In July 2023, the Giza Zoo and the nearby Orman Botanical Gardens were officially closed for restorations/renovations after a consortium of national and foreign companies signed a 25-year franchise to run the two historical gardens that date back to the 19th century.

About a year before the closing, Islam Salaheddine, a writer who was 25 years old, decided to do the trip that the vast majority of children in Cairo do at least once in a lifetime: go to the zoo. Joined by an anonymous and curious girlfriend, the author frequents this old and declining zoo several times and shares thoughts on history, psychology, and faith.

Salaheddine shares his thoughts about the curious and unexamined relations between humans and animals. Animals constituted at the beginning a threat and a challenge to humans. Later, this relationship evolved into a power relation in which animals eventually succumbed to the power and skills of human beings and their continued attempts to quell the animals that remained too wild to bow to the power of humans.

At some point in time, the author wrote, getting the wild animals gathered and forced into a specific zone, in what was the first idea of a zoo, was the way by which people, in this case strictly the rich and powerful, managed to get the wild animals to bow.

Salaheddine explores through his 166-page book the long path between the time when only kings and emperors would have their royal collection of animals to enjoy looking at and the start of the public zoos, designed to entertain the masses and allow for scientific research.

According to the book, the Giza Zoo was among the most prominent zoological gardens in the world in the 19th century.

Besides sharing reflections on what people think and feel when they look at certain animals, Salaheddine's book examines the urban state of the big, crowded, and increasingly un-green zoo, built on 80 feddans. He notes how unkempt the zoo, which lies at the city's heart, has become zoologically and botanically.

In as much as Salaheddine argues that people look at the animals behind the cages of the zoo in a way that reflects and matches their state of mind, he perceives the zoo and its animals, frail and suffocated as they have become, as a reflection of the urban life of the city itself.

According to ‘A Belated Visit to the Giza Zoo,’ animals are kept in cages while the city itself, through ongoing infrastructure work, is caged in concrete so that the city and its zoo seem to have ‘fallen out of grace’.

Bewilderment is perhaps the key sentiment that dominates in the background of this text: the animals are suffering because they are not living in a natural habitat – nor could they regain their natural habitat after years of being held and fed by humans; the people are bewildered for different reasons, and this drives them to project sentiments of unease and frustration on the animals.

The zoo and its workers are also in bewilderment over the decline and the hidden details of the anticipated restoration/renovation and to what extent it would change this historical zoo. And ultimately the city itself is thoroughly bewildered as it becomes greyer and greyer by the year.

Beyond the curious philosophical questions the text offers, it has a wealth of information and references to the Giza Zoo. While not exactly anecdotal, “A Belated Visit to the Giza Zoo” remains rich in historical details.