I just came upon this photo slideshow from The New York Times and it made me incredibly nostalgic.
What seems like a lifetime ago, I lived in Cairo. It was a teeming, tempting place, well suited for a young woman searching for a place that would rattle her soul.
I lived near an abandoned palace and a third-rate hotel. There was a wedding there every night, it seemed. It wasn’t unusual to be roused from a deep sleep by the beat of the tabla and the sound of women ululating with joy.
At that time in my life, all I could afford to eat was street food. I bought my bread from boys weaving around cars on their bicycles. The bread tasted distinctly of traffic.
I ate fuul and tameyya (stewed broad beans and Egyptian falafel) from my neighborhood cart, spending – at most – a dollar on dinner.
Sometimes, when I wanted a treat, I ate an enormous plate of kosheri, a typically Egyptian delicacy made of lentils, vermicelli, rice, and a spicy tomato sauce. I ate with all the taxi drivers, who greeted me with bemused smiles. Being the only woman in the joint meant that inevitably, someone would buy me a coke (but only if I showed some ankle). One of the saddest things about returning to New York was the scarcity of good kosheri (if you have a source – please tell me and I’ll be your humble servant). When I told my beloved dad that I needed my kosheri fix, he researched recipes and made me a big pot of lovely carboliciousness. Nice man, that daddy o’ mine.
Fridays and Saturdays were my days off. On a beautiful afternoon, I’d buy some execrable Egyptian beer and float down the Nile River on a felucca with friends. Parts of the Nile in Cairo are lined with papyrus and so bucolic and peaceful that it’s easy to imagine what life was like a hundred years ago.
At dusk, we’d careen into traffic, risking our lives in a taxi heading to Islamic Cairo for mint tea and apple-flavored shisha. El Fishawi was one of my favorite places for tea and a smoke, even though it was often overrun with tourists during the day. When my parents came to visit me during Ramadan one year, we were just outside Fishawi as Muslims in the city were beginning to break their fast for the day. An old man pressed a date into my father’s palm and motioned for him to eat it. Another man spooned syrupy sweets into our mouths as we passed by. Such outrageous generosity.
On Saturdays, I’d awake with a raging hangover from the formaldehyde-laced beer and rouse myself from bed just as the day cooled off. In a seething city like Cairo, what ones wants most is solitude and peace. Sometimes I’d find it in the mosque of Ibn Tulun.
All of a sudden, I feel homesick for a place that was home for a brief and heady time. I’m longing to return to see it again.
Where do you long to go?
Photos by Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times