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TRAVEL | EGYPT & SHOPPING
Cairo Is a Big Place, the World Is a Small One
Sometimes stuff makes the world go ‘round, and that’s not always a bad thing
Love shopping, do you?
If you’re an expat in Cairo, you shop, whether you have the shopping gene or not. In a poor country like Egypt, distinctive wares can be had for embarrassingly little money. Cairo lets you impress parents and kids, aunties and cousins, close friends, former neighbors, people you haven’t seen since high school, and your ex-mother-in-law with something exotic.
Sooner or later, you go to Muskie Street for glassware that might pass for Murano. You beat a path to the Khayyamiyyah — the Tentmakers Market — and stagger home under piles of textiles with hand-sewn appliqués of geometry, calligraphy, history, and the lateen sails of feluccas on the Nile.
At the dump, you patronize the charity helping garbage-pickers make a living off the leavings of others. You buy more embroidered greeting cards than you’ll ever use, just because the images of Egypt are so charming, and the recycled paper — creamy, textured — is so…
