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Elijah Zarwan is a Cairo-based writer and analyst. He has worked as a senior policy fellow covering North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, as a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, as Egypt researcher for Human Rights Watch, and as a consultant to the Eurasia Group, Harvard Law School, and the Carter Center, among others. He previously worked as the senior Arab world correspondent for Deutsche Presse–Agentur, as managing editor of Cairo magazine, as an editor at World Press Review, and elsewhere. His recent journalism has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, and the Los Angeles Times. He studied history at McGill University, and speaks Arabic and French.
The main streets of Manshiyat Abdel Moneim Riad, a choked grid of hastily constructed apartment blocks spreading out from a power station at Cairo’s northern edge, are organized according to a simple principle: shops and cafes on the edge, mounds of waste, animals, and rough teenagers from the narrow tributary streets in the middle. Rickshaws and trucks battle for position and skirt potholes in between. Men in search of a bit of air brush away flies at sidewalk cafes and survey the scene with contempt.
