Unempty sidewalks

Last night was our first night in the new flat. Of course, like almost every other flat we saw in Cairo, it has chandeliers and looks like it walked out of the 70's.
We woke up starving and went on a food mission, having decided that the baladi supermarket is a cheaper and better bet than the fancy C-mart across the way. While buying some limes from a toothy old guy with a giant prayer bump, we noticed a shop that sold eggs. Not various types of eggs or different kinds of eggs, just one kind of egg. An egg shop. We stood still for a moment among all the beeps and screeches and donkey carts and sooty children running about and just marvelled at it. I'm personally delighted by this and plan to be overzealous in making all kinds of egg breakfasts now.

I'm in love with this neighbourhood. It reminds me of the market streets in the town I grew up in in India. The tailor spins away, old luggage stacked up next to him, while the apprentice at the male coiffeur next door sprawls out alone in the salon on a barbers chair. The faded photo studio with portraits taken in the 90's pinned up outside lies next to a laundry operation; if you peer carefully you can see dark hands moving a heavy old iron on white sheets, the kind that's just a black block of metal with but one switch. The sidewalks give birth as easily to movement as stillness: the photo shop owner sits lazily on a stool far too small for him, cigarette dangling out of one hand, belly drooping over his thighs, the tailors work spills out on to the pavement, three men stand outside yelling into the laundry, one has a leisurely conversation with a man on a rooftop above him, dogs, cats and children dart in between everyone. The dust settles and is swept away with dirty water and a broom made of thin sticks. P and I tiptoe over the sudsy brown muck that flows out of the inside and is left on the street, and duck into our building, hands full of groceries, limes, and a baked sweet potato from a wandering oven-cart.