I shrugged.
"It's for at night," he grinned.
For most contemporaries, Cleopatra doesn't conjure up Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra or Dryden's All For Love, but a naked Elizabeth Taylor submerged to her cleavage in a sumptuous marble bathtub, or getting a voluptuous back rub. That queen, too, is history, for "Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust," wrote some antisemitic white dude. Don't read him!
This Cairo man was an exceedingly minor hustler. In Skopje, North Macedonia, I ran into a very short man who was wandering around wearing a USA cap. In perfect, accent-free and colloquial English, he explained that he had just been robbed by five Gypsies in Ohrid. Though they had taken his IDs, three credit cards, $40, new iPhone and passport, he still had a wallet, first red flag, which he pulled out to show me a photo of an exceedingly gorgeous blonde in a US Army uniform, second red flag. As if to explain why he was so tiny, he said he had been a jockey in Louisville for three years, where he saw nine other jockeys die in violent wrecks, third red flag. As if to snuff out suspicions he wasn't really a Yank, he said he could name all "44 US presidents, with even their middle names," and he actually rattled them off, in order, as we were walking along the Vardar. I'm not going to nitpick and say there were actually 45 American prezzes, but the final red flag was when he said his father owned 50 industrial supply stores, one in every state, and that's just ridiculous, amigo. Still, it was a very impressive performance, so when he asked for $10 halfway through, to get the cheapest hotel room until his wife sends him cash the next morning, I readily coughed up. Plus, there was an outside chance he was genuine, for he hadn't mentioned the 50 stores in 50 states. Hell, it would be disgraceful to deny a fellow American in trouble ten lousy bucks.
Searching for Stella, I serendipitously discovered Horreya, so that's where I am now, having my first beer in more than three weeks, a personal record. Stella is Egypt's only beer brand. First brewed in 1897, it's a respectable lager, just a notch below Beer Lao. The only other choice is Heineken, so no, thanks.
Horreya is a tall ceilinged, spacious room with long-stemmed, three-bladed ceiling fans and large, multi-paneled windows, so you can clearly hear car horns and motorcycle vooms above the low roar of conversations. There's no music, thankfully. The hummus-colored walls are decorated with shaped mirrors and a sign from nearly a century ago, "Votre Boisson PRÃ"degreesFÃ"degreesRÃ"degrees/ VIMTO." The light is naked neon, such as you find at bus stations.
There's a tin ashtray at each table. After spitting on the floor, a nattily dressed young man rubbed out the sputum with his shoe. The waiter patrols the floor with bottles ready to be dispensed, and adroitly opened with a quick flick of his wrist. Most patrons are men. Just now, though, some matronly broad just ambled past me. Ten feet away sits a fierce eyed, sharp chinned and tightly smiling beauty, with her cigarette, beer and bearded, prematurely balding boyfriend.
Behind a square column are two joined tables of possible Americans, judging not just by their faces, but body language. Pudgy and pasty, they may be professors at the American University here, but who knows? Perhaps they're Cornhusker offensive linemen from the mid-80's, here on a quirky reunion. "Hey dudes, let's go to Cairo!"
"Man, that's just a pissy little village! My sister lives right on the corner of Mecca and Alexandria, near the Baptist Church. There ain't nothing in Cairo but the Medina Coffee Shop""
"I don't mean Cairo, Nebraska, dumbshit! I mean Cairo, Egypt!" So here they are.
An Egyptian Mau lurks, frowns, eyes you with hope and resentment then bounces away. In Muslim countries, stray dogs don't wander indoors, but cats do. In Cairo, I spot them often inside metro stations, sometimes nibbling from small plates. At Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, I encountered meowing pussies, licking themselves most indecorously.
Horreya means liberty, by the way, and that's apt, for it is an oasis of license in a culture that generally shuns alcohol. The Koran (2:219), "They ask you about intoxicants and gambling. Say, 'There is gross sin in them, and some benefits for people, but their sinfulness outweighs their benefit.'" True enough, so get shitfaced responsibly, and don't gamble.
For 1,375 years, Egypt has been Muslim, but not entirely, for there are significant Christian communities here, with beautiful, well-maintained churches, 500 in Cairo alone, some of them huge.
For thousands of years before the Muslim conquest, Egyptians downed more beer than Bavarians, Brits, Koreans or whomever else you could think of. In fact, they were one of the first brewers. The oldest large-scale brewery anywhere was in Nekhen, Egypt. In 3600BC, it cranked out the equivalence of 650 bottles a day. In 2580BC, a laborer at the Giza Pyramids was allotted four to five liters of beer daily. (When I was housepainting in Philly, our boss, Joe, only gave us one bottle of Samuel Adams at quitting time!)
Egyptian men, women and children all drank beer, for it was deemed nutritious. Beer was also used in medicines. During their annual Festival of Drunkenness, Egyptians whooped it up all night, complete with orgies, it's claimed. Trashed, they sloshed through the marshes, so to speak, without clothes.
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