Category: Egypt

Cairo, Wahashtini!

Aw–all the goofy little details I like about Cairo, bundled up in one video:

(Khalid, was that what the hospital was like?!)

If you ever have the chance to see Hakim in concert, go! You haven’t lived until you’ve seen about 12 Egyptian dudes in ’80s-look jumpsuits doing full choreography for a screaming crowd…and that was just in Brooklyn. Can’t imagine in his hometown.

And this was the song that was all the rage on the streets:

Uh, it’s called “Grapes.” And the lyrics are something about, well, how sweet grapes are. And how the red ones are good, and so are the yellow ones. Is that dirty? No one, apparently, is sure, but everyone loves the song. I won’t blame you if you stop the video partway through, given the hideous quality–and you sort of get the point of the song anyway.

Summer Trip: The Food

About the time I was eating the most amazing mussels in the world, on the beach in Greece, I realized I should cut a teensy bit of slack to all those lazy food writers who overuse the phrase “a revelation” to describe whatever they’re eating. (I loathe this, for the record.)

I’m not saying the hand of God reached down and chucked me under the chin while I was eating, but I did have a moment of “a-ha” that was close to revelatory.

The next thought I had was: Maybe American food writers use “a revelation” so often because Americans have such awful food. In a cosmopolitan place like NYC, you can eat duck confit, medium-rare pork chops, assorted artisanal cheeses, and fresh veggies of all kinds, but very often you’re just eating a flawless simulacrum of the real thing…and probably paying a lot for it.

I use the prefix “art” to describe this, as in “an art pork chop.” Not at all to disparage the field of art or the process or art-making, but a food item that resembles food in every way but flavor may as well be an object placed on a plinth and lit with halogen bulbs. Then people can come peer at it and call it “cunning” in their critical reviews.

Because our food production system is so fucked up, and our palates so stunted by a relative lack of food tradition and our demand for cheap over tasty, we Americans eat art food all the time–and a lot of the time we don’t even know it.

It’s not till you eat a mussel that is briny and sexy like an oyster, but also sweet like a scallop, and sitting in a gorgeous translucent green shell that you realize exactly why people like mussels so much. It’s not till you eat a green fig off the tree that you realize what all the hype is about. And of course there’s always the “real tomato” issue.

So part of the problem I have with food writers having “revelations” all over the damn place is that they’re just showing exactly how little experience they have eating good food. If you’re having a revelation in print over some duck confit, it means you haven’t eaten good duck confit before. And shouldn’t that be just the barest qualification for getting paid to write about food?

Also, of course, food writers are always getting rapturous about their meals in France. Every food magazine every month has something about France–even Saveur, which is the most worldly of mags, and I admire them for it, still does the fallback “X region in France is amazing” story every couple of months.

I know France is great and all, but again, food writers are just revealing how un-stamped their passports are if all they’ve got to talk about is the charming village market and the authoritative French woman who prepares a revelatory lunch with her strong, assured hands.

Anyway, what I ate on my trip, which was soooo much more adventurous, and for which I was a million times better informed than even the most highly paid professionals:

1) Those motherf***ing mussels. We went back and had them a second time, and they weren’t as good–maybe they’d been overcooked, maybe they were not as fresh. It was good to know at least that Greeks in Eressos weren’t sitting around smugly eating mussels behind our backs every day.

2) Quick salt-cured sardines. Also in Greece, from a nice old lady in the village of Andissa. They were plump and succulent. A little obscene, like if you really did bite off your husband’s nice plump lip and ate it.

3) Pigeon in Cairo. I’ve already mentioned it, but that was truly, truly delectable. (And not a single bite of birdshot–there’s an urban legend in the city that all the pigeon comes from the shooting club, and friend-of-a-friend broke a tooth on birdshot once.) The pigeon gets stuffed with rice or freekeh (cracked green wheat), then it gets simmered for a while to cook the stuffing, and then it gets plopped down in a searing hot pan, to crisp up the skin. The broth from the simmering is served on the side in a mug, and it’s incredibly peppery and delicious. I would drink just the broth, but the resto has a policy that you also must order pigeon–but once you do, it’s all-you-can-drink broth.

