Time Enough To Eat

Egyptian food is wonderful. Much of the wonderfulness of it comes from the freshness of the ingredients. I was cruising the news on the internet and found an interesting piece on Time online (you can reach it by clicking the title here) about how much of the cultural aspects of eating are being lost in the globalisation of fast food. My closest fast food place is probably about 15 km, a fact which never fails to please me. In Egypt fast food places all deliver, making it even easier to destroy yourself with food. On the other hand, sometimes I get an invitation to Mabrouka's and that is much, much better. Mabrouka is a widow about my own age with four sons and two daughters. Two of the sons are married, two are not yet...all of them live in the family house. The daughters are married and live nearby. Mabrouka grows her own poultry and buys produce in the village that is grown by her neighbours. She is a wonderful cook, as you can see in the photo. Dinner included chicken cooked with sliced potatoes in a tomato sauce (fresh tomatoes of course...not a can in her house) that were baked in a wood burning oven. The roast chicken was also baked in the oven and the stuffed aubergine, peppers, zucchini, and cabbage leaves were cooked on a stone top to the oven. It's more work than I want to do, but boy, do I appreciate her work. Dessert is usually fruit.

I wish I could say that since moving to the farm I've lost a ton of weight and become sleek and svelte, but that would be fibbing. I haven't but I know that my diet is a lot healthier than it was in the city. The temptation to just call for a pizza was always really a tough one. Now most of my meals are prepared from the things that we are growing on the farm. This depends on the season, but being able to freeze or dry vegetables makes them last. Like most of our neighbours, we are growing the summer crop of bamia, or okra. Part of the reason for this is because I find the flowers lovely. Fresh okra is eaten while still small, but the parrots and poultry appreciate the larger pods. When dried and ground into a powder, the pods are the basis of a Sudanese stew, moolah, of which I am inordinately fond in the winter. The pods have small spines on them and I'm always struck by the dedication of the okra farmers who have to pick their crop in the summer heat while completely wrapped in fabric to keep the spines out of their fingers, arms, legs, and faces. Much of the crop is frozen to provide okra for winter meals, since when it is cooked with the rich tomato sauce and small chunks of meat, it makes for a very filling meal...much more filling than is needed in summer.

Another summer crop that is more appreciated in the winter is molokheya, which could be called the Egyptian national dish. Molokheya is essentially a weed called swamp mallow other places, a tall plant with shiny oval leaves and small yellow flowers. It grows almost anywhere wild and is also planted in fields. The leaves are chopped if fresh, or crumbled when dry, and cooked in a chicken, rabbit, or beef stock to which is added a fried garlic, coriander and a bit of cumin. Hot pepper can be added to taste as well. The molokheya makes a rather mucilaginous soup...another word for sort of slimy...but it is known to be good for digestion. Once you get past the texture, and some people never do, it is wonderfully delicious over rice. We have a small field of it growing next to the longeing ring and I find the plants all over the garden popping up next to roses or behind palm trees. Welcome.
My parrots like peppers, my grooms love peppers, and I like them too. This year we planted hot peppers and I learned that if you pick them young, they are usually sweet, but if you wait for them to ripen to red, they pick up a lot on the heat scale. Peppers have a ton of Vitamin C among other things and are very good for you. I never had any idea how many peppers can be produced by relatively few plants. It's quite astonishing and I haven't had to buy peppers all year. We also are still working our way through the braided onions and garlic in the verandah, while it is almost time to plant again.

Zucchini is a vegetable that is planted all year round and it only takes about two months to complete the growing cycle. One of my friends in Alexandria called Egypt "the land of the eternal zucchini" because of the omnipresence of this vegetable. Yesterday I made a salad from gargeer (aka: Arugula) cut fresh from the garden, tomatoes and red onions also just picked, the first zucchini from our garden sauteed with garlic and mushrooms (the only bought items), with chopped roast chicken. Zucchini just out of the garden tastes NOTHING like the stuff that you get from the supermarket. In another week I'll be sending zucchini home with my grooms because there really are limits to how much I can eat, even with the poultry, rabbits, parrots, and tortoises helping.

