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INTRODUCTION

‘A scene in Ishash al Tourguman, Bulaq Abul Ela,central Cairo, 2015’

Arrival at the old area of al Tourguman holdsimages of a gritty past that is still remembered by itsresidents. Centrally located is a busy traditional cof-fee shop ‘Kahwa baladi’, situated in al SahafaStreet, where one normally spots elderly men intheir late sixties or seventies, dressed in threadbareoutfits and smoking Shisha. They rarely chat orsocialise but rather continue to gulp short sips oftea with a mental tape of memories of what used tobe their neighbourhood during golden childhoodtimes. Another scene occurs in a tight alleyway: alady dressed in a black gown sitting selling match-books and paper tissues, hoping for nominal rev-enue to head back home happy. Next to her, agroup of kids playing football, vociferously pointingout where they live and work. A majority of theseresidents are living amidst the remains of their for-mer houses and historical ruins and memories.

The inland of Bulaq slums, the so-called‘ishash’, are, and have been, places where preju-diced and imbalanced assessments of land haveled to consistent disputes. During the 1970s, undereconomic reform and high flows of migration to thecity, Ishash al Tourguman had become a dangerousplace, known for its informal housing, degraded

infrastructure, and drug businesses. The ishash wasdescribed as the centre of anarchy and chaos fol-lowing a series of riots in Cairo on 18-19 January,1977 against the termination of state subsidies forbasic commodities which had led to immediate andrapid price increases. The incident occurred afterEgypt’s former president, Anwar Sadat, embarkedon a series of economic reforms in 1974, pursuingan open-door economic policy to encourage for-eign and domestic investment in the private sector.However, Egypt’s large debt burden soon pushedSadat to take a series of loans from the WorldBank, under the condition that state subsidies forfoodstuffs would be severely limited. FuriousCairene residents attacked many symbols ofSadat’s luxury lifestyle like hotels, departmentstores, and even police stations. The ishash wasthen denounced as the hub of a Communist-leduprising of thieves, after groups of activists stashedthemselves away in the swarming slums, makingthe mission of tracking them impossible since thetight streets prevented entry to police vehicles.

It is claimed that the cleansing of popularlife in Cairo had started during Sadat’s regime withthe violent clearance of ishash al Tourguman anddisplacement of its population. Hundreds of fami-lies were evicted in May 1977 without compensa-tion. Replacing the ishash with high-rise structuresreinforced Sadat’s claim to be eliminating signs ofpoverty and decline in Cairo by creating ‘a youth-

Gehan Selim

Abstract

This paper examines the position of planning practices operated under precise guidelines for displaying modernity.

Cultivating the spatial qualities of Cairo since the 1970s has unveiled centralised ideologies and systems of governance

and economic incentives. I present a discussion of the wounds that result from the inadequate upgrading ventures in

Cairo, which I argue, created scars as enduring evidence of unattainable planning methods and processes that under-

mined its locales. In this process, the paper focuses on the consequences of eviction rather than the planning methods

in one of the city’s traditional districts. Empirical work is based on interdisciplinary research, public media reports and

archival maps that document actions and procedures put in place to alter the visual, urban, and demographic charac-

teristics of Cairo’s older neighbourhoods against a backdrop of decay to shift towards a global spectacular. The paper

builds a conversation about the power and fate these spaces were subject to during hostile transformations that ended

with their being disused. Their existence became associated with sores on the souls of its ex-inhabitants, as outward

signs of inward scars showcasing a lack of equality and social justice in a context where it was much needed.

Keywords: Wounded Spaces, Scars, Cairo, Bulaq, Slums, Urban Renewal, Memory.

WOUNDED SPACES: WHEN PLANNING DEGRADEDCAIRO’S URBAN MEMORY.

