Cairo Magazine - Book nook

If the best companion is a good book, then the best shopping expedition is looking for good cheap books. And that quest leads the literary-minded and magazine junkies alike to one place: Sur Al Ezbekiya (Ezbekiya Fences). Sur Al Ezbekiya is nothing more or less than a line of kosks (corrugated metal kiosks) that house thousands of used books in a range of languages, including Arabic, English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish.

The name of the game at Ezbekiya is specialization. You’ll find different stalls for literature, Arab politics and government, philosophy, textbooks, language guides, magazines, comics and computer programming books. “Because our customers require books on specialized subjects coupled with the decline in general readers, we’ve become accustomed to specializing our collections,” one vendor explains.

A student will immediately be asked his or her major, followed by a thorough search for all the books they have on the topic. Most vendors have memorized not only their own collection, but also those of their neighbors. In order to ensure a collective profit, all sellers advise visiting their friends’ stalls, but specialization helps the buyer to avoid too many fruitless searches.

At the end of the first line of stalls are three vendors that boast an extensive collection of multi-lingual textbooks, novels and magazines. Compiled for a specific clientele, the first two vendors sell encyclopedic collections of Shakespeare, guides to Egypt and French literature. The third stall specializes in university textbooks for the sciences, focusing particularly on physics, engineering and mathematics.

Among other stacks of books piled and squeezed into the tiny stalls, you’ll find everything from outdated astrology books to contemporary Nobel authors such as Naguib Mahfouz, Toni Morrison and Franz Kafka. Literature—from medieval to modern—is probably the most extensive collection, but not the most expensive. Novels like Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim or Franz Kafka’s The Trial sell for LE8-12 a book.

For the less academically-minded, fashion and gossip magazines are located in the heart of Sur Al Ezbekiya. Dating from last month to years ago, issues of every conceivable fashion magazine are sold at LE5 a piece, but vendors are inclined to sell stacks of magazines together for lower prices. Apart from the obvious collections of Vogue or InStyle, bookkeepers are more than happy to find more obscure delights for you.

Some vendors target Egyptian thanawiya (secondary school) and university students. As such, they boast a huge collection of computer programming textbooks and disks. In addition, you’ll find plenty of language textbooks for both English and Arabic as a second language.

While one may, in the spirit of buying used books, focus on certain intrinsic and ineffable qualities of a book in determining its “worth,” vendors tend to focus on more mundane attributes: size, scarcity (remember they know who has it and who doesn’t), how many years since the book was published and who the publishers are. For example, American University Press publications are noticeably more expensive than other foreign publishers (LE35-50). Also, if the book is “big,” prices soar. Buying the Selected Works of D.H. Lawrence, an 800-page collection, is priced at about LE30. Nevertheless, the worse the quality of the books, the more you can negotiate on price. The most standard rule of thumb is to keep negotiating: the aforementioned D.H. Lawrence came down from LE45. And, as with most shopping in Cairo, the more frequent a visitor you are, the more discounts you receive from vendors.

Another reason to go to Ezbekiya often is its hours. Each individual koskh opens only four to five times a week, so it may take a few visits to check out all that is available.

If there’s any time to pay homage to Sur Al Ezbekiya, it is now. One vendor explains, “every year, after the book fair is closed, we buy many collections leftover and unwanted by the publishers.” Simultaneously, the owners are currently re-categorizing their collections and are thus more aware of the contents of their entire collection.