The Katameya Heights club is, according to the publicity blurb, Egypt's "ultimate experience".

It has been built at the same height above sea-level as the Great Pyramids of Giza. It is located just 20 minutes from Cairo's international airport and is set on a tamed piece of desert east of the capital.

Katameya's palatial club house is surrounded by 400 acres of green fairways, no less manicured championship tennis courts, and a range of additional leisure facilities from luxury villas to "The Hang Out", a mini-clubhouse that has been "specially designed to provide everything our junior members could wish for".

About an hour's drive south will take one to another aspiring utopia: here villas and apartments under construction are part of a "City of Dreams" called Dreamland, together with a 150-acre theme park in addition to golf and tennis facilities.

"We want you to share our vision, indulge your senses, and reward yourselves and your families with the life you deserve," Ahmed Baghat, the chairman of the group of companies that owns it, says in his note to the general public. He adds: "Achieve long-lasting happiness and health in a whole new way of living, unlike anything you have ever known."

And if that does not satisfy the discerning pleasure seeker, then there is a growing choice of luxury marinas and homes to be enjoyed on the edge of the Red Sea. These are distinguished by price and design as a good cut above the somewhat tawdry mass development seas resorts found along the coast.

To those responsible for building and managing them, these are bold far-reaching projects symbolic of a new free-market Egypt of wealth and job creation.

According to Katameya's general manager Berry Abdel Aziz, such is the demand for membership from Egyptians as well as from expatriate businessmen and diplomats that the club, which is owned by a partnership of three Egyptian
entrepreneurs - the brothers Khaled and Tariq Taleb and Mohamed Sabet - with other investors, can afford to be selective: "This is an exclusive club. It's not just a question of paying money. We insist on recommendations and check the applicants."

At Dreamland, the project's managing-director Amr Assal has only one response to those who criticise an aggressive TV marketing campaign for falsely raising expectations among the less well-off: "We are not politicians, we are investors," he says. "We are here to create opportunities."

Not everyone is convinced by such conspicuous consumption. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leading Egyptian academic, believes that such developments are reinforcing traditional social divisions reminiscent of the country's pharaonic past.

"The rich are increasingly isolating themselves so they can have a good time without being disturbed," he says.

"The ring roads and highways allow them to avoid the slums altogether. They go on enjoying themselves while the rest of the country continues to struggle."

Tarek Allouba, the Egyptian senior projects manager with the International Finance Corporation in Cairo, is also uneasy about such developments. "There is a danger of the rich getting more and more of what they want but with most things remaining beyond the reach of a majority of people," he says. "This risks fuelling social friction."

And yet the experiences of Dr Ibrahim and Mr Allouba are testimony to how politics and religion in Egypt have historically managed to readjust the definition of social division and the nature of privilege.

Dr Ibrahim, whose own residency in the leafy Maadi district of Cairo reflects a not unprivileged ancestral background, is a contemporary of some of today's fortune makers, some of whom he has known personally since students days.

They include Ibrahim Kamel, chairman of the Kato group, a leading private sector industrial group, and an adviser to President Mubarak. "Kamel is the son of a traditional wealthy trader who suffered Nasserism (former President Nasser sequestered the wealth and property of Cairo's elite)," he says.

"He is a US-educated capitalist who believes that his destiny is tied to the growth of the country. He believes in upgrading skills," says Dr Ibrahim.

The business interests of Mr Kamel in recent times have ranged from developing a luxury block of apartments in Cairo to flying Russian-made aircraft with Rolls-Royce engines.

r Allouba is another foreign (US) educated son of a traditionally well-to-do family - his father was a diplomat - whose fortunes were dented by Mr Nasser.

Instead of joining the Katameya Heights he has doggedly hung-on to his inherited membership of the Gezira Sporting Club, which is less exclusive since the British withdrew from Egypt and it was nationalised by Mr Nasser but is still used by retired pashas. Elderly members still play croquet there, and the male changing rooms retain their 1930s English public school-style lockers.

"The man who looks after my clothes when I play tennis," says Mr Allouba with a tinge of nostalgia, "used to do the same work when the British were here."

Times past and times passing. But Mr Allouba has noticed changes beyond the gates of the club since returning from the US in 1992.

"You can tell who has money by who drives a latest model Mercedes-Benz or BMW, but there is a new wealth that only recently has begun to investing in industry instead of just trading or speculating on land," says Mr Allouba.

Undoubtedly, some of Egypt's current rich have been helped by their close links with government. President Mubarak's personal enthusiasm for Dreamland, for example, has not been at all bad for business.

eanwhile, not everyone likes to flaunt their riches openly in Egypt, and even the most successful of the fortune makers make much of the philanthropic side to their existence, finding self-justification in the Koran.

Ahmed Zayat, executive chairman of the privatised Al Ahram Beverages Company, refuses to reveal his salary while insisting that he gives large undisclosed sums to charity. "Islam advocates being a merchant - buying and selling and making a profit," he says. "It is so pro-capitalist."


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