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ful face of Egypt’, and indeed low-income groupsoccupying lands, which potentially carried high val-ues, were not central to the beautification of thecapital (Ghannam, 2002, p. 31). On the nationallevel, city authorities explained that demolitionwould support the revamping and modernising ofthe Cairene life. Relocating a portion of its popula-tion from brutal living conditions to suitable modernhousing units was crucial to improving their livingstandards. For over two decades, while renewalplans remained firmly on paper, a huge gapinghole marked the grounds of Bulaq where the ishashresidents had once lived. In 2001, Cairo’sInternational Bus Terminal, a gigantic project, wasconstructed on the spot. But for years when travel-ling to Cairo, and despite many other things hap-pening in Bulaq, one kept bumping in this anec-dote: close to the terminal doors, one could stillenvisage the memory and footage of the clearanceand displacement incident, police sirens and weep-ing toddlers. The ishash formed a narrative of aplace of unyielding power cursed by its historicalfacts that its residents still track and enumerate.Their wounds bled from the heart of one of theworld’s most fascinating cities, where the state’sinauguration of one of its grand architectural pro-jects stopped at nothing in having its vision fulfilled(Figure 1).

The paper discusses how wounded spaces,marked by past deficits of power, violence, andexclusion in Cairo, are represented and how thespatiality of places remarkably articulates scars thatare never cured by time but are still rememberedand lived. Do relocation practices require care andattention that limit the violence and difficulty ofabandoning a place? My argument is that suchwounded spaces in Egypt insinuate the capacitythat places should not remain the same physicallyand socially because they have been profoundlythreatening postcolonial imperial processes. This

capitalises that whatever is deemed ‘traditional’ –living in urban slums, uneducated and, mostly,engaged in political instability – is somewhat lesslegitimate; therefore, traditionalism is often scruti-nised in terms of its authenticity and degree ofexposure. Nevertheless, restructuring this reality tooverlay new depictions on to a place, excluding itsindividuals and groups, often becomes the norma-tive power of how we reshape our built environ-ments (Davies, 2014). These processes have takenseveral forms of forcible action, such as compulso-ry relocation of people from their districts as oneform of control over politicised spaces, with wide-spread destructive implications for the physical,metaphorical, and imaginative spheres.

THE URBAN MEMORY AND ITS POLITI-CAL INSCRIPTIONS

Postcolonial research examining urban settlementsin the global south has shifted towards radicalisingour understanding of cities and how to transmutetheir physical structures of inconsistencies, conflict,and inequality in celebrating residents’ livedrealisms (Simone, 2010; Harvey, 2003). In the con-text of contesting the inherited values of modernurban development influenced by governance andgovernmentality, there still remains the quest toboost urban transformation in the desire for orderand sweeping away sore histories. However, thisapproach is not without its costs. The reason whyWestern models of urban development, for exam-ple, tend to idealise the outcomes that predomi-nantly impact the everyday encounters, practices,and social networks of the people. Urban renewalventures drawing red battle lines around entire dis-tricts, for instance, signalled a new urban reality, notonly to challenge physical conditions but also towipe away individual memories of these places(Blunt and McEwan, 2002; Ellin, 1999). ManuelCastells’ account of Parisian urban gentrification inthe nineteenth century, aimed equally at elaborat-ing the state’s control of public spaces, is pertinentto what motivates governments today: ‘A Parisoccupied by the higher social strata, a showcase ofcomfort and modernity, is a Paris cut off frompotential outbursts of protest’ (Castells ,1972, p.106).

Various examples show how a city is tacitlyprivileged by simulating its districts as parcels ofland connected by networks of economy; but onthe contrary, populated districts appear as blankentities discounted from potential development,leaving residents depicted as victims. We find urbansociologists and geographers retrieving conceptu-alisations of places, which vary from so-calledslums to luxury theme parks and CBDs, as an inte-

Figure 1. Cairo’s International Bus Terminal constructed on

the site of Ishash al-Tourguman slums in Bulaq in 2001(Source: Author).

