Up In Smoke

Ramadan has begun; we are on our second day now. Many people are fasting, refraining from food, water, and cigarettes during the daylight hours and then breaking their fast with tea and a cigarette to battle those headaches that are the result of the sudden withdrawal. After the breaking of the fast, many people go out to spend the evening in the Ramadan tents where they have soft drinks, tea, coffee...and shisha. A shisha is a water pipe, sometimes called a hubblebubble, that supposedly "filters" the smoke through water. An article today in the BBC goes into some detail on why smoking shisha is really not a great idea.

Years ago I spent a semester teaching health (aka: Sex, drugs, and alcohol) to some middle schoolers who were astonished to see the crud that was washed out of a shisha pipe hose after use...and this was what accumulated AFTER the "filtering"! The smell of the flavoured shisha tobacco is actually quite nice and I like to run across it on an evening breeze. Maybe the fact that I've never been a smoker keeps me from understanding the attraction of shisha, but the health hazards are serious.

So have a cup of mint tea instead. Ramadan Mubarak.

copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Reading Material For Ramadan

It's hot. It's been hot all summer and I'm ready for a change. This has been a busy summer in a way, not always a good way. It started with the rush of getting away from the farm for two weeks...my first trip out of Egypt since moving here with all the creatures. But my son was graduating from Harvard with an MBA, and you just don't miss that. Impossible. So a whirlwind trip to New York and Boston was undertaken on Egyptair's nonstop flight from Cairo to JFK. The return was amazing as I found myself on a flight that had to be made up of most of the preschool Egyptian children in New York on their way home to spend summer vacation with grandparents in Egypt...Sleep? Not much. I arrived to find an old friend from New Zealand in residence at the farm already and two new friends from California arriving in two days, while my niece, her daughter and a group of high school kids also from California were staying with friends who run an alternative school here. Chaos!

No sooner had everyone departed for their respective home bases than Egypt was hit with equine influenza and we had a 3 week quarantine followed by ten days of sheer misery when the horses were inevitably infected and we spent days hosing down a herd of miserable feverish equids. One of the mules and all of the donkeys came down with the bug as well. The babies and the youngsters (5 year olds) were hardest hit but everyone came through at the end and we all breathed a sigh of relief. I was quite happy that this happened at a time of year when there wouldn't be much demand for riding horses anyway with most tourists avoiding the summer heat and most of my local regulars being away on summer holidays.

So here it is the beginning of September and the first day of Ramadan is tomorrow. This means what for work? Who knows really, but the way things work is that if people rely on drivers to go places, they are not going anywhere much after 3 pm. During Ramadan the traffic is appalling for about 3 hours before iftar, the breaking of the fast, and no one in their right mind goes anywhere then. Businesses and schools close early so that everyone can be home for iftar, hence the traffic. I suspect that weekends will be busier than weekdays and mornings busier than evenings, which is fine with me because I love to saddle up one of the horses and go wander around during iftar listening to the silence of people happily eating.

With the summer heat, I've been hiding indoors during the day doing things like scanning about 25 years of old photographs for the children to be able to have them on cd's. I was a bit apprehensive at first, but finding wonderful shots of my husband playing with the kids, memory shots like the photos taken on our one successful camping trip as grad students (Diaa's idea of camping was the Hilton actually), and millions of pictures of the kids' early trips to Egypt filled a lot of holes in my heart. Troubles tend to hide good memories and it's healing to bring them back to the foreground.

Another job I gave myself was to collect all the blogs that I read from time to time so that other people can enjoy them too. Blogger just brought out a new gadget that automatically updates the blogs so you know from my sidebar when there is a new post. Some of these blogs are written by Egyptian bloggers, some of them are expats writing about their lives here, a few are political, many non-political. There are many more blogs in Arabic but I'm only including the English ones...I can't pretend to be able to read a blog in Arabic. One of the things that I noticed when collecting was that I'm kind of a grandmother among the bloggers, having started in 2003. A blog-fogey if you will.

So if you find yourself not wanting to brave the pre-iftar traffic or just sitting in some non-Ramadan place with quiet time, do explore the blogs. They are ample evidence of the variety and richness of life in Egypt, which pleases me immensely since one of my earliest goals with my blog was to find a way to show the world that richness.

So, to everyone Ramadan Kareem. May the next month be filled with the joy that Egyptians find in this month of fasting and reconnecting with friends and family.


copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Listening To The Silence

My camera has been having some dust issues lately. What a surprise considering that it gets tossed into my bag anywhere I go whether on foot, horseback or in the car. I take it everywhere and there's dust everywhere in Egypt. After two years any digital camera would get a little sticky, so I took it into Panasonic in Nasr City, where, of course, the camera opened and closed perfectly. The guy at the service desk handed it back, saying that it was fine and was rather bemused when I suggested that it might need...GASP!...service. I walked out with a receipt for my beloved Lumix and a promise that it would cost between 50 and 500 LE and would be finished in ten days. Unfortunately but as usual, that was a month ago, and today when I called and totally lost it with the service department they told me that I would, inshallah, have it tomorrow. All of this is to explain the scarcity of visual aids. The pictures here are either older or were taken with my Nokia.

