The things that make her stay

There are few things Ila doesn’t like about life in Cairo.

The way the summer months overstay their welcome. The way Egyptians have no concept of personal space or privacy. The way some people don’t lift their feet off the ground when they walk, shuffling down the street in their flip flops, beating out an aggravating rhythm on the asphalt. The way some men spit in the street. And the way most taxi drivers constantly complain about how crowded the streets have become just to wrangle a few extra pounds out of the all-too suspecting public. The things she loves far outnumber them.

She loves the Nile. She loves watching the young couples, standing on the Kasr El Nil Bridge or the Corniche, overlooking the sluggish water, oblivious to the traffic and noise, and to her watchful eye. These couples never face the cars, the young man often draping a protective arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder, as they stand closer than you would expect an Egyptian man and woman to stand in public.

She loves the audacity of a downtrodden nation that can claim that Egypt is Om el Donia, Mother of the World, despite the fact that the last time Egypt was an empire to reckoned with was a few thousand years ago.

She loves the safety of the city. She walks the streets of Cairo late at night, with friends or alone, and does not feel the trepidation she would in any other part of the world.

But mostly, she loves the people she has found in the city.

The boy who stands on 6th of October Bridge one afternoon, weaving between the cars idling in bumper to bumper traffic jam, reciting well-rehearsed jokes into people’s windows for their spare change.

The woman who sells jars of watered down honey in her street, and one early morning, would not take no for an answer as she pushed the plastic jar with the bright red lid into her hands, telling her, “I’ll take whatever you pay. It’s up to you.”
Ila tried to explain to her that she could not spend the entire day with a jar of honey tucked under her arm, but her explanations fell on deaf ears.

And then there were the things that sparked her curiosity. Staunchly masculine moustached men walking through the street, arm in arm, hand in hand, or even pinkies linked, without the slightest hint of homosexuality about them.

The way men openly harass women in the street, with anything from innocent flirtations to outright attempts to pick them up, but wouldn’t stand for the thought of their sisters going on a date.

All of these things came together in one large, messy, chaotic world, tinged with the scent of ground coffee, drowned in thick plumes of car exhaust and shisha smoke, and the sounds of the latest one-minute wonder blaring from car radios, accentuated by the beating of a wrench against gas cylinders, as men on motorcycles drive through the neighbourhood calling out to potential customers.

Ila stood in the midst of all of this, and she knew she had come home.