Akhdarat Is Collecting Memories of a Cairo Garden Under Threat

Cairo is not a city that has been gentle with its green spaces, and Al-Zohriya Garden in Zamalek is the latest to feel it. Construction has recently begun inside one of the capital's older botanical gardens, and what it looks like on the other side remains to be seen.Akhdarat, an Instagram-based platform that launches and amplifies community-led initiatives across Cairo through storytelling, has responded with 'Stories of Al-Zohriya', a project that invites people to come forward with personal memories of the garden before those memories become the most permanent thing left of it.
Participants are filmed on-site in individual short sessions on selected Saturdays — June 20th and June 27th — and their stories are added to a growing archive shared through Akhdarat's platform. The initiative seeks to capture everyday moments that tend to go unrecorded precisely because they feel permanent: habitual walks, childhood visits, conversations under old trees.Al-Zohriya itself has been around long enough to have accumulated plenty of those. Planted during the Khedival era when Gezira Island was being shaped into a network of experimental green spaces, it still carries the physical evidence of that past — aging trees, greenhouse structures, a stillness that feels increasingly rare in this city.

Participation is capped at 20 storytellers. Those interested can apply through the link in Akhdarat's Instagram bio.