“Chris and Amal Go to Rehab – and almost don’t come back”

Yesterday, we decided to do a walk around the City Stars mall. I took notes on the route, Amal took pictures, and we both wrote down various notes. The idea is for Amal to write it up, and for me to add some comments of my own.

So, here’s the route. Taxi drops us at Entrance 7. We take the escalator up to level 1, and see there is a Nokia booth in the middle. Walking past that to the first intersection, we see Boulevard 7 off to the right. We are struck by the absence of overhead screens. On the corner is the Shorouk English-language and Arabic-language bookshop. We stay on Level 1 and walk down Boulevard 7 to Area B. There we turn left. In the Triumph lingerie store to the right, we spot a flat screen, but it is turned off. We walk past 7 ATMs, each with its own screen, to the left. The Envision DVD stall has a screen in it. This takes along to the Food Court (cheaper stores, a mix of local and McDonalds, etc). As we are about to walk from that into the next section, we notice just past the Papa Johns a block of 9 screens, all playing a single image together – but only 5 of them are working. Next we find ourselves at Boulevard 4, still on Level 1. Now there are overhead screens (Samsung brand) playing the mall’s video loop. The Coffee Shop Company has its own  screen, playing Arabia’s MTV-style program. Fuddruckers in the Atrium lobby, which appears to be the main centre of the mall, also has its own screen. Starbucks and Second Cup do not. We find ourselves at a foul-smelling entrance to Spinney’s hypermarket. (This the name that Tesco’s goes by in the Middle East.) There is a Persil Gel booth with a turned off/dead flat screen on its side. We walk along the side of the entrance to Spinney’s, along Boulevard 2. Some shops have their own screens, although they are not always on.

Next, we took the escalators up to levels 2, 3, then 4. These were the escalators near the corresponding entrance. (By this time we were on the verge of mall confusion.) Level 4 was mostly food court. Up to Level 5, where the cinema is. We are in area A still, where we can look over the main atrium and the glass lifts going up and down. We take the escalator up another level to Level 6. Here there are lots of shots that are not open yet. We notice the slogan “City Stars – Cairo’s Capital” on the hoardings covering the unopened shops.

Time for a lunch break from 1.30 to 2.30

Back on Level 5, we go to the Stars Cinema, overlooking the atrium in Area A. The following movies are advertised (although some may be coming attractions – it’s not clear): TRIANGLE; ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS; LIGHTNING THIEF; VALENTINE’S DAY; MY NAME IS KHAN; HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAY; THE BOOK OF ELI; DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS?; WELAD EL’AAM; OLD DOGS; THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG; STAG NIGHT; AVATAR; and FROM PARIS WITH LOVE.

Next, we find our way into the mall’s Khan El-Khalili (screen-free except where the escalators come up, and with its own “Arabic” music). We find ourselves on Level 4, back at the area where we came in (near where entrances 6 and 7 are below). The shops are posh, but there are no screens. Is this because this is Phase 1, and they didn’t put them in until they built phase 2? We more or less end the walk here at about 3.30, and go downstairs to Level 1, near the Atrium, to the Venezia Ice Saloon, from where we can observe the mall’s own screens. Venezia itself has a BENQ flat screen playing Arabia M’s music videos (without the music turned on). Above us is the slogan “Double your pleasure at Phase II with over 250 more stores to serve you” in English. The servers also speak English.

**

After a gruelling mall experience that included Chicken Crispers in Chili, a seamless work-live experience in which Amal picked up a few items in the Zara sale, and a gelato and coffee while we observed the screens, we met up with Amal’s friend again. He was on his way home to New Cairo, where the rich have fled to from Cairo itself. This is out in the desert beyond the Ring Road. How could we turn down this sociological/anthropological adventure? Since City Stars had already given us an insight into a whole other Cairo that is invisible from Downtown, the Cairo that Amal’s friend, who lives in it, says is “not the real Egypt.” We drove out further along the same straight road that took us from downtown to the mall, the road that eventually leads to Suez. Mostly, there seem to be huge walled army compounds along the way, or just plain desert. Eventually we got past the ring road and to the new town of Rehab (pronounced slightly differently from the Amy Winehouse version).

Rehab is Orange County, Cairo, plus mosques, basically. It is gated. When fully developed, it will accommodate 100,000 of the rich and almost rich, according to Mo. So, it’s more of a gated city. There are hundreds of 3-4 story apartment buildings and some small villa houses. There are 2 Rehab malls, 2 medical centres, a restaurant row (with Papa Johns, Los Gauchos Argentinian Steakhouse, etc etc), a drive-through souk area, various foreign-language schools, and a mosque or two. You need never leave – except perhaps to hang out at City Stars. The air is cleaner than in Cairo. Amal’s friend says his mother, who runs a school out there, feels that although she loves the old Cairo, she doesn’t know if she could move back down there, because she feels like she needs grass outside her house now. No matter how much I respond to this place with a sort of Stepford Wives horror, I can also see why all the people exhausted by the dust and stress of old Cairo would aspire to move up here. Furthermore, as we were told, it’s not even in the Cairo jurisdiction, but under Helwan. I think this must contribute to that psychological sense of making a break from old Cairo. And maybe the taxes are lower, too? The rich are always alert to that.

We were dropped off at Rehab 2. We called a cab, and were told we would have to wait half an hour. Our next destination was Zamalek, where we had an appointment with someone who lives out at October 6 City, another satellite development, as far out West as Rehab is out East. Zamalek is the island in the middle of Nile, and it is best approached from West, rather than trying to drive through old Cairo and Downtown to get there.

We wandered around the mall while waiting. It was a mini-mall of the sort you can find in any suburban American development, in many ways. But there was a large coffee shop in the middle with an impressive array of screens, of course. But there were almost no customers when we were there and they were not turned on.

When the cab finally turned up after almost an hour, we commenced an unbelievable journey that took at least an hour and a half and cost 200 pounds. In a city where a long cab ride is 20 pounds, this tells you a lot. Basically, he bombed along the ring road forever, before turning off and getting caught in the most unbelievable traffic jam into Zamalek. This gave us a very concrete and physical sense of the sheer immensity of Cairo – and also made us glad we weren’t trying to do this in July! Once we finally got to Zamalek we had dinner on a boat overlooking the Nile.