Wanted: Place to Live

Part of the excitement of living in Cairo is trying to find an apartment. My grand plan was to live in AUC's dormitory during the summer portion of my program in order to get to know the neighborhoods (and to give myself a chance to learn Egyptian colloquial!) I had a friend that was planning on studying in Cairo during the academic year and we'd made plans to live together after she arrived. My job was to find us a place.

I began my search in early July, thinking that if I had two months until her arrival I would be just fine. What I didn't know was that tenants have a distinctive habit of just moving out any time they like and doormen and landlords have no idea what apartments will be available more than a week in advance. Still, I thought I could get a good lay of the land and a male friend of mine had offered to walk the streets with me which was something I couldn't refuse.

Our wanderings led us down various streets in different neighborhoods. We had a friendly taxi driver doubling as a personal chauffeur that took us from place to place and even stopped to pick up a storekeeper who became an intermediary real estate agent. It was just amazing to me the way everyone helped in their own way and took over parts of the search.

Admittedly, the trip wasn't all roses. The "real estate agent" took us to three different apartments, and at one, I wasn't allowed in because there were some very religious men that felt uncomfortable haivng a woman in the apartment. My friend would be allowed in, but not me. Despite our arguments that my male friend wasn't going to be the one living in the apartment, I was still not allowed inside.

In addition, our "agent" demanded a large sum of money for helping us out for less than an hour. However as we stood there arguing, a small crowd of locals gathered around us, trying to mediate the discussion. They listened to both sides of the story and sided with our analysis of the situation, eventually helping us diffuse the matter. In one way or another, Egyptians are very self-policing and try to take care of their own. Perhaps another group another time might not have sided with us, but it was comforting to know that, in a way, I was taken care of.

Overall, the entire experience was a positive one and I learned a lot. Eventually, I gave up my search to wait until the fall when I would have more information about availabilities. This changed the dynamic a little bit and meant that I only had about six days after my future flatmate arrived to find a place to live and move in. By this point, we were looking for a place for three people (the third person was another girl from my program) and feeling the pressure. But we did it. Through the help of a doorman we met at an unrelated apartment. The man was very kind and offered to ask around in the neighborhood and found something while we were off looking in other areas!

This picture is taken on the other side of town in a little place called Hadiqat al-Azhar (Azhar Gardens) and is a beautiful sunset view of the city. It gives an idea of how apartments are set up and how close mosques are to any given block. From my apartment, I could hear all five calls to prayer and every Friday morning around 11:00am I could hear the prayers echoing off the walls of nearby buildings for about an hour. Every now and then any given day, the "rubbiabicchia" (buyer of all your old things) would pass through the neighborhood calling out his presence. At other times, men on a donkey cart selling gas in canisters rode down our street, banging the cans to announce their sales.

And though I spent much of my time on the top floor of our building in our two-story apartment doing enormous amounts of homework, I always felt connected to the city through its sounds.