Children of Gebelawi

Mahfouz builds a single fictional alley, and the whole of scripture and history play out inside it: a founding ancestor in a great house at the desert edge, an endowment fought over by strongmen, and a line of reformers who each try to win the poor their share. The alley is drawn from the Gamaliya of his own childhood, the old Islamic quarter below the Muqattam hills, near the mosque of al-Husayn and the northern gate of Bab al-Futuh.

Gabalawi

The alley, Gamaliya

The alley

The whole book happens in one cramped alley: its coffee house, its handcarts, its poor crowded against the walls, and the strongmen who bully them. Mahfouz assembled it from the Gamaliya of his childhood, one of the oldest quarters of Islamic Cairo, and the alley's daily life is that district's life pushed into allegory.

Prologue

inspired by The alley of the novel is invented and never mapped to a named street; Mahfouz drew it from the Gamaliya quarter where he was born and raised, so this marks the heart of that district.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