Wow, it's been a while.

School's started again, and Ramadan is well under way. I have mixed feelings about Ramadan here. On the one hand, it's Misr Egypt, a muslim country, and everyone really gets festive and happy and excited...but on the other hand - I think Laila got it exactly right - I haven't felt the deep spirituality of Ramadan properly yet - you know, the sense of barakah and contentedness and the syrup-like passing of time. I thought this year, being away from work, away from university, away from anyone who would distract me, I would have oodles and oodles of time, but somehow, it's like there is even less time here. Even last year, which so far, was my busiest Ramadan ever (going to the shop just about every day - even on Eid), is paling to this - the shop environment was such that you felt like it was Ramadan for every minute. One of the things about here is, even though it is Ramadan, everyone still does just the same things they do the rest of the year - same old street-fights, road rage, shisha and cigarettes, loud music...it's probably very naive of me, but the first several million l times I heard a passing car blaring out horrible music, I was shocked - don't they know it's Ramadan? It only really feels like Ramadan inside my house (and even then, not all the time) and in the masjid.

On the other hand, we've been going to a masjid (mosque) close to us a loooong walk away for Tarawih (special Ramadan prayer in the earliest part of the night), and it really is something. The masjid we go to is called Masjid Salaam, and Zakia said people come from all over Misr to pray there. There are so many people that they put out carpets over the whole huge courtyard, and even then, there isn't enough room, and they spread carpets right onto the road outside. The great thing about MS is that they have a completely separate masjid building for ladies, and this lovely huge grassy courtyard which is curtained right off from sight, so it's really nice and safe inside, and open to the sky. I haven't prayed inside yet, but I love it outside, with the wind and biting ants grass and sky. The whole recitation can be heard via loudspeakers, and it's loud enough to drown out random noise. It feels like...I don't know, as if the recitation were a liquid form of Qur'an, and you become submerged in it. The sweetness of Qur'an increases with the more you understand of it. It has to be the best thing about being here - I mean, of course, it's the reason for being here, but those moments of clarity and understanding are what is really motivating, just for the sheer pleasure of embracing Qur'an, and truly feeling like Allah is talking to you. Subhanallah.

At iftar (fast-breaking) time, the buses and cars and everything just stop where they are, at the side of the road, and get out and eat and pray - right where they are. I watch them from our window. It's so nice to be in a place where people do that! When you spend most of your life squeezing in a prayer here and an iftar there, it really is liberating to live where people schedule their lives around prayer times. Misriyyun Egyptians may keep horrible time (worse than Indian Standard)(that is +2 hours)(they turn up the next day if you're lucky, but more likely, the week after), but they definitely keep their prayers straight. Also, something we've noticed since we got here, is the daily charity of just about everyone. Our local supermarket does weekly deliveries - useful ones, of proper basic food like rice, oil, pasta, beans, lentils, sugar, etc. - and during Ramadan they do it almost daily. It's not just the supermarket, but everyone who can, does. The welfare state may not be like ours, but here, people care, and do something, instead of just talking about it. I would love to see Zakah in action properly...it must be amazing...people who can afford to give up some wealth give it up, and people who can't, receive. Such a simple system, but not a country has managed to get it right yet.

Anyhow. I'm not glossing over the things I don't like; I just happen to have forgotten them. Zax is leaving on Saturday, and Laila the week after. Don't know what I will do without them :( Having them here has hugely eased the transition from one kind of life to another (notwithstanding Mr. Darcy), and it's felt so natural, them being here. I kind of get used to seeing Zakia everywhere, that it only occasionally strikes me as unusual that we should both completely seperately end up in Misr, within 20 minutes of each other, at the same school, and in the same class (to start with). Weird, that. But! Looking on the bright side! They have bequeathed a ton of spices and medicines (medics, eh?) to my household, for which I am always grateful (food vanishes so fast here). And I like spices. Hee. ^_^

We made a ton of samosas and spring rolls and kebabs before Ramadan started. Ooo we had a terrible fishy saga, also XD XD I had the misfortune to buy some smoked fish here - and is smoked fish normally salted? But anyhow, this being Misr, it was salted. Very salted. And it STANK. I can't stand the smell of raw fish, but smoked fish is worse than meat and fish and cats put together and even after I cooked it with onion and spice and all things nice, the smell didn't change one bit...I mean, except to become more pungent, if that was even possible. My hands stank of stinky fish for four stinky days (of course, nobody else would touch it), and it was so salty that we couldn't even eat it as we'd planned to. So then, dilemma, dilemma, dilemma, POTATOES. Eleven kilos of them. I probably only put in about two, though. I turned them into fishy kebabs. Without tasting it at any point. Clever me. XD XD Yeah, they were still too salty. So they have become our fishy horrors, all 164 or whatever of them. But we had some for iftar today, with salad. Made it edible, surprisingly. Tasty, even. Smell was still very...exotic, though.

Fish, fish, fish, I feel like a proper little housewife sometimes - especially after a particularly enjoyable conversation about the many uses of semolina, conducted in English, French and Arabic, all at once, or how to best prepare various incarnations of rice, or the particular virtues of Indian cuisine (namely samosas and chops and all things bright and beautiful), or indeed, managing one's finances while trying to come to terms with the alkaline-wrought destruction of one's handies by a year of hand-washing.

Most of the time, I just can't believe how it's nearly been two months since I last saw my mama, and how on earth we are getting on without her. It's funny how these things go; I used to differ with my mama on all sorts of things, like the way she cuts onions. I always cut them the other way, just because I thought it was a better way to do it. But lately, completely subconsciously, I've taken to cutting them her way. Funny ol' world, innit?