Midnight ululations
As New Year's Eve approaches, party talk is big. Yasmine El-Rashidi uncovers the thrills
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Fun at the stroke of midnight: be it from atop a bridge railing (top) or in the midst of exclusive -- and expensive -- parties, most Cairenes will not miss out on some form of New Year celebration
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New Year's is much like Mondays. Everyone's diet begins on Monday. Every commitment to quit smoking, or chocolate, or start a new schedule, begins on Monday. We gear ourselves up for the grand beginning -- and grand finale -- of a given habit, and in the case of both, the excitement is high.
In the case of New Year's it is much more so. The objectively minor switch from 02 to 03 is actually seemingly major in our minds. It represents a new start and a new chance, the opportunity to leave one year and all it represents behind and start afresh.
Like Mondays, of course.
"I guess it's psychological," jokes Noha Osman, a 25-year-old banker. "We feel that we got through the year, that we can leave all the bad behind us," she continues. "We look at things in chunks," she explains, be them weeks, months or years. And while the ideal would be to look at things one day at a time, the reality is not quite so.
"For most people, getting through a year calls for a celebration," she laughs again. "Life is tough!"
Most people would agree with her, and most would also vote that getting through a single day -- on some days -- is cause enough to celebrate. This year, like all others, party talk is big.
"There's a huge party in Sharm [El-Sheikh]," says 16-year-old Dina Salmawy. "Everyone's going to be there."
Everyone, to this curly-haired high-school student and her group of coffee-drinking friends at Café Greco in Maadi, means everyone cool; all the 'in' crowd.
"We're definitely going." They all nod eagerly, and begin to go into the details of what they will wear. For the most part, it is black, slinky, and shimmering with some sort of something.
"My dress has tirtir (sequence)," says Dina. "And I'm going to put my hair up like this," she says, scooping her locks into a bun-like thing. The unanimous vote is that it doesn't quite look as good as it should.
"You should definitely leave it down," her friend Marianne tells her sternly, shaking her head in disapproval at Dina's initial choice. The girls seem to have suffocated her -- each one reaching over, babbling away, and pulling at her hair from different angles.
This goes on for a while.
"Our parents will be there too," one of the girls volunteers, "But they have their friends. They don't mind what time we go back to our rooms," she says proudly. "We're going to party till 6 or 7am, then we'll all meet for breakfast."
'We', in this case, is not just the five girls gathered, but about 15 or 20 more. "Guys and girls," of course.
Excitement escalates, and will continue to do so until the night of the grand fiesta. It is the only night of the year when these girls -- and their friends, they say -- can party all through the night and until the next day. It figures that it is the highlight of the year.
For others, it may not be so grandiose.
"It's the only time we get together with all our closest friends for dinner and drinks," says Karima El-Haj. "We rotate who hosts the dinner each year. We're five couples. We've known each other since university. We chat, we sing, we joke. It's cozy, and warm, and fun.
"We're all so busy most of the time, or if we get together, someone has to leave early because of work the next day, or the kids, or something. This is really the only time when we spend so many hours together," she adds.
That clan is not the only one that feels this way.
"My husband and I always do something special for New Year's," says Karen Thompson, a four-year resident of Cairo. "For Christmas the kids join us wherever we are, but they always fly off for big New Year's bashes," she continues.
"Last year we went to Paris for four days. This year we're going to Aswan. New Year's is sort-of like our annual honeymoon."
They have been married for 29 years. Maybe the annual occasion works.
Not everyone, however, is so orthodox in their partying approach. The bal masqué party in Maadi, themed around 'fairytales' , will be sure to attract an interesting crowd, and there is talk of a jungle party where guests will have to dress as Tarzan or his female equivalent. The location: somewhere in Garden City -- exact address and host vaguely unknown.
"Dunno, I'm going with a friend, who's also going with a friend," 26-year-old Tarek Adly laughs. "That's how it is on New Year's in Cairo. You end up going to a bunch of parties of people you don't know. Sometimes you find lots of people you know, other times you don't. It's cool, nobody minds who comes or doesn't."
The more, I guess, the merrier.
On Qasr Al-Nil Bridge in the centre of Cairo, that certainly holds true. Each year, the bridge is packed.
"I go there every year with my friends," says Mustafa Hashem, a resident of one of the alleys that make up part of the maze of Boulaq. "We just go and have fun."
For anyone who has been down that way in the hours before and after midnight, fun means blowing party whistles, walking down the bridge chatting, laughing, whistling to the people in cars. The energy is high, the enthusiasm towards life is bubbling, and it is a time and place when those gathered feed off one another's high.
"My parents and sisters and other relatives stay home," Hashem shares.
"They watch TV, and at midnight ululate, and make a lot of noise, and hug," he pauses. "They do what everyone does on New Year's."
Well, not quite everyone. Aside from those who will attend Mohamed Mounir's concert at the Opera House, those who will join football stars and other celebrities at the city's floating restaurants and hotels (seeking the entertainment of the country's most celebrated pop singers and belly-dancers in return for, this year, sometimes four-digit tickets), private party-ers, Red Sea-goers and all the other people that gather in energised celebration, there is a minority that opt to remain home. Not for dinner, drink, and dance, but rather, for bed.
"Movies," says Sarah Maghawry. "A bunch of us get together with lots of movies and snacks, and we hang out at home. In bed! I much prefer it. I used to go to all the big parties but I got bored. I used to go even if I wasn't in the mood. Now I don't."
She is not the only one. There is a handful of believers in the flip side of celebration: that the smaller the better. They gather for dinner, or movies, or even games of Pictionary and charades. Not quite the loud, rowdy image one associates with the coming of the new year, but certainly still a means of celebration.
The marking of a year past and one to come is definitely -- for most -- a reason to let loose and shout out in both joy and gratitude. But when one really breaks it down, and looks at the details that make up that night -- a philosophical conversation that does pop up amongst deliriously tired New Year's goers -- it becomes apparent that the fundamentals of New Year, in essence, are not worth all the fuss.
"It's just more proof that time is nothing but the millimetre lines on the watch invented by humans," says Jasmin Sheta, a 28-year-old professional dance teacher. "Some years pass fast, others slow, in some years life, and myself, change. In others they don't."
Nevertheless, she still parties in her own year-specific way; be it movies and popcorn, or dressing up snazzy to go out and dance.
There are, it appears, two main New Year's perspectives; let's party big, and let's not. In either case, that solitary night that marks the switch from one number to the next represents a moment -- in a time zone separated sense -- when the entire world gathers as one. It may just be another day in the cycle of life -- and yet another chance to mould and create and invent the life we want to live, but it is much, much more. New Year's is an occasion to reflect on time: a chance to give thanks to passing through the bad, and to embrace and give thanks to all that has been good.
We all reach personal points where we feel we must take time to sit back and assess our lives and our lifestyles. It is more often than not a lonely process; tough, eye-opening, and sometimes rather hard to digest. In most cases, as well, it is cause for amends.
New Year's, however, is a much more positive 'time-out'. It takes into account both the good and the bad, allows one the chance to put the past peacefully to rest, and it literally is one when the entire population of the world partakes in the process. It is an embracing of the good times and successes, and an embracing of getting through the tough. Whether the means is a movie, a full-blown ball, or even a peaceful evening of relaxing in bed or the bath with a favourite book, New Year's is a day where the world is brought together to think. And that itself, is reason to rejoice.
