Egyptian Royalty

“Hey Lady! Yeah, where you from? England, Habibti? America?”

In a street the size of my apartment hallway, surrounded by tables of glass hookahs and plastic pyramids, I stand out.

“Lady, very beautiful, very beautiful! Come here, Habibti!”

A heavyset man sweating in the evening heat calls to me from his seat, gesturing at the door of the jewellery shop beside him, his legs tucked away from the tourists filing through the city bazaar. The next vendor jumps into the path my mother and I are exploring, getting close enough to put a hand on my back and for me to smell the day’s work on his skin. Not that the air doesn’t already reek of flavoured smoke and familiar men in close quarters.

“Look, Habibti, I have special price for you, you so beautiful. Where you from? I have special price, look.”

I smile appreciatively, but don’t stop to browse; neither Mom nor I have any need for highlighter yellow t-shirts. I am not the only white woman on vacation, nor am I the only one to warrant a Habibti, or “my darling”, as I wander with my mother, fingering the scarves and nosing the spices. But I am one of the few under fifty, and the only one to stand six feet tall; next to my five-foot-two-and-a-quarter, 51-year-old mother, I might as well be covered in gold.

Walking anywhere through sandy Cairo has earned me a slew of stares, calls and questions. After all, my stature means that I stand a head above most of the men in the Egyptian capital and that there is just that much more ankle to stare at under my long skirts. In the mosques, I’m given gowns for decency (though they hardly covered more than my own clothes did); in the streets, school girls come to touch my hair and tell me their names; in the restaurants, my mother is offered camels for my hand - and with her years of market bartering, she could easily make a fortune. More than a handful of strange locals pull me into embraces only to take out cell phones for pictures and gather around to discuss my dimples in bubbling Arabic as Mom watches, smiling slightly and bobbing her head to the local music. The Egyptian attention has made me into royalty.

Arm in arm with my mother, I pull her away from a tobacco shop and it’s greasy, bearded vendor and towards one of the silver-packed windows that line the alleyway. I direct her around a puddle caught in the bricks and we stop in front of a dusty ledge to check out the jewellery.

“Oh, that one looks nice, honey,” she says, patting my hand fondly and nodding at a simple, hoop necklace.

“Hey! Look at you, beautiful! Habibti, come here so I can see you.”

I tug on Mom’s arm again, towards the woven straw sacks a few stalls down and farther from the tobacco vendor. Between the layers of hanging linen and above the humid smoke, the smell of a hundred spices rise like a wall from the sacks. I pause just outside to let Mom don her reading glasses and examine the labels.

“Oh, wow, Habibti, wow. Come to talk to me, Habibti. Where you from?”

She is squinting at a bag of saffron; I ignore the tobacco vendor.

“Oh, the things I can do to your body, Habibti.”

Mom snaps.

“Excu-use me?” She turns face-to-sweaty-chest with the bearded man; glasses perched on her nose, saffron clenched in her fist. “Who do you think you are?” She put a finger up to his face and he sputters. “How dare you talk like that to my daughter?” Every word becomes slower, clearer; she perfected the art of the oral-lashing years ago. “How dare you be so rude? And in front of her mother.”

Staring at my little, bespectacled mother, he backs up. The other salesmen stop pressing in on us and Mom takes full advantage of her stage.

“How dare you say things like that. Did your own mother not raise you right? Who do you think you are?”

The tobacco vendor’s beard waggles and accented apologies begin to tumble out; he means no disrespect, his mother would never have raised him like that, he is very, very sorry. At this point, Mom decides she’s had enough, puts her arm back through mine, and marches towards the crowded exit of the bazaar.

“Wait, Madame, wait! I know people, I will get you good prices! Respect, Madame, respect!” He follows us past the silver stores, around circles of men sipping tea and puffing smoke rings, and under banners of pashmina scarves.

“Madame, please! I want to give you good price. Take my business card.”

Mom pauses, and he shoves an apologetic hand towards her, waving his little card in the air. I stand behind her, watching as he begs her wide-eyed to accept his small paper offering of penitence. She huffs - too good for anything less than gold - turning once again to walk out as I tail her, all eyes on my mother.

“I‘m sorry Madame! Have a good evening, Madame!”

I was really just a lady to the queen.