kindness in cairo

It's a Wednesday night and my mom, Nisrin & I had just gotten off the metro in Sayeda Zeinab and were wandering around trying to figure out which side of the metro station we should be on. We look in the information area: no one to be seen.

A man in his mid 50s with a full beard who is also getting off the metro asks us where we are trying to go and we tell him Sayeda Zeinab mosque. "come". So we follow him down the stairs, through the night market where fruit stands are lit up with naked light bulbs, and stop at a juice stand.

"Asob?" Sugar cane juice?


We shake our heads "la, shukran". no thanks. But he smiles and tells the man in arabic "four sugarcane juices" and then mutters something else I don't understand. We gulp down the thick sweet juice and smile back.

And we're on our way. As we're walking through the alleyways and side streets Nisrin says to me " do you know what he just said to the juice man? he said 'we need to show them that Egyptians are good people'".


As we get to the street that Sayeda Zeinab and the restaurant we are going to is on, the man points us in the right direction and then tells us he's an Imam at a small mosque across the street so is it alright if he leaves us to find our way from there.