Nocturnal Cairo

After midnight, the city is transformed. One of the world’s most nocturnal metropolises, late night Cairo bears little resemblance to its daytime counterpart. On an August night, I visited this city with A., my oldest friend in Egypt whose love for nighttime Cairo is matched only by his affinity for epic walks.

We set out from A.’s apartment near the Ministry of Interior at 2am. The ministry complex, a light pink fortress surrounded by tanks, barbed wire and black-uniformed police, was the site of some of the worst violence during Egypt’s 18-day revolution and subsequent street clashes. Usually buzzing with the deployment of foot soldiers across the city in blue cage-like trucks, the area is mercifully still as we walk away from it down a narrow alley.

Most shops and restaurants are closed at this time, but on nearly every block a kiosk is still open to sell packaged snacks and drinks. A recent shortage of bottled water has led to price gouging, so I pay almost double for a small bottle. Hours after sunset and despite the occasional breeze, Cairo is still hotter than I care for. Bits of ice floating in the water soothe my dry throat.

There are a few other shops open as well. Barbers in Cairo often keep late hours, so when we pass a storefront window, I’m not surprised to find fluorescent light illuminating a couple of middle-aged men getting shaves. At one corner, a young storeowner sits in his eyewear shop; it’s not clear whether he expects to do business at this time or is just taking refuge here from his parents’ home.

A half hour into our walk, we turn down a wide boulevard lined with shuttered shops. Blissfully quiet in the middle of the night, A. reminds me that this is Cairo’s main market for used electronics. A few hours earlier, vendors were hawking goods that were stacked on tables spilling from the sidewalks into the road. Now it is so desolate that A. recommends we not linger; people don’t come here to take walks, so someone might think we were trying to steal something.

We walk down the middle of the road, cars passing occasionally until we reach Opera Square. Cairo’s opera house was built here by Khedive Ismail in 1869 but burned down a century later. An ugly parking garage stands in its place. This square is the intersection of several busy downtown streets and neighborhoods, and I’ve never seen it this empty. Groups of people spot the square, some sitting by a statue in the middle, others walking across to the far side. Without the burgeoning crowds, this place I’ve been dozens of time seems enormous. I snap a few pictures, pleased to do so without attracting the standard overdose of attention.

A. and I walk through the side streets. Though we pass people nearly every block—a shop owner tending to his bodega, a pair of security guards dozing off in plastic chairs, groups of men at an outdoor café—it’s the quietest I’ve ever seen Cairo. A motorcycle carrying three young men—a common appearance in Cairo—whizzes by us and the driver asks us directions to a 24-hour fast food restaurant without stopping. An ambulance passes in the other direction; unnervingly, its driver also asks for directions.

Eventually, we wind back towards the Nile. Before the river comes into view, we notice the neon lights on its bank and the electronic music pulsing from boats docked there. The crowd is smaller than usual, but horse-drawn carriages are still parked in the gutter and the sidewalk is full of young people: vendors of roasted corn on the cob, juice and popcorn; night revelers who take refuge from Cairo’s strict social norms on floating rule-free parties; and curious onlookers. A. and I strain our necks to catch a glimpse of the female dancers employed on the boats to attract customers, but every time we look we see only men dancing with each other.

Passing by dozens of nearly identical boats, we climb to the top of a bridge, passing two street children sleeping on the stairs despite the clamor of music, honking and yelling. From up here, the boats’ lights reflect on the river’s dark surface. The sun is not yet visible, but its proximity brightens the sky slightly, highlighting the layer of smog that hangs over this city, both day and night.

Sin City: Cairo

The past three days have been full of revelry as Cairo marked the end of Ramadan in typically loud and rambunctious fashion. Many Cairenes often escape to one of Egypt’s many beaches for the holiday, and those who don’t leave spend the afternoons at home with family before descending on the downtown neighborhood where I live. It was a relief when I remembered that all these people had come out in celebration rather than protest.

On the last night of Ramadan, young men waited—queued would be too generous a description—one block down from my building for the local liquor store to open. For a reason unknown to me (infant industry?), imported alcohol is not easily available in Egypt. A few local beers that taste equally bland, a couple of overpriced Egyptian wines, and homemade liquor known for its tendency to cause blindness are available in outlets spotted across the city. The shop on my street made the shrewd business decision to open at midnight on the last night of Ramadan. Closed for a full month, none of the beers were cold but that mattered little to the desperate customers.

