A traveller weaves his way through streets and alleys crowded with memories

I was a child when I first discovered , one morning when I had travelled from my native Upper Egypt on the famous midnight train. I stayed with my aunt on my father's side, who lived in the Fostat quarter [name of a city founded in 641 by the Muslim conqueror Aman 'bn Al 'Ass] on the outskirts of Old Cairo. The air was filled with an acrid, penetrating smell from a nearby tannery.

On the first evening, I went to the nearest mosque, dedicated to the memory of an extremely pious man named Sidi Abdul Saoud. From an adjoining house came the sound of women's voices, cries, and beating tambourines, merging into a kind of incantation. I could not resist. Trying not to be noticed, I slipped into the courtyard of the house.

A group of common women, clad in long black dresses, were dancing in a circle, keeping pace with an increasingly quick, breathless beat. Their bodies merging into a single whole, their hips rocked by a movement they could no longer control, projected an irresistible sensuality.

A young man with hair as long as the women's and wearing a tight gown was standing in the middle of the circle and beating the rhythm with small cymbals. Some of the women dancing around him were playing tambourines.

It was a zar ceremony--a ritual held to remove a spell. The women had gone into a collective trance to expel from their bodies the demons that had possessed them. It had become so intense that some had collapsed and lay prostrate on the ground. The young man leaned over each one and whispered mysterious words into their ears and revived them.

I shall never forget that scene. It unexpectedly introduced me, as if I were a trespasser, into the very heart of Old Cairo.

If you take the road that today leads from Fostat to the international airport, you come to the foot of the great plateau and the overlooking Citadel built by Saladin in 1176. The impregnable silhouette of this symbol of power abutting the Moqattan hills rises above the capital and keeps watch over it day and night. When Bonaparte entered Cairo in the last days of the 18th century, it was here that he installed his artillery. It was from here that he shelled the rebellious poor neighbourhoods.

Before the time of the illustrious French general, the Citadel was the place where the Turkish governors representing the Sublime Porte were inducted in great splendour. It was here too that Mohammed All, seeking to take the reins of power in the early 19th century, invited all the Mameluke lords to his son's wedding--and then had them slaughtered to the last man.

One of the Citadel's gates leads to the Fatimid city, in other words the original Cairo, Al Qahira, founded by Gohar the Sicilian, who commanded the troops of the dynasty that conquered Egypt in 975.

The jewels of the Muslim city can be found there: Al Azhar University and the Al Hussein mosque, surrounded by dozens of other mosques that are lit up and come alive at night, calling to one another with the ebbing and flowing of the vast Cairo crowd. During Ramadan, the month of fasting and of feasting together, circles of believers chant praises to their Creator in harmony. And mystic brotherhoods from all over Egypt meet to sing and dance their love of God until dawn.

I never tire of weaving my way with friends at night through the latticework of streets and alleyways in this neighbourhood where the soul Cairo never sleeps.

Anything can happen on Al Batiniya Street. The first time I innocently turned down this street, at nightfall, a man came up to me and asked if I wanted some oil. I politely turned him down. "It is top quality," he insisted, Why on earth should I want to buy oil I didn't need in the middle of the Street? But I was intrigued by the gaze of that man who, while talking about oil, seemed to have something else in mind. When at last I figured out that he was talking about hashish, I ran away as fast as my legs could carry me. But that did not keep me from noticing other young people seated behind little tables offering passersby the same sort of oil.

All that happened a long time ago.

This first visit to Cairo was followed by many others. For a long time, I dreamed of living in the Al Ghourieh quarter. The severed head of Touman Bey, Egypt's last Mameluke sultan, was hung over the gate to this neighbourhood after the Ottoman Turks killed him in the 16th century. A year earlier his father, Sultan Al Ghouri, had been killed resisting the new conquerors. The quarter has borne his name to honour him ever since.

Al Ghourieh's elusive charm lies, I think, in the omnipresence of the past. The weight of history can be felt in each narrow street and, even more so, in the faces of the people who live there, which express, often unconsciously, the tranquil certainty that this has always been and always will be their home.

I really discovered this neighbourhood when I visited three artists who in the 1970s represented the creative genius of Egypt's common people: the blind composer Sheik Imam, the poet Ahmad Fuad Negm and the lute-player Muhammed Ali. In their public performances, these three men dared to voice the anger of the poor, the outrage of students and the dreams of a better life that were embodied in those days by Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara.

They lived in a shack that seemed in a state of imminent collapse. You had to be very careful where you put your feet. You might be invited to have a cup of tea, but certainly not a dish of grilled chops. Instead you had to settle for the smell that wafted in from a nearby stall.

Such a neighbourhood can hold a strange attraction. Something in the close-knit fabric of the buildings, in the vibrations of the passing crowd, excites the imagination. You can almost guess what the interiors of the houses look like, enter the alcoves, share amorous embraces, follow the silent gaze of women behind the musharabiehs. [1]

Fortunately, the women now go out into the street, often draped in wide black veils that are supposed to conceal their bodies from intrusive eyes but actually emphasize their shapely curves. There is a language in the undulations of the female body that I never tire of learning.

Al Ghourieh leads into a street named after Al Hakim Bi Amr Illah ("He who governs by divine decree"), the illustrious Fatimid caliph whose mystic personality has always baffled historians. In this street you can enjoy all the scents of the East, from perfumes to medicinal plants. Here traditional remedies for most known physical and psychological ailments can still be found.

This street crosses another world-famous thoroughfare, Khan Al Khalili Street, where tourist coaches pour forth their passengers all year round. Here, Egypt's most skilful craftsmen display a dazzling array of handmade products in gold, silk, glass, wood, copper and ivory. All kinds of things are for sale--even dresses for belly-dancers.

A visit to the celebrated Al Fichawi cafe, where they provide you with a royal hookah, is a must for anyone who wants to claim they really saw Old Cairo. This coffee-house is a microcosm of street life, an endless steam of newspaper vendors, shoe-shine men, beggars, street peddlers--as well as poets, novelists and journalists of every stripe.

Lastly, this neighbourhood was long the home of Egypt's national glory, our country's first Nobel Prize-winner for literature, Naguib Mahfouz. His best-known novels take place in this spellbinding maze of narrow streets and dead-ends, where the heart of the city beats and is haunted by his larger-than-life personages. From the immense fresco of characters in his novels, why am I tempted to recall only the futuwa? They were men who, with panache, masculine generosity and efficiency, enforced a certain order, even a certain justice, in their neighbourhoods. They formed a sort of people's police who stood up for the needy and the weak in the name of a chivalrous code of honour.

Today, they have disappeared. And with them, a whole world--that of Naguib Mahfouz himself--which gave >Old Cairo its soul is disappearing from our lives.

As you will have guessed, I am unconsolable.

(*) Samir Gharib, Egyptian writer and journalist, was appointed chairman of his country's National Library and Archives in 1999. His published works include The Vitality of Egypt and Engravings on Time (Egyptian Book Organization, 1996 and 1997).

(1.) In Arab architecture, balconies closed by latticework allowing one to see without being seen.

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