Bridges old and new adorn the city of Cairo, crossing the Nile river and serving to connect the city’s constantly expanding and newly emerging districts. While they are indispensable for enabling movement between certain neighborhoods as well as for dispersing the city’s heavy traffic load, they also carry broader historical and cultural significance. Looking into some of the stories behind their construction and taking a glimpse at the various key stakeholders involved, reveals much about modern Egyptian history and politics. The very recent inauguration of the Rod El-Farag Bridge by President Abdel-Fattah El Sisi on 15 May once again drew nation-wide – even worldwide – attention to the huge construction work currently underway in and around Cairo; the bridge was notably entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s widest suspension bridge to date. The Rod El-Farag Bridge, which has come to be named the Tahya Masr Bridge (‘Long Live Egypt Bridge’), is one of the latest ambitious infrastructural projects to have been inaugurated by the Egyptian leadership. The six-lane, 540-meter long and 67.36-meter-wide suspension bridge was completed in a mere 32 months, requiring a total of…
