Enigmatic Egypt: Part 3 – Tanta

The last blog of my 3-part Enigmatic Egypt series features the stories I have collected from a place called Tanta.

Though largely unknown to the outside world, Tanta is the Egyptian city closest to my heart because for most of my 30-day stay in the country, I called it home.

Tanta is located between the capital city of Cairo and the historical shores of Alexandria.

It is Adam’s home.

Alexandrian by birth, he and his parent moved to Tanta when he was just five years old.

It was there where he learned to play football, befriended the neighborhood kids, went to school, and first fell in love.

Schoolboys playing football outside the Mosque of Ahmad Al-Badawy

I like to think that I did not go to Egypt as a tourist.

I went there as an outsider looking in.

I was curious as to what kind of life he had before I came along.

As expats living in the UAE, we often told each other stories about the homes we’d left behind.

And there was that one recurring character in his stories whom I’d always wanted to meet: Adam’s Mama.

At first, she only existed in his stories as a woman constantly terrorized by her only child’s mischief.

And then she was a middle-aged woman smiling beside her adult son in one of their rare photos together.

Not long after Adam started talking to his Mama about me, she invited us to spend our vacation with her.

That was June last year.

I had no way of knowing then whether she really liked me or not

— I only had to take Adam’s word (or translation) for it, because Mama doesn’t speak English.

Looking back, I should have been terrified of meeting someone who could have so easily ended what Adam and I had with a snap of her fingers.

But I guess I’d always been fool-hardy, and that quality has paid off more times than it has let me down.

When I finally did meet Mama, she was standing outside the arrival gates of Cairo International Airport waiting for her beloved son to come home.

So let me start my story from there.

Cairo International Airport

Adam and I arrived in Egypt near midnight.

We waited in line for the immigration officer for a quarter of an hour and about an hour more for all our check-in luggage to emerge from the carousel.

It was almost 2 when we finally rolled out the door where his Mama and best friend Anas greeted us with smiles so big, it easily made up for our 5-hour flight.

— Not to mention the 3-hour layover in Doha.

Adam’s Mama wore a traditional hijab but paired it with a dark-colored jacket and kickass winter boots.

She was exactly my height (barely five foot tall), so she had to tiptoe to give her only son the kind of hug only a mother could give.

They stood in the middle of a crowd of Egyptian families who were welcoming their own loved ones as well, but in those two whole minutes, Adam and Mama were totally alone.

When they finally let go of each other, Adam greeted Anas with the traditional kiss on both cheeks, and his Mama did the same with me

— Or tried to anyway, except that I just sort of froze, because one, I was really nervous.

Two, Egyptian winter nights are underratedly cold.

And three, I’m a terrible kisser.

Kisses freak me out.

So even though beso-beso (kiss-on-the-cheek greeting) is kind of a thing where I come from also (though it should be duly noted that only women do it among themselves and straight Filipino men would rather be caught dead than do it with their fellow men), I hadn’t done much practice.

But I still did what I could do to salvage the awkward situation by returning her hug.

After taking a few wrong turns along the way, Anas drove us to our home in Tanta – a flat on the fifth floor of a building across the city’s stadium.

Mama ducked into the kitchen as soon as we arrived and emerged with large plates of vegetable mahshy and beef steaks.

In Egyptian cuisine, looks do not deceive.

There was a plate for me and Adam and Anas and their friend Mahmoud (who woke up in the middle of the night to kiss – er – welcome Adam back to his hometown).

By then, it was 4 a.m. and though I wasn’t used to eating at such an ungodly hour, Mama’s food was delicious.

We all went to sleep stuffed at 5 in the morning and did not wake up until past noon.

Church of the Annunciation

On the morning of my first day in Egypt (a Sunday), news broke that a Coptic Orthodox Church in Cairo was bombed by an Islamic extremist.

Taking Adam and Mama’s advice, I stayed home instead of hearing Holy Mass that afternoon.

Days after the attack, while Adam and I were taking one of our many night strolls around town, we passed by the Church of the Annunciation, the only Catholic Church in Tanta.

