The Mother of the World as seen through the lens of French photographer Jean Pierre Ribière and the pen of Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim. The result is a rich and highly original portrait of a city. Ribière"s seventy powerful photographs capture fugitive moments in urban life and architecture, in which historic grandeur meets modernity in a race with time. Meanwhile, Sonallah Ibrahim"s incisive exploration of Cairo"s past and his own past reveals a man living on the edge of a city living on the edge of itself.