Ramadan is Here

Ahhhh….Ramadan. The month of feasting, sorry, fasting. The month of family, bumming off of work, road rage, and basbousa.

Cairo habibti

Finally back home after a looooong summer. My loyal readers, thank you for not giving up on me. I’m back, and bigger than ever (figuratively and literally—why oh why do we gain weight in the summer)

Coming back to Cairo was like coming home. Duh.  Back to the noisy, polluted city that is part of me. And yay for the bridge on kilo 4.5!! (An area notorious for its insane traffic because of a bottleneck–a 6 lane street that suddenly becomes a 2 lane one). They’ve been working on it for a year and it’s finally done. And hello? Why has the Citadel turned green?

Anyway, I spent a day in Cairo before packing my bags and heading to Sahel for one last week before Ramadan. A wonderful week, beginning from seeing the strange Dr. Olivee structure on my way there (what IS that??) and having the nice lady in the restroom bathrooms rationing out toilet paper rolls, to having mango orgys by the pool and sitting in the tired old open-air cinema in Zahran market.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m not at all into partying/ the new Sahel scene so I stayed far away from Hacienda/ Marassi/ Sky etc. For me, Sahel has and always will be about swimming, eating, sleeping half the day,  staying up all night at friends’/ relatives’ houses, and perhaps playing a tough game of Bank El-Haz (Egypt’s version of Monopoly). Akhery Marina. And speaking of Marina, has anyone else noticed the freaky four signs that go “Remember Allah.” “He’s always watching.” “You might meet him now.” “His door is always open?”

Q: Why does one of the new Pepsi cans look like the packing of Always?

Jeans

I need a new pair of jeans. I’ve been living in a pair I bought from Debenhams (of all places) for over a year. Owing to the fact that the size jeans that’s not insanely tight on my butt is usually loose on my waist (big butt and smaller waist), I hate buying jeans. But I had to today, and I can admit (shamefully) that I caved into the pressure to buy a ‘good’ pair of jeans.With the excuse that they would live longer, of course. So off I went cavorting about this pretty city (obviously not in Egypt) in search of jeans.

But unfortunately I was shamed. Every ‘good’ jeans store seemingly only caters to small girls. 7 for all mankind? 30 inch waist (UK size 12) is their ‘biggest’–fat girl, just die. Ditto Rock and Republic. Even tacky Apple Bottoms (which hilariously kept playing the ‘Low’ song mentioning their jeans over and over and over) didn’t have anything over 28 inches. It was so bad I eventually thought of sulking over to Debenhams again. Eventually though, I found an ok pair in River Island. And then treated myself to some divine ice-cream.