Welcome to Cairo | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

Jul

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 option to eat in Egypt except at a McDonalds, you could do far worse.

Stop gasping people – I’m talking about the McArabia. Hurrah, McDonalds has forgone its cultural imperialism for one moment and come up with a passable alternative.

The McArabia is tasty flat bread with beef or chicken kofta, fresh lettuce, tomato and tahina inside. We have tried both and thoroughly rate the beef out of the two. At around LE25 (about A$5), it’s not cheap but it’s damned tasty.

They haven’t gone so far as to serve it up with the Ko’ran or a glow-in-the-dark plastic mosque alarm clock (yes, they are out there), but instead the standard fries and a drink.

Jul

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 garden gnomes and transparent furniture – amongst others of the designer world’s elite. I confess I was super surprised by the annoucement – sure I know there’s enough cash in Cairo to buy Kartell, I just wasn’t sure it was so firmly within the Egyptian taste point. But hey, I’m wrong.

It was a bit of a blast back to Milan, with the red carpet up to the door, though a few differences – the glamorous building is still being finished so they were running on generator power (though you’d never know) and the cocktails were mocktails, as far as I could see. Beautiful Egypt was out in force, with lots of leggy young girls in fashions you’d never see on the metro, and plenty of interested young blokes serendipitously placed outside for a rare glimpse of nude legs.

Jun

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 been selling pork meat for the stunningly low price of LE5 (just over a US dollar) a kilo.

Of course, the pork comes from the pigs who have been slaughtered in the fever of swine flu. A further rumour, which I’m SURE is not true, is that unscrupulous butchers are mixing the meat with that of beef and lamb to flesh out their supplies.

I don’t rate this one because surely no butcher would be so bad as to mix what’s considered unclean meat to Muslims, who comprise around 80 percent of the Egyptian population. But rumours, like the flu, have no boundaries.

But then, as a Christian friend said to me recently, “Muslims say they don’t eat pork, but once they’ve eaten my pork, they love it.”

Hotly contentious, I’ll leave it at that. I have no beef with pork, either way…

Jun

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 fanaticism has grown to an obsession. Especially after a close match with the champions of Brazil.

So imagine what Cairo was like the other night after they beat Italy. Yes, Italy! Even the Italians were disgusted with themselves, moreso when one of their players lost his pants to reveal a white backside, caught on a thousand cameras.

After the match, the city closed off one of the main cross-city tunnels as dancing revellers poured through it, and homemade fireworks lit the sky. Hundreds of cars lined up to drive through Korba, just near my house, so they could wave their flags and have their cars rocked by the swarms of boys celebrating with horns and drums, chanting, “Misr! Misr! Misr!” (Egypt! Egypt! Egypt!)

Egypt is next pitted against America tomorrow night, which they are ridiculously confident of winning, and is the qualifier for the World Cup. I say: show caution. They say: it’s America. Which is almost as bad as Australia.

Jun

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 are 29 cases to date, with new cases developing daily, mostly in people returning from travel in Canada and the US.

So of course, we foreigners are a target for suspicion. So much so that I’ve a good mind to wander through the busiest mall with an Australian flag, sneezing conspiciously and sans tissue – pure naughtiness.

It’s the front page of Al-Ahram today, with a photo of members of the Opera House audience donning masks, girls in the metro with masks on, and one girl quoted as saying, “Egyptians should shop kissing when they meet with friends. The flu provides the perfect reason to change unhealthy habits.” Really. That’s just un-Egyptian.

Throwing rubbish in the street or pouring raw sewage into the ocean – slightly less healthy than kissing, don’t you think?

Personally, I’m loving the Australian response to swine flu (despite the fact we appear to be riddled with the pig cold). Australia has increased its national threat assessment level from “no worries, mate” to “she’ll be right, mate.” There is no thought of incurring the most extreme threat level of “sorry, mate, we’re canceling the barbie”.

Jun

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 city gates of Bab el-Futah to Bab Zuewelia.

The area nearby is the mad bazaar of Khan al-Khalili and is a pedestrian zone (mostly, excluding taxis, wild boys on motorbikes, donkey carts and horse drays) that was, until very recently, potholed and filled with the soup of a handful of centuries.

