Iftar Chez Sherifa

Well, I didn't take any pictures at Sherifa's iftar because my camera battery had died, but I shall do my best to describe. First off, Sherifa is awesome and her iftar was awesome. For those of you just tuning in, Sherifa is our Egyptian Colloquial teacher and she is pretty much everyone's favorite teacher. She is very small and very feisty and an excellent teacher. Our beginner Ameya (colloquial, although I'm unsure about the transliteration) is the only class she teaches for our program because she focuses mainly on teaching the advanced students in the super intense program called CASA (I don't remember what that stands for, but they can't speak any English while they are on AUC's campus). I feel a little bit as though we are more of an ideological statement on her part than anything else, but it's a lot of fun and we are learning more than I ever would have thought possible.

Anywho, on Friday night we all (the six of us in the class) went over to her apartment for iftar, a word which litterally means breakfast and is used to mean the meal in the morning and the meal at sundown during Ramadan which breaks the daily fast. So far we had mainly experienced iftar as an errie hour or so in which the streets of Cairo are empty (something which doesn't ever happen at any other time, including three or four in the morning). This time we got to be a part of the meal!

We had more food than I think I had ever eaten in one sitting before. First there was an apricot drink made from dried apricots which is apparently a traditional Egyptian way for breaking the fast. Then there was delicious lentil soup, stuffed vegetables (eggplant, peppers, squash, and tomatoes stuffed with rice and herbs), koftah (very Egyptian meat dish), another kind of meat (veal seems to be very big here), a rice dish made with caramelized sugar, nut and rasins, and babaganoush, yogurt, and a green salad or cucumbers and tomatoes. Sherifa and her sister had made everything and it was all (well, I didn't eat the meat) absolutely delicious. It is the first time I've had home-cooked Egyptian food and, it may sound cliched, but it made me feel so much more comfortable than I have generally felt while here. There is something about sharing food that creates an extremely strong sense of inclusion.

After all of this, there was an enormous array of desserts. There were several that were homemade and then there were the pastry shop desserts that we had all brought with us. We lingered over tea and dessert for well over two hours, just talking about Egypt, Arabic, and each other. Sherifa told us all about her family and about how she became an Arabic teacher (it is hard to place her age exactly, but I think she is in her early forties). She has an opinion about everything and is one of the few people who have openly discussed politics with us thus far. It was extremely interesting to here her thoughts about the government, religion, language and about how things have changed in the course of her life time. I think that is was probably the best six hours I have spent in Cairo.

Our plan now is to invite her to our apartment for a thanksgiving dinner, but we shall have to see how traditional it can really be. I don't have the slightest clue as to how one would procure a turkey, let alone attempt to cook it in our oven!