4) Malta plums in Turkey. Not that these were the world’s most delicious fruit–just that I’d never had them before, and they were sweet and fascinating. They’re the color of apricots and have big, slippery seeds in the center, and they’re outrageously sticky. In the same day, I also got to sample some fresh chickpeas. Cool-looking, but enh.

5) Olive-oil-stewed sea beans, served cold, at Ciya in Istanbul. Every time, this restaurant has something delightful. They were still a little crispy-bouncy in texture, and the sort of salty you know comes from the inside rather than being added in the kitchen. (Incidentally, this is why Mediterranean fish are so delicious, claimed the fish grill man at our resto in Eressos.)

6) Ayran in Syria and Turkey. I’ve had it a lot before, but it’s always remarkable just how thirst-quenching salty, watered-down yogurt can be.

7) The world’s sweetest yogurt in Ayvalik, Turkey. We were eating a basic little lunch while waiting for the ferry, and I saw the guys at the next table had big plates of homemade yogurt. We got some for ourselves, and it was dairy-product heaven–light, not heavy like Greek strained stuff, and sweet-sour, and with a nice crusty layer of cream on top. Costa in Greece insisted it was because the Turks put sugar in everything–or at least used grape must to start the souring process. Which is interesting on its own. (On a separate dairy-product topic, I saw rennet for sale in a grocery store in Ayvalik–made by the major milk producer, and in a little bottle, right there next to the premade cheese. Great that there’s an assumption your average shopper would make cheese at home.)

8) Everything in Syria.

9) Apricots right off the tree in Greece, and even a few cherries. The local cherries (some we actually paid for, from the fruit stand) were exactly the sort of thing that make people say “a revelation.” They just kept tasting and tasting and tasting and tasting.

10) Best. Beans. Ever. in Istanbul. Fittingly, the name of the restaurant was ‘bean.’ At first, we ordered only one serving, and the waiter looked nervous. After I’d had a couple spoonfuls of Peter’s, and ordered my own, he looked relieved. Order and balance were restored. These beans were perfectly tender, just so they gave a bit when you bit into them, but held their shape. And they were swimming in this tomato-ish sauce that can only be described as pure umami. I have no idea what the magic ingredient was, but it did make me realize I hadn’t eaten pork in many, many weeks. Because that kind of tastiness I associate with pork bits, and here, they’d managed to get it by other means.

11) Assorted other things: kalkan (turbot) in Istanbul, baklava in Istanbul, borek in Istanbul, ice cream in Istanbul. Oh, and did I mention the man selling sardines, who had a beautiful silvery pile, but also a bucket of live ones, and periodically he’d grab a live one and throw it down on top of the silvery mound, where it would jump and thrash, as if to say, “These fish are soooo fresh…” Maybe a little sadistic, but a genius sales technique (right up there with the bra vendors I saw on the street in Cairo, tossing the biggest bras up in the air like pizza dough).

**For the record, Peter and I decided we’re against Turkey getting into the EU. Sure, some people might be a little less poor, or something. But it will inevitably make food worse, as produce-starved northerners demand Turkey’s farms yield bigger and more stuff. Currently, tomatoes are sweeter and cucumbers are crispier than anywhere but Syria, and I don’t want that to get fucked up by greenhouses. (Egypt, incidentally, has started using greenhouses–retarded, considering the one thing Egypt doesn’t lack is sun and dry weather. The tomatoes now suck.) Also, Turkey is already perfectly functional in other respects: you can drink the water, and you can even buy train tickets online. They don’t need the damn EU.

That is all. Must go eat breakfast/lunch. Probably no revelations to be had, alas.

Cairo: The Wrap-Up

Looking through all my pics has made me a little sniffy and nostalgic. Photos are sneaky that way–that’s exactly how I got talked into going back to Burning Man.

Come to think of it, Cairo is sort of like Burning Man–lots of dust, everyone wants to talk to you, and a lot of people want to have sex with you. And seriously–some of the getups are amazing. Also some scary crowd-control issues.

