To look at the city gate of Bab Zuwayla in El Moez Street in Old Cairo, and its surroundings is to see the whole history of Cairo probably better than anywhere else in the city. Power and majesty, poverty and misfortune, wealth as well as desolation, changing fortunes, empires come and gone- all have left their mark here.
The crowd mills around usually trying to make ends meet; a crowd always eager to watch any extraordinary event that comes along, be it a neighbourhood quarrel or a state visit. Battered buses and shiny expensive cars have replaced pack animals and caparisoned stallions; otherwise the scene has not changed for centuries. This is perhaps the only scene in the world that has never ceased to bustle with activity, 24 hours a day for the past thousand years.
The crowd here has never lacked for extraordinary events at which to marvel.
Bab Zuwayla was an ill-famed place , where executions were held. The sensation-hungry crowd could see severed heads and hanged and crucified bodies displayed on the gate.
I was told by the tour guide that Bab Zuwayla was one of the massive stone gates of "Al-Qahira". The name, from which "Cairo" derives, applies today to the entire metropolis.
I love this city.
Can't wait for more Cairo
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