walidat wardeh

that It upsets me that I didn’t find this place before now. Actually, that’s not true. I have passed by it several times in the course of my weekly wanderings around Hamra and then Saad and I stayed next-door to it at the Marble Tower Hotel for one night. It looked cute, the changing menu written on the chalkboard easel outside.

Now having been here, though, I wouldn’t describe Walidat Wardeh as cute; rather, it is the epitome of the way I see Beirut and, while Beirut could easily appropriate a host of adjectives, "cute" isn't one of them.

I think it was originally built to be an apartment, but then, upon becoming a restaurant, the owner enlarged the doorways and knocked down the bedroom walls. But there is still something that feels residential about it, although perhaps that’s more a result of the décor: framed pictures on the wall, the banister between one room and another, and the understated lighting.

The number of people in here is substantially increasing the temperature and cigarette smoke hangs heavily over everything, making things a bit hazy. It reminds me of the glow effect on Picasa – “gives pictures a gauzy glow.”

There is something about this place that takes me back to the 1920s in the US, a time when everyone managed to be simultaneously classy and irreverent. In Beirut-speak, this is how I imagine the city was before the war broke out, when it was at the apex of its own sophistication, the definition of blasé glamour. I can even imagine Walimat Wardeh during the war. I imagine the building next-door being riddled with bullets, but the clientele are oblivious. They come here to exist in the only manner they understand.

A woman in a black and white dress is swaying in the doorway next to my table. I can see that what she wants more than anything is to dance in the center, in front of the band, but she isn’t yet. Maybe she is waiting for others to feel the same compulsion she does, or otherwise she is waiting until the music infuses her body and she has no choice but to capitulate. The tabla and the aoud determine her movement and she is necessarily submissive in the face of their sultry, rhythmic persuasion.

Another woman joins her, but she is dancing because she wants to be seen, not because the music is telling her to. She is wearing shiny, black boots, so pointy that I think a kick from them would splinter any surface, and her maroon shirt looks like lingerie. It is entirely sheer and she is wearing only a black bra underneath. The sole indication that it is a legitimate shirt is that it has a sparkling brooch in the middle, though I suppose lingerie could also have such an ornament. Her hair matches with her shirt and her eyeliner matches with her boots. One of her companions has gotten up and is dancing on the banister. Beirutis will seize any opportunity to dance on a raised place. That’s probably why the banister exists.

The band is four-piece and every instrument is played by a man with long hair. I am thinking of Ian Anderson + Mikael Akerfelt. 1970s head-bangers, but Lebanese. They have a symbiotic relationship with the audience. They play so that people dance and people dance so that they play.

I feel intoxicated.

cairo, part 1

At a resto-café in the Khan al-Khalili in Cairo in the afternoon
April 19, 2006

I am overwhelmed to the point of having difficulty writing. I’ve talked so little that Saad is concerned. In the last hour, I’ve seen more people than I would in a month in Beirut. Walking around is not something one can do lightly in Cairo; it’s not any kind of aimless pastime like it is in so many other cities.

There isn’t sufficient space in my thoughts for everything around me and my own preoccupations: being harassed, losing Saad, losing my purse, losing my shawl. The latter would make me comparatively nude, a target for all of the men who I already catch leering at me voraciously, like my not being Egyptian makes me edible.

To my left is a long alleyway, presumably filled with shops. To its right is a huge mosque and likewise in front of me and to the right is al-Azhar, another large mosque, and a few other smaller ones. It seems bizarre to me that there are so many of essentially the same establishment in exactly the same place. It’s like when there is a Burger King across the street from a McDonald’s, or the three gas station intersection on Route 1 and 571. Hussein’s mosque is right here, as well. Supposedly, his head is inside of it, but I’ll never be able to verify that personally unless I convert to Islam.

The people sitting around the table in front of me are ambiguous: there are two Egyptian men, a very blonde woman, and her very blonde daughter. All four of them are switching between Arabic, English, and a third language I can’t identify. The woman just said “Romanian,” so maybe that’s it.

There are so many tourists here and they are so conspicuous in their entirely un-Egyptian attire, huddled together in groups of various sizes. Women are wearing tank tops, which I would expect in every other place I’ve traveled to where it’s 30 degrees. In Cairo, though, a woman donning a tank top might as well be carrying a billboard and giving out leaflets with the word FOREIGNER on them in oversized block letters. I can’t help thinking that these women came here without making any attempt to understand the cultural norms. I’m wearing a tank top, too, but I have a shawl around my shoulders that I am careful to keep there, and my black and white skirt is down to the floor. I took off the shawl for a few minutes when I first arrived here, but that was only because it is more acceptable here, a marketplace teeming with tourists. Saad and I were talking earlier today about how much more sensitive to context Egyptian comportment is as compared to in the US. He said that the space between the extremes on the spectrum of behavior and attire in Egypt is expansive.

Just like this city. There are at least five times more people in the city of Cairo than in the country of Lebanon.

A woman just walked by. She strikes me as Western in terms of her presentation and features. But in her white Birkenstocks, plaid skirt below her knees, and shawl made out of purple linen, she is one of the first people I’ve seen here who is unmistakably a tourist, but knows how to present herself in a way that is socially acceptable. In stark contrast to her is the woman standing some distance in front of me. The straps of her sports bra are showing in the back of her tan, loosely fitting tank top, which she has paired with black spandex shorts and sneakers. I wonder if Egyptians find this disrespectful or obscene. Or, I suppose a better question would be whether they just write it off as Western and are simply offended by the complete absence of cultural sensitivity.

I just saw a group of men wearing galabiyas and I asked Saad what they wear underneath them. He said underwear and maybe a beater. I almost want one now. I doubt those men are sweating as much as I am.

There is a man with slicked back hair wearing a black and white-striped shirt with a gray vest and dark blue pants. He is dark, but has green eyes. On his arm is a woman who is veiled. She is beautiful. They are some of the only people I’ve seen who don’t look as though they’re here for a specific purpose. They are wandering the Khan in a way that I can’t right now: relaxed, but invigorated by the unending life swirling around them in every direction, as far as the horizon.