It is raining in Cairo.

Today was one fine day for me, although it was completely different for most of the citizens of Cairo. For the first time since centuries, Cairo is experiencing rain, and I mean rain. As an Alexandrian, it is such a normal thing for me to walk and live while it is raining, something we experience annually. But in Cairo it is totally completely another story. People don’t know what to do when it is raining here, as if they are in a scene of “Deep impact” waiting for the particles to fall over their heads. Streets get instantly crowded, people run quickly to their homes and pick up their warmest coats, although the temperature is over 15 degrees.
Then you look up at any building to find people looking out of their windows, stretching hands and heads in a childish manner to experience the rain fall over them.

Wonderful people !!! :)

Tabasco - The heavenly place in Zamalek.

Samir will be my star in this note, again. While trying to get his visa to France to visit his friend Hassan, he had to stay a couple of days in Cairo, sweet Cairo. He had discovered a nice place in Zamalek called Tabasco, and this time we decided to spend a couple of hours there.

Tabasco is a nice Cafe, basically an underground corridor, i.e. a long and narrow place, in the nice district of Zamalek, somewhere near the dorms of the AUC.

Despite its dimensions, the owner of the place knows exactly what people want from a place such like this, so he has arranged the place and equipped it with everything you would need as an AUCian -the premiere guests- or as a normal persion ;-)

You will definitly notice the Red neon light at the facade of the place, which grabs the attention of people passing by, well, I think that was the way samir got to know the place.

You get in to find a shelf to your left, with magazines that you can read if you are alone, then two rows of tables with different types of chairs and sofas, and you can suit yourself.

Pick up the menu and take the notorious Cafe Mocha.


You will really like it.

If you have your laptop, like everyone else in this place, you make yourself comfortable that there is an internet access point there, so you can check your mail or even flirt online ;-)

I really liked this place, and wish you can pay it a visit one day.

Rewsha is wicked

Wicked is the slang word in UK that is equivalent to Rewsha in egypt.
That is what my brother said. I believe him.

Shahrzad

Samir came from alexandria to cairo, specially to pay Shahrzad a visit. If you think that it is a musical, think twice. Shahrzad is one of the oldest milestones in the night life of cairo, a night club, or "cabaret" as they call it in Egypt.

Samir picked the wrong person to accompany him, he picked me. He tried the whole previous week to make it simple for me to go to such a place. I was really convinced.

Then came the D-day, and we are standing in front of the place, and here comes the doorman, or the club tender, you name him, we all know what do they call him ;-) and he started doing his work on Samir, convincing him to enter. We entered......

Just three steps inside, to find a red dark place, with very low light, dark red chairs, and black tables, then a third degree belly dancer going from one table to the other, greeting the guests, and we were received by another lady that was most probably a man and converted, i.e. a trans-sexual. And here I decided that I have got enough of this. I returned backwards.

We have spent the whole night till 3:50 AM searching for another place that was not expensive and was not that low, but we didn't find.

For me, I was satisfied to see such a place, and know that there are real mean places in this city, Cairo.

Nathan D. Muir

"why would I ask somebody else to kill a horse that belonged to me?"
Nathan D. Muir (Robert Redford, Spy Game movie 2001).

"heela hob" synchronizing, The Egyptian way.

While I was driving my way to work, I passed by an accident; a car just got over the pavement, half up half down. And there is no way the driver could get it down, so the only way to get it down was using the forces of Egyptian men and their bare hands.

As Everyone here offers help by instinct, people decided to lift up the car and get it back to the streets, and here comes the heritage they all know while being raised, without even thinking about it. The way to synchronize their forces of lift to get the car back to the street, comes when one of them start the most infamous call, "Heela Hob" , and everybody know that with the very prompt end of his call every one will give the car a push with a lateral movement to move it an inch. And again another Heela Hob and a third one, and the car is back to the streets.

Every nation has got its very own way to synchronize.