طلع من نقرة لدحديره
Tele' men noqra le dohdeira
Translation: He climbed out of a hole only to tumble down a slippery slope.
Meaning: The saying is similar to that of going from the frying pan into the fire. The imagery of uneven topography must have appealed to people living in Cairo up to the mid nineteenth century, before major urban work brought the city to complete flatness. Earlier, large parts of Cairo were quite hilly. Khedive Ismail had his planners fill many lakes and canals, and they simply took the nearby mounds and dumped them in the lakes, creating the solid surfaces now known as Birket al-Ratl, Birket al-Fil, al-Nasriyah, and al-Azbakiyah.
Source: ُEgyptian proverbs, (Al-Ahram Center For Translation and Publishing, 1986) by Ahmed Taymour Pasha,
Translated by: Nabil Shawka
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