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elimgration within the city but not, peculiarly, as an add-

on (Simone, 2010). Michel Foucault’s theories onpower and control of space in the urban sphereshow that modern governance similarly capitaliseson various forms of this supremacy. It also revealsthe position of the state in operating different secu-rity apparatuses to safeguard citizens and theirsense of safety by preventing crime and handingover perpetrators to judicial authorities for prosecu-tion. We therefore find that existential insecurity canbe politically manipulated to increase the control ofspace. Violence, for instance, is presented to thepublic as a case of national security rather thansafety in order to curtail the public sphere and influ-ence the community perception of fear (Zukin,1995).

From a postcolonial perspective, imaginingthe city consequently tolerates our understandingtowards systems of urban political life, everydayexistence, agitation, and disorientated mobilisationof people who are the absolute victims. Thesesocially constructed spaces, according to HenriLefebvre (1991, p. 220), offer individuals theirmembership links with the place. Its buildings andstreets are grasped as a sign of the legendarynature of the place, one that is as important as thecondition of those that lived there. These bondsremain memorised across time largely throughmaterial objects that presumably last much longerthan we do. Yet, this idea remains unchallenged.But when subject to massive processes of destruc-tion, mobilisation, and relocation, dense urbanspaces occupied by inherent localities become

impaired by spatial relations and social traumaimposed by state violence. Similar to several post-colonial localities, the sweeping away of entire dis-tricts has printed its own scars on these places andhaunted remaining residents with wounds of pastglories, whether they accepted it or not. Thewounds reflect a condition of self-remembranceand individual memory embedded in the physicali-ty structure of spatial order away from any externalforces of colonial practices and their aftermath(Kearney, 2012). These spaces represent instanceswhere local identity was an incipient political pro-ject against social and collective memory thatdemonstrates problematic or disturbing conditions.They are the territories where ‘geographicalspace... has been torn and fractured by violenceand exile’, shaping a state of newness of physicaland social realities that reproduces altered visualimages integrated with modern cultural expressionsand secured environments (Rose, 1996, p.191)(Figure 2).

PLACE REMINISCENCE AND ‘ROOTSHOCK’

“We still remember that day when the police sud-denly surrounded the area and forced the people toleave their houses; the men bravely fought thepolice officers, the women were screaming, butthey forced them to leave in the end” (interview).

Al-Tourguman is a poor area that expanded ran-domly in Bulaq during the 20th century. The place

Figure 2. Ishash al-Tourguman images published in the planning scheme brief. (Source: The re-planning scheme Report

1979, GOPP, Cairo).

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was originally established by a Turkish merchantnamed Ali Bek al Tourgoman, whose name itgained, who customised its infrastructure and man-aged its tenet system until his death. The Ministry ofPublic Works privately sold wealthy stockholders,including Ali Bek, huge swathes of vacant land out-side Bulaq’s east-west border to construct newdevelopments that would aid with the absorption ofCairo’s migrant workers. Following Egypt’s defeatin the 1967 war, nationwide concerns were raisedfollowing the suspension of special governmenthousing projects, particularly when daily newspa-pers published images of entire communities livingin emergency shelters after several evacuation inci-dents. The government built these settlements astransitional housing systems to shelter homelesspeople whose houses had collapsed or becomeseriously damaged as they awaited allocation ofhousing in new residential settlements. By this time,al-Tourguman and other areas had graduallybecome dominated by shanty constructs built withlight materials and leftover wood, which lackedwater, electricity, and primary hygiene resources.Thousands of people were crammed into homesthat were ‘only corners of single rooms that accom-modate all the functions of the household mem-bers’ (Rugh, 1979, p. 47). The narrow alleywaysrapidly turned into hives of illegal activities, whichlater became popularly known as ishash alTourguman. People living in Bulaq describe theirneighbours as tragic and doubtful (Figure 2).

“The government has neglected them. They nolonger have any rights in this country.

