Cairo Tower At Night

There is a story about the Cairo Tower on Gezirah Island (another one of those repetitiously named places like the Sahara Desert since Gezirah means "island"). The story is that the Americans paid Gamal Abdel Nasser a chunk of money to influence him in some way and he used it to build the tower as an expression of independence from American influence. Like many stories in Egypt, it could just be a story. The outside of the tower is a concrete filigree and an elevator takes visitors to the top from which vantage point there is an extraordinary view of the city spread below. Recently the shaft of the tower was surrounded in scaffolding for some time and I was fairly curious why. I had to go into the city the other night and as we drove by the tower I saw that it had been "improved" with lights that gradually change colour around the shaft of the tower. It is fairly dramatic.