The embrace of decrepitude can be seen as a form of resistance. On the one hand, the utilization of rundown spaces for cultural production or sociopolitical activism is a resistance to commercial real estate development.1 On the other, it is a resistance to and subversion of established social norms and acceptable behavior in public space. In this way, dilapidation becomes the central physical characteristic of liminality. Sandler uses the term counterpreservation to refer to the informal counterpart to state-sponsored renovation and commodification of space; use value put against exchange value of urban space. The cycle of decrepitude, sprawl, and emancipation from cultural gatekeeping and official narratives of the city is well documented in the evolving portrayal of Downtown Cairo in cinema since the 1940s.
Through the triptych of mainstream representation of space, the people that occupy it, and collective public culture, this piece makes an effort to examine the emergence and reemergence of generational countercultural groups in the creases of transformation. A brief picture of the evolution of Downtown since the 1940s will be painted through film followed by a retelling of the story of the literary counterculture that spatialized in Downtown in the 1970s.
Downtown Cairo had been the standard urban backdrop of the “golden age” of Egyptian cinema between the 1940s and the 1960s; portrayed as modern urban center of upscale and often westernized lifestyles in films like Hayah aw mawt (Life or Death, Kamal el-Sheikh, 1954). With Downtown falling out of favor by upper and upper-middle-class society since the 1970s; many moving to the new bourgeois districts popularized under the new neoliberal state, the lamentation of its ruin became ingrained in collective public culture.2 Downtown, in turn, would be slowly recast—coinciding with a denationalized film industry and liberalizing censorship—as backdrop of deviant desires and moral decadence. Sadat’s open-door policy (Infitah), at its core, constituted opening Egypt’s boundaries up to the West and the United States in particular.3 On On the impact it had on Egyptian society and governance, Amin (2000) argues that while in the 1950s and 60s westernization mainly constituted a westernization of production, in the 1970s onwards it was a westernization of consumption.4 The denationalization of the cinema and entertainment industry under Sadat resulted in the proliferation of commercial films in the 1970s and 80s which, in collective public culture, are remembered as being devoid of real plots, imbued with sexual undertones, and littered with explicit scenes to attract larger audiences. This phenomenon would cascade spatially in Downtown’s rundown cinemas which will be discussed later. One film that came from the transition into this period in Egyptian cinema is Hammam el-Malatily (Malatily Bathhouse, Salah Abu Seif, 1973). The film follows the complex dynamic between the protagonist, Ahmed, who moves to Cairo from Israel-occupied Ismaila, a prostitute, and a homosexual in the Malatily Bathhouse where he is invited to stay. Downtown would complete its metamorphosis in the 1980s and 1990s; unveiled in its new guise as deprecated center of “illicit dreams”5 in Hub fi hadabit el-haram (Love on the Pyramids Plateau, Atif el-Tayib, 1986) and Romantika (Zaki Fatin Abdel Wahhab, 1996). With the introduction of so-called “clean cinema” in the late 1990s, Downtown would, by the turn of the millennium, be shown as one-dimensional middle-class commercial and recreational hotspot in Banat wist el-balad (Downtown Girls, Mohamed Khan, 2005). The renewed interest in Downtown and the emergence of dissident cultural spaces in the period surrounding the 2011 revolution was personified in the part-fictional part-autobiographical Akher ayam el-madina (In the Last Days of the City, Tamer El Said, 2016).
Although listed chronologically, these conflicting depictions of Downtown are not. They are rather emblematic of the polymorphic nature of the city; incubating multiple narratives and overlapping publics that continue to exist simultaneously.
