Everyone has their New Year’s rituals. Mine is born of the conviction that nothing is worse than dullness, so each January I take my kitchen knives to be sharpened. My landlord used to do it for me, but he died; and for a while I relied on Cairo’s travelling knife-sharpeners, who circulated on bicycles they’d rigged up with a whetstone between the handlebars. They’re gone now too, leaving only one ageing gent in a covered market several blocks from where I live.
Like the rest of belle époque Cairo, the market is but a shadow of its former self. Once a glorious glass and wrought-iron pavilion, its neat lanes bright with produce, its shattered roof is now covered in garbage, leaving the jumble of foodsellers in a fetid penumbra. I made my way bravely past slabs of liver quivering on scales, through tight passages lined with hanging cow carcasses still sporting furry tails. The market was damp and swollen, the lanes greased with mud as the roof dripped a light winter rain, splotching tomatoes and tangerines, and the lamb’s heads set out in rows on long tables, terribly white, their eyes shut and ears cocked as if praying very hard.