The stationed soldiers, a permanent fixture throughout my stay in Egypt during a difficult time, informed us the schedule for Sunday Masses.

So I asked Adam to drop me off the church gates the very next Sunday and did my best to go unnoticed by the 10 other parishioners.

I was only able to steal glances at the dusty old interiors, the priest with his back to us as he consecrated the host; and the people who were mostly elderly men and women.

After Mass, I fumbled with a matchbox when a woman in her 40s came over and tried to strike a friendly conversation in Arabic.

I politely told her that I could not speak the language, so she struck the match for me and ushered her 2 young sons out of the church.

When I lit a candle beside an image of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, another much older woman came over and tried to strike an even friendlier, even more Arabic conversation.

Her husband came to the rescue, translated that they were all happy to see a new face, and invited me for the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve masses.

I was no longer able to join them for New Year’s, because Adam and Mama and I were in Alexandria by then.

But I was able to hear one last Mass in the Church of the Annunciation on the evening of 24 December.

The church bells rang all over Tanta and a 3-hour Mass said in the Armenian rite.

Unlike the Latin rite I grew up with, I was lost half way through the Armenian one, and only realized where we were when the parishioners started to clasp each other’s hands – their way of greeting each other “Peace be with you.”

From where I come from, we usually just nodded our heads with strangers and kissed our loved ones, but the Egyptian Catholics’ way was definitely more special.

After Mass, I impatiently waited for Adam to come pick me up outside the church.

I told him to hurry up, not knowing he just came from shopping my surprise Christmas gift: a big box of my favourite chocolates, a mini light-up Christmas tree, and a light-up Santa hat.

On Christmas morning, Mama also got me a Christmas gift: little Santa figurines which we hung all over the flat and a star-shaped Santa stuffed toy which she called “Baba Noel,” because in Egypt, Santa Claus is called Father Christmas.

City Centre Tanta

Depending on how cold the night was, Adam and I either stayed at home to tease Mama about her favourite weeknight TV dramas, or we went outside to explore the town.

With Tanta being so small, there was not a lot to see:

Misr Sweets was the one-stop shop for all things sweet — plus shawarma!

The brick restaurant across Al-Badawy Mosque was Kebab Heaven

And we loved Spectra’s old-timey interiors and great big portions

The rest of the time was spent in search of the best coffee.

We asked Adam’s good friend Adel (a.k.a. Storm) to drive us to City Centre, a popular mall chain in Dubai which opened a new branch in Tanta.

It was Adam’s idea to go ice skating – a first-hand experience for both of us.

I’d already strapped on my blades when I realized they were the wrong size, so aside from concentrating on not falling on my butt, I also had to suffer pinchy skating shoes.

Thankfully, Adam was even worse of an ice skater than I was.

“Please don’t let go of my hand.”

I used to roller skate as a kid, so at least I could balance.

Adam had neither balance nor grace, which made for great entertainment from other mall goers.

Even with the help of a skating instructor,

He still fell.

Thrice.

After just 15 minutes on the skating rink, he called it quits.

“Get me out of here,” were his exact words caught on Adel’s video footage of Adam’s first (and last) ice skating experience.

Our Home in Tanta

If I told you how big of an influence the Evil Eye still plays in modern Egyptian society, you probably won’t believe me.

Truth is, superstition co-exists with religion in the country and no belief more so than the Evil Eye.

The Evil Eye is said to bring misfortune to its victims.

It is a kind of curse given by an envious person to whomsoever he/she perceives to be undeservingly lucky.

One look is all it takes.

There are even some people born with the Evil Eye bringing misfortune with them everywhere they went.

Such people are said to haunt Adam’s neighborhood.

This led to his and Mama’s decision to rent another flat for us in a different side of town.

This was where we lived, in a strange home where we hoped to escape the Evil Eye.

The home opened into a salon with a mismatched dining table on one corner, one-, two-, and three-seater couches, and a brand new flat screen TV with over a thousand channels to choose from.

