Thursday March 28th, 2024
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5 Things New York City and Cairo Have in Common

Our resident New Yorker Joe Nadi has found himself feeling strangely at home in Cairo...

Staff Writer

New York. Cairo. Both those cities should ring a bell to 99.9% of people on the planet. If not well I don’t really know what to tell you. Read a book or something.

Anyway I grew up in the “Jungle” aka “The Big Apple” aka “The City That Never Sleeps” the infamous New York City. I’m not going to delve into how I ended up in Cairo from New York as that is irrelevant but what I can delve into are the surprising (or not so surprising) similarities I’ve noticed between these two amazing cities.

TRAFFIC

Well this is pretty self-explanatory and expected from any big city in the world but traffic is a definite similarity between these two cities. But I must say traffic in Cairo is ten-fold if not more times worse. Being as (and I mean no disrespect to the great citizens of Cairo) there is absolutely no law at all when driving. Well there is but everyone just chooses not to follow it.

NOISE

Even though I grew up in NYC my whole life, noise was always present; you kind of end up just building an immunity to it over time. We all know there’s A LOT of noise in Cairo as well, whether it’s the constant abuse of car horns for absolutely no reason or because they are having a song and dance for newlyweds in the middle of the night, I think both citizens of each city can agree it kind of just becomes a part of you. 

BEGGARS 

Homeless people are located everywhere, but mainly in big cities. NYC has its fair share of them and Cairo definitely does as well. But in my personal opinion, the beggars from Cairo are much more persistent when it comes to asking you for money; they have every right to be because, well, they need to live. The beggars of New York on the other hand will just sit and wait for people to put money in one of their. Plus they will sometimes have comical signs like “Why lie I need this money for drugs” or anything along those lines. Hey, at least they’re honest. 

POLLUTION

Let me just start of by saying pollution is terrible, it greatly affects our world so if you can recycle or just do anything to prevent it don’t hesitate. With that said pollution in New York is definitely present everywhere you go. With the pavement covered in dried up black pieces of gum that people disrespectfully just spit out I’m sure you citizens of Cairo can relate and agree that it is disgusting. This is just one of the MANY pollution examples I used but you get the picture.

MUSIC

Hip-Hop was arguably born in New York. With legends like Notorious B.I.G, Jay-Z, 50 Cent and more hailing from the Big Apple, you can say Hip-Hop has taken the word by storm and is definitely international. Shaabi music has the same exact story, with it being born on the streets of Cairo by the younglings who decided to add some funk to Egypt’s music scene. It has now became a huge musical sensation being played on the feluccas, the radios, the koshks we go to everyday for our bafras and Red Bulls, not to mention it has made its way overseas so it’s on an international level as well.