They have depressing lives, their homes appear likesquats of stacked and glue-like compartmentsstretching in narrow alleyways overwhelmed bypoverty and hunger.

Men and women are jobless with no breadwinner,the elders are homeless and the children surround-ed by slums, diseases, and hunger” (Interview).

But do memories of places relate to the past orarticulate narratives of present human experiences?Or how do locals still living in al Tourguman distin-guish between their present lives and the strongconnections with the past that historical eventsevoke? Indeed, the furious escape of the youngprotestors in the 1977 riots emerged as a seriouschallenge to the state. People still recall how policevehicles failed to seize the vulnerable ‘boys’ andfeel proud of helping them to escape this raid.Notwithstanding, residents of popular areas inCairo, like Bulaq, are legendary for their generosi-ty, bravery, and care. But since that time, state dis-

course has homogenised them, under actions ofsymbolic violence, as troublemakers and criminals,with the district portrayed as a centre for drug traf-ficking and illegal activities (Ghannam, 2002).Official action, under the auspices of the CentralSecurity Force, culminated in 1979 with the outra-geous displacement of thousands more to the cityoutskirts, producing what Fullilove (2004) calls the‘root shock’.

Plans to develop al-Tourguman in 1979subdivided the site into 25 plots under governoratejurisdiction. Local and foreign investors were theninvited to submit proposals to inaugurate projects inaccordance with the planning scheme, but no plotswere actually sold. A respondent from the gover-norate planning department attributed this failure tofinancial constraints and professional shortcomingsin the project’s feasibility study which had estimatedthat evacuation and relocation would cost the gov-ernorate approximately 36 million EgyptianPounds. After clearing the site, however, costs soredto 100 million Egyptian Pounds. On the otherhand, plot sizes were huge because it was thoughtthat this would promote their saleability and tocover the cost of building new houses for displacedresidents. In the event, the plots were unaffordablebecause the site was still surrounded by poor build-ings, warehouses, and unplanned streets. A fewplanners, who were against demolishing the ishash,explained that the entire gesture would be inconve-

Figure 3. The upgrading Planning scheme. (Source: Ishash

al-Tourguman re-planning scheme Report 1979, GOPP,Cairo).

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elimnient and infeasible. They claimed that the process

was one of in-filling the site with high-rise projectsthat were competing with a surrounding contextand that failure could have been predicted. Someadded that it was a naive solution to representCairo in a modern image and apply order to whatwas thought to be a different reality in Bulaq – thereality of the poor versus that of the wealthy. Thiscorresponds more closely to Timothy Mitchell’s(1988) world as an exhibition (Figure 3).

The outcome of futile initiatives of thisnature was that new housing targets were not met,leaving streetscapes with many empty lots andabsentee residents. A kind of political resistancethat forms a different landscape to that for which itwas planned, remained for at least 25 years afterthe evacuation. It was a milestone of failure to setunrealistic plans for change, especially when busi-nessmen and investors later noted that the site wasunsuitable for investment. The residents explainedhow people no longer communicated their previ-ous healthy social networks and everyday encoun-ters. Despite al Tourguman’s vibrant and ideal loca-tion for CDD investment, it developed into an out-cast ghetto and even fostered greater isolation fromthe city’s urban life than ever before (Marcuse,1997). The reliability and transparency of the statehave always been problematic, especially in termsof communicating political messages through localschemes like this. Equally, it may be that forcibleeviction was a tool used by the state to expel theresidents with no underlying plans to rehouse them(interview).

