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Abe

@abe_ram_

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Researching the world, reshaping a little of it.
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⭕️ I posted this picture a few months ago, but I never told the story behind it.

I was showing a friend from Brazil around Islamic Cairo when we reached Sultan Hassan Mosque.

Outside, a group of kids who had just finished their exams were trying to get inside, but they were being turned away by the authorities because they might “disturb the tourists.”

I couldn’t bear the thought of these kids being kept from experiencing their own history, so I spoke to the guard and asked him to let them in with us. I told him I’d take responsibility for them.

After a few minutes, he agreed, and they came in with us.

As soon as they came in, they were already staring at my friend.

“How can a man wear an earring?”

“Is he not a man?”

So I told the boy asking, “It’s normal in some cultures. People are different, and that’s okay. We don’t have to be the same to respect each other.”

Then they started talking.

He told them about Brazil. They told him about Egypt.

They talked about football, school, their families, their dreams.

By the end, the same kids who had been staring at him and laughing were taking pictures with him and asking when they could see him again.

On the way out, I kept thinking:

What if they had remained outside?

What would “the foreigner” have meant to them then?

Would he have remained an abstract stranger? Would the assumptions have stayed?

Sometimes we even build institutions and rules around keeping groups apart, only to give our imagination room to invent the other.

Maybe that’s why opening the door matters.

Not to pretend our differences aren’t real, or that the problems between us don’t exist.

But to give people the chance to meet, understand those differences, and learn how to live with them. taken in Cairo, Egypt by @abe_ram_

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a month ago

🏜️ Project: AYNARA — Wadi El Rayan, Fayoum, Egypt
Typology: Vernacular Desert Eco-Lodge
Scope: Masterplanning, Architectural Design, Environmental Systems Design
Status: Under Construction

The project follows all the principles of vernacular design, specifically of revivalists like Hassan Fathy, following his philosophy not as a revival of local form, but as a continuation of its underlying logic, that architecture is a cultural and environmental system capable of shaping ways of living.

The design operates through a modular field of square-based units organized around a hierarchy of courtyards. Spatial sequences move between compression and release, light and shadow, exposure and refuge, reconstructing patterns of traditional dwelling while accommodating contemporary expectations of comfort and privacy. Thick inhabitable walls, articulated as layered masses, integrate niches, seating, storage, and environmental mediation, transforming the boundary between inside and outside into a lived condition.

Environmental performance is embedded within the architecture itself. The project employs a network of passive systems — including thermal mass, double walls with integrated water elements, wind catchers, underground cooling channels, and evaporative surfaces— to regulate temperature, airflow, and air quality throughout the year. These strategies operate collectively as a low-energy environmental system, achieving thermal comfort through orientation, material intelligence, and spatial configuration rather than mechanical dependence.

Constructed primarily from earth-based materials, the project maintains a direct continuity with its context while reinterpreting vernacular techniques through a contemporary systems-based approach. In doing so, Aynara does not replicate the past, but uses it as a framework to construct a localized modernity, one in which architecture becomes an instrument for shaping not just climate but also collective life. taken in Wadi El Rayan by @abe_ram_

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5 months ago

There are lessons you don’t notice until they’ve already changed you! taken in Egypt by @abe_ram_

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4 months ago

Not lost. Just paused in old light taken in Cairo, Egypt by @abe_ram_

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a year ago

When I was a kid, I was… different. I never fit in. I was the one who always felt like an outsider. People laughed, people ignored. And I accepted that maybe I wasn’t meant to belong.

But then something happened that changed my life forever.

One day, when I was in 10th grade, I saw a homeless girl on the street. She was trying to read something, struggling with words she couldn’t understand. I don’t know what made me stop, but I did. I sat with her. I helped her. We spent three hours together, going over her books, her letters, her little dreams.

And in those three hours, something inside me shifted.

Because I saw myself in her. The same look of being forgotten. The same feeling of being invisible. Except her pain was written all over her life.

That day, I understood something I never did before: maybe the reason I always felt like an outcast was so I could understand others who feel the same. Maybe my pain wasn’t a punishment — it was a gift.

If I wasn’t different, if I didn’t know what loneliness felt like, I would have never cared enough to stop that day.

Years have passed since then. And that one moment shaped everything. It gave me a purpose bigger than myself.

And today, after walking in that direction for years, I started an NGO to help homeless children. To give them what I once wished I had — someone who sees them.

So if you’ve ever felt like you don’t belong, remember this: maybe you’re not meant to fit in. Maybe you’re meant to build a world where others can. ✨ taken in Egypt by @abe_ram_

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a year ago

Even in tough times, something pulls us back to the old ways. It’s not charity or duty, but a quiet instinct to share. These videos show the same street after Friday prayers: a man handing out free sandwiches outside a mosque, another offering Fatayer Al Adra outside a church. It’s heartbreaking to see how desperate the economic situation has become, where people find joy in a simple cheese sandwich. Yet, in the midst of hardship, their smiles mean everything. No policies, no programs—just people giving before thinking of what they lack. Here, even in scarcity, we find a way to care for one another. taken in Bab El Shaaria by @abe_ram_

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2 years ago

شتاء ٢٠٢٥/٢٠٢٦ by @abe_ram_

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9 months ago

#confined taken in Egypt by @abe_ram_

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3 years ago

🌿Today I went to the Cave Church for Palm Sunday. Even as someone who questions belief and resists the pull of the herd, I found myself here, compelled to stand among thousands and witness devotion that is unpolished yet full of promise.

Palm Sunday itself has roots that reach far beyond Christianity. Across the ancient world, the palm has long symbolized triumph and renewal. Ancient Egyptians celebrated with palms, so looking around me I could only see people participating in a ritual that stretches back millennia.

This church rises from Manshiet Nasser—a neighborhood of trash collectors (mostly Copts). Most of Cairo’s waste arrives here daily and efficiently gets recycled. For generations this community has lived at the margins, poor—stigmatized for their faith and work, and often vulnerable to discrimination and persecution. Yet they still endured and built, and from the hardships a church carved into the mountain sprang from the rock on a site that carries a story of faith & hope.

According to legend, during the reign of Al‑Muʿizz, a dispute arose over the verse, “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you can move mountains.” The caliph challenged the Copts to prove the verse, threatening severe consequences if they could not. The community fasted and prayed for three days, and on the appointed day, this Mountain is said to have trembled, sparing them.

Even in recent memory, this place has carried the same weight. During the upheaval of the 2011 revolution, when homes started to get attacked, thousands of Copts from across Egypt gathered here one night in prayer, uncertain of what the next day would bring. And for the time being, they were once more spared.
Amid prejudice, attacks, bombings, ki!!ings, kidnappings, and displacement, this community has endured, carried by hope.

As a speculative observer, I’ve always been struck by this paradox of Christianity: the most powerful became vulnerable to empower the weak, granting not only salvation but, through resurrection, the gift of hope itself.

And standing here, I realized that no matter how bleak life may seem, if we nurture and act on hope, it can become a force that truly moves mountains✨ taken in SAINT Simon's Monastery by @abe_ram_

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6 months ago

Egyptian Streets
#egypt taken in Cairo, Egypt by @abe_ram_

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2 years ago

Summer body ready
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For winter
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We only live once 😊🥙 taken in Egypt by @abe_ram_

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4 years ago

Reviving heritage in the bathroom by @abe_ram_

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3 years ago