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By Dina Basiony

Dismal, depressed, empty and stagnant — this is how the owners of small businesses and coffee shops on Falaki Street downtown are describing their area since the American University in Cairo (AUC) moved its campus to New Cairo in September. With a growing student body of some 5,000 and at least 1,500 faculty members, AUC was looking to break free of its cramped quarters in downtown Cairo and move somewhere it could easily expand its facilities and offer a better education.

Since 1919, when the private university was founded, AUC has been a landmark of Bab El-Louq and its colorful commercial bustle. AUC students and faculty members crowded the baladi coffee shops between classes; local copy centers provided students with stationary and copies of assigned reading material. Business continued to boom even into the night, when students worked late, fuelling the profits of fruit stands, kiosks and even barber shops. Students’ and professors’ double-parked cars provided an income for downtown parking attendants, while local women made money selling tissues, gum and other miscellaneous items to students.

But since AUC moved to its isolated campus in New Cairo, some one-and-a-half to two hours by shuttle from the university’s old dorms in Zamalek, business has virtually come to a standstill and, local business owners lament, it doesn’t look like it will pick up any time soon. Some are considering closing up shop altogether, while others are looking at a risky, but necessary, move to the new campus to keep their businesses going. Either way, nearly a century of profits made from the university’s downtown campus and its wealthy student body appears to be over.

“Since last September, my store has lost 25% of its profits,” says Sherif El-Hosainy, owner of the Isis supermarket near the Greek Campus. “I expected it to be a 10 or 15% loss, maximum, but this exceeded my expectations. Controlling this loss is beyond my ability.”

Opened in the 1960s, the Isis supermarket, not to be confused with the chain of organic stores of the same name, was a refuge for AUC students in search of food, drinks and sweets cheaper than at the university’s cafeterias. El-Hosainy kept his market open 24/7 to serve the AUC community, which he said began giving him more business in the 1990s.

“More than half my customers were AUC faculty and staff who would buy their groceries from me before they headed home,” El-Hosainy says, adding that foreign students would also come to buy bottled mineral water because he was known for not overcharging them. But, he says, “with AUC gone, this source of income is also gone.”

Abd El-Rasool, 27, said that the inventory of his stationary store, Falaki Star Stationary, was also based primarily on the needs of AUC students. “The note cards, whiteboard markers and big blank charts used by engineering students for their projects are all products that only AUC students buy from me,” he says. “Now, no one in the area buys these things.”

El-Rasool says AUC sales made up 60% of his business and that on a normal day some 150 AUC students would come in to the store. Now, less than 50 people come in each day and do not buy consistently and in bulk like the AUC students.

“We’re all sad. This area has become very poor and dull,” he says. “When they moved AUC away, they moved the core of the area.”

Abd El-Raouf El-Kady, owner of El-Kady stationary and copy center in front of the old AUC library, also says he is planning on changing the make-up of his products to cater more to downtown residents.

Directly across from AUC’s Mohamed Mahmoud Street gate is Hamada Coffee Shop, best known for its cheap (LE 1.50) shisha and its oriental atmosphere. Unlike the modern coffee shops in downtown Cairo, like Cilantro, Beano’s and Costa Coffee, Hamada offers traditional drinks like tea and Turkish coffee for no more than LE 5.

“My work depended nearly 60% on the AUC community,” says the owner of Hamada, Amr Mohamed, adding that he particularly enjoyed the coffee shop’s blend of international and local customers. Foreigners would come in to practice their ammiyya (colloquial Arabic) with him and the local clients, he says.

“In the morning, American students would come in and say, ‘salam alaykum, shisha toffah wa ahwa mazboot [greetings, apple shisha and coffee with sugar].’ My coffee shop has been empty and boring since the AUC students left.”

Mohamed’s business is now suffering, but he says he currently has no plans to close down or change professions. “[As a Muslim], I believe that profit is God-given and there is nothing that we can do to change this,” he says.

Local parking attendants are also at a loss about what to do. Sixty-five-year-old Abdo Sayed has been parking AUC students’ and professors’ cars every day from 7am until midnight for 35 years. Sayed says he used to park more than 100 cars per day for AUC students at LE 5 each. Now, he parks no more than 20 cars per day for LE 3 each for residents of the area. The streets are empty, he says.