Finally, being on the cusp of the mango and date seasons, we have a number of sweet options. The mangoes this year had a hard time with the summer heat, but they are just as juicy as ever. The new dates are just coming on the market in time for Ramadan in a couple of weeks, and the sweet red Zaghlouls are already being sold on the roadsides. Left for a couple of days they turn brown and softer, resembling the dates that are more common in Europe and North America. The grapes, both seedless and with seeds are still in season as are the guavas. As the weather cools, apples, oranges, and bananas will take their places.

The farmers here for the most part eat a vegetarian diet. Vegetables grown in the fields, cheese and yogurt from the family cow or buffalo, and bread or rice are the staples. Breakfast is often cooked beans known as foul (pronounced "fool") cooked with onions, garlic, cumin and lemon, and eaten with cheese and bread. Lunch may be bread, cheese, onions, and then dinner might be a vegetable stew. It's a healthier diet than is followed in the city by a long shot. Sometimes it's easy not to miss junk food.
copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Shhh. We Want It To Stay...

However it happened, Mobinil finally got service restored in our area this afternoon. Thank you, Mobinil, we love you again.

Unfortunately, the only suitably jubilant photo on hand is set in New York...but you get the idea.




copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Please Contact Them

The story as I understand it is that some of the villagers in Menawet decided that the Mobinil relay tower there was causing cancer or some such thing. Or maybe they decided that the steel and concrete could be put to better use...who knows? At any rate, from what I understand, and this hasn't been published in any papers that I am aware of, they dismantled the relay tower last week and the area roughly from Shubramant to Abu Sir in Giza has been left with no Mobinil service at all.

To understand what a disaster this is it helps to realise that there are about forty thousand people living in the area, of whom probably less than 10 or 20% have land lines. The rest of us, including myself, make do with mobile phones. Some of us use Mobinil, some Vodafone, and a few adventurous ones the new carrier. To be honest, Mobinil, until recently, had the best reception out here and was the most reliable. Vodafone has improved a lot lately after calls to technical support brought engineering staff out here to check out and improve the situation. Because I do a lot of distance riding and the mobile reception in the desert is spotty...sometimes Vodafone working better than Mobinil, sometimes the opposite...I've had lines with both carriers. Right now I have my Mobinil line forwarded to Vodafone so that people can reach me at home.

Today one of my neighbours called me with the news that Mobinil has apparently decided not to replace the missing relay tower for at least a year, leaving the area completely without service for residents and visitors alike. Bloody brilliant. By the time they do replace the tower there will be no Mobinil customers to need it. As someone who depends on my mobile phone and who has been a Mobinil customer almost since the company opened, I am seriously ticked off. Probably someone in the higher echelons of the company decided that a bunch of ignorant farmers don't need a relay...so who is really the ignorant one?

The link in the title will reach the customer support page at Mobinil. If you are a Mobinil customer and find the idea of leaving 40 thousand residents and who knows how many visitors to the area with all of its antiquities, hotels, clubs, restaurants and so on without Mobinil service, do use the link to let Mobinil know.

We would appreciate it.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Cairo's Bridge Of Dreams - LA Times

This is a really nice piece written for the Los Angeles Times by Jeffrey Fleishman about one of the main bridges of Cairo, the Kasr el Nil bridge, where it seems that half of the city congregates at night. In the summer, the bridges of Cairo become parks with every possible type of person relaxing over the water, breathing fresh air and enjoying the scenery. Worth a read, so click on the title for a link.


