new shisha and days of old

In a back alley of Garden city I found an cafe to rest my tired soles, reflecting on my experience and impressions of Cairo and Egypt thus far. After meandering from the Mogamba office to the American Embassy and back in the heat of the African sun my tunic shirt stuck to my torso. The sweat of an afternoon walk downtown was the gratifying badge of a successful journey through Cairo, discovering cultural nuances in every block. I reached for one of the many wooden-wicker chairs at an empty table in the open-air cafe. This ahawa was typical of traditional haunts that pepper the back streets of downtown, wooden paneling lining the walls, adorned with fans made in the late 60s. I imagined myself traversing the dusty streets of Cairo in the era of Nasser or Sadat when few women wore the hijab and the niqab was nonexistent. Maybe previous days had been spent celebrating the victory of the war of attrition against the Zionist state. Heated conversations following the Sadat's assassination for his appeasement of Israel flaring up over every table. I sat, pensive, contemplating this place that hadn't changed in thirty some years, realizing when I stepped over the threshold of the entrance I had walked into the glory days of Egypt. As I wrote in my diary, the clatter of ivory dominoes penetrated the Arabic conversations around me like rattling bones. The only thing new in this place was the apple and molasses tobacco that filled the bowls of the plethora of shisha water pipes and it was the constancy of shisha culture and continuous demand for shisha that, I supposed, had kept this relic in business. Today, many of the shisha cafes have succumbed to the pressures of modernity, often employing televisions to entertain patrons with a steady stream of music videos, both from the Arab world and America. Yet this house of shisha willfully defied change; not antiquated as younger Egyptians might say but rather, a monument, a living relic providing respite for those who seek to remember better days. After finishing my shisha, I paid the three pound tab and walked towards the street rested, nostalgic for a time before my days, of Egyptian prosperity. But the clouds beneath my feet dissipated as quickly as they came as a glistening new yellow hummer sped by the alley blaring a Justin Timberlake song.