The Weekly Wad

The Politics of Street Cuisine

My first direct taste of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East came as I was sitting with my cousin Inez at the Khan al Khaili, a wonderful warren of retail bedlam in Cairo's center. We were enjoying -- I was enjoying -- a kibdah (liver) sandwich and a spicy sausage sandwich at a vendor of such on the sidelines of the bazaar. My cuz asked a gentleman wearing a turban if we could share the small table in front of the stand and he smilingly obliged. We sat and Inez listened to me gruntingly approve of the food I was inserting into my mouth -- a common sound -- and I smiled at the stranger across from me who returned the smile as he hoisted his sandwich to his mouth. It could have been an Oscar Meyer commercial.

As has happened many times to me during my stay here in Egypt, native Egyptians will see me approach and launch into an onslaught of colloquial Arabic at blistering speeds, expecting me to fully understand and respond accordingly. The joke's on them when I can't and I am forced to use my standard, "inta calemma ingleezy?" line which roughly translates into, "slow down; help." at which point, the joke's on me. After our trying vocal exchange concludes, I am inevitably told that I look Egyptian and upon confirming my full-blooded Pharaonic cred, they then wonder why I don't speak the mother tongue. I still don't have a good answer for that one.

Kind of a similar thing with my fellow kibdah connoisseur, only he leaned over and asked my cousin if I was "Masry", or Egyptian. In muffled English, I butted in and said, yes, I was, and also American. It took about 1.5 seconds for the man's face to go from welcome wagon to angry mob. After a few more tense seconds, he told us he was Iraqi.

My first reaction was sympathy. I apologized, first in English and then after consulting my cousin for the right terminology, in Arabic. He sarcastically said he was sorry, too. Whatever the reader's politics, there's no denying that Iraq is a stinking fish market that every stray cat in the neighborhood has found out about. Some would argue the U.S. of A might have had a wee bit to do with blowing open the windows and doors for these mangy cats to climb through. So I could appreciate his anger, frustration and apparent outrage.

What I could not appreciate was the man's penetrating stares every time I looked up from my gustatory activities. The look of derision and disgust isn't something you want to be eating across from. Actually, I'm used to disgust. But derision certainly does nothing for digestion. As my spicy sausage sandwich quickly became memory and rumor, I was starting to get generally annoyed with his silent-yet-menacing schtick, especially when he asked my cousin how I felt about the Iraq war. She smartly told him to just eat. Regardless, I really tried to engage in some sort of dialog with him, but I was getting no where. Plus, Cousin Inez, whose frantic whisper I had never heard before, was imploring me to stop trying to talk to him, citing his unpredictability.

I apologized again and then he slowly got up and paid for his meal. After briefly conversing with the vendor, the rather burly man in green fatigues turned to us and reached for his wallet. He pulled out a picture of a small boy, about four or five years of age, sitting on a brick ledge and handed it to me. It was a picture of his deceased son, his "baby", whom he said died in the Iraq war. Looking at the faded photograph, the man's pain suddenly felt genuine. I returned the photo to him and he quietly disappeared amongst a display of shiny sheesha pipes and glittering silver bracelets.       

By this point, the blood slowly began to return to Inez's face and she had ditched the whisper in favor of a full-throated scolding in regard to me talking to dangerous-looking men dressed in military green. I calmed her down and offered her some liver.

Still, the incident induced continued pondering. I was unsure what reaction this guy had wanted from me. Was it horror? Abject sorrow? A check? To stand on the table and loudly denounce my government as bits of sausage and bread come flying out of my mouth? I wasn't sure if my battered GAP jeans and round-the-clock shadow gave it away, but certainly there was a dearth of lawmakers trying to track me down in search of my thoughts leading up to the war, let alone my thoughts on anything. But of course, to claim innocence is folly. Even my occasional rental cars need a fill-up.