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Got To Hit The Bookstore

I found these two reviews of a book that I really have to buy. The Man In The White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado looks like a marvelous read. It is the story of her father's forced expatriation during Nasser's regime and how it affected him and his family who found themselves in New York. Lucette Lagnado is now an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, so obviously she made the transition well, but for her father the transplant never really worked. The period of Nasser's socialisation of Egypt was horrific for many Egyptians of European and Jewish backgrounds and also for many Egyptians who simply had been too successful in their enterprises in Egypt. The young state of Israel had high hopes that some of the Egyptian Jews would head there from Egypt and were happy to stir the pot to encourage emigration. Unfortunately, Tel Aviv simply was no match for Cairo (and probably still isn't), so the emigrants were far more likely to go to Paris, London, Geneva, New York, or Montreal. Canada is full of Egyptians who left Egypt during the 50's and 60's and I often get emails from their offspring who are now intensely curious about the fascinating country their parents left behind.

There is no question that Egypt now is not the Egypt of the 50's. Even my husband mourned the passing of the city that died with Nasser's changes, and he was born in the late 40's. But what is the same as in the past? It is the nature of life to change and one simply hopes for the best. I'm happy to see books from the refugees from Egypt because it will remind both the world and Egypt of the multiplicity of resources that Egypt had on hand. This was not a uni-cultural society at all. Egypt had layers upon layers of immigration and conquest and Cairo was the pearl whose brilliance came from the accumulations of cultures from the earliest times. Early Egyptians merged with Nubians, Sudanese, Hittites and others from the Fertile Crescent, Jews, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Arabs, Berbers, the multitude of cultures brought in under the Ottoman Turks from the Balkans and southern Russia, the Europeans who came and fell under Egypt's spell....Egypt has been the true melting pot but rather than losing their shape and flavour in the process, it's as though people come, leave something of their lustre and take on some of the glow of the preceding inhabitants, leaving Egypt and themselves richer in the process. It really doesn't surprise me at all that Cairo is so hard to leave.

Links:
New York Times review: www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/books/10book
International Herald Tribune review: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/09/arts/idside11.php


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Time Out For Sunshine

For the past few days there have been sms' flashing around the mobile phone networks in Egypt warning people to avoid the sun from 11 am to 4 pm. Some of the warnings have been attributed to the UN (I didn't know that they had a weather department?) while others have had no attribution. Friends of mine have told me that there have been announcements on television as well. There's a certain Duh factor here. As long as I can remember, people have been warning that the most dangerous time of the day in the sun is during the hours between 11 and 4...and I can remember a fairly long time. I remember when they first invented sunscreen. Many of us, while we are miserably coping with our overheated summer weather, have been wondering what has changed to make these messages necessary. I guess it's awareness.

I did some net research to see if there have been any momentous happenings in the solar ray world, but no. I suspect that someone has finally noticed that ozonally speaking Egypt is not in the best of circumstances during the summer. As a matter of fact, according to some of the ozone maps that I was able to find while researching, we are in much the same situation as South Africa and Australia, two countries that push sun protection in a big, big way. So these messages seem to be A Good Thing. A look at the map above will show why. The grey and blue band along the equator indicates an area of lower ozone and higher risk. The turquoise band that overlaps Egypt and North Africa is a bit better, but it is the same colour as the band over South Africa and Australia. The green areas are better still, while the red spots are the best. It's sad, but definitely worth noting, that these are all over areas far away from the influence of human beings.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

ER in Cairo

I was out riding with a few friends yesterday, just an hour jog in the countryside, training for two of them who want to improve their riding skills and training for my 5 year old gelding Figgy who is just now joining the working horse string. My mobile phone rang in my fanny pack attached to the front of my saddle and I slowed everyone to answer. Two of my neighbours and a friend had ridden down to Dahshur early that morning and it was one of them on the line to tell me that another had fallen from her horse and needed a pick up with a jeep. The four of us hastened back to the farm to go rescue Janie. Two of the friends went on home while one came with me after we collected cold water, a frozen jug of water, some arnica and some Rescue Remedy.

I ride in the Dahshur area quite frequently. The desert there is beautiful and the pyramids are easily as interesting and beautiful as Giza, although not as big. They are older though. The directions given would probably have stumped an ambulance driver, and even most of the local people around here wouldn't have had a good idea of the best way in to pick up our invalid. So horseback riding does have its rewards. We zipped off down the Mariouteya to the Dahshur turn, and then turned onto a dirt road before the entrance to the pyramid area. About a couple of kilometres down the road a turn over the canal into the tomb area of Dahshur gave us an entry into the desert close to the point where Janie's horse had fallen through a fox den with the result of her rolling over his shoulder and landing on her own on the sand breaking her collarbone.

