Egypt's 'terrace society' flourishes on Cairo rooftops On the roof of a once-grand apartment block overlooking Cairo's Tahrir Square, Shukri Mahmud's father built a humble shack, the din, congestion and worst of the notorious pollution in Africa's biggest metropolis eight floors below. They form what best-selling author Alaa el-Aswany called Cairo's "terrace society," not a world of fashionable sidewalk cafes but a parallel world of rooftop dwellings. A natural sound version of a voiced AFPTV report