Cairo According to: Rosaline Elbay

Before becoming an actress known for her roles in ‘Ramy’ (2022), ‘Kaleidoscope’ (2023), and ‘Qabeel’ (2019), Rosaline Elbay studied to become an archaeologist at Oxford. When we last interviewed her in April, we learned that that fascination with the ancient has never quite left her. Instead, it's transformed into a kind of personal conviction that the stories that matter most are not always the ones history has remembered to tell. Sometimes, you have to go digging for them.

Here, the archaeologist-turned-actress tells us about her unofficial all-day office, her parents’ wedding, and her personal mission to revive interest in Pharaonic Village.

What’s a place that means Cairo to you?

That’s a really hard question, there are so many. I have a lot of memories of being on various boats on the Nile. My parents held their wedding on a boat and they loved taking them with friends: floating restaurants, dahabiyas, feluccas. It’s still one of my favourite things to do.

I remember being on a floating restaurant with my family when I was around five or six and this incredible شرقي (belly) dancer in head-to-toe gold plucked me up from our table to dance. I was completely mesmerised by her, but then so shy I spent the rest of the trip pressed against the window because I didn’t know what to say to someone so glamorous. There were, and continue to be, lots of little experiences like that; totally encapsulated in boat trips.

Complete the following: Cairo is special because…

It’s a real 24-hour city. If you can’t get a sit-down dinner or a freshly squeezed عصير قصب at 3 in the morning, you’re not in one.

What’s your favourite neighbourhood?

I grew up mostly in Zamalek, so I think that’ll always be where I feel most at home. But my father’s office was in Downtown Cairo, and I moved into a flat Downtown for a couple of years in my mid-twenties and really loved it.

All of my favourite neighbourhoods are walkable and old, basically.

Your go-to food spot?

A lot of my answers are going to be nostalgic because at the moment I’m only in Cairo for a small part of the year. When I’m back I love going to eat Downtown at an old haunt — Grillon, Estoril, Felfela. There’s so much great food everywhere in Cairo, and that’s not what I’m eating every day, but those are the places I’m getting my friends to meet me at because I miss them.

Your go-to café?

30 North at Iconia in Zamalek has been my all-day office more times than I can count. So has Cafe Riche.

Your go-to date spot?

A museum, or a walk around khayameya and Old Cairo, but that’s just because of who I am as a person. Then a meal at Almeria or Naguib Mahfouz, and drinks at Carol or Mazeej.

What isn’t a Cairo landmark but should be?

This is already a landmark but I feel like it’s being slept on recently — the Pharaonic Village, founded by Dr. Hassan Ragab.

I’m on a small personal campaign to revive interest in that place. I haven’t been in so many years, but I was obsessed with it as a kid (the boat tour!) and I feel like it hasn’t been getting as much love. It’s a remarkable thing to exist and every Egyptian kid should get to experience it.

Tell us a song that feels like Cairo.

I absolutely love driving around Cairo with my mum, and in her car it’s her playlist. Anything by Abdel Halim Hafez or Om Kolthoum will remind me of some specific moment or moments in that car; where we were and where we were going or coming from.

What's a place in Cairo you wish you could revisit for the first time?

Darb 1718, the way it was years ago. I really vividly remember the first time I walked through the workshops, doors open to artists tinkering away in their studios; past the lawn where a projector was being set up for a screening; up through several floors of an exhibition that sprawled across the gallery; onto the roof that overlooked Fustat.

It felt so hopeful, a place where you could try anything, and in some of the oldest parts of the city. Such a privilege to have ever experienced places like that.