Horreyya means "freedom", and by that I really just mean the end of summer classes and the beginning of my six-week break that will bring my trip to Lebanon & co. and more opportunities to discover Cairo itself. Backing up a bit, last Thursday (the night before Ramadan started), Sarah and I went to yet another concert, this time at Sakiat al-Sawy, a popular concert venue in Zamalek. This was a concert of the Egyptian folk-rock band Maghna Khan, whose catchy songs you can experience in part here. (The link is for my favorite of the songs they performed at the concert, "Eskenderia".)
The next day was the iftar I hosted at my place followed by our late-night felucca and sohour adventure. Since I slept through most all of the following day, I roused myself just in time to meet one of our CASA cultural advisers (and former student) Andrew, for a walk to the little-known Sidi Zein el Abdin mosque in Sayyida Zeinab. Sayyida Zeinab is what is known as a shaaby neighborhood, which technically means "popular" but actually means poor. The mosque, which we approached just before sunset, was raised above a picturesque but aging cemetery, and was surrounded by stone walkways for strolling about and either thinking about God or marveling at the simple beauty of the mosque/tomb. The downside to this visit was that four of us girls attempted to enter the mosque. At first, the man at the door greeted us in English and was quite friendly. Then he asked us where we were from. "Amirika," we responded brightly. His smile turned into a snarl. "Amirika?! AMIRIKA?! No. No. No. Get out. This is Islam. Amirika No. Go away, get out." He waved at the exit. It took us a moment to realize that he was utterly serious, partly because this has never happened to me before in Egypt. And every Egyptian we told was shocked that we'd had such an experience, although Andrew says it happens to him not infrequently in shaaby areas. Although I'm used to hearing angry attitudes about America expressed, people often go to great pains to explain that despite all that they really like Americans as people. Not this one. I found myself wanting to engage the hater in conversation, explain to him that the four innocent-looking girls (looking a little silly in hijab) were there to respect Islam, etc. etc., but thought better. Nevertheless, it left me slightly shaken up as I contemplated it on the way to a nearby restaurant for iftar. We feasted at the simple plastic tables thrown up in the street -- on chicken, kofta, rice, and mahshy.
After a walk through Sayyida Zeinab's packed and colorful streets, past the best selection of fawanees (plural of fanous) I've yet seen in Cairo and a camel butcher with his live wares tethered to posts in the street, we stopped in the courtyard of Sayyida Zeinab mosque itself. It was the hour of 'asha, the last of the day's five prayers. People were milling around the courtyard when the call to prayer sounded and men began rolling out mats to catch the overflow from the mosque itself, whose minaret, entrances, and "Allah" on the facade were illuminated with green neon light. We migrated across the street then to a hole-in-the-wall called Rahmany's, which sells exclusively a special kind of dessert called miziz. I can't exactly tell you what that is, except that it includes milk, rice, sugar, and a "secret ingredient", comes in either sour or sweet (I had sour, good choice), and is topped with cinnamon. The ingredients make it sound like every other Egyptian dessert, so it must be the secret ingredient that gives it an odd kind of glow and that sour tang.
The next day, Sunday, I ventured for the first time to the neighborhood of Shubra, on the east bank of the Nile, north of Downtown. I spent a quiet afternoon at my friend Nada's apartment with her and another Egyptian friend, Evline. Since they are Protestant and therefore not fasting, we had a nice lunch. We also discussed Hillary's recent meetings here with President Morsi and the SCAF. Based on information gathered from this conversation and other conversations with Christians, the widespread belief is that the U.S. is throwing support behind the Ikhwan and therefore has no moral compass whatsoever. And they are clearly outraged about this. (One friend posted a photoshopped picture on Facebook of Hillary sitting in Morsi's lap.) Conspiracy theories abound. My friend explained that her father, for instance, thinks the US is hoping for Islamist takeovers throughout the Middle East so that it will then have reason to invade said countries. Most takes on the issue are less spectacular, but I haven't met a single person (even those who describe themselves as pro-American) who thinks the US has anything but nefarious intentions regarding Egypt. Shubra was unusually quiet (given that it is one of the overcrowded areas of Cairo -- someone once told me, hyperbolically or not, that 75% of the city's population lives there) because there is a large Christian population, so the Christian shops close on Sundays, while many Muslim shops close in the afternoon during Ramadan. So when Nada offered me the chance to ride to the metro on the back of her brother's motorcycle, how could I refuse? No one get nervous here -- I was a pro! We sailed through the sleepy streets without a hitch, past the lovely but aging buildings perhaps dating from the period when Mohammed Ali built a palace in the area. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't a thrill!