The gradual onset of decay that began in the 1970s was accompanied by a heterotopic quality that characterized Downtown, for many, as a place of anonymity and, consequently, emancipation. With the largest concentration of rundown bars and nightlife spaces, frequenting Downtown became an escapade as an alternative reality where, along with earned anonymity, true autonomy can be achieved. The expansion of the city and growing decentralization of social and professional life meant many Cairenes no longer needed to have a connection to Downtown, eventually allowing an almost enigmatic association with moral decadence and hedonism to cultivate. Frequenting Downtown immediately became a suspicious act; overtaken since the 1980s by a reputation of dissidence where illicit social and political pursuits are harbored. The glamor and western allure previously associated with Downtown was replaced with a thrill for the illicit.6 Ambrust (1996) paints a picture of how, in the early 1990s, Downtown’s cinemas served as liminal spaces where low-income male youth could indulge in behavior unsanctioned by parents, a modernizing state, and a materializing moralizing Islamist milieu.7 One scene in the film Mercedes (Yousry Nasrallah, 1993) might be interpreted as a nod to the normality of gay cruising in the same Downtown cinemas that once represented the peak of Cairene bourgeois performativity. In this way, the rundown cinema acquires a certain liminal status that sets the tone for what is tolerated within its walls but unfathomable beyond them. Within the walls of the hypersexual rundown cinema, itself a heterotopic geography of heterosexual space, is a queer heterotopia. The sexually subversive nature of the space capitalized on to seek even more pleasure. Dean Sameshima’s “Figures of lust furtively encountered in the night” (2001) which shows a series of nude mirror selfies exchanged by gay men in the early days of the internet, was exhibited at Sexkino Roland8 in Zurich in October 2022.9 Through this exhibition, Sameshima’s work carves space out of the porn theater; a patriarchal territory historically dominated by the male gaze.10 Instead, cruising, which is typically accepted as a byproduct of the porn theater, becomes—at least for the duration of the exhibition—its raison d’être.
Ryzova (2015) sheds light on heterotopic spaces that emerge on the fringes of other heterotopias. Tahrir Square—itself a heterotopia in its most explicit form—birthed a new heterotopia during the 18 days of occupation. While the square already allowed a kind of social mixing liberated from previously accepted status quos regarding class and gender that was almost impossible to imagine elsewhere, Hoda Shaarawi street was treated as its back alley where protesters would often go to unwind and smoke joints in a safe and discreet atmosphere. Paradigmatic of Downtown’s status as a refuge from mainstream society, El-Horreya bar’s conspicuous ground-floor presence in the heart of Bab el-Luq square has its interior paradoxically concealed from public view through the wallpaper-covered glass front. Fittingly, photography inside Horreya and some of Downtown’s other historical bars is alarming to some older patrons. Outing their socially unacceptable behavior is seen as a possible outcome.
The collective aura of dissidence that permeates Downtown to this day—even with the state’s ongoing depoliticization and sterilization efforts aided by private developers’ gentrification dreams—has its roots in the late 1960s. A cohort of dissident "literary bohemians'' sprouted in its cafes and bars in opposition to official cultural institutions and the older generation of writers. Although many of the writers of this generation had already been producing work since the beginning of the decade, it was the defeat of 1967 that resulted in them being labeled a group along with other manifestations such as the student movement of 1968.11 By the mid-1970s, this cohort had fully materialized. With Downtown already experiencing the mass exodus of its upper and upper-middle-class residents, practically no one in this emerging cohort of writers and thinkers lived there. However, the concentration of cultural institutions like theaters, publishing houses, and bookshops meant many of them worked nearby.12 As such, Downtown’s numerous bars and cafés became known as Cairo’s “literary cafés” and would play the “social and psychological role of lifting repression, achieving catharsis, and affirming one’s sense of belonging to a community”.13 Rituals such as their Tuesday night nadwas (seminars) at the Cairo Atelier, an avant-garde art space at the time, and subsequent congregation in cafés and bars to discuss culture and politics reinforced Downtown’s reincarnation as an incubator of subcultures and political dissent. Manifesting