visions périphériques

This morning I failed to get up in time to eat sohour. I vaguely remember turning the alarm off at 4:45 a.m., and by the time I got out of bed the sun was beaming through the windows. Fortunately, I gorged on yogurt and muesli at about midnight last night, just before bed, so the hunger pangs are only just beginning to set in now, and it’s close to 3:00 p.m.

Last night I cooked in my apartment for the first time. It was a meager spread, but still the first home cooked meal I’d had since coming to Cairo. I bought some spicy curry sauce at the grocery store, some tomatoes, and some beautiful little eggplants. I cooked the vegetables in a saucepan with some curry sauce, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and added a container of yogurt toward the end to thicken the sauce. I also bought some Egyptian-style brownish-white rice, imported from Japan, just to add some local color. It was wonderful to finally eat some vegetables, and all the more delicious after a day of fasting.

So far I’m keeping true to the game. I haven’t broken the rules yet, and I haven’t really been tempted, although today I passed a falafel stand and almost keeled over with craving. This morning I went to a big souk, or market, with Theo, his roommate Laura, and my new roommate, Nathan. We hopped a cab from Zamalek, through Old Cairo and the Citadel, over to a sprawling neighborhood wedged between and among the city’s biggest necropolis. This particular district is home to thousands of Cairo’s poor, who make houses out of the ancient, abandoned family mausoleums. The souk went on and on along both sides and underneath the highway. Venders were selling everything from jeans and t-shirts to old shoes, electronic junk, and souvenir knick-knacks. I didn’t see any other tourists, but there were plenty of miniature pyramids and scarab beetles for sale in the more pricey sections of the souk. Who knows where the venders get their stuff—I saw a collection of brand new keychains for sale, all sporting the phrase, “I ♥ My Doctor.” That made me laugh.

More impressive than the clothing market—which included several aisles of clothing recently harvested from the dead—was the poultry market. At the entrance, there are several stalls hawking live hawks, baby crocodiles, turtles and snakes. I imagine those animals are also edible, but they’re probably more likely to sell as pets. In the poultry market, however, everything is edible. Pigeons dominate, and there must have been a hundred varieties. Pigeons with silly headdresses, pigeons with huge clusters of feathers at their feet, big pigeons, mangy pigeons, baby pigeons. They all looked delicious, and the fasting crowds were frothing at their mouths. There were also quite a few ducks and chickens, though not as many as I would’ve expected. Mostly pigeons. The ducks were a sad sight, lined up in rows along the dirt floor or atop their wooden cages, their feet bound together with the feet of the ducks on either side of them. They were squealing in terror and discomfort, and their owners were not happy to have pictures taken of their product. Nor were the women who were cleaning the chickens happy to have pictures taken of the process—perhaps they were modest, but more likely they were angry that we didn’t offer to pay first. A young man helping with the cleaning kept yelling, “Aschra, aschra,” and rubbing his thumb against his fingers. That means “ten.” He wanted 10 L.E. for the privilege of taking pictures. He didn’t get his money, and I didn’t get my pictures. I could’ve just fired away—they wouldn’t have been able to do anything—but I wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation.

The cleaning process is amazing, if a bit inhumane. You pick out your bird, any kind of bird, and then you take it to the cleaning station, which is run by a different group of people. They take your bird and your money, dunk the bird head-first and alive in a pot of boiling water, dunk your money in their pockets, and then strip the feathers with a few quick strokes. Voilá. I was impressed.

After the market, we walked through the mausoleums for awhile and then caught a cab home. On the way home we passed a neighborhood that boasted no fewer than ten mosques. I’ll have to go back there. Now I’m back home, sitting in my apartment, reading and hanging out, telling my stomach to be quiet. Just three hours until iftar.