Early November 1973. The Egyptian Army is struggling to maintain its gains in Sinai.
Each day Cairo runs out of something else as the country is blockaded: Matches one day, toilet paper the next, cooking oil ... The blood bank has set up a loudspeaker outside our house and we receive hostile glares as the woman's voice, half weeping, half imploring, urges the passers by to give blood for their sons and brothers at the front. Bandaged soldiers with crutches have begun to appear on the streets. Rumours are flying: An Israeli spy disguised as a Moroccan was caught in Ramses Square this morning; a Moroccan spy with an Israeli identity card was caught near the synagogue in Shari' 'Adli at lunchtime.
Then there is a rumour that foreigners are entitled to rations. Provisions are running short. My wife's grandmother has a secret hoard of sugar. She shows us the US dollars sewn into her dresses in advance of her escape to California one day. Have you heard that foreigners can get rations, we ask. She shrugs in the careworn Armenian manner: Kalaam faadi - 'It's all just talk'.
But other foreigners have heard of it too. You need bitaaqa tamwiin, they say, a 'provision permit', a ration card. Where can you get it? Ramses Square is the consensus among the foreigners studying at the universities. We set off on foot. There's nothing much else to do since they put a tank outside Cairo University and locked the gates the day the war started.
Crossing the tram tracks we face a massive government building with a sandbagged blast wall across the entrance; all the big buildings have thrown them up in expectation of bombing. Vast rowdy queues thread out the doors and into the street, all composed of shouting foreign men, mostly Africans. We reconnoitre the ballooning masses of people, unable to make sense of any order that might underlie the pandemonium, but suddenly we spot some Europeans. You need an application form, they say - istimaara - and you get it from a scribe by the entrance.
In a gap between the Africans sit half a dozen Arab men in long robes squatting on chairs before tiny desks. We are beckoned by an old scribe with a milky eye. Professor, we want a istimaara for a ration card please. The Professor scribbles on a blank sheet of paper and barks 'name?'. We tell him our chunky English names and he turns them into fluid sweeps of Arabic on the paper. 'Address?', 'nationality?' It all goes down and in seconds we hand over a few piastres and take our forms.
The interior of the building is a stifling ants nest of African men criss-crossing, stopping, starting, meeting, parting, waiting, pushing. We spot some Europeans in a small queue: This is for non-African foreigners they say. We shelter with them and our line slowly works its way towards a tiny enquiry window. Every five minutes a foreigner peels off with a look of joy, and the next hands his form to the civil servant inside the window.
We are two places behind the leader when the window closes. The queue behind us has been more vigilant and sees another tiny window opening ten feet away, and surges towards it, leaving us at the back of the new line. After an hour we come away with our ration books, roughly printed on hairy beige paper with pages bearing squares to be stamped to verify the receipt of tiny monthly quantities of tea, sugar and oil.
Next day we visit the government supermarket in our quarter. We've never been in there before because normally there is nothing for sale except for tins of communist peaches and gherkins, presumably excess stock from a five year plan in Bulgaria or Ukraine. But now it has become the ration supply centre. Normally we use the baqaala - the grocery a few shops down where I caused a riot of mirth and admiration when we first arrived and I asked for toilet paper in impeccable Classical Arabic.
But now the baqaala is empty. The normally comatose shopkeepers in the government supermarket are fighting on the home front, bravely stamping ration cards and heroically handing over goods to customers at the front of the horde packed into the shop.
We slowly move to the the front, conspicuous among the robes in our jeans and Levi shirts. As we get near to the counter a disgruntled voice from the back says:
Shaay wa sukkar lil agaanib - 'tea and sugar for the foreigners.'
Again: Shaay wa sukkar lil agaanib, this time more voices.
I hand over the ration cards. 'The sugar's finished' the official says.
The whole shop is chanting:
Shaay wa sukkar lil agaanib
Shaay wa sukkar lil agaanib
We turn and push through the sweating, glaring crowd. In the street outside my wife says 'Show me what we got', and I hold out an envelope with a spoonful of tea leaves inside.
© Stuart Campbell 2014
Read more about my writing at http://stubooks.blogspot.com.au/
