Cacophony in Cairo: Besieged by sound, learning to negotiate
In his memoirs, Nubar Pasha recalls how Muhammad Ali carved the foundations of a modern state through the resolute enforcement of law. Among the many legacies attributed to him, one detail gleams with quiet defiance: his uncompromising insistence on equality between Muslims and Christians.
By asserting the authority of the state over its full dominion, he did more than consolidate power. He brought order to the desert: securing the caravan routes that once stitched the Sinai between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
One day, a camel vanished from a convoy. The incident prompted a national alarm. Search parties were dispatched. Investigations were launched. In the end, the camel was found not stolen but grazing serenely nearby, its cargo still strapped to its back.
For it is not only democracies that must persuade citizens of their legitimacy. Even autocracy, for all its silence at the ballot box, must offer proof of competence. The absence of voters does not absolve it from the burden of performance; it merely changes the terms of the bargain.
The kingdom of the microbus
Autocracy derives its perceived legitimacy from being a coherent, comprehensible system, even if unjust. Hence the saying “Equality in injustice is justice.”
No regime can command respect simply by crushing opposition. It must be equally firm in delivering public security, regulating prices, mediating social conflict, and containing all forms of disorder. Only then can a dictatorship claim some redemptive value, offering the safety of a cage.
Perhaps noise pollution seems like the most benign form of chaos, but in reality it’s insidious. It exposes the absence of any system that could claim competence.
I’ve tracked this auditory phenomenon for decades, as part of my broader interest in the senses, as the most truthful lens for observing the world and its political shifts.
In the midst of Egypt’s urban chaos stands the reign of the microbus: a vehicle whose very emergence signaled the state’s disavowal of its responsibilities towards public transportation. Over time, the government’s silence on the behavior of microbus drivers became yet another sign of its abdication of oversight and control.
The microbus’ noise pollution is its most defining trait. The aggressive, jarring blast of the horn startles pedestrians and fellow drivers alike. Inside the vehicle, another blanket of sound imposes itself on the passengers: sometimes bad pop music blares out, but more often, Quranic recitations or sermons by preachers who may now be in jail, dead, or banned from preaching altogether. The driver’s piety in “spreading Islam” never seems to conflict with his daily theft of small change from passengers.
The government ignores the driver’s religious proselytizing while actively enabling his petty theft. Fares have always included small, odd-numbered amounts that drivers refuse to return, citing a lack of change. Once, these were fractions of a pound. Now that the pound is all but worthless, those “fractions” have become whole pounds, as fares hit 14 or 16 pounds.
The absence of dignity
Tolerance towards the relentless noise in Egypt’s main streets has persisted for decades, perhaps due to an exhausted police force, or a delusional belief among authorities that such auditory chaos poses no threat to their standing. But that’s not true. Tolerating noise pollution exposes a weak, corrupt state that’s lost control over the enforcement of its own laws.
During the Mubarak era, Egypt resembled a flabby state: lax but internally consistent. There was some mercy in the political space, just as there was leniency toward traffic horns. Today, the absence of any governing logic makes the whole scene absurd: a regime that cracks down on dissenting voices while tolerating noise that assaults the public’s peace of mind and shreds any sense of safety cannot project authority.
Chaos has spread. It’s no longer confined to major roads but has reverberated into residential streets. Even self-enforced house arrest offers no escape from the daily onslaught of noise that begins early each morning.
My day begins with the “rubabikya” man, the junk collector whose call, “bikya… bikya”, at 9 am, connects the present to a fading past. The word, an Arabic transliteration of vecchia, Italian for “old”, is older than the republic itself, when Egypt was a Mediterranean migration hub, welcoming Greeks and southern Italians seeking a better life. Today, our youth risk death trying to reach an Italy that has long since shut its doors. The “bikya” cry is one of the few remnants of that migration in the opposite direction.
That initial, gentle call, usually unaided by a loudspeaker, doesn’t prevent me from going back to sleep. But at 10 a.m., the first alarm sounds: a deep, thuggish voice, amplified unnecessarily, hawking feteer—flaky pastry. “White tahini, aged cheese, flaky feteer. Hot, fallaahi feteer,” he calls, stretching the word fallaahi (farmers) until it seems to bruise the walls.
I’ve suffered his vocal assault for years in Nasr City, east of Cairo. I once spotted him in Roxy in Heliopolis and realized the extent of his domain. He may disappear for a day but returns the next, ruining my mood. I try to wake up before he arrives, so I don’t feel ambushed.
More than once, I’ve peered from the balcony to track his path from both ends of the street. I’ve never seen anyone buy from him. To this day, I’m not sure the box on his tricycle actually contains feteer. Perhaps it does, but he seems indifferent to selling. I’ve wondered if he might be a drug dealer or an informant. But his hefty build doesn’t match the nimbleness I imagine of dealers.
