Lovers' lane
Injy El-Kashef takes a walk on the wild side
In the heart of this city it is possible to actually walk on the edge of a cliff -- all you have to do is get in your car and drive up to Muqattam, go to the Corniche, park, and just take a stroll on the limestone ground with all of Cairo at your feet. I headed to the Corniche with a friend following a delicious Chinese meal, in need of a good post-lunch cup of coffee. The sun was about to set, the weather was cooler, and it just made perfect sense to watch it go to bed from the highest point of town.
The Muqattam Corniche has such a terrible reputation that even residents of the cliff are sometimes embarrassed to mention where they live, as the word Muqattam conjures images of isolation, darkness, lewd escapades, rows of parked cars packed with youths desperate for intimacy with nowhere to go. That's Muqattam to most people -- and there is quite a bit of fire to justify that smoke.
I went to the Corniche for a sunset and a cup of coffee, and I got much more than that. I got the chance to be part of a code of "understanding", of exclusive attention to one's own affairs, so conspicuously absent from our society. The experience of a hot drink or a fruit juice on a warm, breezy, summer evening is in and of itself valuable -- but just imagine combining that with a social phenomenon almost entirely absent from any other corner of town: live and let live.
The cafés dot the Corniche, one after the other. They all look the same, all serve the same and are all equally priced. So it makes not one bit of difference at which part of the Corniche you actually park. Just park. There are lovers everywhere: on the Corniche railing separating the cliff from the street; inside cars; on the cafés; on the very edge of the cliff with feet dangling in the air; walking about aimlessly arm in arm -- everywhere.
We opted for the café with the largest number of people around it. It almost felt like being in Ma'moura in the good old days. An irresistible summer feeling floated in the air; and it was not the heat that produced it, but the "festive release" that characterises that particular spot.
Let me put it bluntly: there is nothing exciting about the actual beverages one may select from up there. On the contrary, the quality is way below most people's standards. My cup of Turkish coffee will only be memorable because of the miniature mug in which it was served, and without even an accompanying glass of water. That coffee is special because the man serving it is so carefree and so unaware of any sophisticated coffee requirements that his mere presence in one's life for the few seconds it takes to be served a coffee has the potential to stimulate a reality check that most of us are in desperate need of every once in a while. The LE7 for a cup of Turkish coffee and a Pepsi, however inflated, were actually well worth the price of this rare social experience worth much more.
* Muqattam Corniche: once up on the hill, take a right from Al-Nafoura Sq and keep cutting across all perpendicular streets