But enough belabored metaphor. What I like in the end is that people there are happy, and they’re ready to make you laugh too.

Part of my attitude readjustment re: Cairo came from reading an excellent book: Max Rodenbeck’s Cairo: The City Victorious. It’s a broad history as well as commentary on contemporary life. Somehow, reading that Cairenes were exceptionally proud of how they completely ripped off the king of Mali or somesuch, many many centuries ago, made me feel better about all the tedious little shopping scams you encounter today.

Another thing I enjoyed immensely was going to the Souq al-Gumaa (Friday Market), which is this mass of shopping insanity that takes place weekly in the southern cemetery area. As our de facto tour guide, Anna, described it, the line between what’s for sale and what’s trash is pretty arbitrary–there will be some old woman presiding over a blanket covered with broken telephones, used-up ballpoint pens and one shoe. The other shoe may very well be in the trash pile that’s just a few feet away.

Beyond the random junk-sellers is the animal market–where it was sad to see desert foxes in cages, but hilarious to see people excited about buying fluffy white Persian cats–and also a long row of the dustiest antiques you’ll ever see. And that sort-of road winds up in a section selling nothing but toilets. The overpasses are soaring overhead, the din is shocking, and the crowds are so oppressive it’s not clear how anyone actually buys anything–you’re basically forced to walk at a slow shuffle, or else be trampled. Nonetheless, Anna came away with three pairs of great vintage sunglasses, and I nearly expired from the heat. It was everything to hate about Cairo, but also everything to love.

As a place to do guidebook research, it was surprisingly not too difficult. Perhaps half the information I was given will turn out to have been absolutely made up on the spot–but I did my part.

One interesting detail was how quickly I was picked out as “the Lonely Planet person.” When I was checking out hotels, I genuinely was looking for a place where Peter and I would bunk down for a while, so when I said, “I’m just looking now–my husband’s coming next week,” I was not lying. And in that case, it made perfect sense that I didn’t have any luggage with me. But nonetheless, at least five hotel guys said, “You’re the Lonely Planet person, aren’t you?” and then proceeded to shower me with tea and sodas. I have never had anyone call me out as a guidebook writer before–either because people in Mexico don’t care that much, or don’t have a keen enough eye for a disheveled person with a pen in one hand and a compulsive need to pick up business cards.

And incidentally, the fact that guys guessed I was specifically from Lonely Planet was based not on extra-cunning detective work on their part, but the fact that, in Egypt anyway, “Lonely Planet” is right up there with Kleenex or Xerox. (LP marketing should be doing high-fives at this point. Other publishers are gnashing their teeth in despair.) For once, I could see how being a guidebook author is actually sort of close to being a celebrity, in the way that Mr. Killing Batteries depicts his glamorous lifestyle.

One last note about the Cairo trip, and I’m sure you’ve all been wondering: I was only mildly sick, for about a day. I only count sick as incapacitated and unable to leave the hotel room–I spent this one day lying around thinking I might throw up, but never did. Other days I did have a few, um, urgent moments and some discomfort, but overall nothing akin to the gastrointestinal devastation I experienced ten years ago.

But unless you think Cairo has somehow improved its hygiene or generally become less of an assault on the system (my nausea could have just as well been from the heat and dehydration as from food), think again: The very next day, Peter was felled by vicious vomiting that actually required drugs to make him stop. Also, two other visitors I met there required IV drips because they’d gotten so ill.

Sigh. That’s just never going to make the tourists excited to come. Perhaps if you’re carried around in an air-conditioned litter and fed only sterilized grapes? I guess that’s what tour buses are, essentially–and that’s no way to see the world. Wading into the Souq al-Gumaa, sucking pigeon meat from the little leg bones, being invited to weddings by random people on the street–I’m willing to suffer a little incapacitation for that.

On Head Scarves and Anti-Americanism

Just to answer the two most frequent questions I got before leaving for my trip:

1) Was I going/would I have to wear a head scarf?

