A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

Not a brothel

In Tahrir Midan, the Picadilly of central Cairo’s circuses, after a long, hot, dusty day spent being shadowed by touts and hissing men, we searched for dinner, for a beer, for a rest. But trouble in Arabic was brewing above a teahouse on the corner and robocops were filling the side alleys. We hadn’t the language to ask why.  Men were shouting from a balcony, displaying photos of people we didn’t recognize. Loud, distorted arabesque music was blasted into the streets. Days later, we learned that Lebanon had been bombed. People were not happy to hear this.

We searched for somewhere open for a cool drink, somewhere uncreepy, somewhere mellow. We walked out of one deserted place because it was too deserted. We were back out in the hot, heavily policed street, standing in front of a closed door contemplating our next move. The closed door opened and a hand beckoned.  Someone inside said, do come in.

We tentatively peeked in. There was live music, a handful of silent, sullen, drinking men,  and a dozen fat bottomed women belly dancing between the tables. They pulled us in and sat us down at a table. One of the women brought us two beers and insisted we dance.  We declined politely, trying to get our bearings in the gaudy Christmas lit long room full of jiggling bosoms and shimmying bums and wailing singers. We were in a brothel.

We sat at our table, sipped our wonderful cool beer, negotiated our bar tab, and giggled with the girls who danced with fat hip gyrations so fierce they were nearly dislocated. I’ve never seen such large breasts bursting forth in a shimmy.  We were offered the services of one Sapphically open-minded sparkling woman. The boyish pimps giggled and danced and chatted with us until we finished our beers. We paid the bill (cheaper than anywhere else so far) and bade them all adieu. We then stepped out of the whorehouse and into the bellowing, sultry robocop night. Men were still shouting from the rooftops. Cairo still roared.

We will start with Mohammed Ali and the perfumists of Cairo.

We wandered down the mad and busy streets between the meydans, searching for a cafe, a restaurant, anything for a hint of food. Do Caireans eat?  There are bags and watches and travel agencies and tea houses but we could find no food in central Cairo.

We stopped to look dumb and vulnerable in the Picaddilly Circus of North Africa and were inevitably approached by our first Approacher.  He very kindly told us that because it was friday all restaurants were closed for mosque and please, won’t we come into his shop for tea while we waited for Cuma service to finish? Having lived in several conservative and religious lands before, I knew it wasn’t true.  Someone would be minding the counter whilst the rest unrolled the prayer rugs in the back room of the cafe, restaurant, carpet shop. Nothing interferes with capitalism, not even God. However jaded and skeptical we were, we still figured, aw hell, tea, could use a cuppa and sniff out his wares.

Neither perfumists nor hustlers

It was a perfumed oil shop, quite pretty and filled with rows of tiny, coloured glass bottles. We spent the necessary half hour in the shop having metaphorical rugs of perfume unfurled on the floor for our perusal. The low table before us was covered in bottles of various sizes and shapes. Our sampler arms stank of every flower and every spice and every leaf. The tea was good. Muhammed Ali was there, too,  on the table, in an old framed photo of the perfumed man’s father, many many years ago. Perhaps he needed to smell pretty for George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle?

Auto Body Shop, al fresco

We finally managed to extricate ourselves from the perfumed grip of the disappointed man. He conceded to show us the restaurant he had initially recommended and to guide us to the Official Government Tourist Info Centre, both nearby.  Not that we had asked to be shown any Official Government Tourist Info Centre.

Kind fellow

The tourism office was a spartan private travel agency run by a man with the accent of an Ontario used car salesman. He’d lived in Toronto for 15 years, apparently. He insisted we needed tours up and down and throughout Egypt and no no no it impossible to do anything on your own here, verrry dangerous, death and dismemberment not unusual for solo travellers. We nodded politely and enquired again about the food, our tummies roaring. He led us to the doorway and pointed. It was across the street, empty, with an English menu, and frighteningly expensive and called something doofussy like Felelelawful or Fefelalaful. We walked on, searching for food.  The Long March of Mao, as it were, except hotter and with more traffic and fewer caves or Communists.

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