From Shubra I met up with Kevin and we taxied out to one of the lovely gated compounds in the suburbs, called Arabella. We had been invited to an iftar at the villa of our college friend Alya's aunt. When we arrived at the gates, we realized we didn't know the aunt's name and so were stuck for about half an hour with the gatekeepers, most of whom were from upper Egypt and a lot of fun. They brought us stools and sweet juice, even though they hadn't broken their fast yet, and we made smalltalk. Finally we made it to the sprawling villa we intended, and took a brief stroll around the pool and gardens before the azan sounded and it was time to eat. Several large tables were set out on the back balcony, overlooking the infinity pool, and we broke our "fast" with qamr al-din (a special Ramadan apricot drink) as the sun slipped behind the palm trees. Like our friend, who is half British and half Egyptian but grew up in the U.S., pretty much everyone in the family lived part-time or had lived at some point in the U.S. or Canada. The dinner was a mix of Egyptian staples like lisan aasfour noodle soup, ful and (what I think was) lamb, served by a pair of men in crisp black tuxedos -- and familiar staples like ravioli and a real, leafy green salad... something I have not yet seen with anything but shreds of iceberg lettuce since I arrived. When the Ahly vs. Zamalek soccer game started, everyone gathered around. I haven't chosen sides yet, but this is becoming a problem here as people take team allegiance very seriously. We ended the evening back on the deck sipping tea and nibbling dried fruit.
My other family iftar of the week came on Tuesday, when I returned to the house of Ali, the friend of my professor Tarek from Princeton. We sailed out to Shorouk in Ali's car just before sunset along with Kevin and Hannah, another Princetonian currently in Cairo. Ali's wife, Taghrid, had again prepared us an eyepopping feast. The centerpiece this time was an entire sheep, curled up on a large platter. Although the meat was succulent, there was no way seven people could finish, especially given the ten or more other dishes alongside the sheep. Personally, I'm always a fan of the sambousek, fried pastry shells stuffed with beef or cheese. After the meal, we headed off for a postprandial walk at the family's social club, the Shorouk branch of the Heliopolis Club. Memberships in these clubs are hereditary, so upper middle class and wealthy families have belonged to their chosen club for generations -- and they are the main place many such families socialize, since they are oases of green space, swimming pools, gyms, sitting areas, and sports fields in the middle of the cacophonous city or barren desert. (Of course, if your money is new, it costs about $50,000 as a down payment, plus yearly fees, to join any of the clubs.) Taghrid, who worked as a lawyer before she married and now has two young sons, showed us around the soccer fields, track, croquet lawn, tennis courts, and pools (with olympic diving boards) before we went inside and sunk into deep leather sofas in the club's pristine interior.
On Wednesday, the night before the last day of classes, Miriam, Robin, Scott, and I ventured out to a screening of a new (English-language) film called The Noise of Cairo. It was held in a room of someone's apartment (whose? I'm not sure) downtown, which was outfitted with a projector and about 30 chairs. The crowd was about half foreign and half Egyptian, but 100% hip (except maybe us). Word on the street is that if I go to enough of these events, I will see the same 20 ultra-hip people in skinny jeans and plastic frames every time. The movie was about the art scene in Cairo in the aftermath of the revolution, and profiled people like a dance choreographer who hadn't performed anything in Egypt in 10 years, a couple high-end artists working out of galleries in Zamalek, the popular singer Ramy Essam, the graffiti artist Keizer, and a few others. We thought it was a bit limited by being a foreign production and in English, as the vast majority of the content was focused on a small, elite sliver of society (whereas there have been quite a few public art projects as well), but nevertheless quite interesting because it was apparent that many high-end artists were really carefully censored under the Mubarak regime.
