You put down your espresso macchiato with a sip left in the cup ala “turkish” coffee.
Category: The Ordinary
Categories
“Fresh” Air
I was finally able to open the windows here in Cairo for the first time in several weeks.
They have remained firmly shut until now for a couple of reasons:
- The weather has been unseasonably warm. It has been in the mid- to high- 90Fs lately. That is warm for Cairo for this time of year.
- THE BLACK CLOUD (stories here and here). A foul blend of burning smoke from rice fields, stench from burning garbage, dust from the desert and pollution from some 1.6 million cars, most of which burn leaded gas.
These combine to make opening the windows this time of year a bad idea. In addition to the potential health ramifications, the air just smells burnt and nasty.
But it is only around 75F here today, there is a cooling NW breeze blowing, the skies are blue with wispy white clouds.
A good air day. For Cairo.
(which roughly means “Happy Ramadan”)
As has been written by any number of bloggers and others, Ramadan can be a stressful time. 12 hours or so of no food, no water, no caffeine, no sex, no nicotine (all those things that make like worth living) can make one irritable.
There is a great deal of lamenting in the local press about how “Ramadan just isn’t the same as when I was a child….”
People are more materialistic. They are too stressed about keeping up with the Joneses (El Din’s?) in regards to their Iftar spread.
People were kinder to people on the street
People knew what the meaning of Ramadan REALLY was…
The traffic is SO much worse these days
All in all, it sounds a lot like the grumblings one can hear and read in the Western press about how people have “lost the meaning of Christmas” in all the commercialism.
Apparently everything was skittles and ice cream in the old days.
Anyway, some of the taxi drivers we encounter are Coptic. Some of them are rather sarcastic about Ramadan. They will point to shouting matches and fights on the streets, smirk, say “Ramadan Kareem” and shake their heads.
And fights on the street are common towards the end of the day. Most fights in Egypt in general are little more than slap-fights with a bunch of shoving. Strangers will rush in to stop a fight before it gets serious. I am not sure if that is function of the over-crowding here, or some other aspect of the culture.
What it means is that one can be fairly confident that if one were to get into a scuffle, one would only get to throw (or receive) one punch. One could extrapolate that to mean that is one of the reasons that scuffles happen so frequently, because people know the chances of real physical harm is minimal. It allows a blow off of steam in a (mostly) harmless fashion.
Don’t get me wrong, you don’t see fights “all the time” here. But I have seen more fights broken up on the streets here then I have in any period of my life, with the possible exception of junior high school 🙂
People were more cranky than usual the other day. On a taxi ride from campus to Zamalek (about 10 minutes drive, about a 40minute walk) I saw 3 separate fights.
The first involved 2 taxi drivers. I was moving past this one, so I did not see it in detail.
The 2nd involved drivers of private vehicles: both cars stopped and blocked traffic while they shouted and pushed at each other for a while.
Then the drivers got back in their respective cars, continuing to jabber at each other. Then they got BACK out of their cars for more nose-to-nose yelling. At which point the police came over and sent them on their way, mostly because they were completely blocking traffic.
The 3rd fight was in among a crowd outside the local post office.
It was this 3rd fight that prompted my Coptic taxi driver to wryly wish them a “Ramadan Kareem”
It is Ramadan. I only mention this because it means that traffic is much worse than normal during certain times of the day.
During one such busy time I was sitting in a taxi on a side street. We sat there for some time. While sitting there, I saw a scene that reminded me of growing up. What follows also greatly reminded me of my childhood.
I see 2 boys fighting. I saw the entire fight develop from start to finish. More on that later.
My taxi driver looks over to the sidewalk and sees these 2 boys fighting.
One short, scrawny looking kid with glasses. Maybe 6 or 7 years old. Let us call him Mido.
One taller, beefy kid. Maybe 9 or 10 years old. Let us call him Achmed.
They are in that stage of the fight, familiar to all boys as “the hold”. Neither is really swinging at the other or inflicting any damage. They are just kind of hanging on to each other and pushing.
The taxi driver yells at them to stop. They ignore him. He looks around and sees a woman of indeterminate age and of large proportions, wearing a headscarf and an abaya similar to this one. She, and women like her, are an ubiquitous sight on the streets of Cairo. He says something to her and points at the boys.
She reacts in almost comic book fashion: The eyes go wide, the mouth opens and then closes in a look of grim determination. She storms over to the other side of the street and starts berating the boys.
Neither one lets go of the other. She forces them apart and then proceeds [I am guessing here based on the scene and the body language and gestures of everyone involved] to yell at the larger boy,Achmed for picking on the little kid, Mido. She is yelling at him and smacking him on the back of the neck. [Here, hitting someone on the back of the neck is a humiliating gesture. One used to punish, berate or otherwise display dominance. It is not as insulting as showing someone the bottom of your shoe or hitting them with the shoe, but it is up there]. She says waves the the little kid, Mido, off.
The boys disperse, the larger boy being chased by a flurry of invective from the woman.
