Downtown and Down-trodden

Downtown Cairo. If you’ve watched a news station in the past year, than you’re familiar with what constitutes as Cairo’s center or downtown area: Tahrir Square was long considered Cairo’s focal point before the 25 January Revolution ever occured, perhaps because it held several government buildings including the shunned National Democratic Party’s (NDP) headquarters as well as the British-founded Egyptian Museum.

Downtown Cairo, along with Zamalek, a leafy island in the middle of the Nile, were the areas of choice for the French, and then British, colonizers. Their legacy is witnessed still in the architecture of the buildings; the Starbucks I visited last night was housed in an attractive white building with balconies and the typical brown-slatted shutters. Although rich people still live in Zamalek, the area has taken on a faded glamour: after the British (and most of the international scene) up-and-left Cairo more than half a century ago, poor people moved into downtown and took over the once-classy establishments of Zamalek.

An example of a more old-fashioned building in Zamalek. Those curtains, most likely once a vibrant red, are so faded that they look as though they have been hanging there for more than half a century! Buildings like this often have fixed rent, where the families only pay 10 pounds rent a month! Unfortunately, moving in is impossible since no family wants to give up such a cheap flat in downtown.

This little shop, sitting next to a “Vienna Cafe” (that’s the little cafe tucked into the corner right there), would probably be described as a “junk shop” but i think that “antique shop” would be more appropriate! On a closer inspection of the photo, you can see a figurine of a ukulele, a “Choo Choo train” set, an old keyboard and fake-mustache costumes. What an odd hodgepodge of old-fashioned items!

The above sign advertised a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. At first, it appears to be a scene from days past, when Cairo’s men still wore turbans, but on closer inspection, the man in the bottom-right corner appears to be putting a pizza into an open-air oven!

Shops like the one at right in the above photo are common throughout Cairo, not just in downtown. Those brightly-coloured bins in the front are piled high with different types of nuts (pistachio are popular here), and there’s always a ice box selling Pepsi (more popular here than Coca Cola, although the both do coexist).

Despite it’s faded glory, I would still trade living in the Soviet-style tasteless block apartments of Nasr City to the squalid and in dire need of refurbishment colonial buildings of downtown. Nasr City may be safer, but (and I know it’s probably politically incorrect of me to say) I am forever fascinated by the colonial eras in Africa and South America, and especially the architecture. The downtrodden downtown of Old Cairo, while a regrettable indication of Colonial Europe’s prejudice and pompous pride, is nevertheless a part of Cairo which I would urge any tourist to visit, as the streets of Cairo, in my opinion, are just as important to see as the pyramids.

S-L-M

Supermarket Treats in Egypt

Food in Egypt is intriguing. Although I have food phobias, I also have a strange obsession with reading about food, or looking at food: as a child, while reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books, my favorite parts were reading about the food they ate and how they made it (people don’t make their own butter nowadays, that’s for sure!) And when I bought new things for my doll house, it was always the exquisitely-crafted tiny turkeys and cakes. So, although i may not enjoy eating it, I enjoy reading and looking at it and now…writing about it.

One of the tastiest treats in Egypt has got to be Todo. Todo is like the Hostess brand of Egypt: they make all sorts of sweet little snacks just waiting for my sweet tooth to devour. I encountered Todo during my first trip to Egypt, but when we went to the supermarket last week it was the first time I saw the Todo cream-filled cupcakes. Of course, I had to get them!

Below is an example of the more traditional Todo, a little chocolate-covered chocolate cake with a layer of chocolate icing. Perhaps French bakeries would sniff at my Todo obsession–Hostess certainly isn’t gourmet–but Todo is a very good dessert, in my opinion.

Continuing on the sweet-tooth craze, my husband picked these treats up from the market one day after work. The Tempo was like a less-sweet version of the Oreo; the HoHo’s were, well, like Hostess Hoho’s (or maybe they look more like Yodels?) Either way, both were tasty, and an interesting fact is that the packaging on both was in French. Not a word of Arabic in sight!