Then, on Thursday, to celebrate the end of our first CASA semester, the program splurged on an iftar for all of us, and our professors and language partners. They held it at the Hussein Hotel, right in the heart of Islamic Cairo, at the entrance to Khan el Khalili. When we arrived just before sundown, we passed by swarms of hungry people seated at long tables outside the restaurants next to El Hussein mosque, poised to gobble down the salads tantalizingly distributed in advance of the azan. We ourselves sat on the rooftop of the hotel. After a lovely traditional (but thankfully not stressfully excessive) chicken dinner, we migrated to ElMalki, a branch of the dessert chain, for roz bi-laban. Thus began my second Ramadan all-nighter. The next stop on this adventure was a hole-in-the-wall arts center downtown called Mastaba, which had advertised Egyptian folk music. It exceeded our wildest expectations: the folk music, as a smiley old man with an impeccable mustache announced to the fifteen of us or so gathered around on stools, was that imported north into Egypt from present-day Sudan in the time of Mohammed Ali. This meant that the instruments were things like a xylophone with a bunch of gourds dangling from it, a noisemaking skirt made of sheep's teeth, and something Robin called "the one with lots of necklaces" -- a triangular harp of sorts with a lot of -- yes -- beaded necklaces attached to it. Although some of the tunes were familiar to me from contemporary Egyptian music, and the words in Arabic, the rousing rhythms were undeniably African, punctuated with bongo drums. It turned out to be an interactive concert, and so basically the entire audience (including us) was invited up to dance with the members of the band. My favorite band member was either the one woman, a friendly older matron in a sparkly black robe and black hairnet who sometimes sang with a white sheet over her face (not sure of the symbolism of that). After the concert, we saw her sitting by herself at a dingy coffeeshop across the street puffing away at her shisha. Or maybe my favorite was this guy, who appeared in the finale in THIS unexpected costume:
After the concert, we drifted through downtown, which was teeming by 11pm, drank hibiscus juice at a shaaby cafe, and then migrated to our final destination, Korba. Korba is the historic zone at the heart of Heliopolis, the suburb founded in 1905 by Belgian entrepreneur Baron Empain. Baghdad St. is lined with fantasy oriental buildings with lovely arcaded sidewalks. The white stone facades shone in the darkness, and the streets were packed with mostly young men enjoying a coffee and shisha in the wee hours of the morning. Around 2, we got a table outside a place called Arabiata and feasted on ful, omelets, baba ghanoush, warm pitas, and fried cheese. We were lingering outside a juice place when the azan sounded fagr and the crowds evaporated from the streets in the blink of an eye.
P.S. Ramadan TV series mean Ramadan commercials - check out this new ad for the cell provider Mobinil. You can spot Adam in the movie theater scene near the end!
The next day was the iftar I hosted at my place followed by our late-night felucca and sohour adventure. Since I slept through most all of the following day, I roused myself just in time to meet one of our CASA cultural advisers (and former student) Andrew, for a walk to the little-known Sidi Zein el Abdin mosque in Sayyida Zeinab. Sayyida Zeinab is what is known as a shaaby neighborhood, which technically means "popular" but actually means poor. The mosque, which we approached just before sunset, was raised above a picturesque but aging cemetery, and was surrounded by stone walkways for strolling about and either thinking about God or marveling at the simple beauty of the mosque/tomb. The downside to this visit was that four of us girls attempted to enter the mosque. At first, the man at the door greeted us in English and was quite friendly. Then he asked us where we were from. "Amirika," we responded brightly. His smile turned into a snarl. "Amirika?! AMIRIKA?! No. No. No. Get out. This is Islam. Amirika No. Go away, get out." He waved at the exit. It took us a moment to realize that he was utterly serious, partly because this has never happened to me before in Egypt. And every Egyptian we told was shocked that we'd had such an experience, although Andrew says it happens to him not infrequently in shaaby areas. Although I'm used to hearing angry attitudes about America expressed, people often go to great pains to explain that despite all that they really like Americans as people. Not this one. I found myself wanting to engage the hater in conversation, explain to him that the four innocent-looking girls (looking a little silly in hijab) were there to respect Islam, etc. etc., but thought better. Nevertheless, it left me slightly shaken up as I contemplated it on the way to a nearby restaurant for iftar. We feasted at the simple plastic tables thrown up in the street -- on chicken, kofta, rice, and mahshy.
