As dusk approached on our first day in Cairo, we had been pounding the streets, making our way to Khan El-Kalili market. We'd had to ditch the map as the streets we needed were too small to be marked, and therefore got lost in crowds of locals trying to do their weekly shopping. By the time we arrived at El-Fishawi - one of the reasons we were visiting the market - S had been groped by a young boy, we had spent twenty minutes in a traffic jam overlooking the streets, and were very tired. The 'ahwa' was the best place to recover. All over the city, these are simply coffee houses - usually tiny - where tables, chairs, and shisha smoke spill out on to the pavement.
El-Fishawi is perhaps not representative of the typical ahwa, as it is certainly on the tourist trail, but with most streetside examples not welcoming women, we were happy to settle here and ignore market sellers hovering over us with miniature camel toys. We found a couple of free seats, and in our best phrase-book Arabic ordered some mint tea and some 'Sahlab', which we were keen to try as it is a popular drink for winter months. And we soon found out why - it it arrived in a mug, steaming and gloopy. Classically, the drink is made by mixing a flour of ground orchid tuber with sweetened hot milk, often flavoured with orange or rose water. Ours was mixed with dessicated coconut, and had been topped with raisins and peanuts. More of a pudding than a drink, it was incredibly warming and soon became a favourite of mine.
Although sweet, softened by the milk it was one of the few drinks that was not normally rendered ridiculously sugary. The famous 'Egyptian coffee', delivered in small long-handled pots, is concentrated and sweetened so highly that it is hard to think of it as coffee at all. All teas are also customarily sweetened, which was often disappointing if we failed to remember to specify - mint and 'karkade' hibiscus tea are so refreshing without anything added. It seems to be that, contrary to what would probably be the case here, men almost show off with the amount of sugar they add, spooning in heaps one by one as observe the limit of their sweet tooth.
