Property in Egypt, and other interesting legalities

Let's discuss property for a moment. I was under the impression that property ownership in the US was complicated and had many downsides. Now I think it is a positively simple thing!

At some point, either the 50s or 60s as my family tells it, rent controls were instituted. Anyone familiar with New York City will probably know about these, but for those who aren't, basically it keeps rents low by prohibiting raises above a certain amount, and allows existing tenants to retain their apartment if someone moves/dies. Here it has resulted in some ridiculously low rents--say 10LE/month or such (10LE is like $1.30). Families move in together so that when the older person who holds the apartment dies, their child is already living there and gets the same rent. This has led to all sorts of fun problems. For one, there is zero incentive to keep up the buildings, and even to keep them clean in many cases. This means a lot of property in Egypt is in poor condition. New apartments are either owned by the families or not rent controlled. This results in better buildings, as people then pay fees to keep up the building. Although even some of those are incredibly dirty and poorly kept. Oh, and one more thing--in the cities, basically everyone lives in apartments. Land is too expensive for houses.

Further, even though there are leases and rental agreements, it is nearly impossible to get someone out of an apartment. Unless they move of their own free will, you cannot evict or give notice. Eviction is a long process involving the courts, and if the renter pays the rent on the last day at the last minute, then the eviction does not go through. If you want someone to move out who pays their rent, you have to negotiate with them to do so, which will likely involve paying them to move. If you can't come to terms, then you are stuck with them.

The only other way to get them out seems to be to have the city condemn the building, but even that has its own set of pitfalls. First, you have to get the city interested, and pay something. Then, once they decide it is condemned, it is their job to move the person out--and they give them a ticket for a tent until they can be placed in some sort of housing. At least, this is what we are told is happening in Tanta (3rd largest Egyptian city where my father grew up). However, the renter can challenge this ruling--and if they do, the owner must be on site 24 hours a day for at least a week while several groups of people come through without warning to inspect. They then make a recommendation to the court. This, unlike most things in Egypt, apparently happens "fast" because it has a health and safety factor. If the court decides it is still condemned, then the person has to move. If they do not, then you are back to square one.

Sellers want buildings that are empty, or land, so they can build non-rent controlled apartments and actually make some money on them. Buildings with full apartments, which would be valuable in the US, are not valuable here as you pay more for the land and building than you can ever make back from the rents.

Why is all of this of interest to me? Well, the family (read my father and his 4 siblings) owns the building in Tanta, which has like 6 apartments, and a building in Alexandria, which were owned originally by their parents. My grandfather died when I was 7, and they've been trying to deal with all the property ever since. He also owned a lot of agricultural land, which has been sold. We are trying to get rid of the building in Tanta, which is actually a valuable piece of land because there is so little building space in Tanta. It has something like 6 apartments on it, some of which are empty. They have gotten to the point where everyone but one tenant will be out, but this one is being very stubborn, so we are currently working on the city condemnation process. Apparently my grandfather paid off the city to not condemn the building in the 50s! We have hopes that this will happen in the next few months. That still leaves us with a building in Alexandria, which is bigger and not in bad shape, and full...we have no solution for how to handle that one. I personally would really like to figure out how to get rid of that one too, because eventually it will be just my cousins and I dealing with it--that's 14 people, out of which 8 live in the US (6 of which have never lived in Egypt), and one is in a mental institution. But so far I can't see how that would happen without a major outlay of funds.

