Blog Like an Egyptian

(Seeing something so familiar yet so different provided me with several photo ops throughout the trip.)

I woke up at about 4:30 this morning with a bit of a stomach bug, which ended up following me home from Egypt.  Unable to return to sleep, I figured I would write about what (I think) caused it: Food.

Our first tour guide (Sam) said that everyone gets sick while in Egypt.  It’s unavoidable.  And, as we traveled from one end of the country to the other (and back), most people proved him right.  But not I.  For the better part of three weeks, I was the living embodiment of perfect health.  And much like a pitcher in baseball refusing to acknowledge a no-hitter as the game wears on, I became more and more reluctant to admit that I hadn’t gotten sick.  Yes, I’m superstitious like that.

Then we got to our final full day in Egypt.  My stomach began giving me fits, basically forcing me to leave the market early and head back to the hotel for a long afternoon of wondering what went wrong.  Even two (three?) days later, my stomach is a bit topsy-turvey.

But that’s not what this post is about.  This post is about the other 19 days, when I ate all kinds of food I never imagined myself eating … and enjoying most all of it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t start by discussing bread.  In Egypt, most meals are served with a side of bread, or the main course is bread.  In Arabic, the word for “bread” — aish — is also the word for “life,” which should tell you a little something about how important bread is.

In fact, while taking the night train from Cairo to Aswan early in the trip, we were served five different pieces of bread for breakfast.  And that’s it.

But by far the most popular form of bread in Egypt is pita bread, which is sometimes served with breakfast alongside cheese, cucumbers and tomatoes or peppers.  It’s also an integral part of lunch and dinner.  And it doesn’t much matter if you’re eating at a quick restaurant, a big seafood joint or somewhere in between.  Most times, pita bread comes before the meal with a variety of sides to dip or stuff to make a sandwich.

One such dip is baba ghanough, which I always thought was just a nickname given to Vince Vaughn’s character in “Wedding Crashers.”  You learn something new every day.

But one of my favorite things to stuff inside a pita pocket was falafel.  For the uninitiated, falafel is a mixture of mashed beans and spices balled up and deep fried.  It was particularly good at one restaurant in Alexandria.  Our first tour guide, a native Cairo resident, admitted to making the three-hour drive north to Alexandria on occasion just for the falafel at this particular restaurant.

But it was another restaurant in Alexandria that provided me with my most memorable dining experience.

Alexandria is a pretty famous seaport, so of course, we had to eat seafood while we were there.  Problem is, I’m not a very adventurous seafood-eater.  Put a plate of fish and chips in front of me, and we’re good.  Put a plate of anything with eyes in front of me, and my appetite disappears like Darius Miles.  And, yes, the main dishes — fish and shrimp — prominently featured eyes staring back at me.

So I rationalized: If they’re serving it in a restaurant, it’s gotta be alright … right?  And when else would I be in Egypt?  Might as well try something new!  So when the fish with the eye came to our table, I dug in.  (Quite literally, actually.  Our tour guide told us to reach into the fish, pull out whatever we wanted, sift out the bones on our plate and eat with our fingers.)  And when the shrimp arrived, I devoured them like nobody’s business.  And let me tell you: Our pseudo-shrimp Chinese food bullshit back home can’t hold a candle to that.  I ate way too many and wasn’t hungry for a day or so, but it was worth it.

Bottled water was the beverage of choice with most meals.  In Egypt, you don’t drink tap water.  So bottled water is available at nearly every corner market, tourist trap and even on most of the tour buses we took around the country.  Most of the bottles are sold out of coolers, which are deceptive: Most coolers don’t keep the water cool.  So I grew to detest the taste of warm bottled water.

Still, it’s remarkably cheap: A 1.5-liter bottle of water (pictured above) can cost as little as two Egyptian pounds, which roughly translates into 37 cents in the United States.  And I never paid more than $1 (US) for a bottle.

No tap water has another nasty side effect: No ice.  No ice means no iced tea, which I’m pretty much a degenerate for.  They serve plenty of tea in Egypt, but it’s all hot.  I don’t see the sense in serving hot tea in a hot country, but whatever.  I guess no one made the giant leap of logic that goes something like, “Maybe people would like cold drinks to cool off.”  Such a reach, I know!  So I would pour some hot tea and let it cool off as much as possible in the time allowed, but it just wasn’t the same.

Alright, WordPress is telling me that I’m approaching 900 words for this post, so I’ll stop here for now.  I left out enough about food (and some especially good restaurants) to warrant another post in the near future.

But it’s breakfast time now.  I’m hungry!