Tom in Egypt // توم في مصر

..is leaving, and the view of the beautifully lit Citadel by night on the way home. I’d naively forgotten the nature of the Carrefour beast and was actually looking forward to the trip in the taxi on the way there. Initial excitement fast evaporated as I saw the ant-like hordes entering the mall and flocking towards the hypermarché. After an exhausting hour or so hunting for things for the flat – pans, knives, bins and the like – I retired to the nearest restaurant and abused their bottomless drinks, tortilla chips and salsa offers and waited for Andrea to get back with the other food items we needed. It’s difficult to explain the Carrefour madness to people who’ve never been as it’s really unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else. There have been times, I admit, when I have rushed to Carrefour in Alex as a safe-haven to buy some reasonable cheese and half-decent bread, but every time I go on a more concerted shopping trip the experience is somewhat soul destroying. Picture trying to do food shopping on a match day at Old Trafford, or Boxing Day sales with trolleys. I can see its appeal to middle and upper class Egyptians who can justify the inflated price tags because they can buy everything they need there, like at Tesco Express. But one of the things that I enjoy most about wandering through places like the street market on Mohammed Farid, next to our apartment, is that you can find a shop for everything. One man sells plastics, the next sells eggs. One man sells bread, the next is more of a lime specialist. I also love the way that shops group together here: on our street there are maybe six shops selling glasses and sunglasses in a row of seven. In other neighbourhoods I’ve seen stationery, kitchen supplies and even prosthetic limbs sold this way. Happily, Carrefour won’t threaten these shops too much any time soon, I suspect – with only a handful of stores it doesn’t have the presence to enjoy the stranglehold Tesco has on the UK market – but one feels it may only be a matter of time. For now though, I’m happy to enjoy buying onions and carrots from different shops.