And, yes, while disheartening to see a photo of his dead child, I was equally disheartened to see a semi-automatic weapon strapped around him as he sat on that ledge. Not exactly the stuff of family photo albums and not quite the image I would have chosen to invoke a measure of guilt on someone whose fellow countrymen were being mercilessly disposed of in the same conflict, as well.

But as he walked away, shaking his head, I really wished we could have adequately communicated. I wanted to hear his side of things and vice versa and perhaps, over a couple more kibdah sandwiches, we might have understood each other better. Maybe. Alas, the world such that it is and the disinformation still rampant in the alleged information age, for all he knew I was a war-happy, oblivious, American tourist who was sure he was a Koran-crazed terrorist with a double-parked car bomb a couple of blocks away. So much for discourse.

Egypt's Comforting Chaos

While Egypt appears to run on corrupt socialist principles practiced by principally corrupt socialists, driving here is like an Ayn Rand novel: everyone for themselves. It's an all-out, self-interested scramble for forward and lateral movement involving drivers, pedestrians and animals alike. The lines on the roads aren't even suggestive (like in say, Virginia) they're decorative at best. Drivers have no problem whatsoever making left turns across four lanes at the last second and almost without looking. They also have zero qualms about playing high-speed chicken down a narrow street with women and children. And chickens.

Likewise, if wanting to walk across the street -- a fifty-fifty shot of survival here -- I've found it's best to just wade into traffic and for a hurried second, the oncoming cars will part like the Red Sea. But Moses, I ain't. Dawdling will cause you to share the same fate as the Egyptian army. I've already been smacked by several side-view mirrors as I've attempted many crossings and my legs have also just missed being taken out from under me numerous times by decrepit Peugeots and way past-their-prime Datsuns.

Far from the road, though, I've found this chaos exists everywhere, pervading every aspect of the country. My first sampling was in the customs section of the Cairo International Airport where a yelling, howling mass of travel agency escorts held white cardboard signs and hotel and transportation touts harassed everyone with luggage in their hands. I was able to avoid some of it because the adept baggage handlers working for Alitalia had misplaced my bag along with the bags of four German art students and a foxy girl from Halifax. I don't even want to discuss the "Italian food" served on board.

Losing my bag was a first for me, yet completely fitting that it happened in a country where they've given bureaucracy an even worse name. The entire process of alerting an authority to the problem and then photocopying my passport for identification purposes, was needlessly drawn out to about seventy-five minutes, at least. When asked about the hold-up, the dark, lanky man I complained to told me, "the photocopy machine is far away." As in Libya.

My cousin, Wag, who was waiting outside of the terminal the whole time, drove me to his family's apartment in the Cairo suburb of Gisr Suez. Not only was I jarringly introduced to Egyptian driving on the way, but I saw my first microbus drive past us. More or less a hippy van, these vehicles were jammed to the dashboard with locals, riding for the equivalent of about 6 cents. Arabic billboards plastered the landscape. Black smoke billowed into the air, chasing that pesky oxygen away. Horns were being laid on as frequently as the gas pedal and my arrival coincided with the afternoon call to prayer. Every mosque, and there are plenty, mans a loudspeaker five times a day and the air is all of a sudden filled with conflicting middle-school, PA system announcements. Street vendors were loudly peddling their wares to passers by and/or shouting across the street at their competition. Tiny dime-a-dozen corner stores bustle with business, where the concept of an orderly, polite line is lost on all customers. Random canines yelp as little boys throw sticks at the numerous stray dogs wandering around. Local Egyptians exclaim, well, everything in loud voices. The blare from mobile phones of the latest Arabic music announces an incoming call. Twenty different fuul and kebab places all line the same street and are hard at work constructing delicious little pita sandwiches. Hundreds of neon bedecked boutiques show off the latest in haute head scarf fashion. Cars double, sometimes, triple-park. A general all around visual and audio cacophonic symphony.

And yet, somehow, everything moved along seamlessly.

