مقتنيات وسط البلد

This is a book with a special flavor, carrying with it two different faces that complement each other. Here, “Makawi Saeed” selects for us, with the eyes of the novelist, faces and places from central Cairo, from among the sides of those few streets in which an important part of the history of modern Egypt was formed. It was and still is a meeting place for Egyptian intellectuals and artists, where they practice art, politics, speech, and gossip, from “Downtown,” where the lives of these intellectuals, with their unlimited ambitions and amazing madness, are intertwined with the lives of millions of daily passers-by from all over Egypt and the world. We will read about 41 personalities with familiar faces in the sessions of intellectuals or on their outskirts. Some of these personalities were gifted and preferred frivolity to talent. Some of them had their ambitions crushed by their hand or the hand of others, so they retreated into themselves, became mad, died, or moved away. Some of them preferred tranquility and continued to scoop up the pure wisdom of life. On the other hand, he talks about cafés, restaurants, bars, and cultural forums that were active in “Downtown” in the mid-seventies and early eighties. Some of them are places that still exist and retain their luster. Some of them completely withdrew from the picture after being removed by shoe stores or fast food, and some of them deteriorated, even if they still kept their name and place. Here, Makkawi Saeed traces the history of these places, and the stories that took place in and around them. We will read about Groby, and Reishes. Greek Club, Astra, Alibaba, Freedom Coffee, Stella, Estoril and many others. The artist Amr Al-Kafrawi also completed a number of paintings parallel to these texts, which greatly expressed the spirit of this rich world that Makkawi Saeed entertained us with.