You Can't Get to Pizza Hut on a tuk tuk... another adventure at the souq

Items in Michelle’s Bag after returning home from the souq (traditional market that I’d written about previously) today:

Packet of freshly ground Arabic coffee w/ cardamom (cost = USD 75 cents)

New wallet (USD 50 cents)
Chinese (or possibly Korean) post-it notes, 2 small packages and 1 larger package (US $1)

Loose Sage (miramiyya, in Arabic), for making sage tea (USD 30 cents)

Loose Verbana (meleesa, in Arabic), also for tea (USD 30 cents)

Hijabs (headscarves), 5 small, 4 big (US $3.50)

1 notebook (USD 50 cents)

Other highlights from today’s outing to the souq:

Riding in a tuk tuk! (cost = US $1)
I first learned of tuk tuks from a Thai co-worker of mine at summer camp. They’re basically motorized tricycles with seats in the back for passengers. In parts of Egypt, as in parts of South Asia, they’re used as taxis, especially (in Cairo anyway) going to and from less developed areas and villages. In India they are called auto-rickshaws. I saw them last night at the souq and really wanted to ride one, so today, we did. Look at the video (coming soon) and photos for more!

Pomegranate juice (USD 30 cents/glass)
It’s pomegranate season, meaning pomegranates are plentiful and fresh pomegranate juice is at its best! Pomegranate juice is my favorite of the many fresh-squeezed juices available in Cairo, and now is the best time to get it! And even though the sight of two white girls sitting inside the juice shop was bound to elicit odd stares, we ate in.

Koshery al-Ikhwan (USD 30 cents a bowl)
It’s almost a cliché to write about koshery on an Egypt blog… Koshery is a quintessential Egyptian dish consisting of pasta, rice, lentils and chick peas, topped with fried onions and tomato sauce, all served in one bowl. It’s a quick, hearty meal that I actually like quite a bit. We found a koshery place in our neighborhood serving it and stopped for some on the way home from the souq. This particular restaurant definitely had a Muslim feel, as two of the servers had long beards (here, long beards are often a sign of being a conservative Muslim), verses of the Qur'an were up on all the walls (see picture depicting most of surat al-Ikhlass, a verse of the Qur'an that was on the wall), and Qur'anic recitations were playing on the stereo. We decided to jokingly call the shop Koshery al-Ikhwan, or, Koshery of the Brothers, referring to the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan), an Islamist group that has become quite politically active in Egypt in recent years. The Brotherhood has a long and storied history in modern Egypt (one that includes several attempts to violently overthrow the Egyptian government and replace it with an Islamic republic), and I’m not going to get into it all here, but lately they’ve been gaining legitimate (ie, nonviolent) political power as a morally upstanding, socially conscious alternative to the corrupt mess that is the current Egyptian political regime. While officially banned from participating in elections, the Brotherhood fields a slew of independent candidates that run under the slogan, “Islam is the solution.” And when the Brotherhood is not busy furthering their political agenda, they might be serving us koshery…

As I’ve written before, every day is an adventure at the souq. And, an American with any amount of money can do a lot with US $20. Keep in mind however, that for the majority of Egyptians, the prices of things at the souq are by no means a steal, but rather reflect the reality of how little money most Egyptians earn and live on. While Michelle and I are students and are not wealthy by US standards, in Cairo, we can afford to split our time between the souq’s winding alleyways and the upscale, Westernized cafes and restaurants (the likes of Hardees, which is far more popular in Egypt than in the US, Pizza Hut, Costa Coffee, and now the Canadian chain Second Cup!) in areas of Cairo just a 10-minute cab ride from the souq. At these cafes, a latte would cost around US $2.50 and up.

But the pomegranate juice is better at the souq.

And you can’t get to Pizza Hut on a tuk tuk.

Ali's Fruit Stand

This is the fruit stand where Cak and I buy our fruit, owned by an extremely polite guy named Ali. Pomegranates are in season and they only cost $0.25 per pound ($0.50 per kilo)!

