Learning Arabic 101
A friend who lives in another non-English speaking country made a wise observation recently. “You can ask for a drink and say ‘no’ and ‘thank you’, and you think you’re […]
NOTEBOOK
Canter past Patagonian icefields. Sail the tranquil waters of Lake Como in Italy. Sip coffee in a Palestinian village. Listen to the ancient voices of Australia’s Arnhem Land. Climb the mountain paths of northern Albania. Let’s go!
Sweating it out on the sauna express
The temp in Cairo is ramping, up with 40 degrees and sunny blue skies the norm. It’s the time when the city fills up with gulf Arabs coming to the […]
McArabia: would you like dogma with that?
Far be it from me to plug a multinational food chain, but … rules were made to be broken. Let me phrase it this way: if there was no other […]
Kartell does Cairo
Last night, I went to the opening of the new Kartell store (www.kartell.it) Yes, Kartell, the Italian home of Phillipe Starck – he of the occasional tables made from plastic […]
Little black number
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how differently black is perceived in the West and here in the East. In the west, fashion has been dominated by the LBD […]
Get some pork on your fork
This is an old rumour, but a deliciously naughty one worth repeating in the light of the swine flu fanaticism: word has it on the streets that the government has […]
Egypt beats Italy in World Cup frenzy
You know Egyptians, like so many other countries, adore their football. I didn’t think it could get any more frantic, but with the World Cup looming in South Africa, the […]
Swine fever grips Egypt
Despite the fact that Egypt killed most of its pigs in a bizarre species-cleansing exercise that had pig owner (Christians) disraught, the country is not immune to swine fever. There […]
Riots in Iran
It is so disappointing to see the riots and subsequent deaths in Iran over the outcome of the presidential elections, which saw the incumbent conservative president, Ahmadinejad, re-elected with two-thirds […]
A realeo, trulio boutique hotel in Cairo
I recently reviewed a gem of a boutique hotel, Le Riad, in Gamilaya, the medieval Islamic Cairo. It sits on the main street of El Muizz, which stretches from the […]