Heat Waves Are Pounding Egypt, and Often There’s No A.C.

Egyptian summers have always been hot. But it has not always been this hot, with temperatures barely dipping below 100 degrees in Cairo since May, testing tempers and massacring houseplants. And it has never been this hot at a time when the government has imposed power cuts on most of the country for more than a year, plunging millions into sweaty, un-air-conditioned misery for hours each day.

Since last summer, when energy shortages forced the government to impose the daily power cuts, the blackouts have become such a fact of life that local media has taken to publishing regular tips for what to do if stranded in an elevator as the power goes off. At least nine people have died under such circumstances, according to local media reports.

“Pound on the door and don’t panic,” suggested a recent headline in Al Masry Al Youm, one news outlet. But it had little advice for fish sellers who struggle to refrigerate their wares, farmers whose chickens are dying en masse, people with little cash to fix shorted-out appliances or students studying for the all-important college entrance exams by flashlight.

After importing several emergency cargoes of natural gas, the government said the blackouts would stop from this past Sunday until mid-September, when it said they might be reinstated.

Yet social media users were still reporting power cuts on Sunday, and a government-affiliated news site, Cairo24, quoted a spokesman for the Electricity Ministry, Ayman Hamza, acknowledging that breakdowns and repairs had caused some unplanned outages.

In a year when soaring prices, subsidy cuts and the currency’s steep decline have already left people gasping, Egyptians have little patience for official statements blaming relentless heat waves for the crisis — even if it is true that Egypt is heating up at one of the world’s fastest rates.