Breaking the fast

I must answer a comment that I cannot leave unanswered.

The tradition of Ramadan is that is it a time of cleansing.

Quarrels are sorted out and resolved, you start as healthy as you can make yourself, you pay debts before Ramadan starts, and you fast from the first light to the last light.

As the light fades in the evening there is a call to prayer from the mosques all over the country. This is the signal that the fast is over. At this time they break the fast – ‘breakfast’ (which they call Iftar – the opening) – in a traditional way.

I am not doing something wrong. I am only supplying the food for the breakfast. Otherwise my guards’ options are limited as they cannot leave their posts.

Iftar and Jewelled Salads

I have been preparing a tray every night since Ramadan started to take out to our guards for Iftar.

Since the very first glimmer of light, to the last point where a light thread can be told from a dark thread (surprisingly it is not actually very dark) they cannot eat, drink or smoke, and the really devout do not even swallow their own saliva or take medications. The former makes a walk in Zamalek somewhat more unpleasant than usual.

In Jordan we fed our guards every night of Ramadan for the years we were there. It started on the first night of Ramadan in our first year when a guard came to the kitchen window while I was in the kitchen. It was mid Winter and very cold and he asked if we could open a small can of very cheap tuna. I used to buy the same brand for our cat. I was horrified that he would break a long fast with such a meagre and unpalatable meal. Every three days I cooked a large vegetable dish which was thick with lentils and chickpeas and very savoury with local herbs, onions and garlic. As I heard the call to prayer it was handed out. With it were the traditional dates to break the fast, a drink made of a flat dried apricot leather called Khameruddin and water – the apricots soaked to be swirled up into the water – and youghurt and fresh local flat bread.

To our total amazement we were thanked for feeding the guards during a farewell visit to the palace – it is amazing that word would filter through to such a height. In the end we were actually feeding about seventeen, as many guards from other residences would drop in and leave their posts. We were well guarded – but no-one else was!

Here it is traditional to break the fast with dates cooked till just tender and broken a bit (seeds removed) in mild. In the first few days I made the thicker nursery pudding variety, cooking over a low heat till the milk condensed and was thick. Tonight I made the other version, where the dates stayed more whole, and the milk stays almost white. Sugar is stirred in – Egyptian like sweet foods after a fast. With this I took out a large fresh salad since it is still hot, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers all chopped into small dice, tossed with a fistful of fresh basil, and parsley and salt, pepper olive oil and lime juice dressing. There was a bowl of soft, slightly salty white cheese and olives on the side. Also a small plate of dried apricots, whole walnuts, and a very sticky local dessert with almonds in semolina and thick with syrup.

While talking food one of the guards raved about the salad I gave him the other day so I thought I would tell you about it too. I have been making it regularly since an accidental “My goodness, what do I have in the frig with Bob bringing a friend for dinner,” night. The friend is vegetarian and I had decided I could make gnocchi of cheese and semolina with a light fresh tomato and basil sauce. However, I had no salad greens, and they are only just appearing on the market – a bit limp and wilted and not at all enticing.

I made a salad, all chopped into centimetre cubes in the local style, with three different fresh crisp capsicums – red, green and yellow. Add three fresh tomatoes chopped, a generous cup of cooked brown lentils (I soak them for half an hour to reduce cooking time and boil till just tender), LOTS of fresh mint and basil, and a dressing of raspberry vinegar and olive oil with salt and pepper. The best part – add the seeds of a whole large pomegranate. This salad is full of colour, fresh with pomegranate and mint (the former is just a bit crunchy and tangy and the coated seeds are jewel-like in the salad. Lentils add a touch of earth and a bit of protein. I have added other things from time to time, like fried cubes of eggplant, or cucumbers chopped, but we are eating this a lot while pomegranates are in season.

I have a concert and whirling darwish (dervishes if you want the western term) to tell you about. However that will have to wait until another day. I go tomorrow morning to the Moqattam Hills to see the project being run to help the women and children who sort Cairo’s garbage. Watch this blog.

Blood on the walls

Blood on the walls

Warning. Subject might be distressing to some readers as it involves blood and a level of cruelty to animals.

In Eid El Fitr which follows Ramadan and Eid el Adha which follows the time of the Haj – the pilgrimage to Mecca – Moslems slaughter sheep as a sacrifice.

All over the city at the moment there are odd little pockets of sheep as people try to dodge the huge price hikes at the approach of the feast by buying earlier. Because the sheep are supposed to be well fed on tender green grass there are also laden trucks with enormous overhanging loads of lovely long swinging green grass which shimmies in the movement of the trucks or behind little stalwart donkeys coming into the city – for there is no grass in the city to feed these sheep. Bob’s executive PA, goddess, and all round marvel, has started muttering “Run, little sheep, run, it is Ramadan.”

I used to worry about sheep seeing other sheep killed and being frightened, but then came around a corner in Kerak in Jordan once to see an animal being slaughtered and six others happily eating green grass from a trough. They were not at all disturbed.

We arrived this year just after Eid El Adha and all over the city were pools of drying blood and hand shaped blotches on the walls, often child sized. I put some photos in the last blog of handprints from last year, still clear on the walls around the back of the Khan. Just scroll down to see them and click on the image called ‘blood on the walls’. More will appear.

