A cultural center in Old Cairo, latest victim of mass demolitions

Before him, there were whole sections of cemeteries and other heritage sites in the city, which was long the cultural beacon of the Arab world.

But today, the government wants to create a new place in Africa's second capital with more than 20 million inhabitants, clear highways, build bridges and other bypasses to connect new towns and business districts which serve as a facade to an economy in tatters.

On January 6, it was with "deep sadness" and "enormous anger" that Darb 1718 saw its premises, open to artists and their aficionados for 15 years, destroyed "without notice or compensation", recounts the center in a text published on Facebook.

For those responsible for Darb 1718, figures chosen in homage to the bread riots of January 17 and 18, 1977, their case is only a "glaring reminder of the permanent threats which weigh on the heritage and history of Cairo and the movements without any consideration of its inhabitants.

“Everything destroyed inside”

Because, residents, specialists and activists continue to remind, since 2020, thousands of tombs in the City of the Dead, the oldest necropolis in the Muslim world listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, have been destroyed in Cairo.

For experts, the bulldozer is one of the tools of the policy of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who came to power in 2013 by overthrowing the Islamist Mohamed Morsi and who has since promised the 106 million Egyptians "development", " modernity" and "better future", with major construction sites and concrete pours.

These “bulldozers” are the ones who surprised Moataz Nasreddine “just after the New Year holidays”. The visual artist, founder of Darb 1718, recounted on one of the most followed talk shows in the country how he had to watch excavators attack his exhibition building as well as two training workshops in pottery and craftsmanship.

“Everything inside was destroyed” and even “works belonging to 150 foreign artists worth millions and I don’t know what to tell them now”, because no one had been warned that it had to be emptied the places, he told Lamiss Hadidi.

The presenter of the program "Kalma Akheera", "one last word" in Arabic, is, like all media figures in the country, usually a great defender of power. But even she was exasperated that evening.

“We hate our heritage”

“How can we present a candidate to UNESCO when we hate our heritage!”, she said, while Egypt proposed its former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled el-Enani for the post of Director General of Unesco.

“We hate our history and our Old Cairo, we want a city that is only roads, asphalt, bridges,” she said.

On social networks, the anger is the same. An Internet user writes: "the worst is that these are the same officials who walk in the streets of Paris, Vienna or Rome and take photos while being ecstatic and who, once returned to the country, order the demolition of the very symbols of the country.

The architect Ayman Badr, a regular at Darb 1718, said he felt “a mixture of frustration and anger and extreme sadness”.

There, he explains to AFP, "I met many artists, I attended workshops and shows." And, he says, "Darb not only affected me, but also the residents of the neighborhood, especially the children." So its destruction was “a huge shock”.

An even bigger shock for its founder Moataz Nasreddine who in July, sensing the wind coming, launched a petition and collected 16.000 supporters. He had even obtained, he assures, a promise from the local mayor to begin “negotiations after the presidential election”.

But in December the Egyptians voted and renewed, unsurprisingly, Mr. Sissi until 2030.

Then the bulldozers arrived...