MEXI-CAIRO ( MEXICO DIARIES)

Only the writer, perhaps, possesses the stillness to sit and weigh the commonality between two dusts. After a few weeks in the Mexican capital, I had this morning a deja vu which hit abruptly into my routine, the sensation of grasping the city’s air to the point where I could barely breathe. It took me a moment to realize why I felt that way, until I remember that a few weeks ago, when I was in Cairo, I felt the same way. My mind started fiddling towards the other obvious geometries: the dense traffic, which thickens the air into something tasteful, something swallowed; the pyramids, the twenty million peope line, the pace of transformation, and so on. The more I sat to think, the more I began to notice quieter similarities between the two. Now that I have spent significant time in both, I wanted to go deeper, on something that was quite literally stuck in my throat.

To the skeptical reader let me preface by acknowledging that the people of these cities—and indeed, of any nation or city—are not identical. What I write here are those aspects that strike an adventurer, traveler and observer, as remarkably similar, and which, after discussions with locals from both Cairo and Mexico City, we have collectively acknowledged is a curious phenomenon.

The first thing that struck me about both Cairo and Mexico City was the food. Not only the dishes, but the chaotic rhythm of their food intake. Unlike anywhere else I have been, I witnessed an almost entirely unstructured feeding pattern, probably enhanced by the fact that both cities possess a powerful street-cart culture, a saturated corner-food offer and for many, a rule of working hours not imposed by the global 9 to 5.

The local diet follows a remarkably similar pattern. In both cities, the staple dish consists of a base of bread—whether flat, folded, or rolled—filled with meats and vegetables. In Cairo, this is the Shawarma: vinegar-marinated beef or chicken shaved from a vertical spit, tossed with fresh parsley, onions, and tomatoes, and served in a soft fino or kaiser roll drenched in creamy tahini, the latest for me its the true flavour of Cairo. In Mexico City, there are Tacos: soft or …

THIS IS A SAMPLE FROM THE TRAVELING DIARIES OF MEXICO

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