No. None of the countries I’m visiting have any laws requiring it, and I tend to think tourists who adopt this look when traveling anywhere but Iran and Saudi are a little dopey for doing so. First of all, their scarf-wrapping skills are inevitably bad, and they look all lumpy. And they are probably not Muslim, so not required to. Cairo is a giant city with a global outlook, and the fashion on the street is more cool urban than frumpy babushka.

That said, wow, there are a lot more women wearing the hijab (head scarf) now, and even quite a few wearing the full black niqab, and even a couple doing that spooky thing where they put the sheer black veil entirely over their faces, so they look like ghosts. I’d say the split ten years ago was maybe 60/40 covered to uncovered, and now it’s more like 90/10.

Which doesn’t mean everyone is looking all modest and pious. Lordy, no. I haven’t seen so many tight clothes since Queens. And the care lavished on selecting the colors of scarves and the pinning and so on–straight off the pages of Hijab Fashion, and I am not making that magazine title up.

I’ve never been too bent out of shape about the hijab. It is not keeping women down–although it can be used to do so, along with a million other things. For the most part, it’s just another piece of clothing, and taking it off is not going to liberate anyone by itself. That’s not what women thought a generation ago, though–and it’s these older women, resolutely in polyester business suits and perfect coifs, that I don’t see much in Cairo anymore. The same backlash against overt feminism is happening in Egypt as is happening in the States–it’s just manifested differently. In the US, “I don’t consider myself a feminist” goes with midriff-baring tops and visible thong underwear; in Egypt, it goes with a bright-blue hijab tied to show off your earrings and a super-tight long-sleeve shirt and ankle-length skirt.

I’m sure there’s more to it, and every woman has a different reason/explanation/story (or none at all) for why they wear the hijab. It’s none of my business, really. I just appreciate the fashion parade.

(Though I do carry a scarf in my bag for wearing when I visit mosques, which is just polite.)

2) Don’t they hate Americans?

No. A lot of people really, really hate George Bush & Co., but they’re perfectly capable of distinguishing me from George Bush. No Texan accent, to start with.

There has been so much talk of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East that even I was starting to believe it might be true, even though I could not imagine someone in Egypt or Syria actually telling me they hated me because I was American. And it’s not like I believed it enough to start telling people I was Canadian or some crap.

Yes, I counted exactly two awkward silences following our admission of nationality–if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, these two guys were clearly thinking.

More often, though, we got smiles, thumbs-up, “Ahsan nass!” (The best people!), “Yankee doodle!” and even “Hotsy-totsy!” (Huh?) One Syrian security guard said, “George Bush!” with a thumbs-up (we told him he was nuts), and another guard said, “George Bush bad!” while smiling apologetically. People in the Middle East are smarter than the American press gives them credit for.

And they are still kinder than most Americans would ever be to visiting Middle Easterners. I feel especially ashamed about this last point, and I will be practicing my crazy hospitality skills on anyone who comes within range–brace yourselves.

Cairo: On the Way Out

Well, that was a little whirlwind. Peter and I leave for Aleppo tomorrow morning at 10:30. We will be traveling in style to the airport in one of the new air-conditioned yellow taxis that actually use meters and print receipts. I hope they age better than most of the improvements that have been attempted in this city that decays faster than any one I’ve ever visited.

It’s happening of course: I’m getting nostalgic already. I left the Windsor Hotel bar, which is a museum of nostalgia, just at twilight, and something about the air, and the smell, and the honking of horns, and the men smoking sheesha and watching soccer, and the trees with the bright-red blooms, made me a bit sad.

That all vanishes when it’s 106 degrees out, as it was for one day last week, but for now I’m happy to have been back and found a new affection for this place that was so problematic for me for almost a decade.

Sorry no more tales of travel-guide-author road rage and all that. I will try to pull together a couple more anecdotes and post again when I’m in Turkey in another week and a half.

Cairo: I Am Not Being Served!

Dining alone is probably the worst thing about being a travel guide writer–but _not_ dining alone turns out to be slightly worse.

After my Pyramids trail of tears, I just wanted a nice little dinner, in a spot near my hotel.