“Ninety-five percent of my business was dependent on [the AUC community]. All my life, I have been living and supporting my wife and two kids on the money I get from [them],” he says. “Now, I hardly recognize my life. When AUC moved, many households were destroyed.”

Amna Soliman doesn’t even have her own household to worry about, but her livelihood has been crushed since the move. Sleeping outside on the pavement of Youssef El-Guindy Street, with no family members in Cairo, Soliman sold gum and tissues to the students to make a living.

“Every morning students pass by me, say good morning and put a few pounds in my hand,” she says. “[Now], I’m hungry and tired. I don’t know how to live. I wake up every morning not knowing how I will find the money to eat.”

A number of the local businesses and those who relied on the downtown campus attempted to arrange a move to New Cairo with the university, whether to the campus or the surrounding area. But shop owners say it has been virtually impossible.

The new campus’ location, isolated from much of Cairo’s urban sprawl, maintains little to no commercial activity on its outskirts. Much of the campus is surrounded by desert, making it very difficult for the downtown businesses to easily move in and set up shop.

In an attempt to salvage his business, El-Hosainy looked for a space to rent in New Cairo near the university’s campus. But, he says, “The prices of everything in the area are beyond my [financial] capabilities. There is nothing I can do about it.”

AUC’s Student Union President Mohamed Ali says some of the downtown business owners contacted him regarding opening stores on the campus grounds. After speaking with university administration officials, Ali said allowing them to rent space is impossible — only the bigger franchises included in the university’s corporate contract are allowed to open on campus. Right now, Cilantro, Cinnabon, Jared’s Bagels and Quick supermarket have opened stores and, Ali says, the university has just opened a food court with 17 outlets, including Café Tabasco, McDonald’s and El-Omda.

Banned from doing any formal business on campus, Abd El-Rasool drove his car full of stationary to sell goods at the campus entrance.

“I took my car and went to the new campus on the first days of school. I brought notebooks, pens, papers and the products that students usually buy in the first few days,” he says. “I stayed in front of the entrance gate for hours thinking that maybe students would buy from me before going in. But no one bought anything from me.”

El-Rasool is discussing with Ali the possibility of opening a small stationary booth under the supervision of the Student Union, in an attempt to circumvent the university’s corporate arrangements. There are already three copy centers on campus now, so if this fails, El-Rasool says, he will have to close entirely and start a new business.

Nor is there an urgent need for parking attendants, as the campus no longer sits amid narrow downtown streets and is equipped with a good-sized parking lot. Sayed, along with two other parking attendants Hamdy Awad and Khaled Farook, also went to the new campus to see if they could continue their business.

“We stayed for hours in the hot sun at the new campus. Hardly any students asked for our help because they can easily park their own cars,” he says, adding that on the best day he made a simple profit of LE 35. Spending LE 10 on transportation and LE 10 on food and drink during the day, he says the marginal profit of LE 15 just isn’t worth it.

The downtown entrepreneurs aren’t the only ones upset by the new situation. Many AUC students have been vocal about their unhappiness with the lack of cheaper, more authentic options at the somewhat secluded campus.

“It’s ridiculous that I have to spend at least LE 30 at an expensive coffee shop if I want to eat or drink,” says May Kamal, a junior at AUC. “I want to be able to buy the regular food I could get from the downtown supermarkets for no more than LE 5.”

Hossam Abd El-Megeed agrees, adding that: “We’re in the middle of the desert. There are no stores around the campus, and buying from the restaurants inside the campus is such a waste of money every day.”

Ali says the Student Union is working on finding means to provide more reasonable alternatives for the students, but nothing has been decided yet. Either way, it seems unlikely that entrepreneurs like El-Rasool, El-Hosainy and Sayed will be a part of the solution.

If anything, it’s not just money they’re losing, says Mohamed, owner of the Hamada Coffee Shop, but a vibrant cultural and socio-economic exchange built up over the last 89 years. Mohamed says he was friends with all of the students and knew what they were studying. “We had a connection,” Mohamed says, “where the wealthier AUC students were friends with the people of the neighborhood.”

El-Hosainy agrees. “Generations after generations of AUCians would deal with me everyday. Even if they didn’t buy anything, they would just come in to say good morning,” he says. “Now, I really miss that.”  bt