Cairo, Egypt. Picture by Rutger / Flickr.com (CC BY 2.0). Some rights reserved. What are the socio-economic forces and tensions in play – and the competition Cairo’s middle classes face from the super-rich denizens of luxury villas in the secure, gated communities springing up around the city?
Coming home one May afternoon to my venerable Cairo apartment block, I find the faded elegance of its shabby foyer and central staircase suddenly transformed into the final scene of Sunset Boulevard, with a full film crew and camera lights, all switched on as if ready to capture Gloria Swanson’s famous final descent declaring herself “ready for her close-up”.
The main entrance is crammed with metres of thick cables, arc lights of all shapes and sizes, cameras and other pieces of film equipment – with a dozen able-bodied men in flip-flops barring access to the site. Residents who are stranded outside inspect the litter – a messy jumble of takeaway paper bags, soft drink cans, and empty water bottles - strewn around the crew’s three lorries parked in the narrow street, each packed full of yet more equipment. Their noisy cries of “fi ehhhhh?’ (“What the hell’s all this then?” with the final vowel drawn out to signal irritation) are parried robustly with the single word ‘taswir – tasssssswiiiir - taswirrrrrrrrrr’ (“filming” – repeated with increasing elongation). The buzz, excitement and incipient chaos is suddenly stilled as the director’s loud call of ”Klakit... take....... ACTION!’ resolves the tensions of the set into some semblance of order, and triggers a silent, magical moment of anticipation.
