Long wedding night

Muhammad Alfajed works at the Perfume Palace in Cairo. He speaks English extremely well, is a skilled salesman, reserved and well-mannered. He seems to know everything about important world perfumes, he claims that the vast majority of them are made from Egyptian essences, which he offers us for sale. He measured us with a smile and offered the highly regarded aphrodisiac "Secret of the dessert" as an ideal choice in our case.

When the conversation had already progressed in a friendly atmosphere, he offered us to be his guests that same evening at the wedding of a relative from his native village of Ayat. While Muhammad was packing the "sweet secret of the five flowers," guide Tamir discreetly confirmed to us that there was nothing to worry about because Muhammad is a reliable and honest man. Tamir, a city guy, only warned us that the countryside is probably not what we imagine it to be; however, Muhammad will probably be very happy to show his poor relatives that he has good contacts and friends among foreigners, which also speaks to his good earnings.

CHAOS I BUKA: We were also lucky that Muhammad didn't organize himself in time, so we had to go first to the apartment where he lives, in a part of Cairo where you don't bother with tour guides. The traffic chaos and noise in that area is indescribable. At one point, our car stopped and Muhammed and his brother were pushing it along the congested boulevard in the opposite lane. The impression was that the other drivers happily accepted the challenge and enjoyed the resulting chaos - the ancient black and white Fiats and Ladas hit each other non-stop until we got away without anyone (except us in the back seat) getting too excited. .

We were amazed when the car turned from the huge boulevard into an astonishingly small and unlit street that looked more like a yard, so full of children and strewn laundry. It will turn out that Cairo is just like that in almost all of Giza, somehow unfinished and domesticated. After all, the picture of all Egypt is full of such scenes; women smoking beans or men smoking hookahs sit cross-legged on the sidewalks of Cairo's vast boulevards, just like Bedouins deep in the Sahara in front of their houses.

Muhammad told us about the wealth of his family and the success he has at work, hinting that he belongs to the wealthier people. It was hard to understand that, watching the murmur of the poor in the street without electricity where he lives with his wife and children. In the very entrance, where there are no mailboxes, you can see only a dilapidated, almost completely ruined staircase, but also at the very bottom a small room lit by a lamp. We stared at the group sitting on the ground around the lamp, as inconspicuous as it could be. A dilapidated unlit staircase revealed one large, expensive door on each floor. Muhammad's were like that; he didn't like that we noticed the poor, but he explained to us that there are a lot of them in Cairo, newcomers from the interior, who practically work all day long just for bread and baskets, the poor man's meal of rice and pasta. The building fell into disrepair because its tenants or their ancestors rented apartments twenty or thirty years ago at a then fair price. Today, the owners are at a huge loss because their property is practically captured. That is why the prices of new apartments, for purchase as well as for rent, are enormously high.

Muhammad's family, two daughters and a wife, live in a small one-room apartment. The beautiful Dzemila welcomed us in turquoise blue pants and a jacket, decorated with gold and ready to go. The younger daughter, although not even a year old, was also ready to go in the wee hours. Egyptians are never separated from their children and they go to sleep at the same time as their parents. Weddings, or rather celebrations for that matter, start around midnight, and we'll be there right on time.

COMPLEX LIFE: The road to Ayat led along the Nile. The river, which we could not see because of the darkness, because the roads to the interior are mostly unlit, followed us on the left side for the entire hour it took us to reach the village. Suddenly, the road leading through the cornfields was lit up, we later heard it was due to a wedding, so that the approach to the village would be easier to spot, and it came in handy to wake up our little group. The entrance to the village leads to darkness again, and car headlights occasionally illuminate men in galabayas and women in abayas sitting on the thresholds of houses without windows and doors and smoking shisha, often in the company of donkeys or dogs. Four families live in harmony in the village, around four thousand souls who survive mainly by cultivating corn. The happier ones go to Cairo or the coast of the Red Sea, where there are real sources of money.

In front of Muhammad's father's house, everything shines, it is the richest house in the village, it has a large fenced yard, a separate fountain, windows, doors, electricity; in front of the entrance a crowd of men in gray and white galabeis. When the car stopped, Muhammad turned towards us and we saw his new face, which had acquired more pronounced and darker features, and his eyes had a black glow; as if from that Muhammad who knows what he needs to do in Cairo to sell perfumes to foreigners, a Muhammad has emerged who has not forgotten his village because of this new life, but remains silent and waits. He is waiting for moments like this, when he will appear in front of his childhood friends in a new city shirt, taking two women with him, just like his father did, proud of everything he created. Muhammad would probably never want to leave there if he didn't have to, and neither would his older daughter, who would later tearfully ask that they stay in the village forever, where she can run with donkeys and children. The house, however rich it was, was too small for all the new families of his father's seven children. After all, according to tradition, he has to create his own wealth and his parents are not obliged to help him in this.

NET SONGS - NET READING: Our host told me to take his wife's hand, she will lead me. Dinner on the floor in the hall with the sisters-in-law smiling the whole time and looking at my slippers with delight passed quickly and we all went to the illuminated square together. There, in a huge white plastic tulip, a small throne, sat the newlyweds. To the right of them is the stage and a fat singer with a zara and in shalwars accompanied by her husband's band, and in front of them are women and children clapping to the rhythm of the music. The square was covered with carpets, and the carpets were white with dust. All around sat men with hookahs in front of them, as Muhammad explained to me, smoking opium, sometimes drinking the mild Egyptian beer Sakara, or non-alcoholic beer. Opium is prohibited, but the police, if there is any for miles around, would not intervene, according to the traditional tacit agreement. I spent the night mostly sitting on the chair still covered in the nylon from the store they gave me, along with the women in a shady corner of the square. Sometimes a small procession of women would come to pick me up to guide me through the carpet maze and take a picture of an important relative. The less important ones came by themselves, as well as many children, to ask me to take their pictures. The order of songs and the order of reading long lists of names of all the locals who congratulated the newlyweds on the joyous event alternated until five in the morning.

In the next issue: Egypt without caste