High life
Over and out
Taki
Cairo
Although Arab Islamic history began in the Arabian Peninsula — for that was Islam's birthplace and site of its initial simplicity and triumph — it was in Cairo that Islam fashioned a civilisation, outwit- ted and outwaited all conquerors, and where it made its peace with the world. It is still a peaceful place today. While the rest of the Arab world seethes with Islamic revolutionary hatred for anything that's not Moslem, Cairo remains the last bastion of Christian-Moslem co-existence, with a semi- free press and a leading Arab university.
I remember living here as a boy and hear- ing sophisticated Egyptians saying that Cairo — not Paris — was the magnet of Arab youth. Even when Nasser tried to put the lights out, they remained lit, albeit dim- med. It was those lights that attracted and eventually repelled Colonel Gaddafi, the same casino and nightclub lights that led some fanatics to murder Anwar Sadat.
When I lived here during the late Fifties, I used to spend my days playing tennis at 'Don't tell the Prince Edward's in the West End already!' the Gezira Sporting Club, my nights gamb- ling at the Mohammed Ali. Old Levantine gentlemen would punt heavily but gracious- ly, while servants in gold-rimmed djellabahs would tiptoe silently through the cool, im- mense marble halls bringing Turkish coffee and rahat lukums. My father inspected the scene and decided that nothing could or would ever change. But change it did. Our factories were nationalised, although with a smile. The last time I visited Cairo it was for Nasser's funeral. I was a correspondent by then, and what I was looking for Cairo couldn't provide. The action was to the north. The city, I remember thinking, was poorer than when I had left it. More exhausted, yet I still felt it could lead the Arab world. Which it did.
Cairo today is still an authentic capital, still proud, but the 12 million people who have invaded it are about to give it the coup de grace. The heat and dust were always here. Combined with industry and cars they make the ancient city a polluted, sweaty hellhole. The old sophisticated Cairenes are reeling, being shoved aside by hucksters whose pleasures are in acquiring Mercedes cars and flats in Heliopolis with lots of stereo equipment, and whose women wear designer jeans. The old sensuality is gone. Even the traditional Egyptian hospitality has suffered. You now have to pay in ad- vance in top hotels, and waiters sometimes ask for money before serving drinks. There are laws against almost everything — in a vain attempt to control the tide of humanity — with the result that no one obeys anything, including the red traffic light rule. The quick-buck artist has prevailed. Where the Turk, the Frenchman and the Englishman failed, he has succeeded. He is about to buy Cairo's soul.
When the International Amateur Karate Federation decided that the sixth world championship (it takes place every three years) should be in Cairo, I was delighted. thought it a good place to finish. Unfor- tunately, I hadn't reckoned on the new Arab man, the one who thinks that because the government grants him money, he has a responsibility to produce a victory at all costs. Meaning he will cheat outright and blatantly and to hell with sport.
Karate is subsidised by the government in Egypt, and all of Cairo seemed to have been mobilised in order to ensure that the Egyp- tian team did well. Fortunately, we fought the Irish first, whom we beat, then the Dutch and then we faced the English. In a best of five team match we got to the fifth and final one having won two matches apiece. As captain I chose to fight last, thinking that by then the outcome would be clear. Typically, I miscalculated. Waiting on deck to fight a large and very tough black young man, I thought of all the neon nights, all the booze and the controlled substances. My reveries did not make me overconfident. I was knocked out and the team lost, and it was fitting that I finally retired in a city that — like myself — has gone on a little too long. Japan swept the boards, followed by Germany. One of MY boys could have got to the final except for a broken jaw. The Egyptian doctors refused to help him after he beat a local. It was par for the course.
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