"Cairo Downtown Puppy Den"
I wrote this in Cairo a few months back, but Blogger kicked it off for some reason:
I'm back in Cairo for a week, loafing about and doing a lot of remembering. I met up with the wonderful Megan E. Detrie (Cairo champion, third degree) and on my first proper day back in Cairo we went to eat a reasonably hokey lunch in a real ghetto park downtown-ways.
A girl and a boy of maybe eight and eleven, who presumably live or work in the park, came up to us. First it was a lesson on the haram-osity of Megan's 'low-cut' top, after which the boy presented a small puppy - maybe 15 centimetres long, gold coloured and still completely puppy retarded. He sniffed around us and nuzzled our legs. The little girl kept shouting at it and trying to scare it - even though she was scared of it herself, and kept jumping back if it moved towards her. I think that's partly a muslim thing (there are rules about washing after touching a dog), and partly a cultural thing that comes from living in a place where dogs are always filthy because they're never kept as pets. I'm pretty sure these kids were dirtier than the dogs.
We ate our fuul (pretty much the Egyptian national dish - mashed up broad beans with salt, lemon and cumin) on a rickety old bench in the sun and watched the boy carry the puppy part the way up a wooded hill by the scruff of his neck and throw him a few metres through the air to the ground. We packed up our fuul and made to leave the park. The kids pursued us, convinced that they were in for some sort of dog presentation tax or something, but gave up after a while. On the way out, we spotted another puppy on the hill and went up to investigate. What we found was a puppy den dug in amongst the roots of a big tree - about 10 puppies, all obviously from the same litter as the puppy from before, who was none the worse from his throwing and happily rambling about with his siblings.
The puppies were trying to get their brave on to defend the den, with barking that sounded more like a coughing cat and charges that ended in them cowering and trying to hide under our legs. The kids spotted us, and came up the hill. The ensuing conversation (I use the term loosely - my Arabic is relatively basic, and though related, of a different dialect to what they speak in Egypt) involved the kids trying to sell us puppies, and me trying to tell them that they would get sick if they touched them. It involved a lot of hand gesturing (thanks Atif). Somehow, I feel like I didn't do a lot to reduce the kids' rabies risk, and despite the helpful suggestion that we could keep one on our roof, the puppy hard-sell didn't turn out to be very effective either.
Mum dog made her arrival and stood at the bottom of the hill looking agitated at the intruders, so we decided to leave. Puppyless, we made our way back into hectic Downtown.
A better welcome back to Cairo I could not imagine. It's good to be home.
I'm back in Cairo for a week, loafing about and doing a lot of remembering. I met up with the wonderful Megan E. Detrie (Cairo champion, third degree) and on my first proper day back in Cairo we went to eat a reasonably hokey lunch in a real ghetto park downtown-ways.
A girl and a boy of maybe eight and eleven, who presumably live or work in the park, came up to us. First it was a lesson on the haram-osity of Megan's 'low-cut' top, after which the boy presented a small puppy - maybe 15 centimetres long, gold coloured and still completely puppy retarded. He sniffed around us and nuzzled our legs. The little girl kept shouting at it and trying to scare it - even though she was scared of it herself, and kept jumping back if it moved towards her. I think that's partly a muslim thing (there are rules about washing after touching a dog), and partly a cultural thing that comes from living in a place where dogs are always filthy because they're never kept as pets. I'm pretty sure these kids were dirtier than the dogs.
We ate our fuul (pretty much the Egyptian national dish - mashed up broad beans with salt, lemon and cumin) on a rickety old bench in the sun and watched the boy carry the puppy part the way up a wooded hill by the scruff of his neck and throw him a few metres through the air to the ground. We packed up our fuul and made to leave the park. The kids pursued us, convinced that they were in for some sort of dog presentation tax or something, but gave up after a while. On the way out, we spotted another puppy on the hill and went up to investigate. What we found was a puppy den dug in amongst the roots of a big tree - about 10 puppies, all obviously from the same litter as the puppy from before, who was none the worse from his throwing and happily rambling about with his siblings.
The puppies were trying to get their brave on to defend the den, with barking that sounded more like a coughing cat and charges that ended in them cowering and trying to hide under our legs. The kids spotted us, and came up the hill. The ensuing conversation (I use the term loosely - my Arabic is relatively basic, and though related, of a different dialect to what they speak in Egypt) involved the kids trying to sell us puppies, and me trying to tell them that they would get sick if they touched them. It involved a lot of hand gesturing (thanks Atif). Somehow, I feel like I didn't do a lot to reduce the kids' rabies risk, and despite the helpful suggestion that we could keep one on our roof, the puppy hard-sell didn't turn out to be very effective either.
Mum dog made her arrival and stood at the bottom of the hill looking agitated at the intruders, so we decided to leave. Puppyless, we made our way back into hectic Downtown.
A better welcome back to Cairo I could not imagine. It's good to be home.
posted by Simon | 8:08 AM
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