Journeys of a British Egyptian

There I was in the scorching, afternoon, summer heat of Cairo. It was a huge change from the UK’s mild weather and the fact that I had been fasting - no food or drink- for 15 hours by that point only made things worse. I looked around, the sun was quickly disappearing behind the towering apartment blocks that surrounded me. The taxi had dumped me here after taking a clearly circuitous route to squeeze every penny out of me; I had cringed as I watched the number on the meter creeping up, but there wasn't much I could have done. I had two suitcases and no idea where to go. I felt a painful emptiness in my stomach. My throat was completely parched from a lack of water and the desert air, heavy with sand, made it worse. Each breath I took filled my nostrils with the pungent smell of rotten food given off by the overturned skips at every street corner.

I walked for what seemed like hours but was probably closer to 30 minutes. I would ask one person for directions and once I got to where they told me, I’d ask again and be sent off in the opposite direction. With each step, my shoes filled with more sand until the whole desert seemed to be in there, and sweat drenched my shirt so that it stuck to my back, as if glued there. So far Egypt was hardly the paradise I remembered from my youth and the insistent buzzing of the flies in my ear made it difficult to remember what good I thought I had seen in this country.

Suddenly the booming voice of the Athan, the muslim call to prayer, resonated around me. It marked the time for the evening prayer and, more importantly, the time for me to break my fast. That thought only made me hungrier and I thought I heard my stomach rumbling. I continued to drag my feet through the streets in the area squinting at each building number, hoping to see mine, but to no avail. Eventually I decided to ask at a shop I had passed a few times, as I neared it a man pointed to the ground next to him “Here,” he offered “sit and break your fast us.”

In one hand he held a bottle of water, in the other a mango. No feeling could come close to the ecstasy I felt when I sunk my teeth into the sweet, succulent mango. This man who looked like he could barely afford the clothes on his back was freely sharing his food with me. I couldn’t recall a stranger ever being this kind to me. At that moment it was a lot easier to remember why I had decided to come back here.