One other interesting legality. Power of Attorney documents are done and issued by a government office. They have them in various localities around the country. It is an interesting process where you have to be able to speak enough Arabic to show the people processing that you understand what you are doing. We got the nastiest lady ever, who refused to work with my Arabic, and was very nasty to my extremely charming uncle. Who was nasty right back and insulted her deeply so she shot him this glare--if looks could have killed, he would have been very dead! They then microfilm these documents, so if you want a copy, you have to go to the office where it was made. Lovely. It pays to think ahead in cases like this! Anyway, I got one, but it was possibly the most poorly organized system, which was illogical and not labeled, that I have ever noticed. Here's what you do:
--go into the office, and down a hall to a large room, where you go behind a bank of chairs and tell the guy what you want
--he then assigns you to one of the computer ladies, who call you (assuming you can hear over the din of people talking)
--these ladies ask you what the power of attorney is for, and name/address etc of the person for whom you are making it. We got a grouchy, nasty one. If they don't like you, they send you to the boss (who was nice as pie). These ladies are at a desk which is behind a row of chairs, so you have to squeeze in behind other people and the chairs. You wanted privacy? for what?
--Once you get past the lady, you go pay for the document. I can't remember how much, but not much. This office is back out the door and down the hall from where you came.
--you go back to the first office and show the receipt to a man at another desk, who then calls you when the documents are printed
--then it goes to the boss again for review
--at this point, you go to a separate office where they record that you want this for use at a bank, and sign lots of times (like 8) in a huge ledger book, and on the papers printed
--then you go back down the hall to the entrance, where there is a door to a tiny office with a lady sitting at a desk and a horde of people shouting around it. You pay this lady like 2LE and she takes the papers and gives it to someone to microfilm it
--now you are done, and you notice that this office has piles and stacks of papers shoved every which way in various rooms, not to mention many large ledgers, and you wonder how or if they find anything at all.

I would rearrange the office and the process, myself, but it seems to work for Egyptians. It was all very chaotic.

Medley of pictures

This first one is Bab al-Futuh, one of the three remaining gates in the ancient Fatimid walls of Cairo.

The Alexandria tram

My cousin Laila dancing in her apartment

Khouweider, an Arabic sweetshop which my father thought was the best in Cairo--it is excellent.

A street shot in Cairo

Floating on the Nile

A shot of the crowds in the office that does birth certificates

A broken down car in a prime parking spot next to the Nile, near my uncle's house.

My uncle on a felucca

Conny, me, Lina and Gihan. Conny and Gihan are my cousins' wives (Ahmed and Mahmoud respectively) and Lina is Ahmed's daughter. She's studying art at the American University in Cairo.

Gihan again--she loves to laugh

An old, square minaret

a quick glimpse at an archive room off of the office that does powers of attorney. I wish I could have gotten a shot of the bigger archive room--my colleagues in Archives would have swooned at the mess and terrible storage.

Love the stone work

A shot of the Mediterranean from my cousin Mahmoud's balcony in Alexandria.

Bab ezZuwayla

Pictures from Bab as-Zuwayla and Darb al-Ahmar. Bab az-Zuwayla is one of the three remaining gates in the old Fatimid walls, and has been restored so you can climb the (76) steps to the platform where the sultan used to watch parades from. Then you can climb another outrageous number of steps up the minaret. The views of Cairo...on a clear day, would be amazing. Darb al-Ahmar is a neighborhood and a street with a number of monuments on it. It was a very popular neighborhood during the Mamluk and Mohammed Ali Pasha times, as it is at the foot of the Citadel.

This is in a mosque which had the unusual feature of the main prayer area being walled off by mashrabiya screen. I loved the cat.

This mosque was actually one of the messiest I have seen--about 2/3 of it had stuff piled inside it and it wasn't as clean. However, it seems like more of a community gathering place as there were groups of people sitting and chatting in various places, mostly older.

This is the courtyard in the center of the mosque with the fountain which is in not such good repair.

These are the stairs inside the minaret on the Bab. The space was not quite 6' across diameter, and the stairs were narrow and tight and very high.

Sorry about the blur, but I was excited to see this sign! It was deep in the neighborhood, far from any of the political areas.

From the platform on the Bab, you could see this mosque which was outside the city walls, but was built by the Fatimids. The porch in front is a unique feature.

Mosque next to the Bab whose name I don't recall. The dome area is a burial site for someone, and the decorations in the main prayer area are very elegant.

View from the top of the mosque above

Alex

I came to Alex (Alexandria for the uninitiated) "awol embarrahh" or day before yesterday with my cousin Mahmoud and his wife, who is the most cheerful, bubbly person I know that is also deeply devout. They both love to laugh! You can tell from looking at them because their faces fall into lines of smiles.

