Cairo: First 

Right after we landed, got to the Airbnb house, checked in, and went out to explore the Downtown area. We explored Abdeen Garden, looked at Abdeen Palace, took pictures. There, a seven-year-old girl ran up to us, smiling, and started speaking to us in her charming English.

We introduced ourselves, praised her—not even for her English, but for her effort and openness. The girl reacted to our names with some surprise; in her schoolbooks, foreigners are clearly not called like that. It felt like she’d been waiting around for someone she could practice her English with. And she perfectly succeeded in that on her daily route from school to home. She smiled at us—a curly Egyptian girl. Then her mother approached us; we can’t describe the depth of pride she felt for her daughter.

The girl threw her arms around us with that tenderness and sincere desire to share her warmth with others. She said goodbye to us. We wished her good luck. After she walked away, holding her mother’s hand, my sister and I turned right onto El-Shaikh Rihan street and both cried out of her kindness. That was the first person, so kind and sensitive from such a young age, who greeted us in Cairo on our very first walk after the flight.

From the very first glimpse—an impression that lingers long after the journey ends—Cairo feels as though it exists in its own time. It is a city where decades overlap, where the present is tightly woven into the past.

As you watch the small movements around you—people rushing by, flickering signs, fleeting glances, scarves caught in the wind—you begin to notice how this fading unfolds. Old facades carry modern signs, ancient streets absorb today’s noise, and what once begins to soften, slowly reshapes by the rhythm of everyday life. The city’s history fades not because it is forgotten, but because it is lived in. It becomes part of routine—something you pass by, lean against, walk through, without giving it a name.

And yet, within this very fading, Cairo seems to renew itself, revealing new details with every passing moment. Cairo the great, Cairo the historic—a city where every corner whispers stories from another era, while still pulsing unmistakably with life today.

The city slowly becomes familiar to its visitors—the kind of place where you can say, “This is my Cairo. I know it. I can tell you everything about it.” You begin to recognize its rhythms, its corners, its habits. You know something about it.

And then it changes.

From that change, a new city grows—one you never quite manage to catch. It keeps hiding behind alleyways and 24-hour kiosks, behind children playing on the grass in a fenced park, behind two people shouting at each other and drawing a sudden crowd of bystanders.

The image of Cairo hides and reappears, yet it always returns, glowing under the bright sun above the Nile. Each time you truly look at it, squinting against the sunlight, shielding your eyes from sand carried on the wind—and it seems to shift before you, revealing new angles, colors, and movements with every glance. You let go of everything you thought you knew about the capital of this desert country—from books, YouTube videos, or friends’ stories—and allow Cairo to unfold before your eyes, free from preconceptions, expectations, or past impressions.

And as funny as it sounds, when you let this desert city bloom and overflow with colors before your eyes, it opens up in all its fullness. You accept all the chaos and order, the strange and the familiar. You settle in, adapt to it, fall in love.

No matter how much the city seems standing still, barely changing visually or physically, its inner movement, the city’s heartbeat, its whisper, its motion—all speak otherwise. The city breathes otherwise. People thirst for a better future under the crimson-red sun. Louder and brighter than anything else are the voices of those who seek progress, greater support from the state, and the chance to improve their lives.

We set out with open hearts, to look. To look and hear their stories with kindness and a sense of wonder.

Cairo: Last 

In Cairo, your eyes will involuntarily hunt, focus on all the scenes emerging before you, like a beautiful film reel, like a lens trying to find focus. Honestly, you’ll get used to it sooner or later. From funny names of abandoned cafés like Tik Tok or Facebook Café to great historic squares, where a revolution once took place, where the Ottoman Empire’s influence lingered, where colonial traces remain. Again, from people who will spray perfume on you in the street, to the boys at a local bakery who will invite you inside to watch how they bake bread—and then deliver it just as quickly as they dodge traffic rules. And just as quickly as they run off after their shift, to skate with friends, grabbing onto cars to speed up to a wild pace. A scene unfolds, lines of young boys racing toward the crimson glow of this city.

Cairo is testing freedom. The freedom of movement, the freedom of being.

Cairo is a city where the traditions of the ancient and the modern intertwine at every step. You might see an older man, a glassblower, with a faded 2015 calendar hanging above his workspace; a young woman in a mosque, eating chips and resting after her studies; other women removing their hijabs even inside the mosque; adult men smoking shisha and observing the passersby; or three children crammed onto a single motorcycle seat, holding tightly to one another as they ride.

Life flows here in completely different ways and reminds us of Nile that is always free, warm, and almost like a celebration.

We truly wanted to tell about everything this city showed us from the beginning till the end. As if we had a generous Egyptian uncle who told us how people live here, and what they dream about before falling asleep after a long walk through the city.

As if, on the very first day, a curly-haired Egyptian girl hugs us.

And said goodbye to us on the last day too.

You end up missing it.