Still suspecting nothing, I paid an incredibly small amount of money, 50 piastres, and received a radish wrapped in a scrap of paper, charred and smudged with soot. By shape the local radish was exactly like a sausage, but the shape, unfortunately, did not affect its taste, and it was fried only to remove the bitterness without extra expense on sour cream or mayonnaise. It is the developed countries, where they know what an Offshore Company and preferential taxation are, that get sausages with mustard, while the poor get steamed turnips or something of the sort.
Sausages for the poor
Ordinary Egyptians have never lived prosperously - neither in the times of the pharaohs, nor under the Mamluks, nor even after the construction of the Aswan Dam. Thousands of beggars and homeless have always roamed the streets, Egypt has always been overpopulated. And what is available to a poor man? Following the example of Khoja Nasreddin - hold a flatbread over the meat stew of a rich man. Baked radish, soaked sour beans, pureed chickpeas, leeks, lettuce, barley and wheat flatbreads - all this was eaten by the builders of the pyramids of Giza.
Practically all the more or less complex meat dishes, as well as many soups and sweets of Egyptian cuisine, were borrowed from the Turks, the Lebanese, the glorious Circassian Mamluks, the Albanians, the Arabs of Palestine, or the Yemenis - all those peoples who ever came to Egypt and ruled it. Kyufta (kofta) - cutlets grilled on a grate; kebabs - all kinds of shashlik. Another familiar word is pastrama (pasterma): dried and lightly smoked beef in a thick layer of spices; its counterpart in Russian language and cuisine is Azerbaijani basturma. Chorba - a lentil soup flavored with lemon juice, the very one for which Esau sold his birthright to Jacob.
One can also find kara-chorba, a shepherd's soup, familiar to many not from Turkey but from Crimea - the Egyptians learned of this dish either directly from the Crimean Tatars, or through the Circassians. Baklava - a Turkish sweet, diamonds of puff pastry with a spicy nut filling, which we are used to calling in Azerbaijani - pakhlava. Malakhabiju was invented by the Circassians; in Egypt this is the name for sweet and buttery rice boiled in milk with rose water, pistachio crumbs, and spices. And they got used to shawarma (in Egyptian - shaverma) in Egypt too, though they do not eat it as much as in Turkey.
"In the name of Allah, bring more!"
Tykhina is the best dish for raw foodists. There is no need to cook anything: grind sesame seeds, add vegetable oil, salt, lemon juice, cumin powder - and it is ready. Tykhina is served at the very beginning of dinner; flatbread is supposed to be dipped into it. And often Tykhina turns out to be the most delicious dish of the whole dinner - whether from hunger or because it really is. "Wallahi, gat kaman!" - "In the name of Allah, bring more!" But they do not bring it; they are surprised, because after the cheap, standard Tykhina come salad and main dishes. And the waiter brings not Tykhina at all, but further according to the order: ful medames - a stew of local beans, fried red mullet, tarb - a stomach stuffed with meat.
The waiter will be even more surprised if a tourist demands sour and spicy pickles, called either in Turkic "turshi" or in Egyptian "makhalil" - colored with beets, over-peppered and over-salted shallots, olives, pieces of carrot and lemon. Foreigners usually like neither the taste nor the smell of turshi. But Egyptians do not sit down at the table without pickles; for them it is the first preventive measure against the ubiquitous unsanitary conditions. For the same reason, half-raw meat or fish is not eaten in Egypt. Beef in Egyptian style - meat marinated, fried, and only then baked in the oven. Lamb in Cairo style - a lamb shoulder, fried and then stewed in tomato. In fish, before frying, deep cuts are made, salted, spices are rubbed in or lemon juice is poured over, and only then placed on the grill.
Unlike many Muslim peoples, Egyptians do not particularly favor lamb; if there is a choice, they will prefer beef, chicken, and goat. This is an echo of ancient Egyptian times, when for some mysterious reason they kept no sheep, and the use of sheep's wool was outright prohibited.
Midday kef under the protection of a camel's skull
Under the arches of a leaky tent are hung the bones of the beloved camel Sobhan. Awad, Hamad, Musa, Ramadan, Selim, Muhammad, Akhmet, Farak, another Muhammad, Riyadh, and another Muhammad - all the men of the family of Gamal Muhammad remember the camel with a kind word. Oh, what a rascal he was, he always ran faster than everyone. Oh, what a wide and fleshy back he had, and long, strong, sinewy legs, and his knee joints never swelled. In summer he drank every two days, and in winter he could go without water for 15 days. Usually a camel serves for three or four years and then is slaughtered, but Sobhan lived honorably for thirteen years. Only when he became completely decrepit did they slaughter him and eat the old sinewy meat. The whole day they ate Sobhan's meat. First the head of the family, Gamal, ate. Then Awad, Hamad, Musa, Ramadan, Selim, Muhammad, Akhmet, Farak, another Muhammad, Riyadh, and another Muhammad. After them, it came to the women too; Kharbeyya, Khasniya, Selmi, Salha, Bedreyya, Usalma also ate Sobhan.
