Hussein Mosque

We were having dinner with some friends last night when Tim called to share the news, “Did you hear? A bomb went off in the Khan.”

By “the Khan” he was referring to Khan al-Khalili, the touristy/historic market. Its one of the places you “have to go” when you visit Cairo. The narrow streets are filled with kitchy souvenirs, while shopkeepers and touts call to you in twelve different languages.

A few weeks ago, I went with my friends Lillie and Jon to a performance behind Hussein mosque. Lillie took us because she had been to this cafe years ago. Every Thursday night, the cafe is packed while a group of musicians plays traditional Egyptian religious songs. To get to the area by taxi, you can say “Khan al-Khalili” but then they will know you are a tourist and will ask for tourist rates. But tell the taxi driver “Mazgid al-Hussein, insha’allah” and they will take you to the exact same place, but for a fair price. There is a plaza in front of the mosque, usually crowded with tourists gawking and Egyptians visiting the mosque. Cafes line one side of the plaza. Touts try getting any foreigners to sit at their cafe or visit their shop.

It was around 11pm and we hurried past the cafes, but I noted how much more beautiful this plaza was at night. There was an energy in their air with all of the people bustling about. We weaved our way down Hussein Street, which runs along the west wall of the mosque, with the Khan on our left. We hung a right past the mosque, down a street that few tourists see. The small cafe was an authentic ahwa, Egyptian style, not like the Westernized cafes on the square. It was packed and we were hustled in by the proprietor, so excited to have foreigners that he insisted we sit at the front. Lillie wanted to come here because this is her passion. She is an ethnomusicologist, studying Arabic violin. The notes and in Arab music are different from the Western tradition, and the unique scales (modes, maqamat) are bound to particular styles of playing and melodic lines. I get it, in theory, but I can’t follow it. I can’t identify or classify the different modes, but Lillie can. She had been here three years prior and her research mentor knew the main singer personally and had written volumes on this particular cafe.

Between songs, the audience members would hand bills to the singer, but this was not the “stuff it in the hat” kind of tip that an American might expect. Instead, the singer paused with every 10LE note he received and carefully added it to the stack of folded bills in his hand, while launching into an oration of blessings and gratitiude wished upon the benefactor. Further, he knew each person by name and so each blessing was personalized. I would not have known this if not for Lillie and Jon, as my Arabic is nowhere near being able to decipher such things. And so, for a few minutes, bill after bill would make its way into his hand and he would take time after each one to wish for blessings upon its prior owner, while the audience clapped and the drummer played a riff. The singer did not hesitate to make the protocol clear to us, telling us that we needed to give him money. But this was not until after he had already procured our names and where we were from so that, we too, could have a personalized blessing (mentioning Obama, of course). Lillie recognized some of the men from the last time she was there, citing this as being an Egyptian “Cheers,” where each Thursday night these men come together for good music and good company. We left late, at nearly 2am, walking past the cafes and the touts in the square, and grabbed a taxi back downtown.

When Tim called about the bombing, we quickly turned on the television and started opening websites. Reports were (and still are) vague. They have varied from a grenade being lobbed from a hotel balcony to an explosive placed under a bench to a bomb lobbed from a motorcycle. They’ve cited between 1 and 19 deaths. BBC made it sound like it was targeted toward tourists, while the Al Jazeera article sounded like the mosque was targeted. We passed the computers around to let everyone email family to inform of our safety.

Today, Facebook statuses of friends here convey the range of feelings of both expats and Egyptians:

• Crystal is fine, for those who heard about the al Hussien bombings.
• Carl is safe.
• Nada cannot believe what happened at Khan el Khalili!!!!!!!! Why?!
• Brandy is safe, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the bombing in Khan al-Khalili.
• Lillie is safe and thinking about those who were not.
• Mido is Hate the fuckers who tried to bomb EGYPT… Whatever u’ll do Egypt will be always safe & strong!!!
• George is safe and sound, though he was just in Hussein Square two days ago, which is kind of surreal. But Cairo is still very, very safe.
• Reham has a conspiracy theory to explain the bombing!
• Jamie is safe and sound.
• Joshua is ok.

At this point, no group has claimed responsibility, so it is hard to judge a motive.  Though the Western media has implied that the attack was targeted at foreigners (this would be hard to deny), in the past such violence toward tourists has been used for domestic political means. Attacks on tourist sites during the 1990s were largely an attempt pressure the Egyptian government, since tourism is such a huge revenue source for Egypt. For the past 40 years, Egypt has been in a perpetual “state of emergency” and there is a bill in parliament to scale that back next month, leaving suspicion that this attack was timed to influence that decision. Some say that this is about Gaza. At this point, it is all rumors, so I don’t know.

This I’m pretty sure of, though: Thursday night, at that little cafe behind Hussein mosque, a group of old friends will come together for tea, shisha, and music.