2012:5 - The Street on Voting Day

 The streets around the seminary have been busy Saturday and Sunday as people are out, presumably to vote, but that’s not entirely certain. Last night I read in the Egyptian English press that voter turnout was low on Saturday. The French school about a block and a half from the seminary and is a polling place and both yesterday and today it was a buzz of activity. The seminary (on Road 15 pictured below) is located a half block from Road 87, a main east/west street that has been backed up with car traffic for two days. This morning as I walked passed the school soldiers and police were readily visible and people could be seen coming and going. For the last two days we frequently hear helicopters overhead. We read that they have been deployed to keep an eye on polling places. Unofficial results will begin trickling out in the early morning hours of Monday, but official results will not be announced for three or four days. It will be amazing to witness how the coming days unfold. 

Turning west on Road 87 and walking about 6 blocks brings you to Road 9 – the main commercial thoroughfare in our part of Ma’adi - we call it downtown. The street has a more international flair than it did when I first came to Egypt 6 year ago, but it remains a mix of common Egyptian businesses nestled side-by-side with high-concept restaurants, coffee shops and stores catering to foreigners and Egypt’s wealthy elite. Egypt is a country of paradox and that is visible along Road 9.

This morning, for instance, I stopped at a small tamayya (falafel) stand and got two tamayya sandwiches with salad and sauce in a pita. This stand caters to Egyptians walking from the nearby Metro stop to their various places of work. The menu is posted on the wall and is only in Arabic. Three men work in the shop. Two assemble sandwiches – tamayya and eggplant are my personal favorites – while a third works at a fry station set up on the sidewalk in front of their small store front which is about the size of a single car garage. Sometimes people purchase a sandwich and sit on a stoop outside to eat it. Others, like me, take our sandwiches to go. My two simple sandwiches set me back 2 pounds (about 34 cents). Yesterday when I took Hans to the stand to experience the goodness before he left we got charged 5 pounds for 4 sandwiches. Today I asked for and got the local rate.

I took my sandwiches to the Greco Coffee shop – my favorite place to buy air conditioning and coffee – where I got a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice and a small French press. In contrast this set me back 25 Pounds – about $2.75. The Greco has a lovely cosmopolitan atmosphere. People from all over the world gather here to meet friends, enjoy the air conditioning and relax. You regularly hear English (of varied accents) as well as French and Arabic mixing together. When I started coming to Egypt, Greco was one of the few places of this type on Road 9. Today it is one of dozens of restaurants serving coffee, frozen yogurt, desserts, Italian pizza and the like.

The contrast between Greco and the Tamayya stand illustrates what’s happening in Egypt today. Some in this country are hitching a ride on the global economy and demanding more and more of the opportunity and benefits that this can provide. Others want to live a simple life and be able to provide for their family and enjoy great, inexpensive tamayya. Most of my students would never consider spending 25 pounds on coffee, nor would they have the resources to do this if they wished.

The streets in Egypt are full of contrasts. It’s part of what makes them so fascinating to wander.