Utopia in the Suburbs: Cosmopolitan Society, Class Privilege, and the Making of Maʿadi Garden City in Twentieth-century Cairo

Abstract

In the midst of the many uncertainties facing twenty-first century Egypt, memories of Cairo’s seemingly cosmopolitan past have become prominent signifiers of the liberal possibilities that might exist for the country’s future. While the city certainly became home to a diverse, multinational society during the first half of the twentieth century, that population did not necessarily embrace the universalism associated with a cosmopolitan society. By looking at the development of Maʿadi, a well-to-do garden city suburb of Cairo, this article examines the perimeters of cosmopolitanism in Egyptian society. As a fashionable residential community, Maʿadi became home to Egypt’s diverse bourgeoisie. Jewish railroad developers, English engineers, German doctors, and French archeologists all made homes for themselves in the suburb. While residents’ seemingly happy domestic lives in this carefully planned space might appear to exemplify a multinational ideal, this article asks what historical details contributed to the establishment of this particular form of cosmopolitanism in Cairo. What attracted these people to Egypt in the first place? What made their affluence possible? And how and why did those circumstances change over time? Maʿadi might appear cosmopolitan in retrospect, but it represented different social ideals to the people living there in the past. By better understanding the historical meaning of the place, and the other ways that its society has remembered it over time, Maʿadi represents more than cosmopolitanism and can more accurately and usefully inform conceptions of Egypt’s future. When Saffeyah Al-ʿArab sat down in the late-1980s to pen her memoir, she recalled a life in Egypt where beautiful homes sat among lush gardens, and regular interaction with nature was accessible and expected. In particular, she focused on the pleasant domestic life she and her husband Mustafa Moyine Al-ʿArab established south of Cairo in the garden city suburb of Maʿadi. In 1947, the couple purchased a turn-of-the-century English villa with a large garden on just over an acre of land. Saffeyah recollected, “The front of the old house was covered in wisteria and purple bougainvillea cascaded over the verandah which was supported by classical white columns. I loved it at first sight.” 1 More than 40 years after those