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Gezira (literally "island") dominates the waterfront from Garden City to Bulaq, its three sets of bridges spanning the Nile. Nearly 4km long and 1km wide, the island is big enough to encompass two distinct zones. The southern half, featuring the Opera House complex, parks, a viewing tower and famous sporting clubs, is Gezira proper. Zamalek (pronounced "Zah- mah -lek"), further north, is pure real estate - apartments, villas, offices and embassies - with a Westernized ambience and nightlife. Both seem so integral to Cairo that it's hard to envisage their absence, yet the island itself only coalesced in the early 1800s and remained unstable until the first Aswan Dam regulated the Nile's flood in the 1900s. Almost a third of the island belongs to the Gezira Sporting Club , laid out by the British Army on land given by Khedive Tewfiq. The club's main pursuits were horse racing and polo, imbued with an extraordinary mystique. "It is on the Gezira polo grounds that the officers of the Cavalry Brigade are tested for military efficiency and fitness for command", wrote C.S. Jarvis in the 1920s. Diplomats and selected upper-crust Egyptians also belonged to the club, and after Nasser decided against expropriation following the revolution it soon acquired members from the new elite. The hefty membership fees still restrict access to its golf course, tennis courts, stables, gardens and pet cemetery; non-members are resolutely excluded.
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