But no, apparently. I went to two separate restaurants and simply could not get served. It was the oddest thing–I talke to the maitre d’, I went over to a table and I waited for someone to bring me a menu. And waited. And waited. Now I’ve been told that these places have notoriously bad service. At the time, though, it was very hard not to take it personally.

From a guidebook-research perspective, however, it was great: I got to sit in these places for about 20 minutes, look at the food, see who came in and out, generally soak up the vibe, and then not have to pay a penny! Of course I had to slink out in shame (well, I pretended to get a cell-phone call), but I guess it was worth it.

I finally was driven into the arms of Felfela, a serviceable but unexciting tourist joint. This finally pushed me over the edge, as I was barraged with bad service English: “Bon appetit,” said the guy as he poured my much-needed beer, and it went downhill from there.

On my walk home, I passed so much more bad English, on signs, on T-shirts in windows, from random people trying to talk to me, that I was at the breaking point that only a part-time copy editor can get to.

I read a little fluent English before bed, and slept OK. Peter has since arrived, so I have good English input again. The drawback, of course, is that my Arabic is now floundering.

I realize now, as the guy at the Internet cafe is fiddling with my computer and potentially reading what I’m writing, that I’ve become the horrible tourist complaining about bad service. Let me just clarify it is 85 percent my fault that I didn’t get served in those restaurants. Next post: I complain about getting overcharged!

Cairo: City of Contrasts

In the back of my head, I’m already writing drafts of the Cairo chapter introduction. One cliche I cannot bear in travel writing is that “fascinating clash of ancient and modern, limousines next to donkey carts, etc.” routine. Yes, it’s true, but it’s true of pretty much everywhere in the world aside from the US, Canada and Australia. If you have more than a couple hundred years of history, you automatically inspire lazy writers to tote up all the thrilling contrasts.

So there I was in the mobile phone shop at 11.30pm (take that, “city that never sleeps”!) and in walks an Upper Egyptian straight out of central casting. Which is to say, a super-rural guy whose look, in Egypt, epitomizes “not in step with the modern world,” right down to the poofy blue turban thing and the big ol’ mustache and the rubber flip-flops.

And then of course he whips out the blinkiest flashiest cell phone ever. Even the shop worker was laughing. And then the Upper Egyptian guy says to the shop guy in Arabic, “Tell her, ‘Welcome to Egypt.'”

Hmm. This is going to be tricky.

Cairo: Great Expectations

The handy thing about imagining the worst is nothing is ever as bad as you think. Cairo is nowhere near as crowded as I remember–although I haven’t yet ventured downtown or into the medieval section in the middle of the day. The trees are actually green, rather than brown–which might be due to recent rain that washed them off a little, but I’m not complaining. No one has said or done anything sleazy to me. And when I say ‘No, thanks,’ people actually leave me alone.

This is all a little weird, frankly. And I’m sure I’ll wind up completely reversing these statements within the week, but in the meantime, I’m enjoying being pleasantly surprised.

Last night I had the good luck of seeing the Famous Ali in his natural habitat–if not his native Alexandria, then at least here in Cairo, schmoozing with the waiters, chatting up the shisha-coal kid, etc. Just like home, really, but in Arabic. One more thing to add to my list of pleasant surprises–when we were out at 1am on what’s basically Sunday night, I was not at all the only woman hanging out smoking shisha. I’d like to say times have changed, but it occurs to me that when I lived here, I never went downtown on a Sunday night, so how the hell would I know? l guess l shouldn’t be surprised that it’s much more fun to be a tourist here than a depressed grad student.

What’s the Arabic for “way-back machine”?

Saturday night I went to Ali’s Kabab Cafe for dinner, by myself. It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve been there. There was something about being alone, and for once not seeing anyone else I knew, that reminded me of when I first moved to New York, and Astoria. I just sat there and read a little, and occasionally stared mistily into space, thinking of…geez, nearly a decade ago.

Back in 1998–or maybe it was 1999 by the time I got to Kabab Cafe for the first time–Ali’s felt like a little airlock between New York and Egypt. Not that I missed Egypt exactly (here’s one reason why), but I still felt a little out of step with glossy, consumer-y NYC, and I needed a little more dim lighting, hot tea and weepy Umm Kulthum music in my life. In those early days, going to Kabab Cafe felt like I was visiting a foreign country again, one whose GDP was based on nostalgia, atmosphere and clouds of sheesha smoke.

