The book is my collection of stories about my life in Cairo during the 1990's. It is a personal tale, told with vivid recall and an honest love of the city and its people.
"Cairo: The Mother of the World " explores the heart of a city that most
tourists never see - an affectionate, humorous close-up of the aggregation
that is Cairo, as well as an adventure among the streets, tombs, houses,
and monuments that are the city yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Many have said that Cairo never changes, but it does, very slowly, with a
foot in the past and the other stepping toward the future. That is the Cairo
evident here, among all the confusion and noise and sand. That is the
Cairo many expatriates come to love.
Love it with us as we walk among the people of the city and share the joys
of life that only the true Cairene is capable of appreciating amid the gigantic
jumble we call home. It will be an unexpected pleasure.
Excerpt
One of the people who figured prominently in (our secondary school) coffee and tea culture was Om Arabia, a felahin woman who made the drinks in her cubby near the English language staff room. She had a small gas ring where she heated the water in tiny a pot that she held by its long wooden handle over the flame until it was boiling. Then she poured the super-heated drinks into small glasses, grounds and all, placed them on a tray with her asbestos fingers, and headed down the corridor to deliver them before they had a chance to cool enough to handle. I learned to hold the glass by the heavy bottom rim and the very top, sipping the scalding coffee slowly on the opposite side. I never dropped a drink but came close a few times. The drinks were always presweetened, and I ordered mine "mas buut" - not too sweet - but they came with loads of sugar anyway, as any self respecting Arab would prepare or drink tea or coffee.
Om Arabia was a proud woman. She would always greet me the first time she saw me each day with both hands above her head in a sign of respect. I greeted her with a smile because she was always so cheery, and we had a good relationship most of the time. The great mistake I made - that caused her to become angry with me - started out with my desire to eat whatever food I brought to school and to drink the coffee she made on a clean surface. The tables in our staff room, in every staff room, were covered with dirty oilcloth. Om Arabia was also the cleaner who went about with a somewhat rancid rag and wiped the tables every day, or when she saw something spilled on them. No one seemed to notice that they were slightly tacky and covered with stains that should have been washed away with clean soap and water.
One day I decided to have a go at cleaning the oil cloth on the table where I sat - we had unofficially assigned places in the staff room - and brought a container for water, soap, and a clean cloth to school. I had just completed the job - which had transformed the cloth into a clean, dry surface, when Om Arabia swept in to inspect the results of the insult she had heard about. She looked at the table, then at me, and began a snarling diatribe that grew ever more shrill, then she began to sob, and finally, large tears ran down her face and she left the room in croaking sobs and moans. I had never experienced anything like that, and stood dumbly beside my clean table, feeling the greatest remorse. I was truly sorry that I had offended her. I didn't touch another table, and never repeated the insult again. Rather a dirty table than an angry Om Arabia.
As I left that day she was waiting for me beside the gate, tears gone, but still furious. She shouted at me and gestured in several ways that were suggestive of curses, and I apologized to her in the best Arabic I could. It made no difference. It was at least two weeks before she would serve me coffee again, and she refused to even look at me as I passed.
Expands beyond the safety of pages bound by predictability to explore and often confirm exciting creative possibilities. A shimmering collage of memoir, creative nonfiction, literary journalism, and dizzying flights into poetic observation, this is t
