Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Cairo-Food-Aug. 1 2002
My day-to-day life is not so different from life in any other major city except for the following things:
* I pass tens of stray cats and dogs a day -- many of them bathing in sewage overflow.
* I am the object of most people’s stares and attention because I am so different from them.
* I literally take my life into my own hands every day as I climb into a taxi that has no seat belt, no air conditioning, often no door handle nor window handle and venture into congested streets in a city that has no traffic rules, with a driver who speaks no English.
Yet these things, as do all things, become normal after a while and we all adjust.
My mother wants to know what I’m eating. As part of the deal of moving to Cairo in the first place, my husband and I agreed that he would cook all the meals since he is now a student and I am the breadwinner. This is a good thing. Otherwise, we’d be eating cans of peas and bread every day.
Davin is doing yummy things with produce, which is plentiful and inexpensive. Our favorite dinner so far is simple: tomato, cucumber, onion and tuna salad. We eat this twice a week. Another good one is tamarind chicken. You can get a 2-liter bottle of tamarind juice at the souk (an outside marketplace where you buy the best fruits and vegetables...and live chickens and rabbits) for 2 pounds (less than 50 cents). You can drink the juice outright but it is wonderful as a marinade for chicken or lamb. We also eat frozen veggies or some other kinds of beans. Breakfast? Boring corn flakes and coffee.
My lunches are little more authentic Egyptian. First of all, every single restaurant in Cairo delivers. Even Hardees and McDonalds. And get this: for the 1.2% percent of the population that goes online, you can order from McDonalds online and they will bring it to you. But alas, I have been staying away from the fast food -- at least American-style fast food. I have been rotating between three yummy types of food. One is a fuul sandwich. This is basically a bean burrito. It is beans in pita bread. One fuul sandwich is 75 piasters. That is less than 1 pound, which is about a quarter. And one sandwich will do you. The next is called tamiyya. This is cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and falafel in a pita. Again, it costs 75 piasters. If I am really hungry, I go for kosherie. This is like spaghetti. It is sundried tomatoes, garlic, lentils and onions on top of rice and pasta. This costs 1 pound and a half -- so cheap. Of course there are regular lunches available like burgers or sandwiches, but these tend to cost more like 6 to 14 pounds. There is no such thing as a salad bar. We had a coupon for a nice restaurant, which we used last week, and they did have lots of American-style salads on the menu. So I think we can find that stuff but it is only in restaurants and there you are talking about spending 50 pounds (about 11 dollars).
Enough about food. I am entertaining myself by playing soccer once a week, watching the BBC and reading. We work out inside the apartment with some resistance bands we bought in the states. We haven’t seen a movie yet. Right now, there are only four American films playing here: Men in Black, Ice Age, Panic Room and Spiderman, I think. So, our movie-going days will have to remain on hiatus. Before they play American movies here, they are of course censored, all sex scenes are removed and then the movie gets Arabic subtitles. I think there is a booming black market here for DVDs (which the Egyptian government has declared illegal) and some music CDs that the government would not allow. We spend a lot of time with our cats. They are one of our best reminders of home.
The people in general are conservative. They are definitely religious people. Many of them walk around literally reading the Koran aloud. They have little tiny books that contain Koranic verses that people sell outside the subway stations. It is not abnormal to see people mouthing verses as they stroll along down streets. The men and women at work pray a couple times a day and of course no matter where you live, you will hear the calls to prayer over loudspeakers.
But there are also many, many up-and-coming Egyptians who look just like Westerners and who are running businesses and fighting for rights in the private sector. And as conservative as the middle and lower class is here, it will never, never be like Saudi Arabia. Cairennes laugh and roll their eyes when they think of how horrible it must be there. They are definitely opinionated about the Palestinian issue. There is no debate on the subject. They want the Israelis out. However, I am constantly amazed at how little you hear about the whole situation. Egyptians don’t seem to care as much about the situation as I expected them to. Whether for good or bad, they are much more concerned with their own country's problems and their own lives.
Apparently Cairo has a happening nightlife. We wouldn’t know since we are a boring, old married couple. But even a jaunt out for milk one night at 10:30 p.m. showed a whole new side of the city. Cairennes are nocturnal beings. Partly due to the heat and partly as a result of late afternoon naps, people stay up very late here. And most stores accommodate this lifestyle, so that almost every place is open past midnight.
One favorite Egyptian pastime is smoking shisha. That sounds a lot more wicked than it really is. A Shisha pipe works like a marijuana bong, but the content is just tobacco mixed with flavored molasses. They smell wonderfully sweet and the shisha pipe itself is downright exotic looking. Some of them are pieces of art.
1. Types of animals I see everyday: Goats, sheep, cats, dogs, chickens, rabbits, horses, donkeys.
2. Best place for an insider’s view of Cairo -- a shisha bar. Here you can hear discussions of what went wrong in the Arab world, the latest Slim Shady song or how cheap a ticket to Jordan is these days.
3. Number of times a Cairenne honks his horn in 30 minutes: 15-18.
4. Number of times it has been over 100 degrees F but been underreported by the government: At least 5 days. (Apparently, many government buildings are not air conditioned and there’s a rule that once it hits a certain temperature, employees cannot work. So, the running joke is that it is never hotter than 43 (Celsius) in Cairo because the govn’t owns the weather service. Even though it feels more like 50.)
5. One in five Arabs live on less than $2 a day.
6. For the past 1,000 years, Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year.
7. One in every two Arab women can neither read nor write.
8. How to say "You are ripping me off!" -- Inta bitithak alayya!
* I pass tens of stray cats and dogs a day -- many of them bathing in sewage overflow.