Egyptian Arabs have no division into tribes. The only exceptions are recent nomads and robbers - desert dwellers. The Bedouin's best friend is the camel. The Bedouin likes to chat with the camel, tells him about his plans, asks for advice. If the camel is smart, he will find a way to give the owner good advice. If the camel is strong and hardworking, then after his death his bones will protect the owner from evil spirits. Bedouins say that by day there are no evil spirits in the desert; spirits do not like to bask in the sun, but in the dark there are very many of them. And you can't tell whether the Bedouins really believe in camel amulets, or whether they are entertaining tourists.
Camel meat is tasty, goat meat is even tastier, and the tastiest meat in the world is gazelle. For some reason, Egyptians consider gazelle meat the best delicacy, although it is hard to meet a person who has ever tried gazelle meat. Gamal recalls that some old man from the Sinai settlement of Wadi Nazri had a gun about forty years ago, and the gun's stock was covered with gazelle skin. So that old man killed a gazelle and probably ate it. And now no one has gazelles or guns; it is forbidden to own guns so that people do not rob. You can hunt, but only with traps; sometimes hares are caught.
Bedouins do not know how to cook - whether camel meat or hare meat. They serve soggy rice with poorly boiled tough meat and eat it with their hands. The Bedouin delicacy, dried shark meat lasham, is also simply boiled and placed on top of the rice. Once during caravan crossings they ate dried shark fins, which they bought on the coast. The fins were very hard; they shaved them with knives and ate them with lentils or peas.
Some tourists are wary of having lunch with Bedouins, but no one refuses coffee. It is drunk from old brass coffee pots, and water is drawn from very deep wells. The water is tasty and clean. Tasty because it is slightly salty; it is pleasant to drink in the heat. But if you brew coffee without sugar on such water, it will not brew well, so Bedouin coffee is sweet. Bedouins have been drinking coffee (in Arabic, qahwa) for five hundred years, since their ancestors led the first caravans from Yemen. It is strange how long coffee bushes grew on pastures, and people did not think of adapting the bitter red berries for food. Even the cunning pharaohs did not drink coffee; even the pyramid architects, who solved the secrets of the Universe, knew the luminosity of the star Sirius from the constellation Canis Major, but did not know coffee.
Only a thousand years ago, a legendary Ethiopian shepherd noticed that goats chewed berries and then became silly and did not sleep. But another five hundred years passed before Arabs, Bedouins and Turks appreciated coffee "Black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love." And indeed, in Egypt coffee should be drunk strong, sweet and very hot; if coffee is served simply hot, an Egyptian will certainly shout to the waiter: "Hey, why did you warm it in the sun? Go quickly put it on the stove!"
Symbolic drink
A traditional Egyptian house necessarily has a mashrabiya - a carved wooden structure on the window, protection from the sun. In oases, the custom has been preserved of placing a jug of water in the mashrabiya so that a passerby, if desired, could open the doors and drink. The word mashrabiya is derived from the verb "sharab" - "to drink", which sounds the same in Arabic and Turkic languages. Egyptian deserts are characterized by dry air; often relative humidity there is less than 20%. With such dryness, you need to drink a lot, even when you do not feel like drinking. Therefore, a jug of water in the window of an Egyptian house can save a life.
At dinner, Egyptians usually drink water, and after dinner coffee - with milk or cardamom. But beer is drunk only by tourists; beer of the popular Egyptian brand "Stella" costs no less than 15 pounds per 0.33 liter bottle in a restaurant. Guides claim that Egypt is the birthplace of beer. The ancients put pieces of underbaked barley bread into a clay bowl, added date juice and waited a week; after fermentation, the liquid was poured into clay jugs and sealed with a cork. "A thousand loaves, a thousand jugs of beer" - these words began the funeral rite in Ancient Egypt. I tried a similar brew, tuz (tuza), among the Bedouins. But its taste is not at all like classic beer, but sweetish, like kvass. Bedouins make tuz only for tourists; they do not drink it themselves because of its 4-6% alcohol content.
And yet not coffee, let alone beer or tuz, but karkade is the national Egyptian drink. It is made from hibiscus, a shrub of the mallow family. Hibiscus grows in many southern countries; its fresh leaves are added to salads, stewed with meat, and the seeds are roasted and put into soups. But a drink from hibiscus flowers is widespread only in Sudan and Egypt. To brew karkade, dried red flowers are placed in cold water and brought to a boil, then sugar is added and served cold or even with ice. The result is a sourish burgundy drink that, out of ignorance, can be mistaken for freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. Cold karkade lowers blood pressure. Hot, on the contrary, raises it.