Diamonds- Work in Progress

Shahira is not a rich girl but she won’t let you know it. You’ll assume by one look at her perfectly pink pout and her camera-friendly posture with her equally nonchalant companions that this beautiful girl was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

Shahira was born to a working class family from Upper Egypt, descends of potato farmers from Gharbeya. Her father was the only son to make it into university and fought tough and nail to work his way as a mechanical engineer through the company ranks to give his three daughters the education that his sisters could never have.
All three daughters made it into private Cairo universities that the average Egyptian can’t afford if it weren’t for the financial aid and scholarships that they received, another secret Shahira will never tell you.

All that matters is that she was at the right college with the right people, and the fact that she said hello and shared a few cigarette breaks with certain people somehow ended her up here, clinking her champagne glass with a group of loud, boisterous Cairenes cooing over the highest rooftop overlooking the Nile River, but she might as well be with strangers.

Shahira’s friends assume she’s one of them, because you can’t just make it into the ranks of Cairo’s rich and fabulous without looking like you can shop every summer in Paris and carry designer bags with a nonchalance that screams ‘I can buy ten of these for all I care’.
Shahira wears diamond-encrusted heels from a cheap discount shop in a backstreet of Nasr City neighbourhood. She finds it incredulous when they compliment her on her shoes; calling them ‘so designer’ when in fact they’re as cheap and fake as the artful smiles they carry.

‘Honey, you look so sexy! I love your hair!’ they coo at her and lean in for a hug, making sure to press their cheeks against hers to avoid hair being fussed and perfectly pink pouts being ruined.

Shahira is far too clever for her own good, and knows very well that she can’t keep up this pretence, but it all happened so suddenly. Just because she went to class with someone who became a manager of a posh Cairo nightclub suddenly translated into her being worthy: shrewd eyes watched her greet her old classmate, added her up, and came forward with open smiles, asking her for help in next Friday’s guest-list only party.

In this part of Cairo, you have to know someone to get in somewhere, or at least that’s what many people believe. God forbid that you go about the tedious route of making a reservation and showing up on time for your table to be ready. The better connected you are, the more of a chance you have in being accepted into this tiny little niche of people who pretend that Cairo is Cannes and it’s yet another night for Moet and Russian caviar on ice.

But all you need is to look down from the rooftop nightclub to see the walls of the Shobra neighbourhood, a tired and destitute area filled with dark-eyed faces that have served and waited to receive nothing in return.

Shahira sees their eyes and feels more than guilt; she shouldn’t be part of this bubble of a Cairo, but if you work in Public Relations, you smile your way through and show up to every event you’re invited to, no matter what you think. This is networking with clients, her boss reminds her, an imperative part of her job. Please dress up extra nice tonight.

She’s learned to pose with a hand languidly placed on a hip, shoulder jutting out just so, face tilted to the camera, and a blank expression in her dark coffee eyes to let the world (or just this camera) assume that she’s worthy, that she’s someone worth talking about because of the (fake) bag she carries and the (fake) diamonds on her shoes. Shahira knows how to imitate to fit in, and as she stares at the camera patiently with the five other girls with eyes blank like fish who will never call her to go out for coffee or ask how her day was but remember her name when they need to get into a party, she hates herself.

Here, you take your life for granted, you assume that this generous city will never stop giving you the luxury you were born into, with the plush designer carpets and the private soirees in the exclusive boutiques and upscale hotels, but no one sees the eyes of the waiters bringing your drinks or the valets parking your S-Class, because that would force you to admit that there is a world outside your cocoon; a massive monster of a city full of tired, hungry people who break their backs for a better living, for a chance of fresh bread and for their children to make it to university despite their lack of connections and finances to bribe, coerce and seduce their way to the top.

Rami is a man of the people, or so he likes to tell himself. He stands shoulder to shoulder with the crowd of sweaty, dust-stained faces staring up at the sky in defiance as helicopters circle overhead and voices cry out in the dark ‘We are not leaving!’

He feels like himself here more than in his quiet, five-bedroom apartment in Giza, where the view of the Nile and his mother’s oil portraits remind him of his family lineage, of the comfort that was handed to him and was denied to millions of others. His grandfather owned a mansion on the shady island of Manial, and sometimes, during lunch on Friday afternoon, his grandfather will speak of his childhood memories, of running around the palace gardens, where princes kept their stables and bashas came for afternoon tea.

Rami wears a faded khaki t-shirt and torn jeans, he flits through the crowd like a quiet moth through the dusk air. No one notices him, they are too preoccupied. Cairo is angry; the people here want justice, and he wants it for them, even though his plane ticket to anywhere is just one phone call and a few credit card details away.

The people around him ignore his furious typing away on his iPhone as he sends reports to his journalist friends, giving them tips on the number of protestors, their demands, their stories and faces, black eyes that have seen too much to go home, no one can go home now.

Rami and Shahira meet, how they cross paths is not important, but the view from Rami’s Giza window sees Shahira’s family home on the other side of Manial, the island once roamed by his ancestors and their friends before Abdel Nasser acquisitioned their lands and froze their bank accounts, leaving them as poor as the potato farmers of Upper Egypt.