Al Khyiamia (Tent Makers Bazaar)

This guide to Al Khyiamia, Cairo's Street of the Tentmakers, follows artisan Gamal el-Zahabi, still stitching in the same shop he started at age twelve, in a market built beside the Fatimid gate of Bab Zuweila in the 1600s. It traces the craft of hand-stitched appliqué back to workshops that once sewed the Kiswah, the cloth draped over the Kaaba in Mecca, and follows the trade's decline after cheap machine-printed hangings arrived and a 1992 earthquake cracked the buildings above the lane. Listen for the sound of the needle against heavy cotton as you pass under the latticed windows lining both sides.