Getting by in Cairo ... over tea

In some ways, Egypt’s government isn’t a great provider for its people. Early last year, the country ran out of bread, leading people to riot in the streets. A rockslide on Cairo’s outskirts at the end of last summer, which claimed over 100 lives, sparked outrage because authorities took weeks to recover all the bodies, and its slow response surely cost lives.

But in a country where estimates suggest that 40 percent to 45 percent of the population lives on $2 a day or less, cases of civil unrest are isolated and starvation is practically unheard of. Despite extreme poverty, people here just seem better off than the numbers suggest.

This apparent contradiction has a complex, multi-part explanation. Putting aside other factors, it has become clear to me living here that, at the street level, there is a near indestructible social fabric that insures everybody, at the least, can get by. As a result, this social cohesion is critical to Egypt’s continuing political calm and social stability.

I have lived in several different parts of Cairo. In each neighborhood, I’m surprised at the extent to which neighbors — and I mean neighbors in the broad sense — know my business. They know the amount I pay in rent, the trouble I had with an ornery neighbor, and how I take my tea.

When something breaks down in my apartment, as it invariably does each month, I never need wait more than a few minutes for one repairman or another to arrive. I simply stroll over to the local street cafe, or qahwa, and ask for a plumber, electrician, television repairman, etc., and the person I need is always either there, or someone at the cafe calls him and he arrives quickly.

At the heart of my block — complete with electrical stores, convenience shops, a toy store, a barbershop, and even a Cinnabon — are the doormen, who in Arabic are called bowabs. These men, I’ve learned, trade in information and connections. They can get their hands on anything and serve largely as an intermediary between residents (consumers) and vendors.
I tell you the personal side of the story because it was through these experiences that I learned how to tap into this social fabric and use it to my advantage as a reporter.

Making headway as a reporter in a neighborhood you don’t know well can be a challenge. When I head to a new neighborhood and need to find out about the economic situation there or the housing issues or social conflicts, I go right to the local qahwa. Sitting down with the bowabs, the taxi drivers, and the convenience store owners, I’m immediately plugged into the information hub of the neighborhood.

I order myself a shisha (hookah, to Americans) and tea with lots of sugar, prepared the Egyptian way. I’m still working on my backgammon to get it to a level that I can trot out against the ringers at the cafes. This may all sound coldly calculating, but I’ve grown to love it. I can spend hours with my so-so Arabic gabbing about nothing in particular to anyone willing to chat. And that’s the thing about these qahwas: they’re communal, so everyone is willing to chat.

One of my most memorable qahwa experiences was on the Egypt side of the divided town of Rafah. The border wall with Gaza was a couple hundred yards away and a cold rain was falling hard. I imagine it was the weather that had slowed the Israeli aerial campaign, but the rumble of distant bombs still came at the rate of three or four an hour.

The Egyptian military didn’t want us in the town, so I buried myself deep in a cafe with a handful of Egyptians who were watching some B-level soccer match on TV. After initially getting some odd looks, one 20-something guy walked over to me and sat down and we began chatting. Before long, a few more men came over and sat down. A little while later, with most of the cafe engaged in our conversation, we cut right to the political situation that was brewing just across the fence. It took me almost no time to get at the hopes, fears, and biases of those men. It put me in sync with the mindset of the town and gave me a sort of baseline against which to judge all future conversations there.

Given the small-town feel these qahwas exude, they’re a great starting point for establishing contacts in the particular neighborhood or town. After smoking a shisha and downing my tea at any one of these places, I can get a hold of just about anyone. I’ve asked to talk with parents of young children, fruit and vegetable stand owners, members of the political opposition. None of these proved difficult to get a hold of with the qahwa patrons working on my behalf.

Usually when I make my request for interviews, someone, typically a bowab since they’re the most plugged in, will help arrange them. A couple of quick phone calls, hurried consultations with others in the qahwa, and I’m on my way to someone’s house. I speak generally here because my experiences in this regard are many and common.

Putting aside my own experiences as a Cairo resident and local reporter, these qahwas represent the strength of the Egyptian social fabric, a fabric that makes up for what the government fails to provide.

I can tell you that the tea boy on my block knows how I take my tea when I visit the barber next door to my house. But that same social interconnectedness means that the falafel vendor knows when the electrical store owner had a bad month in sales; or that the corner fruit vendor knows when the taxi driver just spent a fortune on repairs; or that the whole block knows when the bowab’s wife is ill. And this flow of information, which is far more rapid, local, and necessary than it is in the States, has a critical impact on the community. It allows everybody to rally around the neediest.

It gives Egyptians a basic safety net of support. It keeps people fed and safe. And sometimes, in a struggling country, that’s enough.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/egypt/090216/getting-cairo-over-tea