THE LAST REFUGE
Why Writing About Cairo Matters
Ibrahim Elhadidi

Published in Cairo Digest V1–FUNDAMENTALS-2025

In a novel by Youssef Zidan, an Egyptian writer and novelist, the protagonist, Heeba, is confronted by Azazeel, a figure who is both tempter and teacher, urging him to write. “Write, Heeba! For he who writes never dies.” Writing, from this perspective, centres around the author and represents a desire to leave a trace and outlive one’s own time. However, as French philosopher Roland Barthes suggests in The Death of the Author, after a work is written, its meaning is no longer decided by the author; instead, it is shaped by the reader through their own interpretation(s). This shifts the focus away from the author’s identity and intent to the reader, who becomes an active agent in constructing meaning. The philosopher Michel Foucault, in What is an Author?, responded to this idea by suggesting that the “author” is not just an individual but a function within a discourse: a category used to classify, regulate, and control how meaning is produced and circulated. Writing, as such, is more than an act of self-actualisation or expression; it is a process of exchange and positioning, where meaning is constantly being shaped by those engaging with the text.

A similar logic could be applied to cities: just as text can be understood in many ways depending on the reader’s interpretation, a city is constructed through how it’s experienced, perceived, and represented. In a city like Cairo, in the midst of its ongoing transformations, how its present realities are captured and recorded is central to how it’s conceived and preserved and how its future is shaped. However, perspectives on change tend to be polarised, fluctuating between mourning a lost past and equating any change with progress. Writing about Cairo shouldn’t be about choosing between extremes but should focus on understanding, questioning, and engaging with the city as it is and reflecting on its shifting reality to play an active role in its ongoing transformation.

Cairo, as we know it, is changing; everything is in motion: its streets, its buildings, and its people. While some changes appear promising, others may project uncertainty. Dominant narratives tend to portray this transformation as inherently positive, casting its complications as an inevitable cost of progress. Cairo, as a growing city, must keep pace: infrastructure requires modernisation; roads must be widened; bridges are needed to cross over dense neighbourhoods and alleviate congested traffic; and neighbourhoods considered “informal” or “unplanned” must be restructured. And with every push forward, something must be left behind.

Places that have long been part of Cairo’s historic urban fabric, familiar streets, old districts, and even cemeteries have not been spared. Some old neighbourhoods, labelled as “impoverished” or “dilapidated,” are disappearing; many green areas are replaced with asphalt or concrete. Sections of Cairo’s historic necropolis, inaccurately named the City of the Dead, where the living and the dead coexist, are being reshaped by new highways to fit a new vision of an ever-expanding city. As a result, the intricate layers that once shaped the city’s historic image and identity are gradually obscured, for better or for worse. And like many things in Egypt, these transformations spark divided opinions.

For many, these changes are long-overdue steps toward a more efficient, modern, and “civilised” Cairo. This argument, grounded in the real challenges facing the city today, measures progress with numbers: like how many bridges have been built, how much traffic has eased, and how many housing units have been constructed. And while figures provide tangible measures of “progress,” they don’t always tell the full story. Stories of dislocation, contested heritage, and the shifting identity of the city. These are often the same aspects that critics of this “progress” tend to highlight. While valid, resistance rooted in nostalgia often fails to address the deeper, systematic factors driving these transformations.

Cairo is layered and complex, full of contradictions, and at times, conflicted about its own heritage. In places where resources are limited and with competing priorities, heritage can seem like an obstacle rather than an asset. This challenge could be further complicated if we consider the unresolved conflict between preservation and conservation, i.e., freezing time in place (or place in time) versus embracing transformation while respecting the past. But we aren’t really there yet. These tensions nevertheless raise many questions, like, what aspects of the past deserve to survive, and in what form? Should we preserve or adapt? And perhaps more importantly, who gets to decide?

Moving beyond these tensions and elusive polarisations, writing offers a way to critically engage with Cairo’s transforming landscape. Now more than ever, we need diverse narratives and accounts of the city that faithfully acknowledge its past, document its present, and creatively imagine alternative futures. Writing in both a literary and academic sense about places like Cairo and its many challenges is crucial to encouraging a deeper and more effective engagement with the city, its natural and built heritage, and its people. It is a way to ensure that the sanctity of the past is preserved, voices of the present are heard, and the dignity of the living is upheld.

This has always been part of how Cairo’s history has endured, not only through the layered physicality of its urban fabric but also in the writings of those who witnessed and recorded its transformations. This legacy survives in the works of figures like Ibn Khaldun, Al-Maqrizi, and Ali Mubarak, among many others. Continuing this tradition is essential. Writing about Cairo as it transforms should not be merely an act of mourning what is lost, nor should it be a blind act of advocacy and support for all that is new. Instead, it should be a tool for documenting, questioning, and engaging with our present, shaping our future, and enabling individuals to gain agency in the process. Writing may be our only way to hold on to memory, meaning, and possibility: our last and only refuge.