انا قابلتهم عند باب العمارة امبارح.

You can usually omit انا.

In Egyptian Arabic, the verb form قابلت already tells you the subject is I, so قابلتهم عند باب العمارة امبارح is a complete and natural sentence.

Adding انا can do a few things:

• make the subject extra clear
• add slight emphasis
• help the sentence sound more explicit in conversation

So both are correct:

• انا قابلتهم عند باب العمارة امبارح
• قابلتهم عند باب العمارة امبارح

قابلتهم has three parts:

• قابل = the verb stem, from to meet
• ت = I in the past tense
• هم = them

So the structure is:

قابلت + هم = قابلتهم

In other words, it literally works like I-met-them.

Because object pronouns in Arabic are often attached directly to verbs as suffixes.

So instead of saying something like I met them with a separate word for them, Egyptian Arabic usually does this:

• قابلته = I met him
• قابلتها = I met her
• قابلتهم = I met them

This is one of the most common patterns in Arabic, so it is worth getting used to early.

In Egyptian Arabic, هم is the normal plural object pronoun for them, and in everyday speech it is used very broadly.

Unlike Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic usually does not keep a separate feminine plural in normal conversation. So هم can refer to:

• a group of men
• a mixed group
• a group of women

So in spoken Egyptian, قابلتهم can mean I met them regardless of the group’s gender.

عند is very natural for meaning at, by, or near a place.

So عند باب العمارة means something like:

• at the building entrance
• by the building door
• near the door of the building

If you used في, it would suggest in or inside, which does not fit as well with door/entrance in this sentence.

So for a meeting location, عند is the better choice here.

This is the possessive/construct structure, often called iḍāfa.

In Arabic, when two nouns are linked like door of the building, the first noun usually does not take ال.

So:

• باب العمارة = the door of the building / the building entrance

Not:

• الباب العمارة

A useful way to think about it:

• the whole phrase is definite because العمارة is definite
• the first noun باب becomes definite through the whole construction

This pattern is extremely common:

• باب البيت = the door of the house
• مفتاح العربية = the key of the car
• صاحب المحل = the owner of the shop

In Egyptian Arabic, عمارة very often means apartment building or residential building.

So باب العمارة usually means:

• the entrance to the apartment building
• the front door/gate of the building

This is a very Egyptian everyday word. It does not usually mean architecture here.

امبارح is flexible.

The sentence you have puts it at the end, which is very natural:

• انا قابلتهم عند باب العمارة امبارح

But you could also say:

• امبارح انا قابلتهم عند باب العمارة
• انا امبارح قابلتهم عند باب العمارة

The final position is especially common when the time information is just being added as extra detail after the main event.

A common Cairene-style pronunciation would be roughly:

ana ʔābelt-hom ʕand bāb il-ʕimāra imbāreḥ

A few useful notes:

• ق in Egyptian Arabic is often pronounced as a glottal stop ʔ
• هم is usually pronounced -hom, not -hum
• ال is often heard as il- or el-
• امبارح is commonly pronounced imbāreḥ or embāreḥ

So a learner-friendly approximation might be:

ana aabelt-hom and baab il-emaara embaareh

That is not a perfect phonetic spelling, but it gets you close.

ع is one of the sounds English speakers usually find difficult at first.

It is a voiced throat sound made deeper in the throat than English sounds. It is not the same as:

• a
• a silent sound
• a regular stop

In this sentence, you hear it in:

• عند
• العمارة

You do not need to master it immediately to be understood, but it is worth noticing and practicing. Even a rough approximation is fine at first, as long as you remember it is a real consonant and not just a vowel.

In Arabic, the past tense can sometimes overlap with what English expresses using either simple past or present perfect, depending on context.

But in this sentence, because you have امبارح, the meaning is clearly a finished past action:

• I met them yesterday

So here it works like straightforward simple past.

You keep قابلت and change the attached object pronoun:

• قابلته = I met him
• قابلتها = I met her
• قابلتك = I met you
• قابلتكم = I met you all
• قابلتنا = I met us is not normally meaningful, so you usually would not use that
• قابلني = he met me / she met me, with a different subject pattern

For your sentence pattern, a few useful ones are:

• انا قابلته عند باب العمارة امبارح
• انا قابلتها عند باب العمارة امبارح
• انا قابلتك عند باب العمارة امبارح

Learning these attached pronouns is very important, because they appear constantly in spoken Arabic.