This guest post comes from Chase Gilbert, a traveler, occasional video game player (read on..) and all-around awesome person who spent some time living in Cairo, Egypt. Thanks Chase!
A chubby Cairene boy with a dirty finger hooked into the edge of his mouth stared at me and the three women I sat with at Ghas, a sidewalk restaurant that came highly recommended by two different cab drivers, a good sign considering the hundreds of cafes, restaurants and street vendors in the area.
We stuck out, in the Sayida Zeinab district; our fair skin and blonde hair contrasted with the locals, who seemed unaccustomed to tourists in the densely populated area.
People pack themselves into these largely vertical neighborhoods — 70,000 per square mile on average, and, in some, several hundred thousand — which forces the young out on the streets to play, and often to work.
Children circled us from a distance at first, watching with the blatant curiosity and innocence that only the young can express. A mosque’s minarets were silhouetted behind them, peaking through ten-story-high apartment buildings. The building seemed out of place among the lights and noise of the city however, it has seen the evolution of Sayida Zeinab, of Cairo; the introduction of electric lights, taxis, and more recently, the birth of these children.
And now, we sat before it, shoveling falafel, pita, tahini, and French fries into our mouths as a gang of girls tightened their orbit until they, with smiles stretching across their faces, charged us and shoved their dainty hands into our chests.
The eight or so girls shook each of our hands with a firm American-style, and in their best English, politely asked us each our name and struggled to emulate the alien pronunciation. We responded in kind with our best Arabic, which was embarrassingly on par with their English.
I reffered to each as Mona, which three of them proudly announced as their own name, doing so slowly — mm – oh – nah! An older girl with her hair and neck wrapped in a black hijab stood with her hands clasped on her plump belly behind them.
She could have been between 13 and 30-years-old, her face wrinkled from her grin and the thick pollution sitting in Sayida Zeinab’s stagnant allies. Her traditional attire could have placed her in these streets 100, or even 300 years ago.
After a few minutes of introduction and coos and giggles from the Monas, our waiter chased them away harshly and they ran into the streets, dodging madly honking taxis.
The neighborhood watched us as we finished our coffees and paid. It was nearly 11 p.m. We decided to stroll deeper into the district, and after a few blocks of dusty streets and more wide-eyed children, the young ladies I was with saw a dark alley that deserved exploration.
Despite my protests, they hustled into the five-foot wide path, sandwiched between massive stone walls peppered with tiny windows, filled with tiny faces peering out.
We came to a group of men working on small engine parts in front of an entrance that threw light out onto the adjacent wall.
Boys played soccer with half-flat balls and screeched at each other while sprinting off into the dark. A toddling girl stumbled around, chewing on a doll.
We passed the men and glanced into a small room filled with boys doing something unexpected; crammed onto benches, with a familiar expressionless stare, each of the eight or so boys clutched a video game controller while sitting inches from televisions with cracked bodies. Some played soccer games but a few played a game from my past; a beat-’em-up fighting game where two characters do their best to punch and kick the hell out of one another.
We said hello and walked by, yet after a few steps I realized I had an obligation to those boys. We went back, so that, with my advanced skills at this particular game, I could represent America in a bi-national video game tournament. My most fluent co-traveler asked if I could join, and the elder men allowed me to go in while a round-faced boy gave me his seat. I expected to dominate, to unleash the talent that a lifetime of the privilege and free time that it takes to master these game afforded me. This was not to be.
The boy finished me off quickly without a word or celebration.
Granted, my controller was missing buttons and the others were barely functioning, but there was no arguing. I had lost and little Mahmoud had won, pretty effortlessly. I left, thanking them repeatedly, and was even a little ashamed of my failure.
The older men told my companions that the building I sat in was nearly two centuries old and the building across from it was constructed during Mamluk rule – roughly 1250 to 1500 CE.
The juxtaposition of the situation was astonishing and for the first time I was affected by how ancient Cairo is. Civilization has existed here for thousands of years, and I and those children are only a blip in its existence, but for an evening we met with Cairo’s coming generation in the Sayida Zeinab’s ancient streets and alleys.
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