March 30, 2008
Searching for Sunny Supermarket
When most people arrive in Cairo, they head straight to the pyramids or the Egyptian Museum.
The first places I tried to find were Sunny Supermarket, Vesalakis general store, a branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken close to a motorway overpass, the Gezira Club playground & swimming pool, Shagarit Al-Durr street, All Saints Cathedral and the British International School Cairo (BISC) - all of them on the island of Zamalek.
Those are the landmarks I remember most clearly from the six years I spent there in the mid 70s and early 80s, aged six to 12.
People say you should never go back - because the reality will always be smaller and grubbier than the place you remember loving when you were a child.
That didn't happen in Cairo when I returned last week after a 26-year (yikes) absence. Some things seemed smaller, like BISC's old hall where we held our assemblies, put on plays and went to church every Sunday while the cathedral was being built outside. But everything else seemed bigger - mostly because everything else was bigger, much bigger.
Cairo was already huge back then. Now it is just overwhelming, something like the ultimate city. Shopping malls and squares and hotels and tower blocks and overpasses and suburbs and traffic piled up behind traffic piled up behind traffic.
I loved it. And the discovery of two new Zamalek landmarks - the Diwan Bookstore and the El-Cid Restaurant - more than made up for the fact that the Sunny Supermarket had shut down and Vesalakis had turned into a shoe shop.
Posted by aheavens at March 30, 2008 11:36 AM
Comments
Andrew, when I first read your article I was surprised to hear that your visit to Cairo after 20 something years wasn't that of a big shock.
And today, when I read a story about Cairo on iht it reminded me of your article. So I'm sharing it with you.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/14/mideast/cairo.php
Posted by: abyssinia at April 14, 2008 6:46 PM
Sunny supermarket also was a usual shopping venue, as well as Tonsi and local gamaiyas. I lived between Shagaret and Mansur Mohamed near July 26th street. When Marriot was built, it made it to a nice hanout on the hot summer days, which was pretty much between May and Oct every year.
Havent been back in 24 years... My folks went back about 10 years ago, said it was still good old Cairo.
Posted by: ksato at May 1, 2009 5:16 PM