Photos: Tora neighborhood in Cairo
The square in Cairo’s Tora neighborhood comes alive in the late afternoon, after the heat of the summer day has dissipated. Most residents live in the same homes their parents grew up in. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Tora’s buildings are set close together, creating tiny alleys that wind through the neighborhood in Cairo. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Ibrahim Ahmed Hassan, 20, hangs out with a friend at the pool hall in Cairo’s Tora neighborhood. Hassan is a business student at a local university and hopes to one day leave Tora. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Ahmed Morsy runs a laundry shop in the Tora neighborhood. Morsy’s grandfather was the neighborhood tailor before Ahmed took over the shop. Business has slowed down, and Ahmed is struggling to provide for his wife and two children. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Gamal Sayed Ibrahim in his shop, where he sells odds and ends and makes copies in the Tora neighborhood. The neighborhood is virtually next to the Nile, but the river isn’t visible between buildings. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Saber Saad sounds the Muslim call to prayer at the small mosque in the Tora neighborhood. Saad retired from his work at a gun factory in January; he had also been a wedding singer. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Now that he’s retired, Saber Saad spends most of his time with his homing pigeons, which he keeps in his rooftop aviary in Tora. He has been training pigeons for 25 years. Ive loved pigeons since I was a boy, he says. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Saber Saad keeps his homing pigeons in a big wooden rooftop pen built on stilts. Like most people in the neighborhood, Saad’s family has been living in the same house for generations. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)
Gamal Sayed Ibrahim’s shop, with a scrim to screen out the sun, is visible from a home in the Tora neighborhood. (Holly Pickett / For The Times)