The left of the hallway led to the kitchen and bathroom, and the right one led to the two bedrooms.

The master’s bedroom had one queen-sized bed, three antique wardrobes, and a large wooden vanity dresser.

This was my room.

Adam and Mama shared the other room with two single beds and a small terrace.

The best memories of my trip were from the most ordinary occurrences at home.

Mama showing off the fresh catch of the day

I loved waking up at 10 or 11 in the morning and seeing Mama pray on the living room carpet or watching TV or streaming cat videos on YouTube and sneaking up behind her to greet her a good morning.

“Good morning” was one of the few English phrases she learned

— Though there was that one time she mixed it up with “Good night,” and we all had a good laugh about it.

Adam was always the last to wake up, and Mama never started breakfast until he was up, because he liked his food warm.

Sometimes Adam wouldn’t be up until 1, so Mama and I would sit together in silence in the salon.

I often wished I could speak Arabic just to speak with Mama, but apart from food words, I was pretty much what you’d call illiterate in the Arab world.

Surprising enough, Mama and I won each other over.

I liked her because she was impossible not to like.

And she liked me mostly because I amused her by eating just about anything.

For brunch, falafel-stuffed bread dipped in fuul with fresh lettuce and cucumbers and tomatoes on the side.

— I now get the munchies for lettuce which transformed my snacking habits for the better.

And for dinner, anything as complicated as cabbage mahshy (which involves rolling strips of boiled cabbage and stuffing them with spiced rice).

To a very simple chicken broth soup with pasta

Perfect for snuggling under a blanket and watching TV

Adam’s favorites were her lean beef steak (which he brought with him to Abu Dhabi).

And macaroni béchamel.

The night we ate macaroni béchamel for dinner, Mama said she’d wanted to eat it for so long but didn’t have anyone to share such a large meal with, so she only got to eat it when Adam was home.

She also cooked the perfect fried chicken.

Crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside

Cumin-spiced shrimps

Which triggered my allergies but totes worth it!

And beef with tomato sauce.

Which tasted uncannily like Filipino mechado

The one thing I didn’t eat was the molokhiya, not because Mama didn’t cook it good but because the food itself was green and sticky and weird.

But my number one favourite was Mama’s hawawshy, a large baked bread stuffed with very spicy ground beef.

Wallahy, after Mama’s hawawshy, all fastfood burgers taste like bland disappointment to me.

On mealtimes when Adam and Mama and I would sit and eat together, I would ask Mama questions about what Adam was like as a child, and Adam would begrudgingly translate for us, so we could bully him in his face.

She related a funny story from when Adam just started preschool and came home with dirty boxers.

That was the one time Mama hit him, because she was very strict about cleanliness.

The rest of the time, she never had any problems with Adam misbehaving.

She said he was always such a well-behaved child and never needed more than a single warning look to stop whatever it was he was planning to do.

“I don’t know what happened to him now,” she said in Arabic, when I asked her how come he grew up to be so damned stubborn.

Mama was rarely ever relaxing on the living room couch (unlike me and Adam who could spend the whole day watching Disney movies and old Tom and Jerry reruns), so when she asked us to switch the channel to CBC Drama at 8 p.m. sharp on weeknights, who were we to refuse?

She followed a corny Turkish series and an overly dramatic Indian trilogy at 9 p.m.

She was concentrating so much she didn’t know we were goofing around.

Mind you, it didn’t take long for me to get hooked with them as well, even if I relied on Adam to translate the Arabic dubbing.

Mama was usually in bed by 11.

She would say “Night-night” and keep the kitchen radio tuned in to a Quran station the whole night.

She didn’t turn off the lights until Adam was in the room with her, because she easily got scared.

She didn’t even watch “Ghost Rider” on TV, because she thought it was a horror movie.

After 11, Adam and I would change the channel back to cartoons and stay up until 2 just sitting and talking and enjoying each other’s company.

That was my typical day in Egypt

Some days Adam would be up early to finish government papers.

