Photo : Al Hussainy Mohamed from Cairo, Egypt — CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Cairo · Sayyida Aisha
The Friday Market
Cairo's flea market: whatever the city threw out, sold again on a Friday morning.
Below the Citadel, over towards Sayyida Aisha, an enormous spread takes over the pavements, the central reservations and the side lanes every Friday: clothes hung on lines, shoes in heaps, engine parts, taps, tools, dismantled furniture, phones, books, scrap iron. Traders lay their goods on the ground and shout their prices, and nothing is new or guaranteed. This is a market of Cairenes who came to buy, not a souvenir souk: there is no craftwork here, only the city restocking itself.
The extra bit
Come early in the morning, before the heat and the crowd build, and carry nothing but small notes in a closed pocket. An hour is enough to understand it; the market repeats itself.
Know before you go
It is packed, dusty and loud, and pickpockets work it too: bag closed and held in front of you, phone out of your hand. One section sells live animals, in conditions that are hard to look at. Nothing is guaranteed — what is sold as new is not new, and there is no exchange and no receipt. The authorities have moved the market more than once, so give your taxi driver the name souq al-Gomaa and Sayyida Aisha as the landmark, and he will know where it stands at the moment. The atmosphere is very male.