I discovered the results of that decision when I woke up the next morning (afternoon, actually) and left my apartment. On the gray cobblestone sidewalk outside of my building, I stepped on the shattered remnants of a green beer bottle, part of the Stella brand label still distinguishable. The neighborhood was quiet for that time of day, as people slept off the previous night’s outing and sat at home with family. Crossing the street, I stole glances at a teenager on the opposite sidewalk drinking from a brown paper bag. At the end of the block, a small truck had backed up onto the sidewalk, replenishing the local shop’s beer supply while a line of customers streamed out the door.

Where the heck am I, I thought. This isn’t the ultra conservative behavior one might expect from a country now ruled by the “extremist” Muslim Brotherhood. And alcohol was not the only vice in ample supply this weekend; I caught more than a few wifts of hashish in the streets. Maybe that explains why on the second night of eid (holiday) I saw a guy lying calmly on the roof of his friend’s car as he drove around downtown.

End of Ramadan

Mostafa only ever calls to ask one thing: Are you going out tonight?

I knew to expect that when I answered the phone yesterday just after dusk, but then he added: It’s very important that you come out with us tonight and tomorrow.

Yesterday was the last day of Ramadan, the month of daytime fasting and nighttime revelry celebrated each year by a billion Muslims around the world. For four weeks, most Egyptians keep the following schedule: sleep for as many hours of daylight as possible (work days are reduced to six hours and productivity falls sharply), break the fast as the sun dips under the horizon, quick nap, eat some more, go out shopping or to cafes, eat as much as possible before sunrise, head back to sleep. I’ve been back in Cairo for the last few days of Ramadan, and my sleeping schedule has followed the Egyptian norm but my eating and drinking habits have been a bit different (more on that in my next post).

The fasting ended yesterday at sunset, as I was riding on the back of my friend Travis’ motorcycle from the gym (where Travis and I were the only ones sneaking in sips of water in the bathroom). On Qasr al Aini Street downtown, people handed out dates to passing cars and cyclists. The skies filled with the call to prayer as the last rays of sun leapt up from the horizon, and the city breathed a sigh of relief that it had survived another Ramadan.

After eating and showering, I went out to meet Mostafa and his friends, who have become my friends in the past six months. Downtown was bustling with families out shopping and young men taking refuge together from spending time with their families. Despite the helicopters circling above the city for no apparent reason, the night was marked by an air of pure joy, rare in Egypt during the past year and a half of political instability and economic uncertainty.

I found my boys on a side street that is usually quiet, but tonight people spilled over into it from the main avenues. They were standing, six of them, against a parked car drinking soda and smoking cigarettes. I kissed everyone hello on both cheeks, sharing in the holiday spirit. We talked for about an hour before meeting up with a few more guys on the corniche to ride a felucca (a small sailboat) on the Nile.

One of the guys bought warm beers from a local shop that had just opened, and we began drinking as the boat pushed away from the dock. We were not alone, though, as dozens of other feluccas passed by as well as the loud, tacky flat bottom boats that blare electronica across the calm, dark water and sometimes feature female dancers. Getting onto the Nile provides a refuge from the crowdedness of Cairo as well as many of its social restrictions.

We sailed about for several hours, often circling around a defunct fountain in the middle of the river that we briefly considered trying to climb onto. We drank and smoke and ate snacks as conversation ranged from favorite Ramadan television series (most popular seems to be about an Egyptian who robbed an Israeli bank, then got into misadventures in various Arab countries as he tried to make his way home) to inside jokes I didn’t always catch.

Our boat’s captain, an old man from southern Egypt dressed in traditional white galabiya and turban, supplied the background music of Um Kalthoum, Egypt’s beloved singer of long, drawn-out poetry. Unhappy with that selection, Mostafa took my phone and played some other Arabic music before settling on a playlist of the top 500 rock n’ roll songs. Song after song, the guys sang along to the Who, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Dylan, the Stones, the Kinks, the Doors, Tom Petty, the Beatles. Beautiful songs about drugs, women, liberation in a time and place where those things are in relatively short supply.

We finally returned to the dock at 3am and went on to a street cafe downtown. I left the boys drinking tea and smoking shisha there at 5am, and I lied in bed listening to the eid prayer, a particularly long one, envelop the city.

Here are some pictures from the second half of our evening, at the cafe.

Mostafa 

Vibration and Beshbeshu

Lashiin the machine

Faisal

Maged

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