Love at First Bite

Bismillah Assalam u alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu,

I was going to write about Thursday (the day after we got here) but that would fill up an entire story book. In short, we went to Al Diwan with an unscrupulous taxi driver (abdullah, think: unscrupulous fish dealer, only much,much worse and can only speak Arabic and also factor in a green looking Ameer Canadian), took our placement exam (in Mustafa's case, his write-my-address-on-the-front-I-can't-do-this-exam), met the real estate agent, and got our shaqqah (flat). Alhamdulillah, and alhamdulillah again. On Thursday we were so hungry that we went to the store beside our apartment and bought aish and literally ate the bread just like that. It was so good. I'll never view eating the same way again.

Mustafa is insisting that I tell you that they placed me in Level 3. Mustafa says he's in Level Minus one.

Today was Jumuah. The night before we had unpacked everything so as soon as we woke up we put on our Youth Council sweaters and jubbas and walked, as cool as campus cool cats, to the masjid and prayed Fajr salah. There are millions of masjids and there is a masjid about two minutes away from us if you go straight through the cat melee and hookah center. The imam is very good alhamdulillah, with the trademark deep, golden Egyptian voice.

We read Qur'an and ate breakfast.

At Jum'ah time we went to the masjid and sat in the courtyard. They had laid a kind of funny green carpet on the stones and even on the road, just like in Pakistan. I sat drowsily and tried to decipher the khutbah, something surprisingly very similar to khutbahs in Canada: we must protect our women and youth from bad things, our country is going to the dogs, etc. etc.

On that note, we noticed a lot of differences between Pakistan and Egypt. In Pakistan, mostly men are on the streets and they almost all are wearing shalwar kameez. In Egypt, there are almost as many women and men, and most of the men wear western-style clothing. Almost all the women wear hijab, not a dupatta like in Pakistan (well obviously).

After Jumuah we had a slight problem when we went to retrieve our shoes from the shoekeeper we had left them with. We thought that since we were in the masjid, he wouldn't charge us anything but nothing worthwhile in life is ever free, especially not Cairo. Then the second problem was that I only had a twenty-pound note, which was way too much. Anyways he gave us the change and it was okay. I am able to usually make people understand what I want, the only problem is, I can never understand what they want. This sometimes leads to hilarious conversations of head wagging and finger waving, and numerous smiles.

We then went back to the apartment to get "The Guide" from Markaz al Diwan. The plan was to go to the bank and get some of American dollars exchanged into guineas, and also look for a restaurant they had in "The Guide" called Mr. Cook (don't ask me how we chose Mr. Cook, we just did) as well as confirm the route from our aparment to Al Diwan. So off we went.

First of all, the map in the little paper guide from Al Diwan was not exactly drawn to scale. As Mustafa said, "It prevented us from leaving Nasr City-just barely." We walked and walked and walked, trying to get from our apartment to Al Diwan and then to Mr. Cook. We finally found Al Diwan after crossing through an alley of small grubby little boys playing soccer. There is so much to tell and I am running out of time, so forgive me if there are some gaps in narration.

We found Al Diwan and were coming back when we saw a restaurant called Tomatoes. Up to this point Mr. Cook was nowhere in site so we decided to take a chance. Mustafa sacrificed his aversion to anything that said "Italian restaurant" on the front. We went in and it was "Love at first bite." The sub was filled with meat and cheese and uuuuuuhjhhhh yumm. Alhamdulillah.

All right I have to go now. Insha'allah we will come again tomorrow.

Assalam u alaikum,

~Ameer