itself as a resistance to hegemonic culture and society, this literary bohemia spatialized in the area surrounding Talaat Harb square giving rise to the expression muthalath el-ru’b (triangle of horror) in the 1980s denoting the area between Cairo Atelier, Le Grillon, and the Bustan café as recounted by Sonallah Ibrahim in his later works. Some of the traditions initiated by this generation have survived to this day such as the tradition to go out in Downtown on Tuesdays which evolved into a weekly DJ set at the After 8 nightclub (closed 2016)14 and weekly literary gatherings at the Greek Club.15 It is important to note that this congregation of certain groups of people in particular places, as would be the case with the contemporary art spaces of the 1990s, does not necessarily pertain to a specific ideology, but it is rather the rejection of ideology and general disdain for established socio political norms that makes them anti-hegemonic.16
The embrace of decrepitude in Downtown Cairo has not only functioned as a resistance to societal norms but has also transformed the physical landscape into a symbol of liminality. The cyclical process of decay, migration and resulting vacuum that allows the emancipation of marginalized voices from conventional narratives of the city has been vividly captured through the lens of cinema over the decades. By exploring the interplay between mainstream representations of space, its inhabitants, and collective public culture, this piece has sought to shed light on the emergence and resurgence of countercultural movements, showcasing their persistence within the evolving urban fabric. The narrative of Downtown Cairo's transformation since the 1940s, as depicted in film, is complemented by the account of the literary counterculture that found its spatial identity within Downtown during the 1970s, illustrating the enduring legacy of resistance and artistic expression within the city's vibrant tapestry. This legacy continued with the 1990s contemporary art scene and the dissident cultural spaces in the window of autonomy that surrounded the 2011 revolution, and continues with the ephemeral appearance and disappearance of queered spaces.
1 Sandler, D. (2011). Counter preservation: Decrepitude and memory in post-unification Berlin. Third Text, 25(6), 687–697.
2 Ryzova, L. (2016). Like ships passing in the night: Downtown Cairo and its publics. In Stryker, B., & Nagati, O. (Eds.), Creative Cities: Re-framing Downtown (pp. 31–41). CLUSTER, the American University in Cairo, and the Research Foundation for the State University of New York.
3 Ghannam, F. (2006). Keeping him connected: Globalization and the production of locality in urban Egypt. In Singerman, D. and Amar, P. (eds.), Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East (pp. 251–266). The American University in Cairo Press.
4 Amin, G. (2000). Westernization. Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present (pp. 45–54). The American University in Cairo Press.
5 Ryzova, L. (2015). Strolling in enemy territory: Downtown Cairo, its publics, and urban heterotopias. Orient-Institute Studies, 3.
6 Ryzova, L. (2016). Like ships passing in the night: Downtown Cairo and its publics. In Stryker, B., & Nagati, O. (Eds.), Creative Cities: Re-framing Downtown (pp. 31–41). CLUSTER, the American University in Cairo, and the Research Foundation for the State University of New York.
7 Armbrust, W. (1996). Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt. Cambridge University Press.
8 A cinema in Zurich’s historic Langstrasse that turned into a sex cinema in 1978 and had recently stopped operating.
9 The exhibition was presented by Nexpo and Querformat.
10 “GTA - Institute of History and Theory of Architecture - ETH Zurich: Kino Roland.” Accessed October 10, 2023. https://gta.arch.ethz.ch/events/kino-roland
11 Ramadan, Y. (2012). The emergence of the sixties generation in Egypt and the anxiety over categorization. Journal of Arabic Literature, 43(2), 409–430. https://doi.org/10.2307/41725606.
12 Ryzova, L. (2015). Strolling in enemy territory: Downtown Cairo, its publics, and urban heterotopias. Orient-Institute Studies, 3.
13 Jacquemond, R. (2008). Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt. (D. Tresilian, Trans.., pp. 175–178). The American University in Cairo Press.
14 Ryzova, L. (2015). Strolling in enemy territory: Downtown Cairo, its publics, and urban heterotopias. Orient-Institute Studies, 3.
15 Naaman, M. (2011). Wust al-balad as neo-bohemia: Writing in defense of a vanishing public sphere. Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature: Portraits of Cairo (pp. 169–176). Palgrave Macmillan.
16 Ryzova, L. (2015). Strolling in enemy territory: Downtown Cairo, its publics, and urban heterotopias. Orient-Institute Studies, 3.