In Our Neighborhood: Souq Bulaq

Behind a bus station on the far side of Dokki, on the edges of Cairo and Giza, up the stairs and just across the tracks of the Egyptian National Railway, you’ll find the market of Bulaq al-Dokrur.

You won’t have any luck if you try looking for it in Cairo Maps, as this authority for finding the more obscure streets and districts in a city where all but the largest thoroughfares seem winding and obscure, shows a blank space in the spot where the market should be. But if you take Al Sudan Street north from the Behoos Metro stop, turn left at the stands of oranges and follow the throngs of people heading over the pedestrian bridge, you’ve reached Bulaq al-Dokrur.

Go down the stairs and you’re in the middle of a bustling crowd of fruit sellers, laughing children, merchants touting their wares by shouting their best offers at the multitudes of passersby as Arabic pop music blares — a veritable explosion of sights, sounds and smells.

Outside a fabric-seller’s shop, brightly colored scarves are hung in a circular formation like a May pole; delicately embroidered robes flutter in the desert breeze. A merchant at a juice stand is squeezing fresh mango and sugarcane juice. People are going about their daily lives here in Bulaq. Ancient white minibuses, Cairo’s most common means of mass transit, skid along on the dusty road, their drivers yelling out names of numerous destinations, from the airport to the Pyramids.

Look down a street and there’s sheep; look another way and there’s a young boy running a pastry stand (ask him for a sample and he’ll be more than likely to oblige). Around every corner is an experience.

The market in Bulaq al-Dokrur is not unique in this bustling city of over 16 million. Most Cairo neighborhoods have street markets, and people go to their neighborhood market and move from store to shop to street side vendor buying the necessities for the day — freshly-cut goat meat; camel kofta!; fish from the Nile, fried to taste; bright oranges displayed in the shape of a pyramid on the end of a grocer’s cart; warm pita bread, just pulled from a stone oven and sold on wooden platforms. There is no Super Wal-Mart here and efficiency isn’t a consideration. The food sold won’t stay fresh beyond a day, and most people go to the market daily, purchasing the day’s meals.

I took my cousin to Bulaq al-Dokrur when he came to visit Cairo. As the hulking 6-foot-tall, white male – a criminal justice senior at a state college only an hour from my Vermont hometown – walked through the throngs of mothers and children sitting beside white plastic buckets of vegetables and old men in long green gallibiyyas selling bread, he remarked, “this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever felt like a minority.”

As for me, Bulaq al-Dokrur is a rush of positive energy. Maybe it’s the honey-drenched Arabic pastries with names I’ve just learned to pronounce or the bright yellow floodlights that line the fruit stands at night and give the pulsing market an eccentric sort of glow into the wee hours of the morning. Maybe the market provides an opportunity for me to lose myself in the pulse of a sheer humanity much larger than me and forget about my worries with the taste of sweet green sugarcane juice. I don’t know, but whenever I feel down in Cairo, I find myself heading over the bridge into Bulaq al-Dokrur.

Welcome to the Cave!

Exhausted from fending off semsars (brokers) and other street mountebank-type-figures pushing substandard, ramshackle housing on us at exorbitant prices, Cakmac and I took matters into our own hands. We found our OWN ramshackle housing in Cairo in the form of what we like to call "The Cave."

(Doesn't it look like a cave? Hi Kerry!)

"The Cave" is a free-standing house in the neighborhood Dokki in Cairo, Egypt. It has a backyard with a tree and with lots of cats that only get in fights with each other around 6am. Our landlady cooks us dinner sometimes, and sometimes we make pancakes at midnight. That's just how we roll in the Cave.

We welcome you to our home, and promise to entertain you with stories, profiles, photos, tours of the neighborhood, and even the occasional cave-drawing. Welcome to "The Cave," and to our daily lives in Egypt.