As an only son, he’s exempted from mandatory military service, but he still has to renew the exemption until age 30.

So Mama and I would be left to communicate with each other as best as we could until he got back.

Some days Adam’s Uncle and cousin (also named Adam) would come for a visit.

Two Adams in one photo!

Baby Adam was a very cute but very naughty 3-year-old.

The first time he came, his pants kept falling off, because he hated his belt so much that he hid it from his parents and until now, they still couldn’t find it.

He kept running around the house while holding his pants up.

When he got tired, I offered him a big can of Pringles which Mama took away from him.

It turned out that Mama was a Pringles person, and it brought out the kid in her.

Luckily, Baby Adam didn’t put up a fight for as long as Big Adam let him play a driving game on his phone.

One night when he and his dad were home to join us for a mixed grill dinner, Mama took so long to come out from the bedroom that I went to check on her.

I found her on the floor.

She lost consciousness.

I called for help and Adam and his Uncle carried her to her bed and tried to revive her.

Mama often lost her consciousness when she was under a lot of physical or mental stress.

It was one more thing which dealt a heavy blow on Adam’s conscience when he left home.

When Mama finally came back to us, we asked her to eat a heavy dinner, and we all pretended that that was that.

The second time she lost her consciousness, Adam and I were outside with Mahmoud for coffee.

We were out for only an hour or so, and we expected to find her watching her TV series when we got back, but she wasn’t there.

Adam found her on the bathroom floor.

I rushed outside to ask Mahmoud to hurry and help, but because he wasn’t very good at English, he didn’t understand my urgency and simply calmly followed me inside.

He and Adam carried Mama to the couch to revive her.

She did so after a much longer time.

I made her tea and joined Mahmoud in convincing Adam to take Mama to the hospital the next day.

Mahmoud took a day off work just to be with us.

Mama took a series of lab tests, but apart from a spike in her cholesterol level, all her results came out normal, Alhamdulillah.

A few days later, we packed our bags and boarded a train to Alexandria for New Year.

That was Mama.

One day she was all right and happy, singing to herself in the kitchen.

The next, she was sick and needed her nose pinched and chest pumped to bring her back.

Life in our home in Tanta was far from being all sunshine and daisies.

But I treasured moments like eating popcorn while watching old Egyptian comedies on TV and racing Mama to the kitchen sink to take over the dishwashing duties, because for the first time in a really long time, I felt like I belonged to a family again.

On the week of our flight back to Abu Dhabi, Mama never stopped bringing home food and clothes to take with us.

While we were slowly packing our bags, she was also bringing back the things she’d brought from their real home.

Then one night while we sat with her watching her TV shows, she started crying, because she didn’t want to go back sitting in the living room by herself again.

Adam and I quickly jumped on the couch beside her and comforted her.

— Well, him mostly.

I cried with Mama too, so there were the two of us who needed comforting.

Our good friend Iman came to pick us up to drive us to Cairo for the last time.

We reached the airport at noon after beating a particularly heavy traffic.

Beside me on the backseat, Mama was already in pieces, and I was in danger of doing the same.

Leaving Egypt meant leaving behind everything I had come to love in a short month’s time.

It meant leaving Mama to eat alone, watch TV alone, and to be alone.

It also meant waking up without Adam in the next room and having to wait for weeks, even months, just to see each other again.

But I had to steel myself.

I didn’t want to let Mama see me crying, because if I did, she would get upset, and she might lose consciousness again.

If that happened, who was going to take care of her with us gone?

Iman helped us unload the bags to the airport trolley, and Adam pushed across the parking lot in front of the departures hall.

I followed right behind him holding on tight to Mama’s hand.

By then, our flight was already boarding, and we still had to go through security, baggage check-in, and immigration.

So finally it was time to say goodbye.

Adam and I took turns kissing and hugging Mama.

We promised her that we would send for her later this year, so she could see Dubai for herself.

Not long after that, we lost sight of Mama in the airport crowd.

Thanks for reading the Enigmatic Egypt blog series!