El tarzi

“Where else but in Cairo?” I ask myself. Nowhere else that I know. Actually, definitely in Greece, probably in Turkey, possibly in Italy…

I was taking a walk with my two small boys, aged three and six, strolling hand-in-hand with them down a local street near our flat in Heliopolis, when I was unable to stop them leaping into a building site filled with large mounds of dirty sand and suspiciously dangerous-looking poles and wires. By default, my mind leapt to visions of the laundry I would have to do, rather than the fun factor of the small people (a frequent mental conflict as I struggle with the opposing scenarios of minimizing mindless labor output for myself, and maximizing fun and experience for them). After factoring possible danger into the equation, I called them back to the footpath while their clothes were still in relatively pristine condition.

They ran ahead of me and screamed. Wondering who had been attacked by what, I saw up ahead an old motorcycle standing on the footpath. Beside it were two men and a small boy of about ten. My boys asked if they could ride the motorcycle and the men, without a second thought, lifted them up onto it. There they stayed for about ten minutes while I chatted to the men, exchanging small talk, waiting for the boys to have their fill so we could continue our walk.

“Come on, yalla,” I said to them, when I’d had enough polite conversation. “Let’s go to the kiosk and get you some chocolate milk.” The kiosk had been our destination, after which we had planned to return home.

“We are tailors,” one of the men told me. “Our shop is just here, downstairs.” I peered down into what looked remarkably like a seedy North Hollywood strip mall, and nodded politely. One of the men ran down the stairs and quickly returned, his outstretched arm holding a business card, which I put in my bag. “Come down and the boys can play with our son,” they offered. "His name is Moustafa." I smiled and said thank you, but we had to continue on our way. Despite my best efforts to extract them, the boys had suctioned themselves onto the bike and refused to budge; they were not going to relinquish a real life motorcycle in any way close to willingly.

What, I thought, is the worst that could happen? We go downstairs… the kids play… the men pretend to be nice and then act like sleazebags in the presence of a foreign woman and we leave, never to see them again. Not the most appealing proposition. Having run out of options, I got the boys off the bike by unashamedly lying to them: “We’ll come back on our way home,” I said, waving goodbye to the men and the boy and walking away with no intention of returning. But divine intervention had other things in store for us that day.

Moustafa whipered something in my oldest son’s ear and they ran down the stairs; the little one broke free and followed; I followed them, irritated; and the two men followed me... a trail of people descending the stairs into a strip which housed the tailor shop and a makwagi (ironing shop) where the makwagi, who was busily ironing men’s business shirts and trousers, looked at me curiously.

While the three boys busied themselves running back and forth along the cement strip, up and down the stairs, and jumping on and off the motorcycle, I stood and chatted further with the two men who, it turned out, were brothers, although there was no physical family resemblance. Their names were Sobha and Adel. As Sobha talked about wanting to visit Australia, I waited for the usual line about his cousin living there... but it never came. He just wanted to visit Australia because he’d read about it in a magazine and thought it looked like paradise on earth; we both knew he didn’t really believe that he would ever have the chance to go. “But a man can dream,” he told me.

When we got on to the subject of Islam (which unfailingly happens to me in such situations) the eyes of both men watered a little, and glazed over the same way a mother’s does when she looks at her newborn child. “I can’t express to you,” said Sobha, placing his hand on his chest, “the feeling I have in my heart when I think of Rabenna (God). I wish for all the world to have this feeling.” At that moment I wished for all the world to hear this man and see the virtue in his eyes. I wished for people to see men like him as the face of the Arab man, the face of Islam, and not men like Mohamed Atta and Osama Bin Laden.

We went inside, sat down and continued talking while they worked and customers came and went. They gave me a pile of fashion magazines to flip through, most of their pages filled with stylish Islamic dresses and hijabs, a few showcasing foreign fashion with designer evening and wedding dresses. Once we had finished exchanging Arabic music that we liked, Sobha announced firmly: “You are now our sister.”

After a while they ordered fuul and hawawshi , called the boys in and insisted that we eat with them, even though I said we had just eaten and weren’t hungry. They lead us into the back of the shop where we ate the most delicious hawawshi I have ever tasted.

When it came time to leave, the men and I shook hands, and the boys hugged goodbye. As we walked away I was thankful that I had been led down those stairs, thankful that Moustafa had whispered in Ziad’s ear, thankful that I had not just walked away with my initial assumptions about those men intact. But mostly thankful that, for the thousandth time in this city, my eyes had been opened.