Once, my anger boiled over. I shouted that I could hear him from Heliopolis before he even arrived, and that his booming voice didn’t need a loudspeaker. He stared back with the calm of someone ready for a fight and continued his sales pitch at the same volume, deliberately dragging his departure.
After the feteer man, the day fills with additional rubabikya men. All armed with microphones, they sweep through the streets as if homes constantly produce junk. Their faces reveal a mix of urban and rural origins. Their vehicles vary from handcarts to tricycles to half-ton trucks. I count around ten separate teams who go around the neighborhood per day.
Seasons of sound
Then come the produce vendors. Their cries signal fruit and vegetable seasons and price fluctuations. All equipped with loudspeakers. Some shout live, others play recordings that spare them the effort but not us the torment. When I signal with a smile and a phone-to-ear gesture, the more polite ones pause for a few seconds before resuming just a few steps away.
In spring, a farmer appears carrying a basket of vine leaves on his head. He transports me to the vines of memory, whose leaves and fruit I sacrificed for the sake of living in Cairo. He might show up once or twice a year, then vanish, leaving me nostalgic for spring, and for all my years gone by.
Apricots are rare—too precious to be hawked in the streets—which only increases my love for them. I eagerly await their season and wish someone would sing out their name just once. Watermelons, in contrast, are overbearing. Their season drags on like a dark cloud. The same goes for grilled corn, though its vendors are far fewer. Watermelon sellers are unique in that they wield both knives and loudspeakers. “Watermelon! Sliced for you!” But who would dare reject a melon after it’s been sliced?
Between the loudspeakers for watermelons, on a horse-drawn cart or a pickup truck, comes the distinctive blare of a meat truck from state-backed charity Tahya Masr. An invisible voice booms, “Esteemed residents,” then lists cuts of meat and their prices, as though proclaiming glad tidings.
This sonic announcement echoes the rhetoric of the informal kiosks of state bodies that, under the guise of charity, sell discounted goods under banners like “We are one!” and “Fighting inflation!” The difference between the cart and the kiosk is that one screams, the other merely displays. But both represent the state’s share in perpetuating the very disorder it claims to oppose—by offering precarious, unofficial work under a false flag of benevolence.
More crucially, these charitable enterprises reveal the regime’s true priorities and lay bare the modest scale of its ambitions. Ambitions so stunted that not even songs or security-media stars can make them seem grander than they are.
Used oil for sale
The sounds of the meat cart, with its wares displayed in the midday heat, dominate the afternoon. Then, as the cool evening sets in, the voices of used cooking oil collectors ring out. This timing feels less like coincidence and more like intent; the stench of used oil would undoubtedly be far worse under the scorching sun.
As far as I recall, this trade began around 2020, at 10 pounds a kilo, the same price as clean oil a few months earlier. Now it’s 35 a kilo, and nothing surprises us anymore.
Over five years, no official voice has told the public whether this oil is safely processed or illegally resold. A single initiative in January 2021, called “Enty el-Bidaya/It starts with you”, run by the Environment Ministry and a private company, offered women new oil in exchange for their used supply.
It claimed the waste was used for machine lubricants, but we never heard of it again. Meanwhile, news reports cite unverified claims: the oil is exported to France and UK, others say it’s reused locally.
This trade demands a full exposé, for the state’s indifference to it starkly reflects a deeper disdain for the public’s well-being and a willful neglect of public health. But I mention it here as part of the broader soundscape, one that also includes food delivery motorcycles, Ramadan drummers, and desperate voices blaring from taxis: a man pleading for a burial shroud, a woman asking for her son’s cancer treatment, both armed with expensive gear: a car, a driver, and a megaphone.
A few Ramadans ago, a drum and pipes band appeared in Nasr City. They were not buskers like in other countries, but a group that produced fear, not joy. Every so often, the six burly men who made up the band paused for a synchronized shout: “Wishing you well every year!” A violent, threatening shout, not a beseeching one.
They continue even after the call to sunset prayer, when people gather around dining tables to break their fast. The band’s activity has started to creep beyond Ramadan. I don’t know when they begin their route, but sometimes they reach my street at night.
When they’re absent, a strong-built beggar in his sixties takes their place. He passes by around midnight, shouting, “Yaaaa Rab!/Dear Lord!” with a force that doesn’t match reverence for God, but feels more like a rebuke of those trying to sleep. Cries bracket the day—the feteer dealer in the morning, the beggar at night. After one argument with each, I learned to negotiate with the other vendors instead.
Once the human noise fades and I’m fully exhausted, the stray dogs take over. Their battles fill the remaining night hours. I’ve tried every refuge to write in peace, to no avail.
And so, like everyone else, I live besieged by sound. I learn to negotiate for moments of silence, as though we were accidental neighbors, not members of a society. We don’t live together; we endure together. We are locked in a perpetual state of self-defense, unable to hear the anguish of Gaza or Laila Soueif.
(*) A version of this article first appeared in Arabic on June 3, 2025.