Face(t)s of Cairo

The last few days I have been walking through the streets of Cairo, meeting the locals (not as much as I would have preferred!), taking cab rides, and visiting some of the sights.

The overarching theme: Cairo is a non-stop commotion.

The chaos of masses, traffic, jaywalking en masse (this will be heavenly for Rudy Giuliani!), haze, pollution, food on the sidewalks, smells, more than 120,000 ancient items in Egyptian museum, history spilling into the streets with monuments and mosques from the times of rulers of all kinds (and hard to remember!) - Abbasid Caliphs, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks (the slave soldiers), Ottoman Turks, modern Egypt... blah, blah, blah... the list goes on!

After the Pyramids in Giza, the best part in Cairo has been the food, conversations with the locals, and some of its Islamic architecture. Luckily two most common foods in Egypt are vegetarian - fuul (a dish of slow cooked fava beans with garlic and garnished with parsley, olive oil, lemon, salt, black pepper and cumin - it sooooo yummy!) and kushari (a mix of noodles, rice, black lentils, and dried onions served with fiery tomato sauce). They also have falafel, just much crispier and flat and they call it ta'amiyya. The sweets have been another god send - my favorie, kunafa, a vermicelli-like pastry over a vanilla base and so sooooaked in syrup... slurp, slurp, slurp!

And then there are the ahwas, the coffee shops where men gather in the evenings and stay put till midnight and beyond to talk about everything (except criticize their "much beloved" President Hosni Mubarak loudly) over many cups of shai (tea), coffee and smoking sheesha (hookah or hubly bubly, as the travel books call them!). I hung out here two nights straight and for the record, "...I didn't inhale and never tried it again."!!!

Here are some of my encounters in Cairo - its people, neighborhoods, street scenes and foods, set to the latest hit single "Lealy Nahary" from Amr Diab, Egypt's answer to Ricky Martin... Before that furrow deepens on your forehead, you better be careful, Egyptians are very proud of him since he has won World Music Awards as the best selling Arabic artist thrice!

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