Open Writing

I walked towards my next stop, the famous Groppi. The streets of modern Cairo surprised me. They had well-appointed shops filled with the latest European goods - clothes, gifts, food in abundance with no rationing, articles all so scarce in England. Walking slowly, I watched the busy street scene.

An Egyptian rode his bicycle, unconcernedly dressed in a pair of striped pyjamas. Another, sauntering along the crowded pavement, had strapped to his chest, like a Salvation Army Band bass drum, a large brass container. Through its glass top I could see ice blocks floating in lemonade. As he walked he was shouting out, "Lamoonada, lamoonada," and at the same time, holding in his hands small brass drinking cups, which he was clicking with his fingers like Spanish castanets. It looked cool and invitingly fresh, but one would have been brave indeed to drink it on an English stomach.

On the comer of a side street was a barrow, not unlike a London costermonger's and, similarly, its hawker was shouting the prices and the quality of his wares, consisting of pots containing varieties of nuts and dried fruit seeds to chew, and sold in funnel-shaped cartons, stacked one inside the other on each corner of his barrow.

Suddenly I smelt the sweet scent of jasmine as a man passed, his arms draped with coils of jasmine flowers threaded on strings. The delightful aroma of his flowers wafted everywhere.

I saw two Arab girls stop to buy some. Then, arranging them around their wrists and laughing between themselves as they did so, their very attractive dark eyes smiled at each other, and I wished that they had been smilng at mine.

But then my attention was caught by a barrow, heavily laden with corncobs, which the vendor was roasting on a brazier. I could not resist, and he handed me one wrapped in its leaves. I had never tasted corncob before. It was warm, soft, sweet and fresh and delicious. What an enjoyable baptism to the delicacy.

Every moment there was something new on which to feast my eyes with wonderment. The rattling, single-deck trams moved along their tracks incessantly, with almost as many non-paying passengers clinging precariously to the outside as there were paying passengers sitting within. When the tram stopped, the outside passengers dropped off to escape the wrath of the yelling conductor.

Seeing them in their white galabeeyas, scattering in all directions, I half closed my eyes and they seemed like confetti, falling and blowing along in a wind. The tram started again and they braved life and limb dodging through the heavy traffic to jump back once more on the moving tram for their free ride to the next stop.

It was then that I became conscious of the noise. It was bedlam. The trams clanging their warning bells continuously; the conductors blowing their whistles (which sounded like ducks quacking); radios bellowing Arabic music at full volume from taxis and street cafes, each trying to out-bellow the other; every car horn blaring with ear-shattering persistence as though the one with the loudest horn, or blaring for the longest time, would be entitled to the right of way over the others; and, added to that, the perpetual shouts of the street vendors.

As I walked an army of small shoeshine boys jostled each other for my custom and paraded in front of me slowing my walk. Each carried by a strap over his shoulder a wooden box filled with brushes and bottles of various colours. All were shouting at once, some with bribes of pretty sisters to entertain me afterwards as a bonus to me for his services.

The noise seemed to grow louder. It was a discordant symphony of cacophonic chaos and animated uproar. The din pressed on me. It surrounded me. It engulfed me until, hardened Londoner that I was, I had to place my fingers in my ears for a few moments’ peace.

It was a modern Cairo I was seeing, a Cairo of modern shops and department stores, luxurious hotels and tall, gleaming white buildings of offices and comfortable, well-appointed apartments. The womenfolk all seemed to be so smartly dressed when compared with those at home, who were restricted by the wartime rationing of clothing and the unavailability of beauty creams and other cosmetics.

Here it seemed as though there had been few shortages. I went into a shop to buy a bar of chocolate, and when it was handed to me I asked, quite seriously, whether it was rationed as I had no coupons. They smiled politely in the negative and added that they would be pleased if I bought the entire stock if I so wished, and with a, "Maybe you would like us to send a large parcel home for you?"

It was also a very cosmopolitan Cairo that I was seeing. The majority of the citizens were Arab but there were also large numbers of the residents, who were of European origin, especially Greek, French, Armenian and Italian. Everyone seemed to be at least bilingual.

Little did I know, as I stood with my fingers in my ears on Cherif Pasha Street, that in one of the apartments above me was the most beautiful girl of my dreams, who would become my wife. She spoke French as the family language, perfect Arabic from being brought up to hear and talk the language everyday of her life, English that she learnt at an English school and a little Italian that she learnt from her friends.

This, for somebody from Cairo, was of no extraordinary significance at all, yet if an Englishman in those days could manage to say, rather badly, 'good morning' in Arabic, they all made a big fuss of him as though he were a linguistic, intellectual genius. (For an Englishman to say two words in a foreign language — then he probably was).

But at that moment, unaware of the wonderful girl whom I was to meet later, I set off towards Groppi, famed for its delicious cakes and pastries. Passing through the newsboys selling their papers and shouting, “Moolha!...Moolha!...Moolha!” (Extra! Extra!), I dropped in at Groppi and had a cup of coffee and some cakes, then some more again. They were exquisite. I went to the garden at the rear of the restaurant, where there was a bar, tables and dancing; about ten officers for each girl.

At the height of the war, with the Americans in Cairo, the proportion was about fifty to one. Folklore has it that when the fighting was on in the Western Desert, if a soldier was seen by a Groppi staff member to be shoplifting a cake or two, then a blind eye was turned in that direction. Groppi could well have afforded the loss; the place was a gold mine.