The other riders collected horses, a groom that I'd brought would ride her horse home, and we packed Janie up into the jeep for the ride to the hospital. We'd only gone a few kilometres on the main road when a nasty floppy sound was the signal that I had a flat tire. Wonderful. And what a flat. The entire side of the tire was cut open, by what I have no idea. A quick call to Janie's daughter arranged a ride for my driver out to our parking place and a new car to continue to the hospital. While we were waiting, three different vehicles stopped by to offer assistance with the problem, but we told them we had someone coming. That's one of the things I really love about Egypt. When you have a problem, someone is going to help.

After a nice traffic jam on the Moneeb bridge we finally made it to Al Salam hospital on the Corniche in Maadi, our emergency room of choice...although that may change. About a year ago I'd taken another neighbour in there after a fall from a horse that broke her arm just below the shoulder, and a month or so ago Janie had taken a friend in late at night after a fall from a horse broke her tailbone. Yes, horseback riding can be dangerous, no question. In both of those cases, the doctors examined the women, made an x-ray, and sent them home with appropriate treatment, so we were expecting to be in the hospital for only an hour and a half or so, as long as the break in the collarbone wasn't too complicated. Something had changed, however, in the ER. A doctor first came and insisted that Janie had to lie on a back board, an object that looks like a surfboard with handles and is supposed to protect the spine in case of injury. Well, that's fine but where was it when we were collecting her in the desert, driving the jeep down the country roads, changing to the daughter's car and walking into the hospital? Seemed a bit like overkill to us but we humoured them. They very nicely gave Janie some pain killer IV and then hit us with a list of x-rays and diagnostic tests that were apparently "procedure". Must have new procedures, I guess. Despite our protests that a) she hadn't hit her head, lost consciousness, been confused or drowsy they wanted a CT scan on the brain. Ok, a bit much but reasonable. They wanted a bunch of x-rays on her back and pelvis as well as sonography on the pelvis and abdomen. Whoa Nelly! Janie had rolled off a horse that was also on the ground, hit the corner of her shoulder on the sand breaking her collarbone, but there had been no impact on her lower back, pelvis, head or even the other shoulder. The problem was very localised.

I was elected the official arguer because I'm very well-known to be stubborn and inflexible when necessary and I have a good understanding of medical procedures for basic first aid. We finally whittled the list down to something we felt was reasonable and would yield some actual information rather than a bunch of "You're fine"'s and a huge hospital bill. Six x-rays and a CT scan later we were told that she'd broken her collarbone (Well, duh. What did we tell you had happened?) but that it was a nice clean break that would have to heal in a sling. We'd walked into the ER at about 12 noon and it was 4:30 pm by the time we could leave. Janie hadn't even had coffee before going riding, her daughter hadn't had any breakfast before picking us up, and none of us had any lunch, so it was a pretty crabby group of women who left the hospital. That probably explains the vehemence of the final argument with the internal medicine guy who still wanted to have a sonography on the pelvic area. Fortunately for us, we already knew that the sonography man had gone home for dinner, so we told the doctor that if anything at all looked bad we would get back to them.

Both Janie and I are old hands here and remember when you had to walk into a hospital and tell the nurses and residents what kind of tests and treatments you needed rather than having some administrator tell us that "procedure" dictates what tests are performed. It's nice that they have all the new equipment and I'm sure that the procedures are useful, but it was so hard to get away from the idea that the driving force for the "procedures" was the balance sheet. I'm quite sure that the income for Al Salam will be rising in the near future because most people are neither as sure of what is wrong as we were, nor as determined in insisting on signing off on things that are unnecessary. I guess that progress has its price.

Oh, and by the way, the photos are just there for the viewing. They are pictures of the Dahshur area where they were riding. Pretty.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani