It was with a sigh of relief that Egypt’s heritage preservation community reacted to an official announcement from the Cairo governorate that “there are no plans to remove the cemetery of Taha Hussein” as part of urban development work in the cemeteries area.
The announcement, made over the weekend, put an end to months of debate on the fate of the tomb of this prominent Egyptian literary figure, dubbed “the dean of Arabic literature”, as part of wider plans to remove the cemeteries to make way for the construction of flyovers to connect the capital with newly constructed areas.
The debate over the fate of the tomb has been only part of a wider and longer debate about finding ways to reconcile plans to “facilitate movement” across the city with heritage preservation more generally. There was speculation, later quashed, about the construction of a flyover next to the iconic Basilique de Notre Dame in Heliopolis and of a Cairo Eye attraction or car park in two-century-old Zamalek parks; one of which is the Fish Garden.
To the dismay of conservationists, part of the city’s Mameluke-period cemeteries was removed, including the tomb of prominent 20th-century novelist and journalist Ihsan Abdel-Quddous. According to an official statement from the Islamic Monuments Department of the Ministry of Antiquities, this tomb and surrounding areas were not registered as historic buildings.
However, according to Soheir Zaki Hawas, a Cairo University professor of architecture and member of the National Organisation for Urban Harmony (NOUH), responsible for heritage-related planning decisions in the city, the debate on how to square the old with the new in Cairo is much older than the recent debates allow.
In 2009, the then relatively new NOUH had to “go through a tough public-opinion campaign with the help of the media” to stop a scheme to build a multi-storey garage in the vicinity of the Cairo Train Station, she said. The campaign failed to stop the construction before it started, but the construction work, which cost over LE30 million, was eventually knocked down.
“The authorities at the time came up with a conciliatory statement saying that the building was demolished due to security reasons. But we did not care to contest this pretext, as we had managed to save the façade of the station, which was what we cared about,” Hawas said.
She added that a couple of years later the NOUH failed to preserve the interior of the Station despite a lot of lobbying. The argument used in the autumn of 2011 for eliminating part of the original interior was that “there had to be an inverted pyramid carrying the names of those who had been martyred in the 25 January Revolution.”
For Hawas, as for other conservationists, the Cairo Station, which dates to the late 19th century, did not need to honour the sacrifices of the revolution. However, “at the time it was a taboo to oppose anything of this sort, even as there should be no taboos when it comes to discussing the preservation of the city,” she said.
Ten years on, Hawas was again dismayed to see commercial kiosks being put up in front of the station. They are not as intrusive as the multi-storey garage, but they should not have been allowed to encroach on this historic monument, she said.
“Nobody is opposed to development. Of course, [Cairo] needs to have development, just like any other city with a growing population. The argument is not against development, but rather for making development compatible with heritage conservation,” she said.
“It is not a new battle, but it is a long one,” she added.
SURVEY
In 2002, Hawas worked on a comprehensive survey of the architectural gems of Downtown Cairo in a book entitled Khedival Cairo — Survey and Documentation of the Architecture and Urbanism of Downtown Cairo.
The book was meant to alert government, conservationists, and public alike to the threats to the architectural heritage and urban texture of this part of the city that was built starting in the second half of the 19th century.
“It was shocking, for example, to see how commercial activities and businesses were violating the façades of some of the city’s most prominent buildings to flag their offices or stores, and it was disturbing to see how some buildings were being reworked to serve new commercial functions,” she said.
For Hawas, the book was part of a wider lobbying exercise prompted by growing worries about Cairo’s cultural and urban identity, threatened back then largely by the wish of individuals to make financial profits at the expense of the city’s architectural heritage. Either they wanted to knock down buildings to build high-rise residential blocks or they wanted to switch the residential function of some buildings to make them serve commercial purposes.
Six years down the road, the lobbying helped in including a whole chapter of a 2008 law, Law 119, that was designed to address the “complex yet not impossible relationship” of development and preservation. The law was passed only a few years after the launch of the NOUH, and there were also NOUH-sponsored recommendations designed to help the government make heritage-conscious decisions on development schemes in areas of historic significance.
According to Hawas, the recommendations were not just about Cairo. “They were distributed to the offices of all the governorates and were designed as a first step before having plans for development schemes in historic areas reviewed and approved by the NOUH,” she said.
As a result, clear rules were in place by 2008, and the path should have been clear and unproblematic “if the law was strictly observed.” This, however, was never the case from the 2009 debate over the Cairo Station and beyond. Hawas said that sometimes the NOUH objects to projects that get implemented anyway. At other times, it proposes adjustments that get ignored. Worse still, with the passing of time it has become the case that sometimes projects are not passed for consultation to the NOUH at all.
Yet, the NOUH’s role is not a matter of individual preference. “It is essential and crucial, and it should not be sidelined or rejected out of hand,” she said.
In 2014, ahead of the launch of the current round of mega-projects then prime minister Ibrahim Mehleb, himself a civil engineer and a graduate of Cairo University, asked Hawas to join the Higher Council for Planning and Urban Development, which was established in 2008 with a cross-disciplinary membership that includes, among others, the ministers of defence, culture, housing, and the environment, to help synchronise its work with that of the NOUH.
This was a mission that came to an end a couple of years ago. However, today Hawas is convinced that it is “crucial” that all development schemes should be reviewed by these two bodies.
“We have the laws and the competent bodies. It is hard to understand why things should go wrong,” she said. At any event, there is a need to ring warning bells when necessary, as has been the case with the kind of outcry that comes up every time there is speculation over a project thought to be incompatible with a particular neighbourhood or with the cultural identity of the city as a whole.
“I think the public is quite aware, and it does get vocal when there is threatened encroachment,” Hawas said.
COMPLEXITY
Having worked on a PhD thesis on the efficient and optimal management of undeveloped spaces within the urban fabric, Hawas is certainly aware of the complexity of the development challenge that a city like Cairo has been facing, especially with the demolition of some apartment buildings to allow for the construction of new roads, the expansion of existing streets into highways, or the introduction of more flyovers.
Again, she said that “the experts are there, the competent bodies are there, and the regulations are there” to help in making such decisions.
She argued that is always possible to amend an initial scheme or to come up with an alternative. “There should be nothing wrong with discussion within government” to produce plans that serve the development objective while sparing people’s houses or the city’s heritage.
“Of course, this is likely to be a process that will not allow for the same speedy execution of various projects, but it is worth the wait because ultimately it is in everybody’s interest, government, public and conservationists, that things are done in a way that does not prompt an avoidable conflict of interests,” she argued.
Hawas said that development is a process that is in motion, and while it continues there should be public debate on how to manage it rather than see the emergence of conflicting interests. “There is always a point at which people can pause a little and think of how to move ahead,” she said.
“Cairo has expanded over the centuries, and it will continue to expand due to demographic and economic pressures. With the ongoing expansion, there is bound to be ongoing urban development, and we just need to make sure that the identity of the older parts of the city are not violated as newer parts are built,” she added.
“The old and the new can always live side by side.”
*A version of this article appears in print in the 8 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.