Postcard from Cairo: Waterways and parks offer respite as residents flee sweltering homes

Amid scorching temperatures, power cuts and economic uncertainty, Egyptians find solace in the night breeze and a glass of refreshing juice

Cairo residents gather along the Ismailia Canal, which connects the Suez Canal and the Nile, to cool down after the day's heat. Kamal Tabikha / The National

To escape the summer heat, worsened by the rolling blackouts that have plagued the daily lives of Egyptians since last summer, Cairo residents head to the city’s waterways every night for respite.

Young men spend the night at small makeshift cafes comprising of small tables and plastic chairs, set up on stretches of pavement around the Nile and irrigation canals branching from it, sipping sugarcane juice, tea or coffee and smoking cigarettes.

Meanwhile, at many of the city’s public parks, Egyptian families form small clusters who arrive after the final prayer of the day, Isha, and lay down rugs which they lounge on until after midnight, eating nuts and other snacks that they bring from home.

“I can only bear to be home at dawn in this heat. That’s when I can catch a few hours of sleep without sweating to the point where I have to wash my face and change my clothes every hour or two,” says Islam Mahmoud, 28, who on Wednesday night sat with a group of friends on the banks of the Ismailia Canal, a 130km-long waterway that connects the Nile to the Suez Canal.

“Out here, you can catch a breeze and there is fresh air. Who in their right mind would stay home in this weather?”

Since the start of summer in late April, the country has been hit by successive heatwaves, with temperatures reaching well over 40°C.

Enduring the heatwaves has been made even more difficult by daily blackouts that last up to six hours in some areas of Cairo.

The power cuts – which have been the talk of the town since April and are at the centre of the new government’s relaunch plan – are caused by natural gas shortages.

Blackouts, which take place at different times in different districts of Cairo, have made staying indoors even more unbearable, as people have to get by without fans or air conditioning for hours on end.

“I live in a very crowded area and when you have so many people in one place, the air doesn’t move,” says Alaa El Sayed, 33, a resident of Cairo’s working-class Mostorod district.

“You need a fan to create a breeze and move the air. Otherwise, it truly is unbearable.”

Mr El Sayed, along with his wife and four children, is one of the many who choose to spend their nights at a local park for some air. The family crosses the Ismailia Canal from Mostorod to a park at nearby Al Sawah Street, in Hadayek Al Qubba district.

On the other side of the park, Abdullah, 14, a mechanic’s apprentice by day, serves passers-by with tea he prepares on a small cart on the pavement outside the park. He sells a cup of tea for 10 Egyptian pounds ($0.21) and a cup of coffee for 12 pounds.

“I am new here. I only started earlier this week when police came and shut my boss’s workshop down for being open after 7pm. My brother owns this cart, so I came to work with him at night until the government allows the workshop to stay open past 7pm,” he told The National on Wednesday,

“My brother was looking for someone to help him on the cart because it’s summer and people are always out late.”

As part of a national plan to reduce power usage, Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on June 26 that all shops, restaurants and cafes must now close at 10pm until the end of September.

Pharmacies and grocery stores are allowed to stay open until 1am, while skilled traders are forced to close their business premises at 7pm.

The energy-saving scheme is unpopular with the country’s small business owners, already struggling with reduced revenue caused by higher operational costs.

While he enjoys the cooler air as he serves tea in the park, Abdullah makes less money each day than he did when the workshop stayed open throughout the night.

Although he continues to work as a mechanic by day, Abdullah says business hours have been seriously reduced, first by the power cuts that render essential tools unusable and now by the early closure.

So far, the police have not taken any steps to shut down the many tea and coffee carts that dot the sides of main streets in Cairo in the evening – something for which Abdullah is grateful.

“The other day, I sold a coffee to a police officer at one in the morning. When he walked up to my cart, I was very worried that he was going to ask me to close the coffee stand, especially after what happened with the workshop. But he just asked me for coffee, so I was very relieved,” he recounts.

Though tea and coffee are enjoyed by Egyptians during the summer months, juice shops are far more popular, because of the variety of cold and refreshing drinks they sell.

In summer, the country’s sugarcane and mangoes – which produce two of the juices most loved by Egyptians – are harvested.

“This juice bar has become a second home for me since summer started,” says Hussein Ali, 37, a resident of Cairo’s Al Zawya Al Hamra district.

“I probably spend half of my salary on sugarcane juice from this place. It’s a 10 minute walk from my house and I find myself going back and forth five or six times a day.

“Life is really difficult right now. No one has any money to spare and the power goes out and the weather is like the fires of hell.

“What can I say? God help us all.”

The government’s power-saving strategy includes switching off street lights in certain districts, said the Transport Ministry on June 27. Stretches of the Ismailia Canal, which divides the provinces of Cairo and Qalyubia, were barely illuminated on Wednesday night.

Despite this, groups of people could be seen sitting on plastic chairs in the dark, some with their mobile phone torches lit up, all to escape the sweltering heat that has taken over the Egyptian capital this summer.

As Egypt’s population deals with what Mr Madbouly called “an unprecedented crisis” at a press conference on Thursday to introduce his newly formed cabinet's priorities, many are looking towards the future with pessimism.

However, perhaps the biggest testimony to the resilience of the Egyptian people is that despite economic hardships, sweltering heat and uncertainty about the future, they can still take a moment to savour a cold glass of sugarcane juice.