Mission accomplished, she walks back to the other side of the street and exchanges some pleasantries with the taxi driver. They share a laugh and the contentment of “having done the right thing.”
This reminded me of my childhood in that it was very common for strangers to question, and correct, the behavior of children that they did not know or knew only as being from the neighborhood. Many people would have no problem with breaking up a fight between 2 kids and demanding to be brought to the parents so that the parents could be informed of “these shenanigans.”
It happened to me and my friends more times than I could count.
I wonder if the same thing is still done in the US? Someone I doubt it.
The other part of this story that reminded me of my childhood was this:
I saw the entire fight. Because of the placement of vehicles and sight lines, the taxi driver could not.
The little kid, Mido, started it. Or at least started the aggression. I am sure there was some provoking event/word or score to settle, real or imagined.
But Mido ran up behind the big kid, Achmed, and started punching him in the back of the head and the back. Achmed turned around and tried to grab hold of Mido to stop the blows. Mido was then able to squirm free and punch Achmed in the face. Achmed was then able to pin Mido’s arms to stop the onslaught. He would hold him and say something to him and then let him go.
Mido would stand there and glare at Achmed. Achmed would then turn around and start to walk away. He would get about 2 steps, and Mido would renew the attack.
This repeated itself 2 more times before the taxi driver notices. By then Achmed had pinned Mido’s arms again and was, it appeared, reluctant to let him go, again.
But when “justice” was served, Achmed must have felt that he got treated unfairly. And no one can cry “that’s not fair!” like a child.
I wonder if he thought to himself “Where was that crazy old woman when Mido was punching me in the back of the head? I shouldda just smacked the crap out of Mido. I wouldda been out of there before anybody noticed.”
Ed donya kiddah. [Which is, roughly speaking, the Egyptian phrase for “C’est la vie”]
Categories
Daahts
The Good Doctor and I went over to a friends house to play darts the other evening.
We were “subs” for some of the regulars who could not make it.
There will be another post about the evening in general. This post is about the accents.
There were a few people there with Boston accents. One was mild, one was somewhat middle of the road. And one mom’s accent was particularly pronounced.
Note: The Good Doctor and I are from the “boston area” originally. I grew up there, of parents that grew up there. My accent used to be “wicked strong”. I worked on taming it and, I like to think, that I did a pretty good job of it. [hush, my dear.]
The Good Doctor was already starting to speak when she moved to the area, and her family had none of that accent. She picked up some of it, and was able to discard it much more easily when she moved away.
Anyway, it was startling to me to hear it in the context of a Cairo suburban home. It produced a sort of “worlds colliding” vertigo for a few minutes.
After I recovered, I asked her what part of Boston she was from, and sure enough, the answer was Dorchester. “Doahchestah”.
To hear such a pronounced accent, here, in the middle of Cairo, was entertaining.
My accent came back “wicked fast” and I had to work “hahd” to tame it again.
One of the other folks there, who is friends with the woman with the strong accent, says that she often has to translate for her to other Americans.
She (the woman with the Boston accent) told an amusing story of having to go to a conference at her sons school (an American school here in Cairo, taught by Americans).
The teacher was concerned that her son had a speach impediment and needed speach therapy. The teacher was from the MidWest US and had, apparently, never actually heard a full-blown Boston accent before.
When the mom opened her mouth and spoke with the teacher, the teacher was in a mild state of shock and unable to speak for a few minutes.
After further conversation, it became clear that, while the child may have some interesting speach pathology, there isn’t really a need [as perceived by mom] for therapy.
It did not occur to me at the time to ask the mom to speak some Arabic. That might have been interesting.
Categories
An ordinary day
So today, I worked from the apartment as usual.
Then I hoofed over to Mohandaseen for a talk at the Egyptian Exploration Society held at the British Council entitled Old Kingdom Settlement at Giza; Recent Excavation of the Giza Plateau Mapping Project.
What caught my eye about it was the presenter’s name was Ana Tavares.
It was one of the better organized and more interesting (to a layman) talks I have been to since we have been here. (We usually attend 2 or 3 a month. We try for more, but.. There are so many every week. A sample listing. )
Anyway, the talk was about the worker village under excavation and their finding. Truly fascinating stuff.
After the lecture I walked about 5 minutes to the Cairo Jazz Club. Had a pizza and listened to a 4 piece classical and latin jazz band. They were one of those groups that really seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was a lot of fun.
Then headed home.
But we needed milk for coffee for tomorrow morning and we had a bunch of clothes at the makwagi [“ironing man”. The old school makwagi uses a foot iron heated over hot coals. Our modern makwagi uses a plain old electric iron]
But it was after midnight. Well, malesh! [no problem]
Walk up the Corniche along the Nile, stop at the “supermarket” (open 24 hours) for a kilo of milk.
Then stop at the makwagi. He was still there pressing clothes (this is a VERY late night culture). Paid him the equivalent of US$3.85 and carried home two arm loads of freshly pressed linen clothes. [he apologized because his delivery boy had already gone home]
Just an ordinary day in Cairo.