A View From Cairo: The Case for Investing in Egypt (Re-post)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Crossing the Kasr el Nil Bridge that spans the Nile in central Cairo at eleven o’clock at night is like walking down 42nd Street in New York at rush hour, only more crowded. Cairo is the real city that never sleeps, and never more so than the current month of Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, and smoking from dawn to dusk and then pass the nighttime hours eating, smoking the shisha water pipe, and relaxing with friends and family. The streets are thronged: families having picnics on tiny patches of grass beside roaring four-lane roads; older men in serious conversation, smoking and playing backgammon in sidewalk cafes; groups of adolescent boys roaming around looking for adventure; and courting couples sitting chastely on park benches or standing together on bridges, whispering to each other and watching the lights of Cairo reflected on the water.
It’s not easy to get work done during Ramadan. People who may have snatched a couple of hours of sleep after the pre-dawn sohour meal roll into the office late. Government workers get off at two in the afternoon, and in the private sector everyone is gone well before five, in order to make it home in Cairo’s fiendish traffic in time for the iftar meal to break the fast at sundown. In Egypt, a land of heavy smokers, nicotine deprivation makes people absent-minded and forgetful, unable to focus on the task at hand.

Without meaning to, I have found myself on working visits to the Middle East at Ramadan three years running: last year in Cairo and the year before in Ramallah, on the West Bank. I’ve been coming to the region for more than 20 years, and first started visiting Egypt about eight years ago. The changes during that short time have been amazing.