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Other entries in Cairo

Khan el Khalili

So despite my having been in Egypt for over a month now, I'm still pretty much the Cairo virgin. I've basically just seen the Citadel and the immediate area where I live and go to school. Luckily, this weekend I added another place to my repertoire: Khan el Khalili, the world-famous, centuries-old bazaar that is still a major center of commerce in the city. I even took advantage of the long weekend (Thursday October 6 was a military holiday in Egypt) to go twice! I guess karma was pushing me to make up for the lack of experience . . .

The first night I went with a group of Study Abroad friends, and right after we got out of our cabs a guy attached himself to us and played the role of our informal tour guide for the evening. He spoke English very well and was quite funny: he did great impressions of various ethnic groups - oh no, that's politically incorrect, but he didn't cross any lines so there was no problem. It was interesting to hear an Egyptian man's perspective on Western ethnic diversity, seeing as he had spent quite some time in the US and the UK. He was also rather informative as he took us around the backstreet workshops and just plain shops, once we separated out the blatant sales pitches from the trivia. Obviously he was a bit pushy for us buy things sometimes, but since he didn't ask us for tips at the end (which I thought was cool) it means he's getting cuts from every store to which he leads us. But hey, that's the informal market for you. The Mubarak government has such a monopoly on the tourist industry that it's no wonder people in this predominantly poor country are scrambling to get a piece of the pie. Westerners complain, but can you blame them? Everyone wants to be comfortable, or at least to eat.

After our tour, I got upset because this man - yes, man - all snappily dressed (so obviously upper class) and everything, thought it would be super funny to stick his hand in front of my camera as I was taking a picture. I yelled "haram 'aleik!" (shame on you!) at him, but he and his friend just laughed at me. I'm sorry to say this, because there are lots of wonderful people of both genders here, but Egypt is full of men with absolutely zero class who quite openly treat women as nothing better than an amusement. And it's Ramadan, too. It makes me upset sometimes, but I get over it.

Also, between my Khan visits I found myself sitting in a favorite restaurant of mine, Al Dente. It's one of the best pasta places in Egypt, probably because it's run by an Italian man (who speaks great Arabic, by the way). It's quite small, but the atmosphere is great and it's open 24 hours a day, so I like to go there to do some reading or just enjoy a meal. Anyway, I was struggling with Alf Laila wa Laila over dinner, so I got to talking a bit about it (or rather, trying valiantly to talk about it) in Arabic with a very friendly waiter named Rami. I asked him a lot of questions since I didn't feel like he was being creepy to me, and we sort of made friends. Towards the end of the evening, he offered to give me a copy of the Quran (since he apparently has many, many at home) to help me learn formal Arabic, which is what I was in effect studying that night. At first I refused, but he insisted and I got the sense that it really would be no problem, since I know from personal experience that it is fairly common for Muslim families to have many copies of the Qur'an at home. So I accepted. The next night I came to pick it up after my second Khan trip, and it is lovely. I intend to study it over winter break inshallah; my father says he has a Muslim friend at work who may be willing to set me up with some Qur'anic study sessions. Anyway, I need to write Rami a very nice thank you card or something, because I have nothing appropriate to give in return. I really, really appreciated the gift.

The second time I went over to Khan el-Khalili, I went with a very intelligent friend of mine named Hind. I got to know her at the Anthropology class I'm taking about feminist narrative. We ran into her friend Samia while sitting at el-Fishawi Cafe, and I got to see quite a bit of the Khan as both of them showed me cool places they knew. I even scored some very nice silver earrings that night.

All in all, the long weekend was a success. Until next time, my friends!

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