TV in Egypt is at once deathly dull and slightly fascinating to me. So far, it is dominated by talk shows--and their version of a talk show involves showing the interviewer, while the interviewee is speaking on the phone in floods of Arabic. The interviewer sits and looks deeply concerned, occasionally interjecting questions or comments which are met by more floods of talking. This is nearly completely in classical Arabic, which of course, no one speaks (but everyone more or less understands, as all schooling is in classical Arabic). This is interspersed by movies and series where everyone is in a constant state of hysteria, whether happy, angry or sad. Then there are the comedians. There's one right now who is annoying the government named Basam Youssef. He is a heart surgeon who pokes fun at the government--the President, the Muslim Brotherhood, and anyone else--every Friday night (in the Egyptian dialect, using a lot of slang). Last week, President Obama came under fire as he was in Israel and met with President Morsi. My family finds him completely hilarious! Even I think he's rather funny, although I understand only a small amount of it. It's kind of like a Jon Stewart or something. It is interspersed with clips from the recent news, much of it the president, other ministers and journalists. This week, he is having a field day with Qatar, which has a lot of money and is trying to buy up everything. My uncle says there was even a proposal that Qatar rent the monuments of Egypt for some number of years and run them as a money-making enterprise, which they could probably do better. Although I'd be worried they would want to improve them out of existence!

Then there's the English language TV. I do not know where they get this stuff. Really. It is the worst, strangest, most annoying and violent TV. Bad movies which I think maybe must be ones which went straight to DVD in the US. Yesterday we watched this one called Shortcut to Happiness with Alec Baldwin--I have no idea what they were thinking making that movie.

Yesterday we went to the new Alexandria Library. It is a lovely oval shaped building. The library is full of light and books and sitting areas and was occupied by many people studying and reading and talking. Additionally, they have a lot of museum space. There's a manuscript museum with some really old books, both Arabic and European (one from 900 AD), an antiquities museum and some space devoted to contemporary Egyptian art. I am really enjoying seeing contemporary art in Egypt.

Islamic Cairo

This is an area I had not been. I mean, I had been to part of it, but unwittingly. I didn't know what I was looking at, and I had only seen a small part of it. I had heard, though... So this time, my travel agent cousin told me where it was. We met in Khan el Khalili on Saturday. She brought her niece and 2 nephews plus a friend along; I brought my uncle, and we proceeded to walk through about 1/3 of it. This section has been heavily restored; most of the buildings have been restored, and some are in use, others are museums/monuments you can go in and see. They even set up a system of one ticket for all of them! Very sensible. They also fixed the street and it is very nice...too nice, because now the cars are back. They should have kept it car free, or only cars during certain hours, because it is too narrow.

Anyway, it is beautiful. There are several sabil-kuttub (cisterns that provided water to the public with schools above them for the poor), mosques, mausoleums, and other buildings. I enjoyed looking at them, and the different styles. It is amazing to step into a space that has been used continuously for more than 1000 years as a place of worship.

I am convinced that the US media is hysterical about the Arab world and Egypt in particular. Someone just asked me if the police are on strike. It seems that some of them are--it is by rank. There are less police in evidence than there used to be, which has resulted in increased crime and chaos. Egyptians are very uncomfortable with the rise in crime, as Egypt has been very safe generally. Even now, it is much safer than many places, but there is a rise in crime. Chaos--seems like traffic is worse, and less organized than before. However, I have not felt threatened once. It is certainly no worse than most American cities.

Late Nights

Last Thursday I went to my aunt's house to watch how couscous is made from scratch. It is quite easy, really, but takes some time and probably some making to know it is right. My aunt cooks without recipes and with very basic tools. She thought it was rather amusing that I wanted to know, and I was writing it all down and taking pictures to boot!

Then my uncle and I went to dinner at 9 pm at a Lebanese place. It was delicious, but not what we planned--we were supposed to go to a Moroccan place which is no longer there. Malish (that's what Egyptians say when there is nothing to be done). It was on a boat on the Nile and outside--just the right temperature and amount of breeziness...

After, my cousin Mahmoud (nickname: Hanif) called to say we should come to visit, as he and his wife Gihan had just arrived. We were just enjoying the restaurant and chatting. So, off we went to visit, arriving there at midnight (pretty much on the dot!). My cousin Ahmed, who lives in Texas, opened the door! So we had a lovely visit and got home about 1:45 AM. Completely normal!

Friday we ate dinner all together at my aunt's house, after watching the couscous finish. It was delicious! We ate dinner there Saturday. Friday was couscous with meat or sugar, soup, salad. Saturday we ate rabbit and rice and vegetable soup. The rabbit was roasted.