“It was my whole life”: in Cairo, floating houses are disappearing

Published on: 08/07/2022 – 17:51 On June 26, the Egyptian authorities announced the destruction of residential barges moored along the Nile in the Embabeh district of Cairo. Since then, the inhabitants have been evicted and the floating houses destroyed. Our Observers are sorry for the disappearance of this cultural heritage of the Egyptian capital. One after another, the “awamas” of Cairo are emptied of their inhabitants and their furniture. Since June 26, these residential barges, emblematic of the Egyptian capital, have been destroyed or moved along the Nile. Between the districts of Elkit Kat and Agoza, 25 of the 32 “awamas” moored on the banks of the Nile have already been completely or partially destroyed. Some of these wooden houses are transported to sheds belonging to the Egyptian Ministry of Water Management and Irrigation. An awama moved on July 4 in Embabeh, Cairo. On social networks, the former inhabitants, many of them owners for decades, share their stories of life in these floating houses or publish the last images of them before witnessing, helpless, their disappearance. “They destroy the awamas, they destroy history (…) They are the enemies of beauty”, laments this Egyptian artist in a publication dated June 29 on Facebook. Since the announcement of the destruction of this heritage of Cairo, the local and international media paint the portrait of the few inhabitants of these barges. “Madame Ikhlass” Helmi, 88, has thus become one of the faces of these Cairenes who have lived all their lives in an awama on the banks of the Nile. “Madame Ikhlass” Helmi emptied her house of her belongings with the help of neighbors a few days before being evicted. © Nada Zien Elden The writer Ahdaf Soueïf, who had chosen ten years ago to live far from the buildings and the urban hubbub of the Egyptian capital with 21 million inhabitants, also saw her house disappear on the 4 July. They have taken our home. pic.twitter.com/o1fEJdKwzd— Omar Robert Hamilton (@ORHamilton) July 4, 2022 On July 4, the son of writer Ahdaf Soueïf documents the process of destruction and dismantling of barges at 96, avenue du Nil near the tunnel from Agoza to Cairo. Ahdaf Soueïf was also dislodged from her awama. The ministry announced on June 26 its desire to “unclog” this side of downtown Cairo, citing health and safety reasons. According to the director of the central administration for the protection of the Nile, the inhabitants do not pay their permits to be moored on the Nile, and the awamas do not respect the safety and security instructions of the construction. For him, it is therefore impossible to renew their residential licenses. He also believes that the household waste from these barges is thrown into the Nile. “I witnessed the ransacking of my quay, of my garden” For their part, the inhabitants of the barges have organized themselves into a collective. Contacted by the editorial staff of Les Observateurs, the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueïf says: I stayed with my awama until the last moment. I watched her being dragged away, I witnessed the ransacking of my quay, of my garden. I was heartbroken for our homes and gardens which we have maintained for decades.We [les habitants] we actually pay all the licenses and taxes relating to our houses: a license for the mooring of the barge, a second for the plot of the wharf that we rent from the government, and a last to benefit from the right to live in it. The family of writer Ahdaf Soueïf bids farewell to the family awama on July 4. “Egyptian literature and cinema have immortalized these barges” According to Ahdaf Soueïf, in 2016, the inhabitants of floating houses saw their charges suddenly increase after a change in the calculation of mooring fees requested by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation. In 2018, the fees increased again, for “late payment”. Two years later, in 2020, the residents found themselves unwittingly in illegality, as the authorities refused to renew the residential licenses, before promising to publish an updated version that would regulate their situation. It has never been done. After 4 years of conflicting messages from different authorities, the only communication coming in escalating fees & fines, we now understand what they want. Not because they told us, but because they said it on TV: no more residents, only commercial. So: what are our options? pic.twitter.com/o4cHnO8U4J— Omar Robert Hamilton (@ORHamilton) July 2, 2022 And the standoff continued: This administrative harassment, we suffered it for two years, with intimidation and ” regular visits from the armed forces. My awama was my whole life, my home. Most residents have managed to stay elsewhere today. But apart from Madame Ikhlass Helmi, none of us received any compensation. We could have found common ground if the ministry had accepted a dialogue with the owners: for example, organizing an “open house” day and inviting users of the corniche to visit our barges to let them know the history of these awamas. .Because these are part of our history, and Egyptian literature and cinema have immortalized these barges. They have always been linked to artists: Farid El Atrach and Mounira Al Mahdiya themselves lived on awamas. These awamas are a cultural relic that does not exist anywhere else, but our government is destroying this heritage and erasing its history. The Egyptian government has offered a solution for the inhabitants: to transform their residences into businesses – with a license at a much higher cost. The Ministry of Water and Irrigation has also assured that only residential awamas will be moved. But a resident contacted by our editorial staff, Mohamad Awad, lost his commercial barge on June 28. He claims, however, to hold all the tourist and commercial licenses required: We had the notice of destruction almost the day before. No other tourist awama was destroyed except mine. This summer, I’m going to lose a whole season’s receipts. I went to see all the administrations to solve this problem, I was sent from one office to another. {{ scope.counterText }} {{ scope.legend }} © {{ scope.credits }} {{ scope.counterText }} i {{ scope.legend }}© {{ scope.credits }} “In Egypt, the heritage takes a back seat to commercial investment “Ahmad Al Bindari is a historian and photographer of modern Egyptian architecture. He expresses his sorrow and his frustration at the destruction of the last awamas of the Nile: These floating houses have never been classified as cultural heritage, but that does not prevent them from being part of Cairo’s heritage, specifically of the old center- city, just like the singing cafes and the old buildings of the beginning of the 20th century. Between the 1920s and until the 1940s, most of these houses were concentrated in the chic district of Zamalek, then the bourgeois populations abandoned these dwellings in favor of villas. They were then taken over by the middle classes, and the authorities moved them to the Elkit Kat neighborhood in Embabeh. In the late 1980s, artists and intellectuals brought awamas back into fashion, and since then several families have moved back into these houseboats. Many monuments have been destroyed in this direction in the past: the triangle of Maspero and the avenue du 26 Juillet [quartier historique dans le centre du Caire donnant sur le Nil, NDLR] was razed in 2018 to make way for real estate projects, despite strong resistance from residents. In 2020, the City of the Dead [plus grande et ancienne nécropole du Moyen-Orient située au Caire et classée au patrimoine culturel par l’Unesco, NDLR] suffered similar treatment: the authorities are planning a major highway that will cross the necropolis to facilitate traffic. For the authorities, heritage takes a back seat to commercial and real estate investments in “strategic” areas on the banks of the Nile. If it was really a question of unclogging the cornice, these barges could benefit from a footbridge, and would not have to be moved or even destroyed in this way. The authorities now want to transform the east and west banks of Cairo into a large tourist corniche including a promenade and shops, cafes and restaurants. A first stage of this project has already been carried out on the east bank of the Nile near the Qasr El Nil bridge.