Anthony Sattin on Cairo

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2016

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

Cairo. The facts say one thing: the biggest city in Africa and the Middle East and now so chaotic and polluted that most visitors to Egypt prefer to avoid it. This same city also speaks to us of history and humanity – Moses and Jesus, Arab poets and Napoleon’s scholars who were here beside the Nile. It speaks of brilliance, beauty and power, of Europeans looking on in amazement at a Cairo that was the trading partner of Venice and of such importance that the Arabian Nights narrator called it the Mother of the World. More recently, through writers such as Nobel prizewinner Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa Al-Aswany, it has spoken of humour amid hardships, of both compassion and corruption. Having seen Cairo shift and grow over the past twenty-five years, former resident Anthony Sattin examined the streets, the stories and the history of Cairo in an attempt to reconcile the myths with the facts. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:36.7	Now they might say I'm Saudi and I'm Arab and I'm Muslim
0:40.0	You know they're trying to radically refashion their country and they need help from the best experts in the world
0:45.1	Do you want to have your country's people be disqualified from that because of some essentially antiquated point of view about how countries work together?
0:53.4	In recent months it can feel like Saudi Arabia is intent on buying the world.
0:57.8	It's bought up much of golf, sports teams, many of the globe's best soccer players to its own domestic league and it owns huge chunks of many of the biggest companies on the planet. But Saudi Arabia is not just on a shopping spree. The once insular oil- Rich Kingdom is transforming into a major diplomatic and military
1:16.0	player, a pivotal actor in the energy transition and looks set to host high-end cultural events
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	...

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