Egypt

Black Sabbath Iftar

September 28

On Tuesday Omar and I went to see the remnants of Black Sabbath (minus Ozzy Osbourne) in Denver. It was a unique experience to break the fast while cruising down the highway, calculating sunset with the dashboard clock and tucking into a styrofoam box of Chinese takeout at the appointed moment. Over the years, Ramadan has become, to me, a wholly Egyptian experience, celebrated with Egyptian foods at big ’azoomas of relatives and friends, capped off by soccer games. Ramadan in Egypt is how I learned to cook without needing to taste the food. Now that we’re back in the US, I can buy chicken stock in cans, already strained and seasoned--no need to go to a fararghi and select a live rooster, throw him in a pot, and season the broth myself, gauging the level of salt and onion by sight and smell alone in the last hours of fasting. In the west it seems there’s no need to cook by sense--everything is already prepared and measured out. It’s the perfect place for a fasting cook. There’s some small uneasy irony there that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Right. Here’s how other people are spending the holy month:

Ali Eteraz writes a series of Ramadan Reconciliations that are definitely worth reading, especially if you’ve kept up with his other work over the years.

Muse chronicles her first Ramadan in Cairo.

As the full moon makes its appearance, Aziz of City of Brass reflects on the halfway mark of the month.

Posted by G. Willow Wilson on 09/28 at 02:35 AM
EgyptPersonalReligion • (792) Comments • (99) TrackbacksPermalink

Plays and Protests and Such

May 16

Yesterday I went to a play at AUC with a friend, who introduced me to someone who said “You’re the one who’s writing a comic book about Cairo.” That’s always fun. Granted, the English-language lit crowd in the city is not large, but it’s still a nice ego boost when people you don’t know have heard tales of your escapades.

On another note, the wave of strikes by Egyptian factory workers denied fair compensation continues in the Delta. One in particular deserves notice: women at the Kafr al Dawar textile factory have been holding a sit-in for 22 days, and refuse to leave before they are given their promised yearly bonuses and are compensated for the factory’s impending closure. In Egypt, where strikes are more or less illegal and unions are run by the government (let that contradiction sink in for a moment), what these ladies are doing takes tremendous courage. You can find out more about the strike and about how to support the strikers by contacting the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights or The Bussy Project at thebussyproject at yahoo dot com.

In other news, Neil Gaiman has posted some fabulous pictures from the wedding of subcultural luminary Alan Moore. 

Posted by G. Willow Wilson on 05/16 at 07:25 PM
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