The voice of "Abdellateef", the bean (FUUL) vender, used to be the first voice heard in the early morning, as he walked along the street pulling his cart. His customers were mostly workers who came in the early morning to work in the different shops and the workshops of "Al-moski" and "Haret Al- yahoud"*. There were not only workers but also school and university students, and some businessmen, who managed to energize themselves with the (FUUL) dish so they could be able to cope with a new day in Cairo, where streets and buses are crowded, while both the weather and prices are sizzling hot !! 

"Haret Al-yahoud" is the name of an old neighborhood  located in central Cairo in the "Gamaleya" district. It extends from "Al-moski" St. till "Port said" St. , and encompasses the neighborhoods of "Al-khronfesh" and "Al-saghah" located in the heart of the old district of "Gamaleya", which got its name from the Jews who had early in the 20th century set up their shops there and tended them until the late sixties .

Both the old and the recent tales of "Haret Al- yahoud" show that it was a part of Al-Gamaleya. In the stories of Naguib Mahfouz, he wrote about in "Bein Al-qasrein" and "Qasr Al-shoq". The only difference was that "Haret Al- yahoud" symbolized more the commercial and financial side while the human side was dominant in Mahfouz's areas .

In "Haret Al- yahoud", there was "Souk Al-sayarefah" or the market of finance, which was the center of  finance in Cairo in the forties and the fifties.  No wonder the place mainly in finance market owed its name  to the jews who excelled in the trade of gold, precious metals and stones as it was their main profession everywhere they lived in. With the Jews' exodus from "Haret al- yahoud" and all Egypt, "Souk Al- sayarefah" the finance market changed its trade to clothes market and women's faked jewelry and accessory. 

Haret Al- yahoud was originally renowned  as a center for money and finance.  For many the area was considered a stepping stone, from which people started their road toward money and power.  It became a place  of conflicts -- a race track for many people, who used it as a ticket  to join the club of rich and famous.  The quest for money through legal and illegal means of the trade such as mixing small craft business, overseas business trips, with shady real estate deals,  cheating, robbery, drug dealing, prostitution, and trafficking.

"Souk Al- sayarefah", and "Haret Al-yahoud" mirrored the social and economic situation of Egypt in the seventies.  The period of the "open door policy", when all legal and illegal opportunities of getting rich quick, were readily available to the willing and the greedy .

Rezq was back in "Haret al-yahoud" after spending many long months in captivity. He was a volunteer solider in the Air force when the six days war broke out in 1967. His old friends and relatives gathered around him, eager to listen to his stories of captivity.

Rezq started his trek in the district (Souk Al-sayarefah), determined to become one of its wealthy and powerful businessmen.  His intentions were to compensate for the time he had lost during the painful days of captivity, humiliation and the abject life of the army.

Ref'at Al-nutty, the owner of a small lonely coffee shop in "Souk Al-sayarefah", was a eloquent speaker endowed with deep voice and a pure heart.  These natural gifts qualified him to be used by politicians who wanted to be elected in People's assembly representing the "Gamaleya" district. Ref'at was the strong voice of their  dubious propaganda machine, which of course was full of promises and short on delivery. 

Once the elections were over, the rascal politicians having secured their seats in the assembly, they would conveniently forgo their promises to their constituencies.

Ref'at's political life began in "Al-ithad Al-ishtraki",  but when it became defunct he moved on to the National Democratic party. Because of the man's honesty and pure soul, he was naive  and did not fathom the political game.  It did not occur to him to think of doing some business on the side, as the others did, to secure his future. All of the people around him were accustomed to fleecing the country for their own benefit, but he refused, believing in honesty, and upholding the motto of sacrificing oneself for the good of citizenry. He did not wake up to the sad state of affairs regarding the deceiving crooked politicians until it was too late.

Faiza knew that she was one of the four wives of Hajj "Abdelrahman Al- Mansoury". She migrated to Cairo from the heart of the Delta with her family, and it was her lot in life to end up with a polygamist, who had migrated from Upper Egypt. Abdelrahman begot many children from his multi-marriages.  He named four of his sons "Mohamed", thinking  that such a trick could help them duck from the military service.

Life in the Army meant to him, as to many in Upper Egypt, sheer humiliation and countless suffering. When "Abdelrahman" died, his children from Faiza, four boys and a girl, were still young.  Soon after his death, his eldest son (from another wife) opened his safe and stole all of its contents.  He knew only too well that dividing his father's inheritance among a dozen of children would leave him with almost nothing. 

After the funeral, Faiza, carrying her son in her arms while her other three children clutched at her dress, went to the eldest son of her late husband, Mohamed Al-mansoury, to ask for her children's inheritance. As expected  Mohamed denied his theft and claimed that his father had left nothing. Faiza was enraged and damned him and her bad luck. Distraught, she wondered how she would face life, with all the hardships of a helpless widow carrying for five young children?!

(To be continued)

Sayed
 
 

* There were probably never more than 3,000 Jews in the city in the beginning of the 19th century, all of them gathered in the Jewish quarter (Harat al-Yahuwd) near the center of al-Qahirah. They traditionally played an important role in the trades that dealt with precious metals. Because of the capital they controlled, they also helped the ruling elite manage their tax-farms. As bankers to the `Uthmanliy janissaries, they long shared their prosperity, and they shared their decline as well when the janissaries were broken as a political and financial power by `Aliy Bey al-Kabiyr around 1760-1770 and replaced by the Syrian Christians.

The Saghah, where precious metals were worked and sold, occupied an even more central position, because it was there that money was changed. A picturesque trace of these activities comes down to us in the names of the streets: a small street directly south of Sagha, the Street of Cut Coins (al-Maqasiys), evokes the illegal practice to which moneychangers resorted in times of economic stress. Immediately to the west was the neighborhood where Cairo's Jews lived, the Harat al-Yahuwd; its residents played an important role in gold and silversmithing and in banking activities.