After a walk through Sayyida Zeinab's packed and colorful streets, past the best selection of fawanees (plural of fanous) I've yet seen in Cairo and a camel butcher with his live wares tethered to posts in the street, we stopped in the courtyard of Sayyida Zeinab mosque itself. It was the hour of 'asha, the last of the day's five prayers. People were milling around the courtyard when the call to prayer sounded and men began rolling out mats to catch the overflow from the mosque itself, whose minaret, entrances, and "Allah" on the facade were illuminated with green neon light. We migrated across the street then to a hole-in-the-wall called Rahmany's, which sells exclusively a special kind of dessert called miziz. I can't exactly tell you what that is, except that it includes milk, rice, sugar, and a "secret ingredient", comes in either sour or sweet (I had sour, good choice), and is topped with cinnamon. The ingredients make it sound like every other Egyptian dessert, so it must be the secret ingredient that gives it an odd kind of glow and that sour tang.
The next day, Sunday, I ventured for the first time to the neighborhood of Shubra, on the east bank of the Nile, north of Downtown. I spent a quiet afternoon at my friend Nada's apartment with her and another Egyptian friend, Evline. Since they are Protestant and therefore not fasting, we had a nice lunch. We also discussed Hillary's recent meetings here with President Morsi and the SCAF. Based on information gathered from this conversation and other conversations with Christians, the widespread belief is that the U.S. is throwing support behind the Ikhwan and therefore has no moral compass whatsoever. And they are clearly outraged about this. (One friend posted a photoshopped picture on Facebook of Hillary sitting in Morsi's lap.) Conspiracy theories abound. My friend explained that her father, for instance, thinks the US is hoping for Islamist takeovers throughout the Middle East so that it will then have reason to invade said countries. Most takes on the issue are less spectacular, but I haven't met a single person (even those who describe themselves as pro-American) who thinks the US has anything but nefarious intentions regarding Egypt. Shubra was unusually quiet (given that it is one of the overcrowded areas of Cairo -- someone once told me, hyperbolically or not, that 75% of the city's population lives there) because there is a large Christian population, so the Christian shops close on Sundays, while many Muslim shops close in the afternoon during Ramadan. So when Nada offered me the chance to ride to the metro on the back of her brother's motorcycle, how could I refuse? No one get nervous here -- I was a pro! We sailed through the sleepy streets without a hitch, past the lovely but aging buildings perhaps dating from the period when Mohammed Ali built a palace in the area. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't a thrill!
From Shubra I met up with Kevin and we taxied out to one of the lovely gated compounds in the suburbs, called Arabella. We had been invited to an iftar at the villa of our college friend Alya's aunt. When we arrived at the gates, we realized we didn't know the aunt's name and so were stuck for about half an hour with the gatekeepers, most of whom were from upper Egypt and a lot of fun. They brought us stools and sweet juice, even though they hadn't broken their fast yet, and we made smalltalk. Finally we made it to the sprawling villa we intended, and took a brief stroll around the pool and gardens before the azan sounded and it was time to eat. Several large tables were set out on the back balcony, overlooking the infinity pool, and we broke our "fast" with qamr al-din (a special Ramadan apricot drink) as the sun slipped behind the palm trees. Like our friend, who is half British and half Egyptian but grew up in the U.S., pretty much everyone in the family lived part-time or had lived at some point in the U.S. or Canada. The dinner was a mix of Egyptian staples like lisan aasfour noodle soup, ful and (what I think was) lamb, served by a pair of men in crisp black tuxedos -- and familiar staples like ravioli and a real, leafy green salad... something I have not yet seen with anything but shreds of iceberg lettuce since I arrived. When the Ahly vs. Zamalek soccer game started, everyone gathered around. I haven't chosen sides yet, but this is becoming a problem here as people take team allegiance very seriously. We ended the evening back on the deck sipping tea and nibbling dried fruit.
My other family iftar of the week came on Tuesday, when I returned to the house of Ali, the friend of my professor Tarek from Princeton. We sailed out to Shorouk in Ali's car just before sunset along with Kevin and Hannah, another Princetonian currently in Cairo. Ali's wife, Taghrid, had again prepared us an eyepopping feast. The centerpiece this time was an entire sheep, curled up on a large platter. Although the meat was succulent, there was no way seven people could finish, especially given the ten or more other dishes alongside the sheep. Personally, I'm always a fan of the sambousek, fried pastry shells stuffed with beef or cheese. After the meal, we headed off for a postprandial walk at the family's social club, the Shorouk branch of the Heliopolis Club. Memberships in these clubs are hereditary, so upper middle class and wealthy families have belonged to their chosen club for generations -- and they are the main place many such families socialize, since they are oases of green space, swimming pools, gyms, sitting areas, and sports fields in the middle of the cacophonous city or barren desert. (Of course, if your money is new, it costs about $50,000 as a down payment, plus yearly fees, to join any of the clubs.) Taghrid, who worked as a lawyer before she married and now has two young sons, showed us around the soccer fields, track, croquet lawn, tennis courts, and pools (with olympic diving boards) before we went inside and sunk into deep leather sofas in the club's pristine interior.
