When the film industry finally fell to nationalization in the Sixties, studio representatives quietly cleared out their desks and returned to California. Money drained out of the country like water from a mirage. theaters were abandoned, becoming home to drug addicts and cats. Eventually the statue of Soliman Pasha, the French-born general, was trucked off and the street renamed, consumating what had already come to pass -- that Soliman Pasha, the very idea of Soliman Pasha, was finished.

It’s Thursday night and the boulevard is teeming with young Egyptians, women in dresses with colorful prints, their dates in button-down shirts, cell phones clipped to their belts. Overhead, giant handpainted caricatures of the actors stretch over the marquee. the bright tempera-colors lend the street a carnival air. pedestrians cascade around vendors in white tunics, blankets of leather belts and hair-brushes setting off whirlpools of movement, and the air resounds with the rough musicality of Arabic, words that explode then halt abruptly, suddenly snuffed out.