We heard it said out loud: “Gas and alcohol don’t mix.” Little did then-President Mohamed Morsi know that his mangled reference to “drinking and driving” would become part of his legacy. Satirist Bassem Youssef, along with many, soon started the “Egypt and Mursi Do Not Mix” campaign.

As a nation, we have always had a penchant for compiling lists of things that don’t mix. This chemical and that? They don’t mix. Business and pleasure? Peanut butter and ketchup? Again, don’t mix ‘em. I could go on: Mexican food and tight jeans. Pizza and pineapple (sorry, Canadians). Kunafa and avocado (not sorry at all, Etoile).

Why, then, do so many companies assume that their place of business should mix (almost always unlicensed) with residential buildings?

Most of us can at least try to skip the kunafa during Ramadan — unless, that is, the pastry shop opens on your ground floor, rubbing sweet syrup into the open wound that is Egypt’s zoning regulations.

(And while we’re on the subject of pastries — and with Ramadan just 13 or so days away — a note to all pastry shop owners out there: Please leave the kunafa alone? Just this year? No more exotic fillings or hidden surprises for us. The only green thing you can stuff into our kunafa are USD bills.)

Stop me if you’ve lived this before: You go to sleep all peaceful and happy — then wake up the next day to a living nightmare. Your building has turned into a construction site, and it’s not the historic villa down the street being bulldozed. No, it’s the ground floor of your building that’s being transformed into a hair salon, a café, a restaurant.

Or better still: The apartment right next to you is suddenly “global headquarters” for a startup, their army of (overpaid) fresh graduates stalking the hallways, huffing their vapes as they make phone calls in a building that has never (ever) been zoned for office space.

The problems are too numerous to count.

For starters, the company has staff, visiting clients, and guests — all of whom have cars. Cars that need parking spots — commodities worth fighting for as cavemen fought with clubs and spears to defend their shelters.

How do we cope? As Abu Ahmed would tell you: All is fair in love and war parking spaces. And war it is. Once your car leaves that sweet parking spot in front of your building, your own Abu Ahmed will — like the veteran soldier he is — defend it. His weapon of choice may vary, but will surely include one or more of the following: pumpkin-orange cones. Big stones. Massive potted plants. Cement blocks. Metal posts with jury-rigged padlocks.

How to make it worse? Throw three companies into a building that lacks enough underground parking spaces for all of its (legal, licensed) residences — if, indeed, it has underground parking at all.

And so it is that those of us unfortunate enough to live above (or below or next to) that hot startup are forced daily to do war if we have a hope of finding a parking spot in a three-block radius of our building.

Not bothered by having to engage in street fights over parking? Consider the litany of fire, health, and safety issues that come with a business moving into your building. Think: Fire exits. The stench of grease from a deep fryer. Massive waste collection issues (from offices and restaurants alike). Startups that create electrical fires and shortages by illegally overloading electrical systems.

I get it: We’re not a nation that prioritizes physical health and safety. Or mental, for that matter: Who the hell can unwind when, after engaging in a war over parking and wading through startup people in your hallways, you arrive upstairs to be serenaded by noise from the café next door or the restaurant across the street?

A case in point: A good friend not long ago complained endlessly about the rarity of good restaurants in Maadi. She stopped the day an Italian seafood place opened up in her literal back yard. Her living room and its kitchen share the same wall. Once the commotion of frying pans and pots start in the kitchen, my friend (in all other circumstances a peaceful human) turns into the Demogoron, ready to open a dimensional portal and take the restaurant with her to the Upside Down.

We don’t get to choose our neighbors, but we do choose our neighborhoods and the types of buildings in which we nest. Your neighbor’s kid? The one modeled on Dennis The Menace? Nothing you can do. But you can choose not to live next to a nursery of little shrieking minions.

This is one area in which folks who live in new-build developments have an edge over those of us in established neighborhoods: There are iron-clad regulations for residential, commercial, and mixed-use buildings. And where a SODIC or a PHD or whoever will consistently enforce those rules, not so our friends at the local district council (hayy). For folks like us, zoning violations and random construction have become the norm, and while the state has recently shown some interest in solving the problem, its enforcement drive has been haphazard at best.

Zoning violations are being handled as part of the same “reconciliation” program that has seen the state give owners of illegal buildings a path to legalization. Owners who have rented to (or who run themselves) businesses in purely residential buildings are dealt with under the same program as wildcat builders, giving them the chance to rezone properties if they pay a fine. The program has been amended more than once to be less financially taxing, more inclusive, and even more forgiving.

Mercifully for those of us who have to live in these buildings, reconciliation is not a simple process. Many owners raced to apply for licenses last year when the Housing Ministry said it would allow ground floors to be rezoned for commercial enterprises. I bet they stopped in their tracks when they read the requirements, which include:

• The unit should be on a main street;
• The street on which the unit resides needs to at least 21 meters wide;
• No similar or conflicting businesses can be in the same neighborhood;
• The Building Owners’ Association (read: your neighbors) need to agree they’re cool with having a business in the building;
• The building (or the area) needs to have sufficient parking spaces to avoid the creation of traffic problems.

(You know what else the program should stipulate? That those of us driven ‘round the bend by companies in our buildings be allowed to send the violators bills for our psychotherapist's fees — in reconciliation).

And that program? Its fate could be in question after the Supreme Administrative Court issued a controversial ruling, saying that rezoning residential properties as administrative or commercial violates the Building Act.

Navigating the maze of laws is not for this sailor. All I want is a neighborhood that respects its neighbors. As much as we want to see our neighbors become rich, rich, filthy rich by building their own businesses, we prefer they not do it in our building — or by renting their flat out as a dance studio.

Ultimately, I don’t believe in fairy tales. I would love to fantasize about a happy marriage of commercial and residential tenants in the same building — the same way we fantasize about the princess marrying the frog. But we all know better, people. The frog won’t turn into a charming prince. Odds are much higher (as Shrek and Fiona showed us) that the princess will become an ogre.

Sorry, Fiona. Nothing personal. Or as Billy Crystal as Dr. Ben Sobel once said: “Don’t kid yourself, Jelly. It doesn’t get more personal than this.”

ANALYZE THIS is a regular Enterprise Weekend column by the Mother of the Resident 15 Year-old.