The Lady's Admirers

Cairo's nights are long, especially in the summer. Even though the street lampposts hardly emit much light, if at all, the shops and restaurants brighten the streets with their own lights, bustle, and smells. This is quite evident in Sayeda Zeinab and its surrounding areas. An old part of Cairo, where many generations have lived, it contains the Sayeda Zeinab Mosque, named after the Prophet Mohammed's daughter. She came to Egypt seeking refuge after her brother Hussein was killed. Her body is entombed inside the mosque, and many Egyptians visit it seeking her blessings. As breathtaking as that experience can be, it is not why my friends and I decided to pop down to Sayeda Zeinab for a night out.

 A young restaurant cook prepares traditional Egyptian Hawawshi and Tajen as takeaway.

We shimmied through Sayeda Zeinab's back streets in my friend's small white Fiat 128. Although the car is of Italian make, most residents would agree, it is one of the most prominent Egyptian symbols of our era. With a rattle or a squeak punctuating the guided tour of Sayeda Zeinab my friend was giving, I marveled at the old stone buildings, with many abandoned and neglected relics of Cairo's past in full but sorry display, such as the old Sufi building Sabeel Um Abbass where the Sufi order provided shelter and food to those who needed it in the past, and the former main Cairo gaol call Kism Al-Khalifa, where prisoners from all over Egypt were sent to be processed before moving them to their respective sites. All that remains of it now is a partially operational monster of a stone building with rusted metal bars still holding firm over many of its windows.

Customers line up waiting for their Mombar orders.

We parked next to the restaurant we would be dining at, Habayeb El-Set, one of the many in the area that provide a cuisine uniquely Egyptian, such as Mombar, which are basically rice and herbs stuffed into intestines, as well as Fatet Kaware', which are a rice dish and sheep knuckles. Other famous restaurants in the area include Al-Rakeeb, which provides a similar menu to Habayeb El-Set, Al-Gahsh, a famous foul and ta'miya cart, Al-Refa'i, a kofta and kebab restaurant frequented by famous people, and Booha, a restaurant famous for its Sogo' Balady, an Egyptian sausage containing a mix of herbs, meat and wheat kernels.


After finishing our meals, we headed to Al-Rahmany, a shop on the road leading to Al-Nasriya, serving a special kind of thick drink brewed from rice. They come in two forms called El-Helw (Sweet) and El-Mizez (Sour). I personally prefer the latter which has a tangy flavor accentuated by the cinnamon sprinkled on top. It comes in a small cup, but is definitely filling, as its consistency is similar to that of syrup.

Men of all ages congregate and socialise on roadside coffee shops such as this one.

The night came to a close amidst the chatter and laughter of customers in a coffee shop directly in the middle of Sayeda Zeinab, with wooden chairs arranged on the pavement of the main street next to the area's police station. As the lights went off shop by shop in anticipation of sunrise, I realized that Sayeda Zeinab is a spiritual, historical, and gastronomical experience that can't be missed by anyone visiting or residing in Cairo.

I'll take one wedding, an apartment and two rings to go, please.

Six o'clock on a Tuesday morning, I rushed to the bathroom to perform my daily morning ritual of preparing for work hoping to break my usual bedsheets to car seat record (which I usually fail miserably at). Halfway through my toothbrush/shower scrub combo, I realized it was my day off from work. Returning to my bedroom half-groomed, I decided I should accompany one of my friends to work, and perhaps learn a thing or two from him.

As a freelance interior designer, he doesn't really have office working hours or grumpy bosses to deal with, so I called him up, and he agreed to pick me up on his way. We weaved through the narrow and notorious Cairo streets, stopping at outlets providing everything from floor tiles to bathroom fixtures. Although the products were well known brands, everything seemed a lot cheaper than I expected. This was especially evident at the tile market in Al-Muhajereen, a run down block situated in the bowels of Ain Shams. The shops were a lot more beat-up though than their pricey counterparts.

 A newly-wed couple hold hands at a post-traditional wedding in Cairo.

Most of my friend's customers seemed to fit the profile of the aspiring young graduate, trying to spend as little as possible of his parent's hard-earned money in renovating and furnishing the apartment his parents also bought a while back. All of this was, of course, to satisfy the conditions and terms his future in-laws have placed in order for him to marry their prized daughter.

It is already well known that in Egypt's middle class and upper middle-class that an apartment is the key to winning a girl's hand in marriage. This obviously doesn't make things easy, considering Cairo's horrendously expensive real estate prices which rarely ever seem to drop, even as the rest of world's real estate markets plunge around it. Apartment prices range between 100,000 Egyptian pounds in places like El-Marg, up to millions of pounds in more affluent districts such as Maadi. This makes the average price of an apartment in Cairo much more expensive than the current average price of one in Dubai!

Custom ceiling and lighting designs being implemented by workers in an apartment in El-Tagamo' Al-Khames, on the outskirts of Cairo.

I drifted back out of my daydream as my friend switched off the car's air-conditioning and turned off the car's engine. The blazing heat of the summer sun hit me hard as we stepped out onto a Nasr City pavement in front of a fairly new apartment building. He told me that we would go in to observe how the work was going on in an apartment he was preparing for a young man who previously insisted that it shouldn't cost more than 50,000 pounds to have the apartment ready. We stepped into the apartment which was fairly average in size, with two bedrooms,  a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The floor was covered in rubble, sand, and piles of wet cement. It looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic thriller, with men in torn and dusty clothes scattering about doing various jobs. I asked how much has been spent so far , and he told me 'believe it or not, 20,000 pounds'.

My eyes were wide as he explained how much the electricity cables and sockets, plumbing and general building materials cost along with the wages paid to the workers. I thought all that stuff came with the apartment in the first place. He told me I was old-fashioned, because that's not how it is anymore.

 A panoramic shot of the 7th District at the south end of Nasr City.

Returning home just before sunset, I looked back at the day and wondered whether there could possibly be a compromise between tradition and basic practicality. Considering how some newly-married men and women end up living with their in-laws (siblings and grandparents possibly included), I concluded that often with the measure of compromise, there is a measure of sacrifice.