* I am the object of most people’s stares and attention because I am so different from them.
* I literally take my life into my own hands every day as I climb into a taxi that has no seat belt, no air conditioning, often no door handle nor window handle and venture into congested streets in a city that has no traffic rules, with a driver who speaks no English.
Yet these things, as do all things, become normal after a while and we all adjust.
My mother wants to know what I’m eating. As part of the deal of moving to Cairo in the first place, my husband and I agreed that he would cook all the meals since he is now a student and I am the breadwinner. This is a good thing. Otherwise, we’d be eating cans of peas and bread every day.
Davin is doing yummy things with produce, which is plentiful and inexpensive. Our favorite dinner so far is simple: tomato, cucumber, onion and tuna salad. We eat this twice a week. Another good one is tamarind chicken. You can get a 2-liter bottle of tamarind juice at the souk (an outside marketplace where you buy the best fruits and vegetables...and live chickens and rabbits) for 2 pounds (less than 50 cents). You can drink the juice outright but it is wonderful as a marinade for chicken or lamb. We also eat frozen veggies or some other kinds of beans. Breakfast? Boring corn flakes and coffee.
My lunches are little more authentic Egyptian. First of all, every single restaurant in Cairo delivers. Even Hardees and McDonalds. And get this: for the 1.2% percent of the population that goes online, you can order from McDonalds online and they will bring it to you. But alas, I have been staying away from the fast food -- at least American-style fast food. I have been rotating between three yummy types of food. One is a fuul sandwich. This is basically a bean burrito. It is beans in pita bread. One fuul sandwich is 75 piasters. That is less than 1 pound, which is about a quarter. And one sandwich will do you. The next is called tamiyya. This is cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and falafel in a pita. Again, it costs 75 piasters. If I am really hungry, I go for kosherie. This is like spaghetti. It is sundried tomatoes, garlic, lentils and onions on top of rice and pasta. This costs 1 pound and a half -- so cheap. Of course there are regular lunches available like burgers or sandwiches, but these tend to cost more like 6 to 14 pounds. There is no such thing as a salad bar. We had a coupon for a nice restaurant, which we used last week, and they did have lots of American-style salads on the menu. So I think we can find that stuff but it is only in restaurants and there you are talking about spending 50 pounds (about 11 dollars).
Enough about food. I am entertaining myself by playing soccer once a week, watching the BBC and reading. We work out inside the apartment with some resistance bands we bought in the states. We haven’t seen a movie yet. Right now, there are only four American films playing here: Men in Black, Ice Age, Panic Room and Spiderman, I think. So, our movie-going days will have to remain on hiatus. Before they play American movies here, they are of course censored, all sex scenes are removed and then the movie gets Arabic subtitles. I think there is a booming black market here for DVDs (which the Egyptian government has declared illegal) and some music CDs that the government would not allow. We spend a lot of time with our cats. They are one of our best reminders of home.
The people in general are conservative. They are definitely religious people. Many of them walk around literally reading the Koran aloud. They have little tiny books that contain Koranic verses that people sell outside the subway stations. It is not abnormal to see people mouthing verses as they stroll along down streets. The men and women at work pray a couple times a day and of course no matter where you live, you will hear the calls to prayer over loudspeakers.
But there are also many, many up-and-coming Egyptians who look just like Westerners and who are running businesses and fighting for rights in the private sector. And as conservative as the middle and lower class is here, it will never, never be like Saudi Arabia. Cairennes laugh and roll their eyes when they think of how horrible it must be there. They are definitely opinionated about the Palestinian issue. There is no debate on the subject. They want the Israelis out. However, I am constantly amazed at how little you hear about the whole situation. Egyptians don’t seem to care as much about the situation as I expected them to. Whether for good or bad, they are much more concerned with their own country's problems and their own lives.
Apparently Cairo has a happening nightlife. We wouldn’t know since we are a boring, old married couple. But even a jaunt out for milk one night at 10:30 p.m. showed a whole new side of the city. Cairennes are nocturnal beings. Partly due to the heat and partly as a result of late afternoon naps, people stay up very late here. And most stores accommodate this lifestyle, so that almost every place is open past midnight.
One favorite Egyptian pastime is smoking shisha. That sounds a lot more wicked than it really is. A Shisha pipe works like a marijuana bong, but the content is just tobacco mixed with flavored molasses. They smell wonderfully sweet and the shisha pipe itself is downright exotic looking. Some of them are pieces of art.
1. Types of animals I see everyday: Goats, sheep, cats, dogs, chickens, rabbits, horses, donkeys.
2. Best place for an insider’s view of Cairo -- a shisha bar. Here you can hear discussions of what went wrong in the Arab world, the latest Slim Shady song or how cheap a ticket to Jordan is these days.
3. Number of times a Cairenne honks his horn in 30 minutes: 15-18.
4. Number of times it has been over 100 degrees F but been underreported by the government: At least 5 days. (Apparently, many government buildings are not air conditioned and there’s a rule that once it hits a certain temperature, employees cannot work. So, the running joke is that it is never hotter than 43 (Celsius) in Cairo because the govn’t owns the weather service. Even though it feels more like 50.)
5. One in five Arabs live on less than $2 a day.
6. For the past 1,000 years, Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year.
7. One in every two Arab women can neither read nor write.
8. How to say "You are ripping me off!" -- Inta bitithak alayya!
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