More thoughts on Cairo -- streetlife observations

It is a city out of focus, blurred by smog and the clamor of its streets. Outdated cars rattle their way through the crowds. Horns note a turn or a watch out! or a go faster. Grime is engrained in every surface from the windows of the rusted black and white cabs to the faded cloth handles of the old mens' waterpipes. Dust is everywhere, coating the thick leaves of the rubber trees with a brown film.

It is a loud city, loud in the quiet, punishing way dreams are when they are distorted by fever. Everything whirling, surreal, out of control, sleepy but frightened and vigilant like a hostage in the trunk of a car just before he loses consciousness to an inhalation of carbon monoxide.

Occasionally the smog melts away and the glare of the new-found sun awakes the drugged people so that they sit up, blinking and disoriented; however, like hostages kept in ignorance of their whereabouts they people only truly wake up at night. It is then that their world, their entire existance, changes. In the orange glow of the streetlamps and the blinding fluorescense of the storefront window displays, the sleeping people come alive.

It is then that one notices the juice stands with their swinging nets of mangos and pommegranates and the sickly-sweet sugar cane juice served in mugs like frothy, chartreuse beer. The odor of rotting guavas mixes with whifs of vomit from the back alleys. Charcoal and sweet apple smoke waft from the shisha parlors with their sawdust floors and elderly clientel.

Skinned cows, a silly shade of fuscia, hang in the butchers' windows with their tails flopped forward revealing their indignity to the world even after death. Balding men in plaid shirts hustle among the taxis on their way to unknown appointments, their foreheads marked by the black, ashy callous of prayer. Great, black lumps of shriveled old ladies park themselves on the sidewalks, selling packets of tissues or twinkies.

A man in a galabiyya, the traditional ankle-lenth shirtdress, digs into a McDonalds hamburger, and a young man passing a girl on the street hisses "ishta." Literally the word means "cream," but it also means the young man is lower-class, uneducated, and ignorant of the fact that the girl was walking on this street for purposes of her own, not simply for his pleasure. But to reply would only earn the girl more unwanted attention so she pretends that the man was never there and the moment passes, though this interaction will be replicated every day all over the city between countless young men and women.