We arrived to a collection of concrete block buildings with not so much roads in between them as dirt trenches. Driving past everything mentioned above, I was somewhat startled to see herds of large, ugly sheep feeding and screwing alongside the neighborhood's main drag. Wag explained that the sheep were for sale to anyone with a craving for lamb. Depositing the car in front of a building that, from exterior observation, looked as if air strikes made weekly visits, we went through the main door and Wag conversed briefly with the stocky, curly-haired man in a traditional galabayah who stood up to welcome us. He was the doorman, as every residential building in the country has, who not only lived on the first floor, but who would often run errands for you and even wash your car.

A flight of stairs later and we had reached a handsome, warm interior. I was introduced to Wag's wife, Laverne, her sister Inez, and Wag's two tiny tykes -- cousins all -- for the first time. The moment probably best describes the initial unfamiliarity of arriving in and being absorbed by the country of my forefathers. Yet at the same time, while enjoying a simple meal of freshly grilled fish and rice with these almost complete strangers, I had an odd sense of comfort. I was listening to and somewhat comprehending, the Arabic language I grew up with alongside people I didn't and yet nobody felt out of place.

As for Cario itself, I had learned to tame her relatively quickly. Within a couple of days, I was fearlessly crossing streets without local human shields and bargaining over this and that. I could order things in coffee shops and was even able to engage in small-talk with cabdrivers. The Cairo noise; the chaos, began to feel normal.

My bag eventually showed up one morning, too, albeit almost three days later. My cousin joked that Santa Claus had delivered it. Yeah right, Santa could never pass a Peugeot.

Getting Schooled Again

Wandering through Heathrow after getting off a plane is always a marathon, especially if you have an imminent connecting flight to catch. Thankfully, I didnt. But the twists and turns corresponding to the multi-directional arrows on hundreds of yellow signs made me wonder if a piece of cheese was waiting for me at the end.

All that was waiting at the end might as well have been an extremely overpriced piece of cheese. And coffee. And everything else. It was a wonder I was allowed to breathe without forking over some kind of nominal fee. Regardless of the gripes, I was on my way to see a shortish, scraggly-haired man who was waiting for me at the Budapest international airport's Terminal 2. When I layed sore eyes upon the young Che Guevara look-alike, I did what brothers who've not seen each other in over six months do. I let him carry my bag.

Davey led me via bus and subway car to a homey, IKEA catalogue of a flat in the heart of the Pest part of Hungary's capital city. I was introduced to a very affable roommate and empty pizza boxes littering the living room. Ah, college.

'Lil Davey had chosen a city for his study abroad adventure with quite an exciting year behind it thus far. A few months back, the Hungarian prime minister was caught on tape claiming to have lied to the electorate and not in so many words, but in pretty much those exact words. Unsurprisingly, he survived a confidence vote along party lines and is still in power despite enormous, weeks-long street protests. Further, this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of showcasing what a Soviet tank did best; steamroll its way into an Eastern Bloc city to crush anti-Communist uprisings and maybe a goulash run. We were fortunate to encounter a moving commemoration of the tragedy as thousands of the city's citizens marched across a main thoroughfare, carrying lit candles on a drizzly, Sunday dusk.

Similarly, the so-called House of Terror, where communists tortured several of the rebellious Magyars responsible for all the trouble had a rather chilling display lining the outside of the museum. Miniature oval photos of each victim, or hero, were spaced out about six inches from each other with plenty of colorful candles underneath. Observers came to light more candles and to quietly reflect on the sacrifices many of the brave, working folk-turned-revolutionaries had made so Hungarians could have a life of choice instead of having to live with garish, Bolshevik red day in and day out.   

Once inside the museum, however, the solemnity of the occasion and the monument intself were cheapened, Davey and I noticed, by the haunted house music being played on loop as visitors walked in. While the Soviet repression was an afront to thinking people everywhere, is there really a need for Vincent Price theatrics to plow the point home? Shouldn't the large, Soviet tank in the lobby and the inscription, "They died for you." chiseled on every wall suffice? 