We are over halfway through Ramadan, well past the first part of the month when the general population of Cairo is going around the bend from caffeine and nicotine withdrawal. After a week or so their bodies are used to the idea that they will get their fix after sunset, but the late nights and the sugar highs from Ramadan deserts ae beginning to take their toll.

Today I had to do something that I try not to do during Ramadan. I drove myself into Maadi to take care of some urgent errands. The traffic wasn't really as bad as I'd imagined it might be, but it was bad enough. Between the Monib Bridge and the Autostrad, the flow slowed to a trickle and as I crawled along I could see the cause. A large truck was blocking the left lane (not necessarily the fast lane in Egypt) and behind it I could see a small car was rather smooshed against the concrete guard rail. People were standing around discussing the situation and there seemed to be no causualties, which was a relief. Just ahead of the truck was another car that had somehow been involved in the mess as well.

I don't know if anyone collects the statistics, but based on reports by friends of mine who don't have the option of holing up on a farm and just going places on horseback on dirt tracks, I'd be willing to bet that the accident rate goes way up during Ramadan. The temperatures have been in the low to mid 30's C (low to mid 90's roughly by that other measure), so dehydration is a real issue. Blood sugar rates that are scraping along the asphalt during the day skyrocket after iftar...as do the speeds of many cars. It really is not much of a surprise when people tell me how just in our neighbourhood there have been two hit and runs and one major head on collision in just the last ten days. I don't like to drive during Ramadan. I'd rather stay home.

One of my informants about traffic conditions came out to ride with me this evening. She's military, an fighter jet mechanic, and does a lot of driving between the base and Maadi where she comes on her days off. She rides as much as possible while she's here. I guess it's a good antidote for all that mechanical stuff. I suggested that she come out and ride with me over the iftar period to hear the silence of the countryside, so she came out about half an hour before iftar. The guys got our horses ready while I finished a riding lesson with a couple of small girls and we set out for the trail while they set out for iftar.

Iftar, the breaking of the fast, takes place just after the call to prayer at dusk. Half an hour before the call, there were still a few farmers working in their fields and a few stragglers urging their livestock homeward, but most of the fields were empty. Wonderful smells of garlic, onions and tomato drifted from the houses we passed and children were rushing in from playing outdoors. You never realise how much ambient noise a place has until it goes away, and the quietest time in Egypt is during iftar. It's one of the few times when you can be out in the countryside and truly be alone as long as you are not near someone's home. We ambled along enjoying the birdsong and waiting for the moment when we would stop hearing the trucks on the Mariouteya Road nearby. This is one of the major routes south and the steady rumble of trucks, buses and cars on it becomes a kind of white noise that you don't really notice until it goes away. Eventually that time comes when even the slowpokes have either arrived home or given up and the white noise is gone.

The call to prayer echoed from the mosques of the area and gradually a deep silence fell over the fields and canals. We were the only people out on the trail and every family we passed invited them to join them for iftar. We thanked them and continued our ride. The sky darkened and the palms became black outlines against the horizon. Closer to the farm a few cars were beginning to move about as families left their homes to visit friends. We were passed by one large blue dump truck full of kids who shouted greetings. I guess if the family vehicle is a dump truck, that's what you use. We did, however, decide to prudently avoid the larger village on the main road by the country club and the smaller one just past the entrance to the farm because of another fine Ramadan tradition that really doesn't go that well with horses...cherry bombs and bottle rockets. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Random Ramadan Moments

I'm sitting here feeling very hard done by. It started with a sore throat yesterday afternoon, moving into a fever. Time to spend some time being nice to my body, even if it means that I'm missing what will naturally be a brilliant iftar at the home of my friends Amr and Cristina in Zamalek. Cristina is Italian and makes her own pasta. Need I say more? But I come to this recharging period honestly. There have been a lot of things happening around here. Tracy has gone back to the US for a time to study in programs that use horses to help teach children and executives leadership and other social skills. She's not sure when she'll be back, but I'm betting on no more than about three months. Just before she left we were working night and day to finish my guesthouse in time for Sonia, a lovely British woman who wanted to stop by and experience Egypt with a bunch of "normal" people on her way to a job working with orphans in India. Not sure how "normal" we are, but we've done our best. She arrived at the beginning of Ramadan and has had probably more Ramadan experiences than most tourists. One evening, the grooms had milked the gamoosa and heated the milk with sugar. Tracy and Sonia made the mistake of drinking it next to the donkey paddock where Hanuma our young gamoosa lives and they got mugged.

