CAIRO, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- At the Diana market in downtown Cairo, the Egyptian capital, sellers display an assortment of vintage items every Saturday for locals and inbound tourists who flock to the place looking for treasures from the old days.
Mostafa al-Jazzar, 55, has been doing business in the market for three years. He told Xinhua that Diana market, named after an old nearby cinema, has become "a paradise for antique lovers and artists," while showing 120-year-old copper jugs and statues that used to be accessories in royal palaces.
Al-Jazzar has a diverse collection, ranging from money-saving boxes priced at 150 Egyptian pounds (4.9 U.S. dollars) to statues priced up to 10,000 pounds.
He buys his pieces from original owners, antique collecting groups, or hawkers roaming the Egyptian streets.
"Heritage is everywhere," said Sobhy Krazy, a Syrian who runs a restaurant in Egypt, referring to his impression of the market.
Krazy spent four hours wandering the bustling market and bought a small Iranian carpet, three black rotary dial phones, and some serving trays to grant his newly-opened eatery an authentic glamour.
"One visit is not enough to tour the whole market," Krazy said, noting that he bought an old radio and camera at his previous stops.
There are 13 such markets selling age-old items in Cairo, including second-hand clothes, furniture, accessories, and antiques, mainly scattered in dynamic old streets around the center of Cairo, according to Gamal Moghazy, an expert in Egyptian heritage.
These markets cause traffic congestion and defame the image of Cairo's old streets that should be preserved as heritage, the expert said, adding that many vendors are doing business without licenses.
Moghazy noted that street vendors have been a major concern in Egypt for long years. The parliament in April decided to draft a law to unify licensing authorities and merge the unregulated business into the formal economic sector under state supervision.
Abdel Rahman Mahfouz, a 62-year-old who started his business in the Diana market in 2017, said that "sellers here choose only Saturday, a weekend day in Egypt, to avoid obstructing roads and troubling security forces."
The elder stressed that despite new overwhelming technologies nowadays, people still long for the beauty of age-old items, noting that the number of his clients is on the rise. ■