Thursday, December 22, 2005

23 Sharia Sherif

You may have noticed a while back that there was an aborted mission to Sharia Sherif that resulted in Helen music heaven. Well, that saga did not end, and so begins one of my favorite purchases ever.

During our Eritrean cooking lessons we had asked the head woman, Fatima, where we could find this special Eritrean red pepper (shatta). At first she was rather vague, mentioning downtown, and then Sharia Sherif, and finally, acting as one who had begrudgingly been forced to reveal what she secretly wanted to reveal the whole time, she lowered her voice and said quickly, "23 Sharia Sherif." In conjunction with another downtown shopping trip Jayanthi and I made our way to Sharia Sherif and found ourselves finally in front of 23 Sharia Sherif. A stationary store. I walk in and ask, thinking that maybe they have an Eritrean working there informally, but the woman at the desk looks at me like I'm crazy when I ask for Eritrean shatta instead of a 24 pack of envelopes. Even I'm feeling a little bit shady, thinking that "Eritrean shatta" sounds like the best codeword for drugs I've ever heard, but when we ask a man on the corner selling doo dads and sweaters on a table, he immediately points us down an alley, tells us to turn left and to go to the first floor. Of course I don't expect anything bad to happen to me, but I am glad to have Jayanthi with me so that I don't think that I'm crazy. We enter the apartment building, go to the first floor, and walk to the end, wondering if we are meant to just knock on a certain door. At the end of the hall we can see to our left an open door revealing a room with a few men sitting, and luckily one of them notices our bewieldered expression and comes to our assistance. We ask him about the shatta, and he simply nods and leads us into the kitchen, asking us to sit down. He reaches into the cupboard and brings out a plastic bag with a KILO (2.2 pounds : ) ) of shatta. We ask if he has anything smaller, he says no, we say how much, he says 35 pounds, we pay, we leave, and the exchange has just been completed. No small talk, no questions about how we knew he was here, no questions about Eritrea, just a transaction.

So I now have a 1/2 kilo of Eritrean shatta and a story. You can't really ask for anything more, can you?

Jayanthi left last night and now it is just me and this, my last day in Cairo. Of course I woke up sick, having all of the extreme and rapid temperature changes finally catch up to me, but lots of tea, a hot shower, my American drugs, and the exhilaration of today will surely do the trick.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh baby!

You're sick!? Feel better soon and have a good trip back

- Jayanthi

4:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

THAT IS AN INCREDIBLE STORY. I am so envious. What did you buy? That word means nothing to me. Will it make something yummy that I can eat sometime?

3:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just realized that this could be your last post. Noooo!! What am I going to do when you don't write this blog any more! You're not allowed to leave Egypt!

3:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i'm planning on going to Egypt next year, and attending the same university. I'm a little apprehensive about the whole thing, as my exposure to Arabic and the Middle East is quite small, and I was just wondering if you could email me, or something, so i can get a feel for the atmosphere over there.
I plan to take a Qu'ranic arabic class, but that will be the extent of my learning, until I find some way to take an actual, spoken arabic class.

my email is fbichica@hotmail.com

I really hope to hear from you

9:20 PM  

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