Davey and I bonded as we wandered the architecturally stunning streets of Budapest, indulging in restaurants here and teahouses there. We sipped dozens of espressos in tiny coffee shops and cocktails at Cha Cha Cha, a lively and fun bar tucked inside a subway tunnel which I had enjoyed on my first visit to Budapest four years prior. This time, though, it was nice to be able to leave the place on my feet.

I fell in love with the city on that visit, before its acsendancy to the European Union. The main difference I could detect this time around, was a real air of progress. The town itself seemed somewhat cleaner than I remembered.  Not once was I approached by a prostitute claiming to have met me a few days ago and wanting me to accompany her to a "great bar". Many new restaurants and bars had sprouted up and English was spoken with a regularity I certainly did not recall when getting off the train in 2002 and inquiring of a place to crash from a woman behind a desk who just stared at me for minutes at a time. I'm not sure if that is progress or not, but it certainly makes the city and its numerous charms more accessible.   

The steaming pots of goulash; the platters of stuffed paprikas; the generously plump sausages; even the extraordinarily good Hungarian wine was all had by us for a song, or at most, half an album. The cumbersome Hungarian florint is still in use and will be for a bit longer as Davey told me that it won't be till possibly 2014 when Hungary finally gets to use the euro. Thankfully, for us, the prices haven't been affected that much by joining the Union. Even our soak in the famous baths of the stately Gellert Hotel was a mere pittance for the pleasure of dipping yourself in soothing thermal pools filled with scores of old Hungarian men who lost the war against gravity, years ago.

Davey has it good. He's enrolled in a school filled with students from all over the continent, as well as other continents, in a city rich with history, tragedy and triumph. What's more, his classes are relegated to only two days a week and his only worries remain where to party on Tuesday night. Youth is wasted on the young.

Still, it's hard to place the blame on my 21-year old, little brother. While Budapest is wonderfully distracting, his institution of higher learning also sets the bar pretty low. In actuality, they set the bar up every Friday and Saturday night.

School Club I suppose, could be considered an extra-curricular activity. As we approached the steps of the university Davey attended on the banks of the city-splitting Danube, I could see the colorful logo consisting of a mortarboard resting on red letters spelling out those very words. Once inside, there were a cadre of bald bouncers, tersely demanding an admission fee. I had an instant flashback of  being escorted from another Hungarian establishment by similar looking henchman and a woman in a fur coat four years ago, but that's an entirely different, longer story. Once the fee was paid, Davey and I entered what was essentially a happenin' lounge area with a semi-full bar and nothing but Heineken on tap. In fact, Heineken was sponsoring the whole thing as was evident by the gigantic Heineken signs littering the place. We checked our coats and made our way downstairs to where the real party was.

School Club quickly turned from relaxed lounge into booming niteclub once we descended. In the center of the large, oval-shaped room were huge bars serving every kind of alcohol mixed with every kind of mixer, by trendy-looking male bartenders. Everyone in the crammed joint was dressed in "club-wear" and, as they do in the rest of Europe for some reason, most of the men had copius amounts of styling gel sculpting their hair into making you think they just woke up from a nap. Mass cleavage abounded on virtually every single woman I saw, God love 'em, and the music was typically stupid, Euro-techno-pop.

Surrounding the perimeter were ebony and gray-colored mannequins with bad perms and pink lips. Each of them donned a green Heineken shirt and were posed in such a way so as to mimic dancing. Looking as if a Heineken representative broke into a JC Penny's and decided to host a throw down, the mini-auditorium couldn't have looked more ridiculous. And fun.

Davey and I did a lap and headed upstairs for the beer counter. Sipping on the Netherland's second-best brew, I kept looking around in disbelief. Respected university by day; Studio 54 by night. Where was this place when I was in college? My second time in Budapest and I was still discovering and learning new things about her. I just never expected to actually be in a place of learning to do so.