Ramadan Afternoon

A little girl walks home with a halter and rope while men sit on the wall of the empty coffee shop to chat. The fruit juice seller has washed his floors and is waiting for the pre-iftar rush of clients. Hot, slow afternoon.

Cup Of Tea? Waterpipe?

The horse fair refreshment stand at the horse fair is a tiny bit spare. But it got lots of business from the buyers and sellers of horses, donkeys, and equipment get thirsty bargaining.

Afternoon Coffee

There's something comforting about watching two old friends meet for coffee on a warm winter afternoon.

Coffee Break

Many years ago before Cairenes went totally overboard over lattes, there was a nice family owned Italian style coffee shop on Road 9 in Maadi. Cafe Greco was an instant success among the expats and soon was filled with both local and foreign residents. For my money, it's still the best coffee in Cairo, despite Starbucks, Cilantro, Beano's and any number of other competitors.

Coffee Shop Near The End of Ramadan

The month of fasting is over as is the feast, but this photo of a village coffee shop during Ramadan shows the men sitting and watching traffic, bargaining for some sugar cane for their children, and not having any coffee or water pipes. In the evening the coffee shop would have been crowded with patrons. By day, it's pretty quiet.

Hookahs for all

Waterpipes, hookahs, shishas...all of them names for the smoking implements that "filter" the smoke through the water and are so popular in Egyptian coffee shops. Not being a smoker, I can't verify that they cool the smoke, but being an ex-health teacher, I can verify that the smoke definitely isn't cleaned in any way. Nevertheless, the glass bottles and metal tops make a lovely pattern.

What REALLY Runs Egypt

Yes, it's a teapot. Tea is the glue of every meeting and is the source of many greetings. "Come have a cup of tea!" is a call that I hear at least half a dozen times in the course of my rides around the countryside here. If I drank all the tea I was offered, I'd never get anything done. People joke about the English and tea, but the Egyptians have them beat hands down.

A Sign Of The Times

This simple shot is for people who know Cairo and more specifically Maadi. Lucille's is an American hangout, a transplanted diner where you can get great cheeseburgers, apple pie and cheesecake. It's a tiny place and the "smoking" vs "nonsmoking" designation was always a bit of a laugh, but now things are changing in Egypt and it will all be nonsmoking.

The Old And The New

An elderly Egyptian gentleman enjoys a cup of tea and the autumn sunshine at Fishawy, my favourite coffee shop in Cairo, next to some young tourists. Fishawy has been the classic Cairo coffee shop for many decades and at one time he probably would meet his friends there for a tea, some conversation and time out.

Lunch At The Horse Fair

I went with a couple of friends to the Friday horse fair in Barragil, a semi-urban area near Imbaba. One friend, an older man who has a passion for mules offered the ride and three women went with him. It's not all the sort of place that tourists would go and not even the sort of place that most women go. The woman running the lunch tent was about the only other human female there and while we did attract a certain amount of attention, most of it was relatively polite. Little boys should basically be put in cages from the age of twelve to about twenty-five, I sometimes think.

Random Cat

Sitting in Fishawy's coffee shop in the Khan with friends, I suddenly had a small cat jump up on the chair next to me curl up between my leg and my bag and go to sleep. Such trust in the good nature of a stranger.

Waiting Out the Rain

On a wet afternoon in Cairo a group of men play dominoes at a coffee shop while waiting for a shower to stop. Visitors sometimes wonder what is smoked in the waterpipes at the coffee shops, but as a rule it is a fruit flavoured or honey flavoured tobacco.

Coffee Break

Coffee shops in Eygpt are more than just a place for a cup of coffee. They are a way of life. There are coffee shops in Cairo that specialise in lawyers and if you want a cheap lawyer, you go have a cup of coffee and find a young lawyer who doesn't have enough money to set up office except in a coffee shop. Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's Nobel prize winning author, had his favourite coffee shop, Fishawy, in Khan el Khalili, which was known as a writers' coffee shop. These shops serve the thick sweet Turkish coffee, tea with milk, mint, or lemon, and various kinds of fruit juice as well as providing water pipes with tobacco flavoured with mint, apple, cantaloupe, strawberry, and so on.