So when a Frenchwoman and her Syrian partner found this 1960s apartment block, it was home to 81 people, the rooftop serving its usual Egyptian occupation – as a rubbish dump. Now the rooftop is a chic Arabesque-meets-Bel-Air garden terrace that looks over some of the city’s oldest mosques, including the mosque of Al-Aqmar, which dates from 1125. You can see minarets from the Fatamid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, the citadel and the waterfront hotels that line the Nile.

Lovers of white, despair! Veronique has one of the most energetic and exciting visions of colour ever to be seen in a hotel – and it all works. She is amazing! Each room is a vivid colour, either mid-blues or hot pink, eggy yellow or rich reds. They’re named after periods such as the Ottoman or Pharonic suite, or after people and personalities – the singer Omm Kolthoum, a Bedouin room, the bellydancers’ room…

She can tell you where every chair came from, what period the reproductions are modelled on, from Pharonic furniture to chic 1950s. She sourced all the photos, paintings, the detailed touches like the antique typewriter in the Nagib Mafouz suite (winner of the Nobel prize for Literature).

She’s taken the bulky silver necklaces of the oases women and box framed them for dramatic effect, the light fittings are enormous and super-glam, and she serves the best pastries in Cairo, discovered after an extensive search. “I would be looking at pain au chocolate and would have to ask, ‘Is that a pastry or a roast chicken?'” she said over dinner. Her driver picks them up from a bakery near the Four Seasons First Residence, Giza, every morning, and it’s worth the effort.

There are just 17 suites, and it’s not cheap, ok? The standard suites are E240 up to E300 for the superior suites. But in a city characterised by big five-stars and slummy dives (with the notable exception of the lovely budget Pension Roma) and the Talisman Hotel, a former project by the same dynamic duo, it’s a welcome addition to the Cairo scene (and hello, Kartell opens a shop here in a few weeks, too!) Anyway, here are the pix – you be the judge.

May

El Ahly stops the nation

If you wanted to tear through the congested Cairo streets at 200km/hour, last night would have been a good time to do it, as 20 million people were all glued to the TV or at the football stadium in Alexandria as the reigning champions of Egyptian soccer, El Ahly, played the young guns of Ismalia. It was billed as a match between youth and experience. El Ahly scored in the fifth minute, the ball headed in by Flavio, the player they call, rightly, the Golden Head. In the crowd, boys pulled off their bright red Ahly shirts leapt up and down in unison. The crowd was a sea of red, a marked absence of the blue and yellow of Ismalia. Other giants of El Ahly included Wael Gomma, who looks suspiciously like Vin Diesel, and the god of football, Abu Treka, widely tipped to do all the scoring.I was half listening to the commentary while I worked and thought, How impartial is this commentator? Then I realized, it’s El Ahly TV (yes, the football team has its own TV station). So what do you think? Even I could it work out, cos the commentator yelled ‘mabrook’ (congratulations) on every forced offside and foul.El Ahly won, 0-1, the captain, Shady, climbed up on the goal posts, goading his fans on to get louder, and the station showed its colours…“Your sympathy is not enough,” said the (totally partial) commentator in the glitter-laden post-match dissection of other teams in the league who were supporting Ismalia in a bid to end El Ahly’s iron grip on the league. “You can compete with us, but you can’t take it.” Humility, obviously, is not a quality prized in the Egyptian league.

May

Getting porked

Rumour has it on the streets that the government is selling pork meat for the stunningly low price of LE5 (just over a US dollar) a kilo. Of course, the pork comes from the pigs who have been slaughtered in the fever of swine flu. A further rumour, which I’m SURE is not true, is that unscrupulous butchers are mixing the meat with that of beef and lamb to flesh out their supplies. I don’t rate this one because surely no butcher would be so bad as to mix what’s considered unclean meat to Muslims, who comprise around 80% of the Egyptian population. But rumours, like the flu, have no boundaries.

May

Touching the Pyramids

Sometimes life throws nice gigs at you like the other night, when I spent a night at Mena House Oberoi , Egypt’s classic grand hotel, for a review for UK website Travel Intelligence.

The hotel’s celebrity list reads like a who’s who of all worlds – Roger Moore stayed here when filming The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), John Travolta opened Egypt’s first disco here back in 1972. Omar Sharif has been a regular as was Egypt’s (and the Middle East’s) most famous singer, Umm Kalthoum, who dossed here each month and now has a suite named in her honour.

