When the day is through

When I get home, which these days is usually not until 4:30 PM or so, I like to go up to the roof to do my homework. Kanzy's roof is rapidly becoming my favorite place in the building; even in direct sunlight, the breeze seven stories up makes it much cooler than the streets below, and the late afternoon sun provides light enough for me to work, but also creates some nice shaded areas near the old pool.

It would be a stretch to describe the part of Doqqi where I live as beautiful; the apartment buildings surrounding Kanzy are prematurely old, weathered by sun and wind and the thick layer of dust that coats anything exposed to Cairene air. The roofs of the buildings are strewn with scraps of metal and wood, strata of dust and bird droppings, topped off with veritable forests of satellite dishes. Trees in the area are few and far between, and those that have managed to survive the close construction in the area look like any day now, they might lose their remaining will to live and finally succumb to the heat. The cars are parked two and three rows deep as far as the eye can see, and the sidewalks are cracked and uneven - where they exist at all. There is garbage everywhere, and even late at night, we can hear cars honking and zooming past the building, probably without headlights on. (Cairene drivers use headlights where American drivers use select hand gestures to express frustration.)

I am maybe not as much of a city girl as I'd like to think, but I do find a certain beauty in the view of Midan Tahrir from a third floor classroom when the pre-iftar rush begins, and a certain comfort in the Egyptian crowds that don't ever seem to sleep. For the last few days, I've been lucky enough to be on the roof during the maghrib call to prayer, which even in Doqqi is a pretty amazing experience. From my favorite chaise, I can track the sun as it ducks behind one of the nearby apartment buildings, orange and round and perfect. I don't know if it's the air pollution or some odd sentimental tendency of my own, but Cairo has a fairly awesome sunset. (I can't wait to experience it in the desert in a few weeks - we're currently planning a trip to the Black and White Desert.) Just after 6 PM, the call to prayer goes out; a few years back, somebody told me that there was a push to get all the districts synced up and have one call go out electronically to the entire city. I don't know what happened with that initiative, but I'm glad that's not how it is - it's much more beautiful to hear a chorus of Allahu Akbar ("Allah is the Greatest"), with each masjid starting up after a few seconds of lag.

I was trapped up on the roof with my friend Elyssa, a security guard, and the building manager (that in and of itself is another story for another day) on Tuesday afternoon, and the building manager kept saying Maghrib jamiil ("beautiful sunset"). I had to agree.