I eat meat happily enough, but prefer it to be nicely separate from the realities of killing, plastic wrapped and packed in nice white polystyrene in a supermarket. Here soft and floppy and recently killed carcasses come into the shops with testicles swinging to demonstrate the virility and sex of the animal killed. This is all a bit much for me, but not as bad as killing the animal myself. All over the city there are shops selling chickens, ducks and rabbits, and the animals are all alive in crates made from palm fronds. They will despatch them for you or you can take them as they are, upside down and tied by the feet, and cope with them at home.

For Moslems, with strict laws about the appropriate ways to kill animals for food, it is an important alternative.

Sometimes I wonder if this way is better, with no pretence and an unavoidable knowledge of just what eating meat means. Perhaps it is good for children to grow up aware of death as a part of an on-going cycle? Certainly Bob grew up on a farm, and would never have dreamt of giving an animal a name as they were just steak on the hoof. Sometimes I think we ascribe human emotion to animals that do not necessarily feel emotion as we know it.

Then I see some small evidence of cruelty like the man who walked with a child yesterday. He was well dressed, in a spotless long white thobe, and held a large duck under his arm. As he walked he was chatting to the child and absentmindedly pulling feathers from the duck, who seemed to be patiently tolerant under his arm. As he walked he left a drifting trail of feathers in his wake, and an occasional wind lifted them softly and slewed them sideways and into swirling eddies in the dust and dirt of the street.

Walking in old Islamic Cairo

There is an area between the tourist den of the Khan El Khalily and the North Wall of the old city that is decreed a World Heritage area. You keep walking past all the touts of the souq. We were clever enough to go on 6th October which is a major public holiday here, celebrating a brief but glorious victory over Israel. It is also a bridge – as is the 26th July. I am always getting the two confused and that is difficult since I keep ending up in the wrong place because of the sheer impossibility of remembering dates.

The 6th October in the first week of Ramadan is spectacularly deserted in the old city. There were just a few hopeful silver shops open (enough to do a little damage for my house guests), and a few street sellers. Because it is Ramadan all the food and drink stalls are off the streets until almost 5.30 pm when they are out in force. My friends bought some beautiful pieces, simple Tuareg and Ethiopian crosses, and a couple of lovely pieces in the style of Siwa Oasis – strongly African in design.

We kept walking beyond the tourist areas and into a marvellous maze of narrow streets. Overhanging windows are covered in meshrabiya – the wooden grills which allowed women to see without being seen. They project out over the road allowing tiny spots of intense dark shade. It is hot in full sun, though Cairo is now cooling down.

There are such beautiful mosques in this area, and all the more interesting because they loom up as you come around the corners of muddy little streets, with rubbish building up at the edges and no expectation of the stark beauty of carved stone.

I am posting a series of photographs of this walk. I will let them speak for me.

A sabil-kitab. the bottom was a water source for the village women,
like a well, or a deep pool kept full of clean water. The top was a
school for small children. 'Sabil' is well, 'kitab' a book.

Click on any of the photos below to see a set of all the photos from our walk.

Taxi driver

I had another odd taxi driver incident yesterday.

"Where do you live?" said the driver.
"Zamalek."
"Do you have an Egyptian boyfriend?"
For a moment I wasn't sure I had understood him. then I thought he must have thought that I was living here with an Egyptian.
"No, I have an Australian husband."

"Give me your mobile." This was said with such authority that I was reaching for it before I even thought about it. Then I realised how idiotic this was.

"Why?" I asked.

So I can put your number in mine and give you my number so I can be your boyfriend."

I said very clearly that I did not want a boyfriend and ignored him. His hand was creeping down the back of the passenger seat towards my knee so I hauled my large bag of shopping onto my knee, feeling somewhat pleased when it belted him on the hand.

When we pulled up I handed him ten pounds as I got out. Now this was well and truly enough for the fare and in fact about twice what a local would pay.

"Not enough" he shouted.

Then added "I don't want you for my girlfriend, you don't pay enough!"

At this stage my large and very serious looking guard, Ahmed, was heading towards the car looking decidedly focussed on the driver, so he took off. Ahmed apologised for the badness of some Egyptian men.

I am OLD. Too old anyway for any off this nonsense and I get so fed up with it. I am well past the average use-by date, large (though that is often an asset here)and have no pretensions to beauty. Mind you, this guy was no catch and was missing most of his front teeth.

I can't answer questions privately when they are added as comments. So - answers for some of you for whom I don't have email addresses. If you want a private answer give me an address in the text of the comment.

For the query about genital covers - I don't know why they put them on babies - actually both sexes wear them but they are different. It is not a Middle East tradition, and no longer a tradition anywhere as far as I know. The pieces in the photos are antiques from Sri Lanka, and they had them in Malaysia too.

Now my very good friend Helen from Canberra - you are just NOT to say that it has not been a good week. I have been worrying for days. Please tell me by email what is happening to you.

I howled with laughter over my son's blog with the triple soup! He writes brilliantly - as do Tabbi and my other daughters, Karmen and Kim. Isn't it lovely when your children can surprise and amaze you with their talent?

More later - I have LOTS of photos of St Simeons and the Citadel in Aleppo (both Syria).

Click on the photo below for a set of photos on the road to Aleppo.

Click on the photo below for a set of photos of the Beit Wakil Hotel.

Click on the photo below for a set of photos of the Citadel.

Click on the photo below for a set of photos of St Simeons.