The bakers rent a back room to filthy, sadistic Zaita, who cripples people so they will be more sympathetic as street beggars. Kirsha (Umm Hussain) declares his actions sinful and seeks to reform him. His spoiled son Hussain cares only about dodging gossip and escaping, while fiery Mrs. Kirsha is addicted to hashish and occasionally obsessed by homosexuality. Hussainy lives next door with his wife and rents one flat to Kamil and Abbas and another to the Kirshas. Widowed Saniya Afify owns one, occupying the top floor and renting the others to matchmaker Umm Hamida and her beautiful foster daughter and to Booshy. Two three-story residences close off the alley. Booshy, kindly mystic Radwan Hussainy, and a somnambulant philosopher, Sheikh Darwish, gather nightly to smoke, drink tea, and talk. A bakery, Salim Alwan's warehouse, and Kirsha's Café complete the alley's businesses. Uncle Kamil usually naps outside his confectionary, next door to his best friend Abbas's barbershop. Midaq Alley is an isolated, dead end street in Cairo, Egypt. They include a dissolute café owner, his fiery wife, and their materialistic prodigal son a young man who, for the love of a beautiful girl, goes off to make his fortune while she falls first for a rich, elderly sexaholic and later for a pimp who turns her into a prostitute a kindhearted mystic two ghouls and assorted lesser characters. Midaq Alley is a novel about a street full of colorful Egyptians coping with life towards the end of World War II.
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