the sixth floor...الدور السادس: 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.