The following is a 17 November 1998 article from Reuters.

Cairo to Relocate Businesses to Protect Antiquities Upgrading Egypt

"After the plan is fully carried out the area would be like a time machine from the American movies. We'd take people back into past centuries." — Abdallah el-Attar

C A I R O, Nov. 17 — The wooden door and lattice windows of the 15th century walled bazaar in Cairo's old city shook as Adel Hegazy hammered copper sheets and apprentices ferried them in stacks in and out of his shop.

Modern life threatens ancient history in Cairo. (ABCNEWS.com)

The 49-year-old blacksmith brushed off the fact that his workshop at Wekalat Qaitbay is on a list of buildings scheduled for relocation from historic sites in medieval Cairo.

"We are causing no harm to the monuments," he said. "I inherited this place from my father who inherited it from my grandfather. We have been here for ages."

The government wants to relocate hundreds of workshops, offices, schools, homes and stores that it says encroach illegally on areas classified as antiquities in the heart of Cairo. The U.N. Development Program helped prepare a plan last year to rehabilitate the area's rich jumble of ancient mosques, Islamic schools, fountains, synagogues and Coptic churches.

Fire Hazards Threaten Buildings

The cabinet activated the plan to turn the district into an open-air museum last month after a fire that began in a pile of rubbish gutted the 18th century palace of Musafir Khanna. Other potential fire hazards abound, such as the wooden food crates piled high in the 500-year-old Houesh Attai courtyard.

Antiquities officials say seepage from 19th century sewage and water pipes is eroding the foundations of many old structures, which were also rocked by a 1992 earthquake. Power cables hang from houses in the narrow streets.

Women make tea on gas burners and laundry flaps from the walls of the 14th century Beshtaq palace. Cars clog the old city, whose widest street, el-Moez, is just 25 feet across and more than 1,000 years old.

Authorities have noted more than 200 violations at 108 historic sites in just two areas of Old Cairo, Gamalia and Moez, and have surveyed all the area's 300 listed landmarks.

Moving Harmful Professions

"We are talking about complete rehabilitation of the whole area, the sites, streets, cars, environment," said Gaballah Ali Gaballah, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities. "Professions that are harmless to the environment, like jewelers or woodwork, of course will stay. But if there are harmful professions like blacksmiths or aluminum (welders) this is going to be moved."

Work has started on a tunnel scheduled to be completed in three years to divert traffic from the heavily populated area around the Hussein and Azhar mosques.

Abdallah el-Attar, head of Coptic and Islamic Antiquities, said workshops may be allowed to stay put if they switch to tourist-friendly activities such as selling souvenirs.

"After the plan is fully carried out the area would be like a time machine from the American movies. We'd take people back into past centuries," Attar said enthusiastically. He said the project will cost $250 million, which the government hopes to raise from tourism revenue and international aid groups.

Money, Awareness Stumbling Blocks

"There are just two main obstacles facing implementation of the plan. First, money. Second, spreading awareness of the value of such antiquities among the population," Ragai Hussein, head of Coptic and Islamic antiquities in North Cairo, said. He also cited the tangle of overlapping authorities and government organizations responsible for aspects of the project.

The Supreme Council for Antiquities wants to take over the sites from the Religious Endowments Ministry, which Attar said controls 95 percent of 650 medieval sites throughout Cairo. Tenants, some of whom have occupied the sites for generations, pay as little as five pounds a month in rent.

"It is such a frustrating situation," Attar said. "We are supervising what we do not own, but we are trying."

The Cairo governorate, charged with building alternative housing, plans to relocate displaced citizens to Manshiyet Nasser, a northeastern suburb bordering the desert.

Hussein said lack of awareness about the value of the monuments among Old Cairo dwellers, many of them uneducated, was a major hindrance to the plan and to the inspectors' work.

"We create police files for those who encroach on the monuments," he said. "People react by hating the monuments. They call them just piles of stones that upset their lives."

Hegazy, hammering in his sooty smock, is concerned more with daily survival than with the relics of the past. "This is where I work to feed my children. I will resist evacuation. Are monuments and tourists more important than us?"

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