The Sad café
After the Second World War, socialism promised a utopian future for the working classes. Egypt followed this beacon of hope with the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 and the establishment of Muhammad Naguib as president of the new republic. Nasser succeeded Naguib in 1956 and began introducing socialist policies in 1962. However, by the time I visited Egypt in 1990, these policies had broadly failed and a harsh economic reality had set in.
Cairo was a teeming and ever-expanding metropolis just a few kilometres from the famous pyramids at Giza when my girlfriend and I visited these ancient and colossal structures. We also went to the Cairo museum to see Tutankhamun’s death mask and his other treasures, gaped across a high panorama of the city from Cairo Tower and wandered about the Souk quarter, taking in the heat, the smells and the bustle of the crowds.
Making an exhausted retreat, we found ourselves in a quiet and dusty Cairo backstreet, searching for somewhere to rest aching legs and quench parched throats. In the space of twenty metres, we came across a little dilapidated café set back from the road, looking forlorn and forgotten. Curious, we ventured into the dark and dusky smelling interior.
There were no customers, which would normally have put us off. An old man with a wrinkled brown face regarded me with suspicion from behind a counter which hadn’t been cleaned for some time. I knew they wouldn’t sell beer, but nor did they serve coffee and there didn’t appear to be any bottled water. We didn’t fancy yet another glass of tea, so I reluctantly pointed at small bottles of ‘Seven Up’ and then held up two fingers. The old man scribbled the cost on a dog-eared scrap of paper and held it up. I didn’t haggle and paid him slightly more with a crisp new banknote. We sat down at a table near the window, looking out into the bright, sunlit street and waited for our drinks.
I heard him open the bottles. The escaping gas made a short hiss. At least the lemonade wasn’t flat. He shuffled over with our drinks and, with shaking hands threatening to spill the contents, carefully placed the glasses in front of us. I smiled and said, “Shukrān”. Avoiding eye contact, he nodded, then retreated back behind the counter.
I looked around the café. It was very shabby, and there was a distinctly dank odour about the place, somewhat incongruous in this arid climate. A high-pitched smell of dust seemed to emanate from a thick green carpet running down the centre of the room, and in combination with the smell of dampness, formed an unpleasant miasma. Along the adjacent wall, a similar table to ours was draped with a cloth and overlaid with an additional transparent plastic cover. Arranged on top were grubby looking menus with splatters of an earlier meal dappled across them. In the centre of the table, next to a silver salt cellar, was one of those semi-enclosed and two-tone ashtrays I remember from the Sixties.The seats of metal framed stools were padded with thick yellow, cream and red cushions and arranged around the perimeter. Some cushions were compressed as though heavy customers were still sitting on them, while others were discoloured with mould.
A narrow shelf ran around the walls, just above table height, holding bottles of Coca-Cola, Canada Dry tonic water and an orange drink. My roaming eyes then fell upon two pictures above mirrored panels. One was a colour photograph of a boy in a white Jellabiya being embraced by Hosni Mubarak, the fourth president of Egypt. The other was a print of the third president, Anwar Sadat, regaled in military uniform and set on a large white plate.
I looked again at the photograph with Hosni Mubarak and wondered where it was taken and who the boy was. The old man behind the counter detected my interest.
“My son”, he proclaimed in English, anticipating my question.
I must have shown my surprise. So, he did speak English.
“ He meet my son. I very proud, but like Sadat, Mubarak full of empty promises.”
I was going to smile in empathy, but an expression of despair had filled his face.
“Egypt finished. Café finished. All very sad.” He gestured around the room as if pointing to the evidence of the decline of his nation, and his business. With that, he turned and, with a posture of utter melancholy, shuffled through a curtain of beads into a back room.
We looked at one another but remained silent in case he was listening. Perhaps the owner had once been patriotic, and the pictures had been put up to reflect that. Perhaps they had also once represented his aspiration for a more prosperous future for himself and his son. Where was his son now?
There was a heavy silence. I looked down from the grimy tabletop supporting the now empty glasses of lemonade to the faded green carpet, perhaps a metaphor for the hope he once held when he fitted out this strange Sixties-looking café. While life bustled along the main street, he and possibly his son had been left behind. It felt like a sad little place.
We stood up to leave, making some noise to draw back his attention, but the man did not reappear. I took one final look around and imagined what it might have been in that promised Egyptian utopia. Pulling the stiff old door open, we stepped out into a blaze of light and heat.
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