I Needed That

Brilliant experiences are often found in the strangest of places. As you may have established from yesterday’s post, I was struggling to find anything cool about Egypt. That changed last night.

While walking home at about 1 AM from a enlightening balcony discussion with the resident Brazilian and Mexican experts, I stumbled upon a street food vendor. Here’s the thing: I love street food vendors. I want to be a street food vendor. I would be happy if I gave it all up to serve chai in India or shawerma in Egypt. As such, I have a borderline ridiculous respect for these masters of the culinary beat.

I couldn’t help but stop and see what the guy was offering. After peering into two bowls contain random meat, I quickly deduced that he was serving sandwiches. A quick calculation later (me + hungry = sandwiches), I was using my severely broken Arabic to figure out how much I had to shell out to get what I could only imagine to be a treat for my stomach. I told the guy that I wanted four sandwiches (they weren’t very big) and found it would cost 4 LE (80 cents CDN). Good news.

The guy seemed a bit surprised that I wanted to sit down at his makeshift table, but he did oblige and serve my food on a plate. As a “garnish” he brought over a big plate of tomatoes and pickles. I polished off what I think was a liver concoction in two of the sandwiches and a smoked ground beef mixture in the other two. I don’t usually eat liver (provided I know it’s liver), but this stuff went down without a problem. I then turned my attention to the tomatoes…I can’t quite acquire the pickle taste.

We exchanged the customary “What’s your name?” and “Where are you from?” pleasantries soon after I finished eating. As expected, he exclaimed, “Ahh…Kent, like the cigarettes.” Yep, that’s me. I’m just one giant stick of tar and nicotine. As I went to leave, his helper offered me some shai. It’s just black tea and sugar. Sure, it doesn’t contain the complex flavourings of its Indian sister, but it hits the spot after a nice Egyptian meal.

I told them that I’d come back tomorrow, armed with my camera and appetite. As I walked across the street and away from the cart, I felt weightless. I had just had my best experience in Cairo to date.