Dawood Hill grew up in East London. His family came from Jamaica, and his father was white. He embraced Islam when he was about twenty-one, around 2005, and he wanted to practice it properly. But the life around him in London pulled the other way.
When he was young he got mixed up with the wrong crowd. He knew he needed to leave his past behind, so he moved across London to the west side and found work at Heathrow Airport, handling baggage for British Airways. The job came with flights at ninety percent off, and he used them. He flew to Egypt again and again.
Egypt was the country that welcomed him. Other countries wanted visas, sponsors, and residency papers. Egypt was open to everyone. A couple of brothers at the mosque had told him it was a good place to go, a place where a young man who had just embraced Islam could learn Arabic and learn his religion. Libya was in trouble, Yemen was in trouble, and Egypt was the place to be.
He first came to Cairo in 2006 and went straight to Nasr City. In those days there was no Rehab City and no Tagamoa. Nasr City was where everyone started. He liked what he found. The people were kind, the weather was warm, and life moved at a slower pace than the grey streets and sad faces he had left behind in England.
What pushed him to leave for good was the way people treated him at work. His manager at the airport was racist, and so were plenty of the men around him. One Jamaican colleague insulted his mother, saying she had only married his father for a passport, and Dawood ended up swinging at him. White colleagues mocked him when he prayed. He decided the people there were not going to change, and the best thing to do was leave.
Cairo was rough around the edges. There was dust and dirt, half built buildings, and crowds everywhere. But to him it felt like an adventure. Dogs ran down the street, something was always happening, and people sat outside drinking tea after eight at night. In England, by seven in the evening, everyone was asleep and the streets were empty.
He learned to speak the Egyptian dialect the practical way. The Arabic classes taught him formal Arabic, and when he tried it in a shop the man behind the counter looked at him as if he had stepped out of the 1930s. Real estate work taught him how people actually spoke, and after he got married he learned even more, thrown in at the deep end at home. His reading and writing are still weak, he says, like a four year old, but speaking is no problem. The dialect travels well, and people across the Arab world understand Egyptian Arabic, from Morocco to the Gulf. The trouble is that people sometimes take him for an Egyptian, and Egyptians have a reputation in some places for hustling to make money. He has had to live with that, but the same dialect also opens doors, because people everywhere love Egyptians too.
When he first arrived, Egypt was a place you could come to with nothing. A sandwich cost a pound, and a man could live on very little. That has changed. By 2024 a person coming to Egypt needs money behind him and a plan. Life is more organized now, with better areas, compounds, and villas, and the police no longer stop foreigners the way they used to. But it costs more, and it is harder to just get up and go.
Rents tell the story. In the newer areas like Badr and Shorouk, a simple flat can still be found for two or three thousand pounds a month, about fifty dollars. Something decent runs five to ten thousand, and a good place can cost twenty thousand, about four hundred dollars. Nasr City can cost more, even for a forty year old building with rats, because the transport, schools, and hospitals are all close by. In Egypt, he says, people pay for convenience, not for the quality of the building.
Work came slowly. He started in real estate, finding flats for foreigners who needed somewhere to stay. The money was irregular, so he bought an old car and drove people to and from the airport. Then the people he drove around, many of them teachers, told him to get into teaching. It paid regularly, it was less stressful, and people respected it. He became an English teacher, and later a teacher trainer. He also runs marathons to raise money for refugees around the world. He tells people that teaching is the best way for a Westerner to earn a living in Egypt, because the English language is a gift that is always needed.
For the long term he advises people to think like anyone else planning for old age. Save toward a pension, invest in real estate, and live off the rent one day. Property prices in Egypt only go up, he says. A quieter job on the side, like driving a taxi, can keep a man busy without wearing him out.
He is honest about the hard parts. Setting up a local business means paperwork and headaches, and a restaurant or a barber shop will not make much money. Many people teach online instead and get paid in dollars, since the Egyptian pound moves up and down. But the internet is still 4G, and the electricity cuts out. When he taught online he kept a small generator, a router, and a second SIM card as backup.
He also speaks plainly about safety. Crime in Cairo has gone up, mostly petty theft and harassment, and drugs are part of the problem. But it is nothing like the knife crime and gun crime of Britain and America. In London he used to carry a knife on the train home late at night, just to protect himself. In Egypt he has never needed to.
Raising a family is the clearest difference for him. Schools in London had violence in them and around them, and he remembers how unsafe it felt. In Egypt his children can go to school without that fear, and education is taken seriously. Parents push their children to study, and a certificate matters for everything, from getting married to getting a driving licence. Egyptians are known around the world as doctors and engineers.
He has watched Egyptians dream of the West the way he once dreamed of Egypt. They talk about Big Ben and the Statue of Liberty and streets paved with gold. They do not see the tax, the rent, the crime, or the cost of living. A funeral in Britain costs four thousand pounds, and inheritance tax takes forty percent. He says they would give their right arm to go, and then their left arm to come back. The one real benefit, he says, is the passport, which makes it easy to travel.
Visas are part of the practical side. A visitor pays twenty-five dollars for an entry visa, then has thirty days to sort out a residence permit, which can be renewed for three or six months at a time. There are longer routes through business, investment, or marriage. People usually come alone first and bring their families once they are settled. He knows brothers who have been in Egypt for thirty years, and one who had been there that long passed away recently, having married an Egyptian and built his life there.
His advice to anyone starting out is simple. Throw yourself in at the deep end and do not treat going home as an option. Do it and do not look back, because the grass is not greener back home. It will be hard at the beginning and it will get easier.
He has not lived in England since 2006 or 2007. Wherever he travels, whether it is Saudi Arabia or anywhere else, he always comes back to Egypt, because Egypt is home. He says a person can make a place their home. You do not have to be a guest who sees a pyramid and goes back. You can live your life there.