Dinah Zidan  Sommer 2021

A Greek dentist we met in Constantinople who had been practicing for many years in Cairo said: “Ah Cairo? It is a hundred times more beautiful than here! Oh, but certainly, because they have the English over there. By all means, go there. It’s just like a European city. You’ll love it there; you’ll see lots of paved streets. And then there are the streetcars, and the hotels, fifty or a hundred times bigger than this one here...” Dumbfounded, I inquire about the Arab city, the white city with mouchorabies polychrome minarets, and then about the museum in which everything of Egypt will soon be housed. “Yes, yes, I know all that, but after all it’s not the real Cairo!” On the other hand, he knew about the Pyramids.
– Le Corbusier: Journey to the East (1911), Žaknić 1987