Fatema and I celebrate iftar in Amman, 2003
Excepting my chocolate frenzies, I really enjoyed Ramadan in Jordan. It felt celebratory and festive, even though everyone was cranky, nicotine- and sleep- deprived. We had iftars of garlic soup and couscous and lamb, plenty of qatayif afterwards, oregano tea, zaatar tea, mint tea. I stayed in Jordan for Eid, which coincided with the American Thanksgiving and made me homesick, but a few of my friends ventured down to Cairo for the week. They came back with stories of dusty hostels and mean cab drivers, sleeping in airports and getting stopped at borders. All in all, it didn’t sound like an ideal vacation.
I forgot about their tales until a few days into our own Cairo-during-Eid trip. I’d wanted for a long time to see Cairo during Ramadan and Eid—18 million people celebrating a month-long fast and a week-long Festival must be something. Cairo is known for its sheisha and belly dancing, night-long iftars. But you have to know people. Luckily, we did know people. We knew Loay and Rebecca and Anthony, all of whom know/are Egyptians who know how to party like Egyptians, which translated to smoking sheisha and riding feluccas. Which is great by me. Unfortunately, these people we know all have day jobs, so we were left to our own devices during the day. I spent much of my summer in 2002 walking through Cairo, mostly lost, so this was not intimidating to me at first. After a few days, it, oddly, grew more intimidating.
Egyptian Woman
In 2002, I was with a bunch of foreigners who were either practically Egyptian or lost just like me. I had all summer to explore, so I didn’t need to worry about wasting time being lost while trying to get to the Citadel before it closed. Maybe I was also a little looser, unflinching, less spoiled—I refused to take taxis, I knew the metro stops by heart, and I wasn’t scared to ask questions. On this trip, I took taxis-plenty of them-neglected the metro but for one day, and grew increasingly skeptical of asking questions, particularly to cab drivers or storekeepers (granted, those two types are not notorious for giving you a straight answer, no matter the country.) After a few difficult exchanges with cabbies and a lot of time lost in the streets of Cairo, I grew a little more intimidated by the sheer immensity of the place, the dust that never settles, the noise that never subsides. Why this hadn’t bothered me before…perhaps it was because I had no expectations of what Cairo would be like. I had a vague impression of some pyramids, the Nile, maybe some guys in robes. When I arrived with a blank slate, I let Cairo fill it up with its flaws and beauties, and I wasn’t disappointed. This time I arrived speaking the language and expecting to know the place, and I was disappointed. It took a few days for my attitude to adjust.
Street Behind the Khan
It also took a few days for my appetite to adjust. The thing about traveling during Ramadan is that Ramadan is the month of fasting. Y3nni, there is no food to eat. Y3nni, after walking through Cairo all morning, you get a little hungry. But I learned that if you wait until about 2 PM and just keep going, your hunger subsides and you can eat a decent evening iftar and go along your merry way. By Friday I had this figured out, but it didn’t stop me from carrying around a packet of sugar biscuits in my purse. Not only am I not a Muslim, but I’m a traveling non-Muslim. I figured I should be allowed some biscuits, even during Ramadan. (After a week there, I came back and discovered that I was five pounds lighter due to the long, long days and few meals. Naturally, I gained it back in about two weeks, but it was nice while it lasted.) The iftars we shared with Rebecca and Anthony were delicious, all lentil soup and restaurant-home-cooking, ma7shi and bechamel sauce, with tea for dessert. It was a different flavor from my Jordanian iftars, both culinarily and psychologically. It was more basic food, salt-of-the-earth food, roasted pigeon and bread and rice, things you can imagine your grandma, if she were Egyptian, cooking up to fill your belly. Oddly, most of my Jordanian iftars were eaten at homes, and most of my Egyptian iftars eaten out, but it was the Egyptian food that felt homier, and the Jordanian that felt more festive and exotic.
Tamar Hindi for Sale
Empty stomach or no, we did a lot of walking. We walked around Zamalek, and we walked down the cornice. We walked through Khan el-Khalili and down Port Said Street. We walked through M3aadi and through the Coptic churches. We also took a lot of taxis. It’s a walkable city for your daily needs-bread, water, whatever, but not if you actually want to get anywhere. You can’t walk from Zamalek to M3aadi unless you have a lot of time on your hands. So you take a cab, which is bound to be an interesting experience, if not a cheap one. We could have metroed, and perhaps we should have, more often, but we didn’t. The cabs gave us at least a sense of downtown, Tahrir Square and Zamalek, The roads that cross up to Mohammed Ali and down to the Coptic Churches. I’m sure we paid double what is appropriate for most of our rides. I’m ok with that.
Muddy Street in Cairo
And still, I have no sense of direction in that city. I have no idea where we are on the map at any given point. I have no sense of North or South, even when I am staring at the Nile, which runs North and South. Something about the condensed sprawl of the place, the people upon people, the dust upon the old, grand buildings with their sky-scraping billboards telling you to drink Coca-Cola. Something about the energy of the place makes me forget directions and lost my aim, wanting only to sit on the curb with the men and their sheisha, watching the chaos go past me instead of trying to keep up with it myself. It is not a romantic city, as Paris is romantic with her cafes and boulevards and angst-filled poets, or Marrakesh with her piles of alluring spices and secret alleys, or even Amman, who wafts her jasmine kisses over you as you stroll up and down her hills. Cairo is big and dirty and old, but these sometimes take a romantic turn: on the felucca gliding down the Nile, a river so long you can’t imagine the end of it. And it’s romantic to look up across the dust and skyscrapers and see pyramids nestled in the distant desert, pyramids that were built before English was a language. It’s romantic to see the Nubians, dark and serious in their galabayas, padding along next to the fairer Cairenes, Upper and Lower Egypt represented in these men, brought up miles apart, passing each other on the street corner after they buy their bread. And sometimes in the morning when it’s quiet, you look up at the old buildings with their intricate, curled molding and great, imposing doors, their charming windows that look out over the tall, old trees lining the street, and you imagine, for a moment, a whiff, what it was like when these buildings were new and full of life, swept and proud, when they saw dancers and weddings and elaborate iftars. Then it feels romantic, as a lost love is romantic; sometimes I only miss the man I wanted him to be, and sometimes it’s only the imaginary Cairo that I miss.
But sometimes I miss the real Cairo too. Even after being so fed up, so overwhelmed, so ready to JUST LEAVE THIS CITY, now sometimes when I get a whiff of desert air, or hear an Egyptian accent, or crave some koshary, or remember the cityscape sprawled beneath me, I miss Cairo.
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