Greetings from Alexandria! The last time I was here with a group, last March, the whole day was colored by my severe case of gastroenteritis (what the guides delicately call "Mummy Tummy"). Today, I felt fine, but the day was also colored, this time by a sandstorm that had blown in from the desert and dusted the air, the cars, the houses, our nostrils and skin with a fine brown powder. As we toured around the city, everything was seen through a sand-colored filter. Strange, interesting light. I wanted to wander around just taking photos of people wandering through the haze, but duty called so instead I trailed along from Pompey's Pillar to the Roman Amphitheater to the Biblioteca Alexandrina with my gang of U.S. tourists.
Now it's evening, the dust storm has calmed and my belly is full. I am in my room at the Helnan Palestine Hotel where there is some great live oud music happening down in the garden courtyard near the sea. I went out tonight with "the guys", my Egyptian colleagues Walid, Tamer and Hassan, along with Rabia, the taciturn bus driver with the shy, radiant smile, to break their fast in town. This time, no KFC. We went instead to a very popular down-home Egyptian restaurant called "Hosny". What a scene! The place was jammed with people, waiters, flames shooting off the grill, food piled up on plates. It looked like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on a busy trading day. With much negotiation and gesturing, Walid and Tamer talked us into a table for five. It was already piled with plates of hummus, tadziki, salads, fresh pita bread and lots of glasses of juice. We sat down and waited, just as everyone else in the place was doing. There was a low buzz of talking and the bustling of waiters, but the atmosphere was subdued. Then, about 5:50, the sound of the muezzin of a nearby mosque sounded outside and, with a short, almost silent individual prayer, everyone began eating. I've never experienced anything quite like it. A whole population of people who had been fasting since daybreak all digging in at once, with relief and joy and chewing and swallowing. At first, it was fairly quiet, everyone intent on their food and drink. Then the talking began to swell and people started calling to the waiters for this and that to be brought to their table. Grilled lamb and beef, plates of shrimp, bowls of beef broth poured out of the kitchen. It was a great, happy letting out of breath, almost in unison.
I had eaten breakfast and lunch, but this was not a moment for abstaining. I dug in with the rest of them, avoiding raw vegetables and juice mixed with tap water. With great satisfaction, Tamer lit a cigarette and took a deep lungful. Ah! The conversation swirled around in Arabic, giving me a chance to watch the rest of the diners, then would swing back to English. Hassan, an intense, funny 27 year old, declared grandly that he wanted to have two more wives who would work and support him (he has one wife and two young children). I told him he was having Ramadan delusions. Walid laughed at him and said, "One wife is plenty!"
By the time we finished, there was a huge pile of plates, stacked artistically on the table behind us. We adjourned to a seaside coffee shop for glasses of black tea with fresh mint leaves and (for the other guys) a water pipe ("sheesha"). We talked about this funny business of touring people around the world while the big TV blared strange soap operas. Then we came back here to the hotel to sample some of the pastries – very sweet and sticky -- that Tamer had bought in preparation for Iftar. It was a good evening.
Much love and gritty, sandy kisses.