Now I know half the other regulars, Ali and I are friends, and he doesn’t smoke the water pipe in his place anymore. Almost nine years have slipped by since I was in Cairo–and now I’m set to go back again, in less than a month.

Last time, I was there for a year doing the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA). Not only was Arabic irrelevant to Americans back then, pre-9/11, but the social shenanigans of twenty wacky students in the pressure-cooker of Cairo were utterly wasted, because reality TV hadn’t been invented. This would’ve been ratings gold: mix medievalists up with political wonks, throw in a few Mormons, shack us up in grand, decrepit apartments with dusty chandeliers, and make us all sit in class together for eight hours a day. Weirdly, I am still friends with a good portion of these people.

This time, I’m going to update a guidebook to Egypt—a job I’m now feeling like the 25-year-old me should have done. In my preparation for the research trip, I’m finding it very difficult to brush away all the emotional associations and remember the details that might be relevant to a traveler who’s not sucked into a yearlong process of ego destruction via high-school-style social snubs, recurring illness and failure to grasp the infinite subtleties of Arabic grammar and vocabulary.

Such as: Men will harass you like crazy on the street. (Mental note: Buy more sports bras. Breasts must be locked down.)

And the gauntlet of cab drivers at the airport—it’s like the paparazzi, but not. Know where you’re going, and how much you’ll pay.

And it’ll probably already be crazy hot. And pack Kleenex—the smog makes your snot run black at the end of the day. And be careful crossing the street (especially careful this time, with my now-blind eye).

As you can see, I’ve been slowly building up to a full panic. It’s a very specific version of a broader pre-trip anxiety that always seizes me, no matter where I’m going (this Thursday: New Orleans, where I will certainly miss Jim and Daphne’s wedding because I will have been mugged and shot and left in the middle of a potholed street).

I’m trying hard to think positive. Normally I would do that by thinking about food.

But Cairo is a difficult place, food-wise. Not only is it not exactly bursting with deliciousness, but my gut flora were so traumatized by my decade-ago visit that my stomach still lurches a little when I think of, say, tabbouleh on a hot summer night. (Why did I eat that? No sane Cairene eats parsley salad in the summer.)

So I think it was my solo visit to Ali’s that warmed my heart a little, and created room for the barest flutterings of excitement as I was flipping through guidebooks today: al-Tabei, that place with the super-garlicky marinated tomatoes; Fatatri al-Tahrir, where you can get a flaky “pizza” topped with jam and coconut and nuts; kushari, the lentils-n-rice topped with a zingy vinegar-tomato sauce; even those 20-cent mashed-potato sandwiches with the crunchy bits of cilantro; and the chicken livers and French fries at the Odeon bar.

After that, I run a little dry in the restaurant department, but now, in my reverie, I’m on to bars and clubs (Atlas in 1992, my first trip, now that was a scene, and that upstairs joint where the Sudanese prostitutes hung out) and then, most important, my salvation in Cairo: grocery shopping.

The shiny-clean milk store. The corner shop where I realized, after months, that I could buy eggs in any number I wanted, rather than base 12. The master orange-juicer down the street. The neighbor greengroceress who heckled me for not being a regular customer. The creak of donkey carts laden with cactus fruit and mangos rolling past my window.

There’s plenty more. But no one wants to read Zora’s Proustian Guide to Cairo. I’m glad I’ve arranged a long visit—the whole first week will likely be spent getting all those Masri madeleines out of my system.

And then the next week, I’ll be back to beating off the street lechers with a stick, fighting with cab drivers, stomping up stairwells to fleabag hotel after fleabag hotel and cringing in horror every time I blow my nose.

Yallah—off we go.

Kabab Cafe, for old time’s sake

Same treatment with the ol' KC, reprinted from eGullet, plus more pics on the way. By the way, Ali is kicking ass these days. Sweetbreads, sardines, fantastic duck...

Read more