Egyptian friends have often told me: "Our Friday morning is your Sunday morning." Indeed there is a quiet laziness to Friday mornings here that is more like the idea of Sundays in America than the real thing. The streets are empty, the people are asleep, the shops are closed, and at least in my mind it is possible to hear birds chirping. The Friday prayer, which breaks the silence at noon via speakers positioned to reach every corner of the neighborhood, nevertheless has an oddly lulling quality. The voice of the imam, though loud and rhythmically aggressive, is muffled so that it is hard to make out anything more than a phrase here or there.
We arrived as a conspicuous group of over a dozen, made more so by one guy narrating our journey in a Godfather voice. In order to reach the street where the wedding was to be held, we passed for quite some time through a labyrinthine souk -- not the Khan El Khalili kind, but the practical sort that sells kitchen implements and Mickey Mouse nightgowns and whirring children's toys. If we stopped to ask directions, we didn't need to say anything. The foreign bride? Straight ahead!
Because transportation beyond the end of the metro is exclusively by tuk-tuk, we passed a number of those parked alongside the dirt streets. It was around 10pm when we finally reached glowing lights and the entrance to a a tent, all strung up between a few apartment buildings of 3 stories or so. Most appeared to be single (extended) family homes: Sofia and her husband, fiance, will now live in one such house in an apartment about his parents'. In Egypt, the bride moves to her husband's apartment, which he must ready before the wedding -- usually having bought it quite a while before, as owning an apartment is usually a prerequisite to a girl agreeing to an engagement. "The apartment" thus takes on all kinds of broader meaning, most importantly the husband's ability to provide for his wife.
The two perpendicular alleys in which the wedding took place were covered over in old Oriental carpets. Bright red and yellow fabric was draped from the apartments to create a tent feeling inside, criss-crossed by strings of lights, and round tables were set up -- primarily, it seemed, to facilitate the passing out of copious amounts of green apple Fanta. The bride and the groom hadn't arrived yet, and in fact friends of the groom were still at work constructing the platform where the couple would sit on a white couch to greet guests. We watched as they hammered and erected a beach scene backdrop, subsequently covered in white gauze.
At last the bride and groom appeared on the TV screen rigged up in front of us, and everyone rushed toward the entrance of the tent to welcome the couple. Cheb Khaled's blockbuster hit C'est La Vie was blasting as they made their way up our makeshift aisle, the bride's father (the only one in a suit - weddings are casual in these parts) danced behind them. Sofia, my friend, was wearing a white lace dress with long sleeves and a turtleneck, as well as a sort of cap that Muslim women wear under their veil -- a kind of wedding hijab. She recently converted to Islam and her new husband is a political activist who trained at Al Azhar and hopes to be a reformist preacher. Look at her makeup! said an Egyptian woman to me, She is masreya masreya now! (100% Egyptian).
For a short time, we heard the sound of fake guns going off, and worried in passing if our other friends' ominous warnings about security had been warranted. But it was just to add to the festive mood, like the fireworks. As for the rampant hashish we'd been cautioned about, I saw only a few young guys smoking outside the tent when I slipped out to find a bathroom. A middle-aged lady standing on her stoop nearby invited me in to use hers. It was a hole in the ground with a spigot and wooden box. I couldn't have cared less given the circumstances, but she seated me down in a white plastic deck chair in the linoleum-tiled hall and apologized: Sorry it's not like your nice bathrooms downtown!! she told me, in the same breath asking me to stay for tea. Manawwareen, manawwareen! she kept saying, a gracious way of saying "welcome" that literally means - You are lighting up the place.
Back in the street, the dancing was picking up, with a mob of mostly teenage girls in one circle and a mob of young guys in another. Once I was in, there was no going back. The girls grabbed my hands and gestured to copy their moves. Seeing a foreigner enthusiastically engaged in "shaaby" dancing, as it's called (see previous: "Haty Bosa ya Bet" video) was hilarious to the girls, and one of them even asked me to dance with her husband. Another woman foisted her baby off to me (see below). Another was waving something in the air as she danced, then handed it to me. I followed suit, only to realize that it was a knife. We looked behind us to see the boys, some shirtless and drenched in sweat, crowdsurfing across a sea of strangers.
When I tried reluctantly to leave for the metro, the girls kept grabbing me and pulling me back in to dance. At last we all blew kisses goodbye and I started to make my way toward the exit. Partway there, I encountered a little boy, maybe 7 years old, who challenged me wordlessly to a dance-off. Drugged into shaaby wedding nirvana by the loud music and a couple hours of spinning, I accepted. To this day, I am not sure who won, but the photographic evidence is here:
What remained between me and the door was a sea of rowdy youth. Asking to get through would be fruitless, so I just began to dance my way through the crowd. The seas parted and the youth clapped as I threw my hands up and made a dramatic exit.
