ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the Cairene used paper markets. It discusses the dealers and the buyers, and considers how human relations, including the author's own positioning in them, make the flow of certain materials possible. The Egyptian private market for 'used paper' is vast though not necessarily easily visible to the naked eye. The main physical location of this market is the Sur al-Ezbekiyya at the outskirts of Downtown Cairo. Ezbekiyya is the principal marketplace for second-hand reading material coming from estate sales or sold as refuse to its dealers. The work of Antoinette Burton is particularly useful for conceptualizing the used paper markets of Cairo. A prominent category of 'pure' collectors are clients from Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf, where oil wealth has sparked a fashion for private libraries and collections of objects featuring 'Arab heritage'.