On Wednesday, the night before the last day of classes, Miriam, Robin, Scott, and I ventured out to a screening of a new (English-language) film called The Noise of Cairo. It was held in a room of someone's apartment (whose? I'm not sure) downtown, which was outfitted with a projector and about 30 chairs. The crowd was about half foreign and half Egyptian, but 100% hip (except maybe us). Word on the street is that if I go to enough of these events, I will see the same 20 ultra-hip people in skinny jeans and plastic frames every time. The movie was about the art scene in Cairo in the aftermath of the revolution, and profiled people like a dance choreographer who hadn't performed anything in Egypt in 10 years, a couple high-end artists working out of galleries in Zamalek, the popular singer Ramy Essam, the graffiti artist Keizer, and a few others. We thought it was a bit limited by being a foreign production and in English, as the vast majority of the content was focused on a small, elite sliver of society (whereas there have been quite a few public art projects as well), but nevertheless quite interesting because it was apparent that many high-end artists were really carefully censored under the Mubarak regime.
Then, on Thursday, to celebrate the end of our first CASA semester, the program splurged on an iftar for all of us, and our professors and language partners. They held it at the Hussein Hotel, right in the heart of Islamic Cairo, at the entrance to Khan el Khalili. When we arrived just before sundown, we passed by swarms of hungry people seated at long tables outside the restaurants next to El Hussein mosque, poised to gobble down the salads tantalizingly distributed in advance of the azan. We ourselves sat on the rooftop of the hotel. After a lovely traditional (but thankfully not stressfully excessive) chicken dinner, we migrated to ElMalki, a branch of the dessert chain, for roz bi-laban. Thus began my second Ramadan all-nighter. The next stop on this adventure was a hole-in-the-wall arts center downtown called Mastaba, which had advertised Egyptian folk music. It exceeded our wildest expectations: the folk music, as a smiley old man with an impeccable mustache announced to the fifteen of us or so gathered around on stools, was that imported north into Egypt from present-day Sudan in the time of Mohammed Ali. This meant that the instruments were things like a xylophone with a bunch of gourds dangling from it, a noisemaking skirt made of sheep's teeth, and something Robin called "the one with lots of necklaces" -- a triangular harp of sorts with a lot of -- yes -- beaded necklaces attached to it. Although some of the tunes were familiar to me from contemporary Egyptian music, and the words in Arabic, the rousing rhythms were undeniably African, punctuated with bongo drums. It turned out to be an interactive concert, and so basically the entire audience (including us) was invited up to dance with the members of the band. My favorite band member was either the one woman, a friendly older matron in a sparkly black robe and black hairnet who sometimes sang with a white sheet over her face (not sure of the symbolism of that). After the concert, we saw her sitting by herself at a dingy coffeeshop across the street puffing away at her shisha. Or maybe my favorite was this guy, who appeared in the finale in THIS unexpected costume:
After the concert, we drifted through downtown, which was teeming by 11pm, drank hibiscus juice at a shaaby cafe, and then migrated to our final destination, Korba. Korba is the historic zone at the heart of Heliopolis, the suburb founded in 1905 by Belgian entrepreneur Baron Empain. Baghdad St. is lined with fantasy oriental buildings with lovely arcaded sidewalks. The white stone facades shone in the darkness, and the streets were packed with mostly young men enjoying a coffee and shisha in the wee hours of the morning. Around 2, we got a table outside a place called Arabiata and feasted on ful, omelets, baba ghanoush, warm pitas, and fried cheese. We were lingering outside a juice place when the azan sounded fagr and the crowds evaporated from the streets in the blink of an eye.
P.S. Ramadan TV series mean Ramadan commercials - check out this new ad for the cell provider Mobinil. You can spot Adam in the movie theater scene near the end!
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