Royalty and diplomats include the Aga Khan, Prince Philip, Spanish kings, Saudi princes, Thai princesses, and King Gustav of Sweden, a noted archaeologist, whose name also hangs on one of the hotel’s suites. Winston Churchill stayed here while orchestrating the North Africa campaign in WWII, while Jimmy Carter helped broker peace between Egpyt and Israel from the hotel in 1979.

Charles Heston used to ride a horse into the gardens every afternoon after filming the Ten Commandments, and on a slightly less noble note, an Australian soldier was arrested for running through its halls naked chasing a woman when the hotel became the HQ for the Australian army during the First World War (word has it the army turned up with a baby kangeroo in tow). The soldier defended his nudity saying the army rulebook says not to wear uniform when engaged in activities deemed unfit for its honour.

Every hotelier has their fingers crossed that Barak Obama will stay when he visits Cairo in June – most likely he will stay at the embassy or one of the city’s many palaces – but he could pop in for tea and to see the treasures of the original hunting lodge which is now the hotel’s Palace wing, its furniture inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl, the massive chandliers and corridors of pale grey marble.

The real reason you’d stay at the Oberoi in Cairo is for the reason show in the pic: this is a shot from my room. Take a look out the window, people, at that hulking great beast. Yes, it’s the Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops), one of the three Great Pyramids of Giza, so close you could spit on it. If you wanted. Of course I don’t want to. I don’t want to incur the wrath of the mummies and much less the Egyptian government.

I lolled around by the pool (see pic 😉 and had my first proper curry in three months in the hotel’s Moghul Room, which won best hotel restaurant in Africa by Conde Nast, and is reportedly the best Indian restaurant this side of Mumbai. Richard Nixon has sat at its restaurant’s tables and I reckon he also enjoyed the naan, which, friends, was memorable and made me miss serious Indian food. Thai food is forgotten, I’m on the hunt for the perfect Indian curry now…

The other great thing about the Oberoi is the golf course, at 110 years old, the country’s oldest. Golf freaks, beware the green monster before you view the next pic! Suprisingly, the green rates are seriously low, less than A$15 for a hotel guest and $40 for non-members. The only others on the course this morning were a few delighted Japanese guests.

The course is just across the road from the hotel, which is also a two-minute walk to the ticket office of the Great Pyramids, where touts try not too hard to lure you onto a camel, horse or into a carriage.

Which brings me to price: of course you want to know how much it costs to stay at the Mena House. Sure it’s not cheap. It’s a five-star hotel, and the rate card on the hotel counter reads E230 for a double room in the Palace wing with one of those jaw-dropping views of the Pyramid., which has stood here for 46 centuries.

Apr

The disgusting and the divine

If you were ever after a slice of streetlife in Downtown Cairo, taking a bench at Restaurant Zezo the Disgusting’s (est 1962) would give you ringside seats.

The restaurant is a string of benches and trestle tables set on the roadside opposite one of Cairo’s city gates, Bab el-Futah. Built in the 11th century, the gates lead into Gamilaya, the heart of Islamic Cairo, which is why Zezo’s little kitchen is topped with a perky imitation of the gates.

Zezo’s is most famous for its sandwiches – soft white bread rolls – filled with fried liver or spicy oriental sausage, and a super-sweet, hyper-activity-inducing roll filled with halva, cream and… honey (omg!!!) for around LE5 each. The floor is the city’s dirt and there’s a constant stream of taxis, donkey carts, garbage trucks and cheap Chinese motorbikes tearing past, spilling pollution onto the scene. Best eat at night, then.

Last time we visited the 24-hour Zezo’s, a bride sat, in full white regalia, at the next table, intermittently weeping and fainting till her groom back-handed her and manhandled her into the bridal car watched in a mix of amusement and horror by the rest of the cafe.

The perfect follow-up to a late-night dinner at Zezo’s is tea and a shisha pipe at Lord’s, inside the city walls. The cafe’s pets include a handful of stripy kittens, a scattering of small, colourful birds and a large duck, which I reckon is so cranky because it’s sleep deprived. Come too close, and it’ll take a bad-tempered swipe at your ankles.

“What time do you close?” we asked one of the busy cafe boys at Lords.

“There are no walls at Lords,” he replied, with a mystical look in his eye that could have either been the result of the late night, indulgence in sufism or a particularly strong hash…

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