Froot Loops aren’t an Egyptian brand (although I did try the Egyptian version, Temmy’s, which features a crocodile on the box, and they sorely lacked sugar of any nature) but they are one of the few American cereal brands I’ve encountered in the Egyptian supermarket. It’s also funny to see the box, which I’ve been familiar with since childhood, appear in Arabic.

No trip to the supermarket (in Egypt, I’ve gone to both the giant department-store Spinney’s at the CityStars Mall as well as Metro Market, which has a huge candy section and CinnaBon pop-up shop, as well as most recently Omar’s Supermarket) is complete without President cheese. But what I want to know is: is it Egyptian, or French? My aunt brought over President cheese for Christmas Dinner, which makes me want to assume that it is French. But apparently it’s very popular in Egypt too.

And what do I make with President cheddar cheese slices? Grilled cheese, of course! My husband had never had a grilled cheese until I made it for him (oh, the horror!) That’s perhaps because sliced bread is unpopular in Egypt and, also, rather expensive (they prefer their pita bread, baked in open-air bakeries). Rich Bake is the common go-to source for sliced bread (and other bread goods) and I find that I like it more than regular American white bread (of course, it has nothing on French baguettes, but c’est la vie).

When people ask me, “Can you find something normal to eat?” in Egypt, the answer is not only “yes, in the cafes” but also “yes, at the supermarket.” Metro Market would look identical to something like King Kullen, if only King Kullen had lime-and-pepper-flavored potato chips. Oh yes. More on that later.

S-L-M

Celebrating my Birthday in Egypt

I have decided to keep a sort of diary about my life in Cairo, where I will be spending the next month. For the sake of letting my subscribers know that I have posted something new, I will add these diary postings to my normal post list, but you can also find them in the page entitled “The Cairo Diary.” It’s kind of nice to do a more informal musing on Arab culture. 

Holidays are meant to be fun. They are meant to be times of joy, when people get together to eat, drink, remember and celebrate with their family and friends. For me, holidays do not have a high success rate; the expectations and hype, I feel, are too high, and I have spent many a holiday for this or that reason in tears. So the idea of spending holidays abroad–and thus away from the people who celebrate the holiday–appeals to me.

To date, I have celebrated most major holidays abroad. I spent Halloween in France (I did nothing) as well as Thanksgiving in France (I probably feasted on my glorious ham-and-cheese baguette, which in my opinion is a far better Thanksgiving feast than turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce). I spent Christmas Eve in the Fiumicino Leonardo Da Vinci airport  and then in a hotel room at the Satellite Hotel outside Rome, eating a disgusting pasta dinner (the mineral water, the only thing to drink besides wine which I didn’t want, was awful) thanks to severe rain, and then Christmas Day trying not to fall asleep in Paris’ Charles De Gaulle Airport, with nothing but Pringles and a Pepsi and an endless game of Solitaire. I spent Memorial Day (don’t remember) and the Fourth of July in Cairo, the latter sitting in an American school in sweltering hot heat, where no one seemed to realize that it was July 4th despite being an “American” school.

This was all in 2011. Most recently, I spent New Years Eve/Day in Barcelona, Spain, with my twin sister and university friends as I recently reported. And now I can report that I have spent my birthday abroad here in Cairo, the first birthday I celebrated without my twin (!) or my cousin, who also shares the same day.

Although it was strange to celebrate my birthday without them, it was the first time I really celebrated it as “my day,” which I will never view it as. I spent the day fuming in our flat because there was no internet (again!), then went over with my husband to his parent’s flat where his family, including his older sister and her adorable children, had prepared a small celebration. They lit the chocolate and creme cake twice (as I requested; it’s a tradition in my family) and sang “Happy Birthday” to me, first in English and then in Arabic. We also had a plain cake which his mother had made, which was delicious. I played with the children and declared that I was turning 5 years old, not 23.

Afterward, my husband and I walked around Cairo’s huge CityStars Mall (5+ levels and more awing than any Long Island mall) with his friend before returning home. We were supposed to go to the Cairo Tower yesterday for dinner, but as of yet this hasn’t materialized. Despite the lack of  an “excitement” factor, I had a very lovely birthday with his family and hope that this year continues on it’s upward trend. Our visa interview is coming up in two days, and if I don’t get on here before then, please wish us luck!

S-L-M