There are more workers than there are customers. In ordinary circumstances, that would not be the case at 10 pm on a Friday in a well-stocked grocery store on a main road in Dokki. Although the two-and-a-half month old curfew has gradually been eased, and is due to be lifted fully on November 14, on Fridays it still begins at 7 pm.
This shop is one of several small businesses across the capital that have opted to stay open; its 24 opening hours were not interrupted even by the first day of the curfew.
Mohamed Amin says they did not consider closing. “Business is low, but what can we do, we have to eat.”
Only people who live within close walking distance come during curfew hours, he says. “The phone doesn’t ring. People know we won’t deliver, so they don’t call, for example people living in Tahrir Street,” he says, gesturing to a street very nearby. During curfew hours, he estimates custom is down to about a quarter of what it usually is.
Egypt is known to be a night society. Cairo rivals New York as the city that doesn’t sleep, meaning also that a significant amount of economic activity occurs in the evening. That was before curfew, or course — or more specifically before the curfew imposed by the military on August 14 of this year, for curfews imposed since the beginning of the January 25 revolution have not been adhered to in the same way as the ongoing curfew has been. Jokes about how Egyptians went down to the streets as curfew began, shared on social media during previous curfews, were a world away.
Given the different political context surrounding the imposition of the curfew — it was announced as sit-ins calling for the reinstatement of former President Mohamed Morsi were violently dispersed on August 14 — in general, Egyptians have been far more observant of the curfew, now in its third month, than others imposed in the past two years. Initially, beginning every day at 7 pm, the curfew has been eased a number of times, so that in most of the country, curfew now lasts only four hours from 1 to 5 am. The curfew begins at 7 pm on Fridays, and in border cities in North Sinai curfew begins at 4 pm every day.
Although curfew is now imposed for just four hours, it continues to be an economic strain. As Alaa Ezz, Secretary General of the Federation of Chambers, explains, “workers often have to leave two hours before curfew to get home, so that can mean closing three hours early. So you’re killing a lot of the day, given that much of the working day in Egypt happens in the evening.”
With the shortened curfew, Ezz says that most factories are back to their usual working hours. Continual industries such as iron, steel and glass, however, must work on a three-shift system. If the furnaces are turned off, it takes three days to get them working again. The solution that factories have found, Ezz explains, is to provide camping accommodation for their workers, who then go home every other day.
Whether workers have a choice in the matter is unclear. Similarly, waiters and kitchen staff in those restaurants that stay open during curfew hours, also spend the night. Given the state of the economy and the consequent fears of lay-offs, it would be plausible to imagine that many workers are essentially obliged not to go home.
Ahmed Hatata, head of the Street Vendors’ Association, who is himself a vendor at Ramses railway station, says that because of curfew passengers are always in a rush to get on the trains to be able to make it home on time that they have no time to stop and look at merchandise.
“Some days we wouldn’t even come because it wasn’t worth it,” he says. “We can’t afford these losses, we have families to feed and rent to pay.”
In addition to the Street Vendors’ Association, the Street Vendors’ Union established in 2011 represents a group that before the revolution had almost no representation. Mohamed Ahmed, head of the union in Alexandria, explains that the union had organized for vendors to have set places in which they pay rent in the new train station. “The idea was that vendors would have regularity and security.”
The contracts were signed at the end of June this year and a month’s deposit was paid in advance. But in the first month of curfew, there was very little movement of passengers, and so no business, Ahmed explains. The union has put in a request to exempt the vendors from paying rent for the month of August.
The main sector directly affected by curfew is the transport sector as ordinarily, most movement of goods happens at night when the roads are emptier.
In 2011, the Federation of Chambers managed a scheme to grant permits to transport companies and businesses so that they could work during curfew. “But it was much easier then. 2011 was a revolution, and you didn’t have terrorism,” Ezz says.
Then, each application required his signature and a seal. Now, it is “a much more complex logistical operation.” The final signature is from the military police. This adds an extra day. “This is not too bad,” he says, “given that every day we are submitting 60-70 000 applications.”
There are problems with around 2-3 percent of the applications, Ezz estimates, most often because someone’s name matches that of someone else who is a security concern. He says he has not asked what the criteria are.
Permits are not granted to individual owners, and so many drivers now rent trucks from companies rather than individual owners. This means an increase in the prices of fruit and vegetable, Ezz explains.
Atta Ahmed al-Seif, who sells fruit to small retailers and vendors at Obour wholesale market also says that the higher cost to hire transport vehicles translates into price rises of fruit and vegetable.
