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 "I was blindsided by the beauty," the U.S.-trained architect
said of the house which he first saw more than two decades ago.
Built of brick and stone, it has a large inner courtyard and a
number of rooms with decorative painted wooden ceilings.
He struck up a friendship with the butcher, who owned the
building, and received a call from him several years later
saying a property developer wanted to buy it and tear it down.
Determined to save the building, Habashi bought it in 2009, only
to be told he could raze it but not restore it. He refused to
give up and won the right to restore it in a two-year legal
battle. A decade after he bought the building, the restoration
is almost complete.
His battle was part of a larger fight to save old buildings
which some professional restorers and architects fear is being
lost because of bureaucracy, official corruption and laws which
they say do little to protect Egypt's architectural heritage.
"I'm not at all optimistic. I believe only 25% of the buildings
will survive," said May al-Ibrashy, a restorer who has been
working in historic Cairo for about 25 years.
Government officials did not respond to repeated requests for
comment for this article.
The five-square-kilometre (about two-square-mile) historic
quarter, which has one of the world's biggest collections of
Islamic architecture, has been declared a World Heritage site by
the United Nations' cultural agency UNESCO.
But though its main monuments are not under threat, many houses
and smaller buildings are being demolished.
Government inspectors, fearing they could be held legally
responsible for any problems, have declared many centuries-old
buildings in danger of collapse since earthquakes in 1992 and
2005. Many have been demolished and replaced by cement and brick
high-rise buildings that critics describe as garish.
The demolitions appear at odds with government officials'
pledges to maintain Cairo's role as Egypt's "cultural, tourism
and heritage capital", despite work on building a new capital
east of Cairo to ease pressure on the city of over 20 million.
Those fighting to save old buildings in historic Cairo say the
demolitions are destroying a potential stream of tourists and
revenue from tourism, which earned Egypt $11.6 billion in 2018,
according to central bank figures.
BUREAUCRATIC NIGHTMARE
Habashi's bureaucratic nightmare began when he applied for a
permit to begin restoring the house soon after he bought it. He
said the government replied that the house was condemned as on
the verge of collapse and that if he wanted to work at the site,
he would have to demolish it and then rebuild it.
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Habashi appealed to two state bodies: the Antiquities Authority,
responsible for about 600 historic monuments, and the National
Authority for Urban Harmony, tasked with preserving many other
buildings.
Inspectors from each agency came separately to look at his house, he
said.
"They stopped at the doorstep (and said): 'This is a crumbling
building. What are you trying to save?'" Habashi said.
Only after obtaining a letter from a UNESCO official confirming the
building's historic importance was Habashi able in 2011 to secure a
court ruling that he could restore it.
Destruction of historic buildings since 2011 has been extensive,
said a foreign restorer who studied historic Cairo's Darb al-Ahmar
district, much of which is inside the old city walls.
"My analysis is that approximately 15% of the urban fabric in al-Darb
al-Ahmar has been replaced by newly built structures seven to 10
stories high," he said. Official figures were not available.
Nearly 100 historic buildings in Darb al-Ahmar were replaced with
high-rise buildings as central authority collapsed after the 2011
uprising that ended autocratic president Hosni Mubarak’s 30 years in
power, said architect Tarek el-Murri, who has years of experience
working in the district.
For art historian Shahira Mehrez, and six others with whom she
bought two dilapidated houses, it is convoluted rent control laws
that have stymied restoration work. They hope to turn the houses
into boutique hotels but have been blocked by people claiming usage
rights to rooms and closets in the two houses.
Yet other laws have frustrated Cherif Abdel-Meguid, a hotel
developer who since 2007 has bought eight historic houses in the
hillside Darb al-Labbana neighbourhood near Cairo’s citadel.
When he applied for permission to restore them, authorities told him
four were under demolition orders. To restore them, he must shave a
metre or two off the facades to conform with a 1950s law designed to
widen streets, he said.
He has not done so. Instead, he has submitted plans to rebuild the
insides while preserving the facades, and is awaiting a response.
(Editing by Aidan Lewis and Timothy Heritage)
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