Minister of the Interior stated that 10 people were killed (4 Muslims,

10. As usual, he blamed the communists for escalating the conflict, which started as “a simple fight” between two female neighbors, one of whom happened to be a Muslim and the other a Christian.

11. One woman suggested that Sadat had to “say something” to explain the clashes when he was confronted by journalists and politicians in the United States. She emphasized that after coming back to Egypt, he retracted his statements.

12. Boycotting Christian merchants has been publicized by Islamic groups asnecessary to prevent Copts from gathering money that they supposedly invest in buying weapons (Ansari 1984).

13. Personally, I never managed to see physical differences between Muslims and Christians. The cross on the inner wrist and clothes, however, are strong visible indications of religious identity.

14. People are very sensitive to names, which are often used as clear indicators of the religious identity of the person.

15. While my discussion here is limited to the mosque, studies suggest that the church plays a similar role in the Christian community (Abdel Fattah 1997).

16. This is to prevent confusion among those who do not know the rules of the performance and who could make mistakes by standing when they should be sitting or vice versa.

17. In the women's section, which I had access to, the Friday prayer was coordinated by a woman who made sure that we were standing correctly and secured room to squeeze in newcomers.

18. It is important to notice that my discussion of the mosque and religious identity is not a negation of their importance in the old location (see Early 1993 for a discussion of what she calls “popular Islam” and “religious conservatism” or “new orthodoxy” in Bulaq). I argue, though, that they gained more significance in articulating the presence of the people in al-Zawiya al-Hamra.

19. The mosque also attracts many people who seek some basic modern services. Through charitable organizations, the mosque provides socially required services such as affordable education, health care, vocational training, day care services, and financial support to the poor.

20. Young women who choose to pray in mosques outside their neighborhoods are also provided with a morally unquestionable chance for a social outing. Detailed narratives are constructed after each trip, describing such things as the long time they waited for the city bus, the impressive khutba, and the large crowd gathered to pray inside and outside the mosque.

21. The most needy (such as widows) are offered small amounts of money to encourage them to attend these lessons together with their children.

22. Other factors (such as passengers’ temporary captivity in the bus, the relative diversity of passengers, and the protection that the mobility of the bus offers to the activist) also make the bus a strategic site for al-Sunniyin.

23. It is ironic that al-Zawiya is viewed as ‘ashwai‘ by many Egyptians and is often depicted as such in the state public discourse.

24. Unlike Western modernity, this modernity includes a desire to maintain some form of continuity with the past. See Armbrust's (1996) study of Egyptian mass culture for a sophisticated analysis of this aspect of “Egyptian modernity.”

25. A clear example of this is the widely publicized case of the “devil's worshipers.” The “transgression” of the accused was directly linked in the public discourse and daily conversation with money, traveling abroad, dressing in black, and listening to foreign music.

26. For example, Sadat managed to get a religious decree (fatwa) to support his peace treaty and used part of the American aid in 1978 to strengthen the Koran Program Services (Diase 1996).

27. See Eickelman and Piscatori (1996) for a critique of modernization theory and its assumptions regarding religion.

1. The key money is an advance that is paid to the owner before moving into the apartment.

2. Appadurai (1996) made a distinction between locality and neighborhood. The latter is “the actually existing social forms in which locality, as a dimension or value, is variably realized” (179).

3. Magdy has three sisters and four brothers. Only one of the four brothers managed to travel to Libya and Iraq. The other three have been dreaming of and planning on traveling (without success) to a neighboring Arab country.

4. Paradoxically, to realize his dreams and meet the expectations of others, Magdy has been forced to work abroad for much longer than anticipated. Though his future in-laws expected him to return permanently by the end of the first year after the engagement, Magdy will not be back until the end of the fourth year. He also borrows money from his co-workers and participates in savings associations to secure large sums of money to send back home. When his fiancée expresses her frustration with his long absence, he reminds her that he needs to furnish the apartment and save some money to start a business in Cairo because he does not want to travel after getting married.

5. I say “temporarily” because there are indications that the government tries to break down such collective cooperation by prosecuting individual families separately. So this collectivity may not last for long.

6. A zawiya is usually a place for Sufi Brotherhood meetings. This association, however, was not made in people's interpretation of the name.

7. Many similar apartments in the old and the new housing projects have been turned into shops, workshops, and clinics.

1. For more on Mubarak's policies, see Springborg (1989) and Rodenbeck (1998).

2. Whenever I went to local mosques for Friday prayer, a young woman carrying a box asked us to donate some money to build or expand mosques. We were usually prepared with bills of twenty-five or fifty piasters to deposit in the box.

3. Just like these expansions on the side of the main street, many mosques extend to the sidewalk on Friday. Plastic mats are placed in front of various mosques to accommodate the growing number of worshipers.

4. A major part of the problem in conceptualizing resistance is that, as Sherry Ortner (1999) argued, most discussions of resistance tend to be “culturally ‘thin,’ insufficiently grounded in local views of the meaning of morality, justice, subjecthood, and agency” (146).

5. A good example of this tendency is reflected in two articles (Ortner 1995; Abu-Lughod 1990) that are often cited in anthropological discussions of resistance. Although both Sherry Ortner and Lila Abu-Lughod presented insightful critiques of studies of resistance, neither of them tried to crystallize a specific meaning of “resistance,” which comes out everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.

6. Similarly, mosques that are outside the grip of the state are viewed as sites where extremists brainwash the youth and recruit their followers (Abdel Fattah 1995). These mosques and Hisham's additions are seen as threatening to the country and national unity. The Egyptian state has been struggling for the past twenty years to extend its control over private mosques. A 1996 law, for example, does not allow preaching in mosques (private and public) without a permit from the Ministry of Endowment (al-Wasat, April, 10, 2000: 7).

7. Although it is rarely reported in the media, one often hears rumors about conflicts between ministers and officials over plans to upgrade and beautify Cairo. The Egyptian capital is run by officials (such as the governor) appointed by the president, while elected representatives merely play a consultative role (Denis 1997). The presence of all ministries in Cairo, however, often creates conflicts and contradictions over providing services and managing different aspects of life in the city.

8. Because this boom in construction is recent, no one that I know has been to see the judge yet. However, people discuss and prepare themselves for this possibility. They base their expectations and strategies on the experience of people in housing projects in other parts of Cairo.

9. The notion of the “political” remains vague in Bayat's analysis (see also Bayat 2000). There is little discussion of what makes an act political aside from its being linked to collective action. At the same time, the additions of Magdy and his neighbors demand more cooperation, coordination, and sharing of information than indicated by Bayat (2000: 548).

10. Some mosques also host classes for sewing and needlework and adult education and offer spaces for funerals and weddings.

11. Hercules, the American TV serial, became very popular in al-Zawiya during 1996–1997. The name Hercules started appearing on many items, especially those geared toward children and young men, such as caps, school bags, and packets of chips. It is also used to name gyms and sports facilities.