This Friday, as I lay in bed half-listening to the sermon, I thought back to the night before. Certainly it had been one of the most memorable experiences of my time in Cairo. I had spent quite some time that evening trying to figure out just what to wear: a tunic with loose pants? a long-sleeved shirt under a dress over pants with a scarf? The latter won out, but in truth we had no idea what to expect. I've written about weddings before, but this one was different. For one, it was the wedding of one of our own: a CASAwiyya. Second, it was to be held in Shobra El-Kheima, the very last stop on the Cairo metro line. In truth, Shobra El Kheima is in a different governorate to the north, and is considered by most in Cairo or Giza proper (many of whom, I found, had never even been there) to be the end of the earth. What will you wear? people asked us anxiously, worried we would scandalize the locals with short sleeves or skin. Just mentioning that I would attend the wedding had a huge shock factor.
In any case, Sofia, the bride, sent out an e-mail a few days beforehand warning us that her fiance's brothers had printed off hundreds of flyers stamped with the Ultras Ahlawy and Ultras White Knight logos. But thankfully: Molotovs are not allowed, wrote her fiance, Mohamed, on the Facebook event.
We arrived as a conspicuous group of over a dozen, made more so by one guy narrating our journey in a Godfather voice. In order to reach the street where the wedding was to be held, we passed for quite some time through a labyrinthine souk -- not the Khan El Khalili kind, but the practical sort that sells kitchen implements and Mickey Mouse nightgowns and whirring children's toys. If we stopped to ask directions, we didn't need to say anything. The foreign bride? Straight ahead!
Because transportation beyond the end of the metro is exclusively by tuk-tuk, we passed a number of those parked alongside the dirt streets. It was around 10pm when we finally reached glowing lights and the entrance to a a tent, all strung up between a few apartment buildings of 3 stories or so. Most appeared to be single (extended) family homes: Sofia and her husband, fiance, will now live in one such house in an apartment about his parents'. In Egypt, the bride moves to her husband's apartment, which he must ready before the wedding -- usually having bought it quite a while before, as owning an apartment is usually a prerequisite to a girl agreeing to an engagement. "The apartment" thus takes on all kinds of broader meaning, most importantly the husband's ability to provide for his wife.
The two perpendicular alleys in which the wedding took place were covered over in old Oriental carpets. Bright red and yellow fabric was draped from the apartments to create a tent feeling inside, criss-crossed by strings of lights, and round tables were set up -- primarily, it seemed, to facilitate the passing out of copious amounts of green apple Fanta. The bride and the groom hadn't arrived yet, and in fact friends of the groom were still at work constructing the platform where the couple would sit on a white couch to greet guests. We watched as they hammered and erected a beach scene backdrop, subsequently covered in white gauze.
At last the bride and groom appeared on the TV screen rigged up in front of us, and everyone rushed toward the entrance of the tent to welcome the couple. Cheb Khaled's blockbuster hit C'est La Vie was blasting as they made their way up our makeshift aisle, the bride's father (the only one in a suit - weddings are casual in these parts) danced behind them. Sofia, my friend, was wearing a white lace dress with long sleeves and a turtleneck, as well as a sort of cap that Muslim women wear under their veil -- a kind of wedding hijab. She recently converted to Islam and her new husband is a political activist who trained at Al Azhar and hopes to be a reformist preacher. Look at her makeup! said an Egyptian woman to me, She is masreya masreya now! (100% Egyptian).
For a short time, we heard the sound of fake guns going off, and worried in passing if our other friends' ominous warnings about security had been warranted. But it was just to add to the festive mood, like the fireworks. As for the rampant hashish we'd been cautioned about, I saw only a few young guys smoking outside the tent when I slipped out to find a bathroom. A middle-aged lady standing on her stoop nearby invited me in to use hers. It was a hole in the ground with a spigot and wooden box. I couldn't have cared less given the circumstances, but she seated me down in a white plastic deck chair in the linoleum-tiled hall and apologized: Sorry it's not like your nice bathrooms downtown!! she told me, in the same breath asking me to stay for tea. Manawwareen, manawwareen! she kept saying, a gracious way of saying "welcome" that literally means - You are lighting up the place.
Back in the street, the dancing was picking up, with a mob of mostly teenage girls in one circle and a mob of young guys in another. Once I was in, there was no going back. The girls grabbed my hands and gestured to copy their moves. Seeing a foreigner enthusiastically engaged in "shaaby" dancing, as it's called (see previous: "Haty Bosa ya Bet" video) was hilarious to the girls, and one of them even asked me to dance with her husband. Another woman foisted her baby off to me (see below). Another was waving something in the air as she danced, then handed it to me. I followed suit, only to realize that it was a knife. We looked behind us to see the boys, some shirtless and drenched in sweat, crowdsurfing across a sea of strangers.
When I tried reluctantly to leave for the metro, the girls kept grabbing me and pulling me back in to dance. At last we all blew kisses goodbye and I started to make my way toward the exit. Partway there, I encountered a little boy, maybe 7 years old, who challenged me wordlessly to a dance-off. Drugged into shaaby wedding nirvana by the loud music and a couple hours of spinning, I accepted. To this day, I am not sure who won, but the photographic evidence is here:
What remained between me and the door was a sea of rowdy youth. Asking to get through would be fruitless, so I just began to dance my way through the crowd. The seas parted and the youth clapped as I threw my hands up and made a dramatic exit.
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