REMEBERING THE SCARS: OLD MEMO-RIES, NEW SPACES

Literature on collective memory shows how con-stantly incidents of the past are tied in fundamen-tally with social networks and landscapes (Boyer,1994; Halbwachs, 1980; Heynen, 1999;Abdelmonem and Selim, 2012). Memory occurs inthe present to inform our habitual associations andway of life, not distinct from its archaeological pres-ence. It is not surprising to observe controversialperceptions among social groups when they recallstories of the past and their living spaces. They usu-ally tend to link their stories with places and physi-cal objects to establish a thread of memory thatmay or may not be sites that witnessed suffering ordisturbance. Yet, the place and its object dimen-sions and attributes become the most durable partof this fabric, through objects of remembrance(Bevan, 2006). Buildings and urban spaces aresymbolic evidence of certain social networks andpractices. There are indeed some memorised pro-jects, like urban renewal or changing landscapes,

which attempt to obstruct public dialogue and areappreciated as signs of forgetting the past, with anentire community disappearing and leaving behindits physical manifestations: buildings and spaces.Yet, spaces cannot mysteriously embody memoriesby the quality of their existence, just as the city can-not disclose history without supporting narratives(ibid.). In fact, societies retain their memory throughcontinuous and sustainable performance of acts,rituals, and normative social behaviour.

On the other hand, places have meaningsthat exceed their forms as authored illustrations ofthe past and methods by which social groups expe-rience them. In fact, the wounds of al Tourgumanemerged through conflicting pasts as zones of tran-sition and social change to materialise transforma-tion. Wounds also thrived through its residents, notonly the groups that suffered the consequences ofeviction but also those that had witnessed the razedfor prospect development encountering andopposing state violence and the trauma of dis-placement. Under the increasing spread of differ-ences in postmodern societies, class and socialsegregation follow distinct pathways and occupydifferent zones of the city, so that the wealthy hard-ly encounter the ‘unwanted’ others (Mitchell,2003). Indeed, this idea will never arise withoutvisions of a strong country protecting its citizensfrom the ‘unwanted’ beyond its boundaries,‘changing in this sense our rooted sympathies ofwhat constitutes the public to legitimate new formsof urban structures through environmental change,behaviour modification and stringent policing’(ibid., p. 4).

Fullilove (2004) argues that a ‘root shock’threatens the ability of any person to function just asmuch as when they lose vast amounts of blood,simply because we all have strong social and emo-tional links with the places we inhabit. Thus, for us,place always develops as a protective shelter forour social and ecosystem associations. These qual-ities are not about local forms of owning or claim-ing the place but rather about the connections andstructures of sentimental networks that give thickmeaning to a citizen's experience, one that associ-ates more widely with place than human subjectsthemselves (Bennett, 2005, p. 10). This under-standing opens for us different channels to expressand communicate sensory emotions about places,rendering their distinct histories.

After the relocation incident, the ishashbecame an anchor for its former residents’ sense ofbelonging and took precedence over other associ-ations. But the remaining groups became vitalraconteurs of the incident and its aftermath. Manystill form the elderly population living in Bulaq whoeither memorise or witnessed the confrontation with

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the armed police. They explained how state actionsdisrupted their inveterate relations to the geogra-phies of the place and that the inconsistencies pro-duced in this process created odd grounds for peo-ple and places that, for many years, did not under-stand why their neighbours had been banished.Despite living in slums, their rooted habits, prac-tices, and cultures signified a sustainable process ofcollective settlement, communicating a robustsocial message that they were connected groupsthat felt highly safe and secure (Selim, 2015).

People's reminiscences on the hardships ofliving in the ishash are closely related to the hous-ing conditions described as ‘ruins’. However, theyalways cite their easy access to other parts of Cairo,marketplaces, and cheap goods. One informantexplained that ‘when our past neighbours bakedsomething, the good smell would reach us from adistance and we would share the food. People tendto eat together and support each other during diffi-cult times’ (interview). Local vendors also utilised alTourguman lands to sell cooked foods, sugarcane,and fresh vegetables. Others occupied the space todisseminate some of their home-based goods orset up bakery ovens for simple pastries. The areawas a hub for young teenagers to gather and inter-act with others. While these activities graduallyencouraged the presence of people, the areabecame empty, dark, and potentially unsafe forwomen and young children, especially at nightwhen its original occupants vanished in no time.However, the continuous presence of peopleensured assistance when needed. People werealways ready to help prevent a fight or protect achild. Being seen by others provided social controlthat allowed more freedom of movement forwomen and legitimised their interaction with men.

