Martoons

I Fell in Love with Cairo but it Could Not Love Me Back by a Canadian male tourist.

There are villages in Cairo that have grown from alleys. This particular one was about 200 metres long and straight. You could see down it from one end to the other. It was narrow – only tuck-tuks, motorcycles and bicycles could go back and forth within it, and were doing so constantly. Some of that movement was business travel such as deliveries but just as much was kids bombing around on this Friday night. An uninterrupted facade of one or two story buildings lined each side of the alley and most of these structures were old if not ancient.

As my friend led me through the alley village, most of the housing units had their doors wide open yet only a few folks could be seen inside the dark interiors. The vast majority of the population was outside in the alley. A good portion of the lower floors of the units were shops, open and doing business. Food kiosks. Barbers. An egg seller. Tea houses occupied exclusively by men who were playing board games like dominoes, sipping tea, puffing on in-house pipes. My friend knew of a pizza place and we eventually located it, however was dark and had gone out of business. Instead, we settled on a bowl of eggplant from a nearby kiosk.

Folks of all ages came and went past our table non-stop. Cairo comes to life at night, and that includes all age groups. My theory is that after dark, the city cools down to tolerable temperatures. As I sat eating my eggplant under the watchful eyes of the kiosk operator, I gazed up through a break in the alley buildings. Way up and off in the distance you could see the top sections of a humongous ultra-modern apartment complex that was under construction. My friend explained how that area, across the highway from the alley village, had been a very bad one and the government had finally paid everyone to move out. The new sky-high towers, however, would only house the wealthy. One small designated area was to be earmarked for some of the former residents who’d decided they didn’t want to move away.

I re-focused my attention on my eggplant and what else was going on in the alley. A young man (perhaps 30) with crutches attached to his arms, awkwardly and mechanically hobbled past our table. “What do you think is wrong with him?” my friend asked. I could guess something like polio. “No, that guy lost both his legs in an accident. He was given prosthetic legs, but because he’s poor he was given the cheapest ones available. If a rich person had that accident, the prosthetics would be so good you wouldn’t even notice.”

Our quick food stop was over and we made our way back toward the start of the alley village. At a little 3-way intersection, my friend stopped me to observe an old-fashion swing set amusement ride. It was at least 50 years old and badly in need of a paint job but nobody seemed to notice or care. Its two compact compartments were swinging back and forth and each contained a very amused child. A woman operator stood by and interceded periodically to make the cars swing higher. It was a truly joyous moment for all involved – the two riders as well as my friend and I standing by observing. You could feel the glee.

The woman operator was dressed in typical all-covering Muslim clothing with only her face exposed. She was chunky, had large glasses and a wide smile. She asked my friend if I wanted to try the swing. I laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea but joked around with the jovial, good-hearted woman. “I’m too big … to wide!” I tried to illustrate my incomprehensible foreign language words with some hand gestures. “Too big.”

She replied (in Arabic, translated by my friend), “She doesn’t think you are too big. Thinks you have a nice shape.” The compliment gave me a heart-warming glow. A genuine heart-felt gratitude. I spontaneously extended my arms and exclaimed, “Hey! Thanks. You are so kind to say that. Here, give me a big hug.” In the next one or two seconds as I floated toward her with my welcoming arms, true love overcame me and I yearned to embrace her. I was determined that my feeling cross over the cultural divide between this traditional Islamic Egyptian woman and me from half a world away. It was a surreal split-second. I wanted to love her.

Yet she could not love me back.

How could I forget that a Muslim woman does not embrace any man in public? My arms fell back down to my side and I stepped back to the sideline where I belonged.  Just then the woman got busy with a new customer. My friend and I turned away and left the alley. (April 10, Cairo.)