My my my beautiful neighborhood

I went wandering around my neighborhood finally, on a multi-quest to get lost, AND find a shower curtain (future entry on why I needed a shower curtain). I got some rough directions regarding in what general area I could find a shower curtain, so I started walking in that direction somewhat purposefully. I'm pretty sure those last two sentences were full of grammatical obscenities. Almost a solid month here, and I hadn't gotten lost in downtown yet, so I was pretty excited about finally having zero direction (in a venue other than work).

First stop - the 2.50 LE store, equivalent to a dollar store in the States. Actually, I don't think 2.50 is really all that cheap, but the store had enough of a selection of low-quality house supplies and essentials that I noted its location for future visits. Found some nice hair-care products: Who wants garlic in their hair? Mmmm boy. How about whale liver oil? Actually these may be perfectly legitimate products, but I'm a guy who washed his hair with hand soap for 2 weeks because I was too lazy to look for shampoo, with minimal (visible) effect on my hair. So this, like most of my pictures, may only be funny to me.


Bigger non-western cities sometimes have streets where all the shops sell the same category of materials, from the all-wedding-dress and prosthetic-limb shopping streets of Seoul to the fireman's-paradise alleys of Cairo, pictured below. I was going to photograph the propane-cylinder-and-engine alley, but that place was a little too close and sketchy-feeling at first visit for me to want to whip out the camera. I'll have to photographically assault that corridor again later - but for now, the fireman's equipment square will have to do. I'm really tempted to stock up on gas masks and then just freak people out (and breathe easier) by walking around downtown and hailing taxis wearing a gas mask. Too hot to wear the whole suit and rubber boots though....sorry ladies!


Continuing the theme of, um, themed shopping areas, this display had All Things Taxi. Beaded seat rests, faux-fur dash covers, leopard-spotted steering wheel covers, and all manner of flashing lights and decorations - rows upon rows of taxi knick-knacks to please the eye and distract one from the noxious exhaust/smoke fumes. Oddly enough, there were no tourists around this area - I guess crappy plastic accessories aren't the most desirable souvenirs, but to me, they make me think of Cairo more quickly than tiny stone pyramids.

Not a joke, this isn't a Big & Tall store, it's an Average-Height & Potbellied store. All the clothes and suits were for guys about my height (maybe slightly taller), and about twice my weight. As tasty, greasy, and fatty the food is though, soon I will be shopping here. I'm also adding this to my list of mannequins-my-future-mansion-shall-be-full-of.


Interestingly creepy art on the walls of a restaurant about 5 minutes from my apartment. Food was so-so, but it seemed like a hangout for older, well-to-do Egyptian intellectuals as much as it was another expensive place that foreigners go to dine. I want to try their mollokheyya (sloppy stew-sauce liquid made from some sort of tasty green leaf) to see if it's worth the 2x price tag, compared to the local places. Some of these ghostly ladies seem to be giving a two-finger peace sign, others seem to have fists in the air, while others look like they had their hands lopped off entirely. But it's not like they have faces or eyes, so I guess no-hands is the least of their worries. HAR.



Weirdest hijab I've seen so far. Honestly, I don't know if this is meant to be a hijab or just a weird underwear display. The blouse seems way too tight to be anything resembling a hijab anyways - panties on face and chest, perhaps not so modest. The more I look at it, however, the more I think this is just a weird display - there isn't even anything covering the hair on this metal mannequin, reducing further the hijabiness of the outfit.


After about two hours of wandering around, the novelty of being lost started to wane, and I tried to focus on figuring out where I was in the city, and where I could find a shower curtain. There's probably a shower curtain district that I missed, but even the toilet-seat-cover and shower-head stores didn't have shower curtains. After another hour or so, I started to become somewhat irritated, and started looking for anything resembling a shower curtain, including sneaking around the industrial district looking for tarps, and later, trying to steal the plastic wrap off of a roll of sheet metal, thoroughly unsuccessfully. I was now desperate for shower curtainage.

I walked by a carpet store at one point, and, seeing something resembling a table cloth in the display window, decided to give it a try since trying all the stores that made sense (bathroom supplies, pharmacy, fish market) was not resulting in the purchase of a shower curtain. At this point I had gone through a few iterations of learning how to say "curtain" in Arabic, and tried it out. Blank looks. Tried it again, and the guy in the front pawned me off to an older guy in the back of the store, who took me down a narrow isle of rolled-up carpets, presumably to slaughter me and hide me between some carpets.

And then, there they were, slightly dusty, but still shining in the fluorescent light like something awesome that's shining in fluorescent light. A whole freakin wall of shower curtains, in the back of an Oriental carpet store. Of course, why didn't I think of that? EXACTLY....no one would have thought of that, so the Infinite Improbability Drive of Cairo had me find my shopping target there. Whatever urge the shopkeepers may have had to rip me off likely vanished when I started hopping with glee singing "ilham d'illeh" (Arabic for "woo hoo!" or "rockin") over and over again. They went from surprised to curious to amused to vaguely concerned after about 5 - 10 hops, sold me a glorious curtain, and bid me a wary farewell.