Activities of unknown neighbours and themixing of people from different parts of Cairo influ-enced the view of the empty lands and surroundingspaces. The new spatial settings supported restruc-turing the interaction between the residents and, inparticular, others, and the way they observed pub-lic space. This shift was epitomised by growingrestrictions on access and use of spaces followingthe evacuation, which was mostly driven by fear.Feelings of belonging to al Tourguman were sym-bolised in a way that connects its residents with thepast and appears to show a collective referencethat articulates its support for state policing actions.Indeed, insecurity and an unknown future made forstress among the remaining population. They weremostly conscious that they would be subject to sim-ilar traumatic situations at any time and, somehow,were prepared for it. They were also aware thatarmed evacuation was also going ahead in otherneighbourhoods in the city, like in the Ayn Hilwan

dwellings of old Cairo and the al-Marg area. Theseand other unexpected incidents were aired in themedia, showing armed police surrounding thesehouses to evacuate families by force.

CONCLUSION

Al-Tourguman and other similar sites in Cairo rep-resent places where the status of local people hasremained a significant social and political issue,and, over time, has become central to local con-flict. The conflict also emerged as a struggle overlandscapes for personal, group and national iden-tity, and meaning and belonging. In fact, relocationis not only about moving people from one place toanother, but about how it affects life and socio-spa-tial relationships within the local community. Sitesdefined by scars and wounds not only exist as imag-inary and/ or physical locales but endure as‘behaviours and occasions for memory and inter-vention’ (Roach, 1996, p. xi). While everyday exem-plified knowledge of inhabited places is taken forgranted, eviction enables its spectators to possessfirmer bonds with their former living place based onattachments that disengaged them from their child-hood connections. In all ways, some residentsremained in the ishash gave rise to another level ofloss. They collectively formed a sound, chronic, andinveterate narrative that was slowly constructedafter the immediate relocation losses. Indeed, theindigenous stabilisation of communities is frag-mented once places are demolished.

The ishash residents, through their stories,raised moral inquiries about the politics of placemaking driven by urban upgrading. They calledattention to their association with place, its mentalmemory and inspiration in making a just andunique life. They also challenged the invisible statusthe city authorities bestowed on them and have nocapacity for state building. Yet, their commendablesurvival over almost four decades since the trau-matic incident documents their existence througheveryday encounters and use of space, therebyclaiming individual and collective rights to their city.They also enact their habitual engagements withvibrant places like Bulaq evidencing their cognitiveand emotional attachments, spatial and socialmemories, and fragile social systems. Still, theirinterpretations always reveal a bounded self-ten-sion between the recognition of state violence andanxieties about the unknown future they face whenhoping to survive.

In fact, new forms of public memory couldbe structured and transferred to the inhabitantsthrough their intergenerational social outreach thatoffers social stability and security, despite the ongo-ing ruptures of geographical segregation and

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elimexclusion. However, it is suggested that place mem-

ory is usually a complicated case to resolve.Communities usually tend to define themselvesthrough their physical and social environments butwill not always accept a place’s depressing history.Indeed, when individuals return to places that havewitnessed violence and pain, they find themselvestrapped in horrific images of the past, with livingmemories and emotional attachments. Similarly,displaced groups tend to revisit their friends and rel-atives back in the ishash, and some will even shopand buy goods from traders they used to know.That is why social change must be counted as bothloss and opportunity, particularly when chunks ofthe city become detached from other spaces.

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Author

Gehan Selim School of Planning, Architecture, and CivilEngineering, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdomg.selim@qub.ac.uk