Located in the outskirts of northern Cairo, Obour market is frequented by small fruit and vegetable retailers from all over the capital and adjacent governorates. Before the imposition of the curfew, it was buzzing with life throughout the day and night, but now slowly comes to life with the first light as curfew hours come to an end.
Ahmed, a young man, makes tea for drivers as they rest before hitting the road again. He says that business has been slow since the curfew, as not as many trucks can make it to the market especially those coming from far away governorates.
Ahmed Sader, a young driver of a small truck who has been involved in this business with his family for 15 years says, “The curfew is not an issue — all drivers have to do is adjust the timing of their work.”
Most drivers say that they do not face problems at checkpoints, and that they are usually allowed through. It happens sometimes, however, that they are not. Sayyed Mohamed Ahmed, a driver in his 40s from Qalyubiya estimates that they are sent back about 20 percent of the time.
Few complain, but Khaled, a driver in his 40s from Mutturia, says that stopping at the checkpoints is time-consuming. He carries an assortment of oranges and dates. “Getting searched doesn’t take long, maybe 15 minutes, but it’s not just me. Say there are three in front of me, then I will be at that one checkpoint for an hour.”
Indeed, some of the buyers say that because of the long journey times, more of the produce goes off.
Abdel Raouf, who sells nectarines to vendors, says that where he used to throw away 10 out of every 100 nectarines, now he has to discard about double that, 20 out of every 100. Another shop owner chips in, “We used to sell everything all through the night, now one third of the fruits is left and goes off.”
A shop owner standing in front of empty and broken wooden pallets that he says used to be covered in all kinds of fruit, explains, “The market is very stale, we don’t sell half as much as we used to before the curfew.”
At Obour market, it is not all criticism of the curfew, however.
Hagg Gamal Ahmed Mohammad whom others describe as the mayor of the market sits with a group of men, observing and smoking shisha, under a poster of Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He praises the curfew for increasing safety, “Before, bandits used to attack truck drivers especially on the Ring Road, but now it’s much safer.”
“I hope the curfew continues for good,” he adds.
Like other drivers, Sader is also grateful for the curfew. “I feel a lot safer,” he says.
Even Khaled, who is more critical of the curfew, concedes that he feels safer.
“Before the curfew, I would be anxious driving on the Ring Road,” he says. “There are bandits and armed attacks. But we have to eat, there’s no choice except to drive on those roads.”
Khaled said that he now feels safer driving on the Ring Road than at any other time since the 18 day uprising that overthrew former President Hosni Mubarak.
Ezz, of the Federation of Chambers, also says that the “curfew has meant a decrease in criminal activity, but not terrorist activity. Someone can transport weapons or detonate bombs during the day.”
These observations remain anecdotal but telling — criminal activity falls under the remit of the police not the military or security forces.
The impact of curfew in a certain sense has been myriad; the owner of a taxi or microbus who is paying for his vehicle in installments, for example, takes a hit, or the households who can barely cover basic expenses and are extremely sensitive to any increase in price.
But, as Samer Atallah, assistant professor in the department of economics at the American University in Cairo, explains, it is very difficult to quantify the impact of curfew.
“Many small businesses have been affected,” he says. “The impact is impossible to quantify, but substantial.”
“The issue is a broader context not the curfew,” Ahmed, head of the Vendors Union in Alexandria argues.
Atallah agrees. “Once curfew is fully lifted,” he says, “if security stays as it is, the economy will not return. Curfew is one aspect of a larger picture.”
That larger picture of course relates to political crisis and a failing economy. Atallah describes it as a vicious cycle of political and economic instability feeding into each other.
On the micro level, in this sort of context, consumption patterns change.
Ezz explains that an intensified political crisis is accompanied by decreases in spending. People stock up on food and consumables but avoid unnecessary spending.
“People are not going to buy a fridge, say” Atallah explains, “if for example there are a lot of layoffs and jobs are insecure. People refrain from unnecessary consumption.”
Consumption is generally highest on Fridays — the one day of the week on which curfew continues to begin at 7 pm since August 14.
“I wish we could isolate Fridays and see what the effect on the economy has been. Children are off school, it is a major shopping day. Fridays generally are a day of significant economic activity and consumption.”
There has been little public criticism of the curfew. How people feel about it is perhaps determined not only by the extent to which people’s lives are affected, but how they feel about the political context.
As Mishmish Samer, who sells fruit to small retailers and vendors at Obour market says, “better a curfew than Morsi.”
But for Omar Fawzy, a taxi driver who takes the risk of working during curfew hours, “the fact we can’t work, that prices are going up, it’s hard — it’s always the people who suffer.”
