Part 1
Well, Ramadan has finally arrived. I say finally because for the past few days Cairo has been a mess. As my friend from Wes, Nishita, put it, it’s the “storm before the calm.” Every shelf of every supermarket has been thoroughly scavenged; one would think there is some kind of looming natural disaster about to befall Cairo. And I’m beginning to think they all know something I don’t.
Our first mistake was placing our order from Drinkie’s (Egypts largest purveyor of spirits, bottled exclusively by al-Ahram bottling company, whose working motto is “at least its not rubbing alcohol”) at around 10:00pm last night. We ordered 2 cases of large cans of Heineken, 2 bottles of “Cubana” rum, one bottle of “London” gin, and one bottle of “dark” whiskey from Drinkie’s call center (dial 19330 from any Egyptian telephone) for a grand total of LE.516. Despite promising on numerous occasion that our order was just minutes away, it appears that Drinkie’s ran out of alcohol before closing its doors for the month. Thankfully, Mena has promised to take me on a date to the duty free store to buy FOREIGN LIQUOR when she returns from the wedding in Boston. This is a trip we have actually already attempted once only to learn too late, much too late, that one only has 48 hours in the country before the full roughly LE.6000/bottle (yes that is more than a thousand dollars) tax is tacked on. Despite the four bottle per person per trip limit on alcohol, I’m confident that we will find a sufficient supply to slake our thirst worked up over this month of fasting.
Which brings me to my next point: I am indeed planning to fast for the month, though I may be forced to drink some water on the first day or so. A surprising number of my friends also plan to follow the injunction against anything passing the lips between 4:00am and Iftar (breakfast) at sunset. Tonight after a long conversation with my Egyptian family, including a discussion of the highly controversial topic of just who did build the pyramids (by the way, the answer is definitely not the Jews), I had my first Shuhur (meal before the 4:00am call to prayer) consisting of a sandwich of bitingani (marinated eggplant) and tahina and Erik had three tamiya (falafel).
To celebrate my first day of Ramadan I am also going shopping for a Quran for my Quranic Studies course. While finding a Quran in a Muslim country should seemingly be easy, it has actually proved to be a bit of a challenge. The AUC bookstore sold its only copy of the text containing both the Arabic and the English so my options seem to be the large English-language book store on 26th of July st. or else the book market at Soor al-Azbekaya.
Part 2
The first day of Ramadan has come and gone, and as quickly as Metro’s shelves were emptied, they were restocked. I guess this isn’t their first time.
As promised I fasted today, having only a glass of water upon waking up. Usually I have not been particularly hungry until the mid-afternoon here, however the thought of being unable to eat until just after 6:00pm seemed to make my stomach especially grumbly today. I felt pretty good about things until about 5:00pm when on my way back from an unsuccessful trip in search of Yousouf Ali’s translation of the Quran I thought I would have to give in. The thing that was most tempting was walking down the streets and seeing the long communal tables set up for Iftar. But I stuck it out and broke fast with a nice cold orange Marinda and a piece of bread. We had our real Iftar at a Lebanese restaurant in Garden City (The area of Corniche el-Nile abutting the Four Seasons) called Tabouleh.
The most interesting thing about the first day of Ramadan was not my own experience with fasting but rather the way in which the city and its inhabitants have magically changed. The streets of Cairo were stunningly quiet. Normally the traffic is unbearable, which is understandable seeing as a city with an infrastructure designed for 3 million people has 6 million cars. However today, my usual nightmarish midday trip from Zamalek to the American University in Tahrir Square was downright pleasant.
Also shocking was seeing business closed. They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but Cairo is the city that never closes. Stores open at around noon and stay open at least until midnight and many restaurants and‘ahua (cafés), and most supermarkets stay open 24 hours. The other thing about stores here is you can have anything delivered; pretty much if a store exists (anywhere in Cairo) it will deliver to your door. But yesterday, many stores were not open until after Iftar, if they opened at all, and those that opened early mostly closed their doors just before the 4:00pm call to prayer.
Now that I’ve had my Suhur and heard the call to prayer echoing across Cairo, its time for me to go to sleep. But I promise more (hopefully shorter) posts soon insha’allah.
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