CAIRO’S FABRIC UNRAVELS

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

 

        Album: Ladies of the Canyon (1970)

        Joni Mitchell Copyright

 

This album was released  the year I left school. I recalled  these lines the other day when reading an article in The Week magazine a précis of a piece from the National (Abu Dhabi)

 

Cairo Nile houseboat residents clamber to save homes from demolition order.

By Kamal Tabikha  Cairo  Jun 30, 2022,   FULL ARTICLE LINK. 

 

“This is my home, my only home. I built it myself and I thought it would be my last home,” said prominent Egyptian novelist and literary figure Ahdaf Soueif, 72, who lives on a Kit Kat houseboat.

 

The article tells of the gross development along the banks of the Nile in Cairo. It took me back for I was lucky enough to work in Cairo on several occasions when I was at the BBC and Microsoft.

 

Tabikha's article tells of the magnificent Nile houseboats (19^th century) being towed away and destroyed to make way for waterfront development. Early on. Earlier on the Egyptian government has also stopped boats playing their trade crossing the river.

 

I thank God that I was in Cairo, across 2009 - 2012  to witness the magic of the Nile, free all this development. I made several of drawings at the time and a successful monoprint in 2011. 

 

Doubtless with all this change the modern visitors visitor will not miss much.