Until recently, there were two things you never talked about in Egypt: time and money. While it was permissible to discuss things like eternity, you wouldn’t dream of announcing the hour you had to wake up or the appointment you had in the afternoon. If people wore wristwatches, they were ornamental. As for money, just as the aristocratically rich find it a vulgar topic of conversation, amongst Egypt’s princely poor it was likewise infra dig.
Time isn’t as elastic as it once was in Cairo, where the days pass in a Sisyphean loop focused on survival; and money is now so tight it’s the very talk of the town. Walking through the city, the snatches of conversation that reach one’s ears are no longer phrases or gasps of laughter, but numbers, amounts in Egyptian pounds. People aren’t discussing foreign exchange rates or the stock market, but the price of everything they need and can’t afford.