We couldn't send Tracy back to civilisation without a good ride to hold her over until she gets her next Egypt fix. She and I headed south towards Sakkara to see the date harvest, which has been winding to a close earlier this year due to the heat. Every year I think that I have enough pictures of the date groves and every year their beauty pulls me back in. The heavy bunches of gold and red dates hanging like chandeliers in the tall palms and the children playing around the ripening dates on mats under the trees are simply too lovely to ignore. Having Ramadan fall during the date harvest is a blessing to those fasting. Fresh crisp dates are rich in minerals that replenish the electrolytes lost during the heat of the day.

We are still waiting for the heat of summer to truly end. We are feeling happy that the temperatures are simply in the low to mid 30's C, and an afternoon nap is still a good idea, especially for those who observe the fast. With the onset of dusk, the call to prayer, and the replenishment of the body through iftar, spirits rise and then soar with the help of a sugar high. The dogs, of course, don't fast, but they observe the cooling of the evening with a wild romp on the grass. We've seen some changes in the dog pack lately too, one welcome and one not. Our welcome change was a Moroccan Sloughi puppy that I finally was talked into by an old friend who has been breeding them for years. I've been stalling Hafez for years as well, saying truthfully that I need another dog like a hole in the head. But this time I got suckered into it and the new arrival is a delight. While she's about the size of the Rat Terriers right now, she will grow to be almost as tall as Morgana the Great Dane, although quite a bit lighter in weight. Sloughi's are a rare breed, a North African sight hound that was hunted almost to extinction in a rather misguided attempt to protect gazelles. They are graceful catlike dogs and Sabah has moved right into the dog pack without a ripple. I usually wouldn't name a dog with an Arabic name, to avoid offending anyone who might share the name, but when I tried to change her name everyone ignored the change and simply continued to call her Sabah (morning) with various additions. Sabah el Kheir in the morning as the traditional greeting goes. When she's being a pest, she's Sabah el Daousha, or morning of noise.

Our sad change was the loss of the man of the house, the inestimable Fred, son of Bluto who was the best Rat Terrier in the entire world, his son being a worthy successor. Fred, as the only unneutered dog of the pack, took his job as main man seriously and had a feud going with a neighbour's mastiff. One night somehow the mastiff (who ordinarily is a very nice dog) got in and the boys decided things. No matter how great the terrier, against a mastiff it really isn't a contest. I can't blame the other dog and his getting in the garden was one of those horrible random mistakes. He's now buried in the front garden under a white frangipani tree next to the red frangipani that marks the grave of my daughter's old cat. So one comes and another goes. Not easy, but then none of us will get out of this alive.

The other evening Sonia and I enjoyed one of the countryside's special treats, a sunset ride during Ramadan. We started out in the afternoon sun along the trails watching the farmers on their way home for iftar. Everyone heads home a bit earlier than usual so as to be at home before dusk and the call to prayer. Even the birds were settling in the trees along the canals as we rode along. We watched the sun set, heard the call to prayer, and then heard all the human noises in the countryside fade to silence. No cars were moving, no children calling out, not a human sound disturbed the air for at least 45 minutes as everyone sat to enjoy the breaking of the fast. The moon was almost full and gave enough light to cast clear shadows of the horses as we wandered the trails on our way home.

Sonia is on her way to India in another couple of days so we decided to go see Khan el Khalili at iftar. She wanted to buy some gifts for nieces and a nephew back in the UK and I've never been to the Hussein area during Ramadan, so it seemed like a good idea despite the sneaky sore throat that was scratching in the background. It was a good idea too, an amazing experience. We arrived about 4:45 pm, with the call to prayer expected roughly an hour later. My long-suffering, not to be lived without driver/farm manager Mohamed took us into town and searched diligently for a parking place while we wandered rather aimlessly watching the crowds swirling around us. Once we rejoined Mohamed we looked for a reasonable place to have iftar because Mohamed was fasting even if we weren't. We found a table on a balcony overlooking the square in front of the mosque of Hussein and relaxed there watching the families wait for the end of the fast below. Bus after bus filled with tourists pulled in and discharged their loads, while Cairenes of every variety milled about the area in front of the mosque. When the call to prayer came everyone fell to their meal with a will...although in some cases a welcome cigarette came first. The difference between the city and the countryside was extraordinary. It was indeed much quieter in the square for a bit, but certainly not silent. We finished our meal with tea at Fishawy's, the famous coffee shop of Khan el Khalili, as it was filling with tourists, families and students ready for an evening of Ramadan entertainment. No one serves alcohol during Ramadan but Egyptians are out visiting, shopping and enjoying the night more or less all night during Ramadan. We wandered around the bazaar finding fun trinkets for kids and even managing to get ourselves lost for a while. Khan el Khalili is huge and sprawling, tiny shops stashed in among ancient palaces, warehouses, and mosques. I even found some lovely old brass bells for our donkey harness. Finally, we made our footsore way out of the city and hiked for another half hour to find the car that Mohamed had parked behind a hospital of Al Azhar university.