Closed off in Cairo: walls erected during Egypt protests still standing

The Guardian, by Patrick Kingsley

Residents and business owners say 12ft barriers installed by military dictatorship have changed the once vibrant streets

One day in late 2011 yoga instructor Salima Barakat arrived at her studio in central Cairo to find a wall blocking the entrance. Soldiers had built a series of four-metre-high concrete barriers across the width of her street, dividing the road – and her building – in two. On one side was her garage. On the other was her front door.

"I have my 80-year-old aunt living in the building," said Barakat. "If anything had happened to my aunt, how would she have got out?"

The wall is one of around a dozen that continue to block a similar number of the most central and strategic residential thoroughfares in downtown Cairo. Two blocks north, life bustles on. But the walls have stagnated the once-lively streets in their immediate vicinity.

"People don't know how to live here any more," said civil servant Abdel Mansour, whose home and office sit 100 metres apart, but are now separated by a wall three streets east of Barakat's. "It's like we've reached decay. There's no more movement of cars, or of people."

The walls were erected, supposedly as a temporary measure, by the military dictatorship that followed the fall of Hosni Mubarak. In November 2011 revolutionaries protesting against army rule tried to force their way from Tahrir Square towards nearby government ministries. After days of deadly fighting the army built the walls to stop them. They are still there.

"It affects all of us – the people who work here and the people who live here," said Georges Hanna, a dry cleaner whose shop, once perched on a bustling thoroughfare, is now at the bottom of a makeshift cul-de-sac, thanks to the wall on Fahmy Street. Hanna said business had dropped markedly after its construction, as the resulting traffic jams made his shop hard to access. "Some of my clients had been with me for a lifetime, but now they stick to places closer to their home. There was also a lot of walking traffic. But now no one will pass this way because there's no shops."

A wall blocking Qasr al-Aini street. The banner reads: 'Residents and owners of markets in Cairo, ask Mursi to open and bring down the walls.' Photograph: Amr Dalsh/Reuters

For some the walls are more than a hindrance: they are also a visual visual reminder of how the new Islamist-led government is as unconcerned as the dictatorships that preceded it about the concerns of ordinary Egyptians. The new government, headed by Egypt's first freely elected president, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, has not only preserved the walls but has even built new ones.

"The walls are the latest iteration of the gap between the rulers and the ruled," said Mohamed Elshahed, the editor of Cairobserver, a website about urban space in Cairo. "The Brotherhood are just a civilian cover for the same mentality that has been governing Egypt for the last 40 years."

"It's oppression that you can see with your eyes," said Zeft, one of many graffiti artists to have painted murals on the walls as an act of defiance. "We were colonised by the military and we're now colonised by religion."

For Zeft, an engineering student who was involved in the November 2011 protests, the walls also have an emotional significance. "I see a certain street and I can remember that someone died there. Or that someone was blinded near that wall." He pointed to a bulge on a lamp-post next to a wall on Manshour Street. "Feel that," he said. "That's a bullet. It entered there, and settled here."

At first, the images on the walls were hopeful. On one artists created a witty trompe l'oeil of a suburban street apparently beyond the wall, an optimistic reminder of what the roads used to be like. Zeft put a rainbowon another surface, children playing beneath it. But later Zeft's work became more despondent. Recently he helped a friend create a horrifying mural of a woman's assault in Tahrir Square, a reference to the recent wave of sexual harassment of female protesters.

"It used to be a very lively area – there was always people laughing and joking all the time," said Sarah Youssef, a non-governmental organisation director who owns a flat on Youssef el-Guindy Street. "Then after the walls it became very quiet, very dull and sometimes scary. It's become a place where all the weird stuff happens: robberies, theft … Tahrir Square is lively, but then I go home a block away and it's totally dark, there's lots of garbage."

Youssef and her husband have been forced to move out of their flat, partly because of the walls and partly because the teargas frequently used at nearby protests exacerbated her asthma. "For eight months my furniture still smelled of teargas," Youssef said. "One of my neighbours started coughing up blood."

Some residents – usually those blessed with strong arms and dressed in casual clothes – save time by hauling themselves over the walls. But it's tough work, and sometimes dangerous. "My brother tried to get over this week and he broke his leg," said Ahmed Tegi, as he clambered over himself, carrying a bag of juice back to his restaurant on the other side. Many schools straddle the barriers, forcing students to take the long route round. For a time, the only way to one school was through Salima Barakat's house.

"Before it would take two seconds to get to work," added Mansour, the civil servant, who has lived in the area all his life. "Now I have to go all the way round. It's ridiculous. Some of my colleagues have to get up at five in the morning because the traffic is so congested."

Samir Abou Eissa works as a car parker for business executives who don't have time to do it themselves. But because of the walls and the protests, work has dried up.

"People have lost their jobs in these areas so they don't come here any more," he said. "Also there's a general sense that it's more dangerous, so people don't trust to leave their keys with me. And because of the walls, people are more frustrated with parking, so they park anywhere, and don't ask me to help them. My remaining customers are the ones who have been here for many years. I haven't got any new customers recently."

Taxi drivers are also frustrated, as the walls have made it even harder to drive through parts of Cairo. "This road used to be moving traffic," said driver Mahdy Sayed on a blocked street that is now a glorified car park. "Before it would take me less than five minutes to get through here. Now it takes an extra half hour. You have to take the longest route, and there are [fewer] passengers."

The blockage has nevertheless had a few positive effects. On some streets, the walls have added to the traffic. But on Qasr-el-Aini Street, a normally frantic thoroughfare that passes the houses of parliament, the walls have rid the area of cars. "In a way [it] has returned the area to a neighbourhood feel," said Elshahed, who lives nearby. "It's a very bizarre side effect that I don't think was ever intended. Qasr-el-Aini was almost a hellish experience, with cars honking the whole time. But now it's much more pleasant, somehow."

Yet for Youssef, who has moved back in with her parents, this is scant consolation. "I miss my home," she said.