'bout that time again, eh?

Indeed. The month of Ramadan is upon us, conveniently coinciding exactly with the month of August - for the noobs out there (I just wiki'd this so it must be true), Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar which follows lunar cycles rather than solar ones, thus resulting in a shifting of the month of Ramadan by about 11 days every year.

Having been absent from the world of blogging for quite some time (relatively speaking) I will endeavor to spend my last few weeks here in Egypt eagerly lapping up this blogger's fodder that is Ramadan in Cairo. You can expect along the way that I'll be subtly unraveling the past few months of my life in a denouement-like fashion, though the focus of this blog will be the 180° (more like 90° really) shift that this city undergoes.

We'll start with today. Ramadan is notorious for the horrid traffic that it brings along with it. Everyone rushes home from work at the same time to prepare for iftar (or fitar here in Egypt, the breaking of the fast i.e. breakfast) and the roads are even more of a mess than usual. This morning however as I went to flag down my usual morning taxi the roads were almost completely clear, I actually had to wait a bit before one came rolling along. Same thing coming home, with the exception of the 6th of October bridge, but thats only because the guys still holed up in Tahrir are really messing with traffic patterns. The corniche was its usual mess, but I'd never hoped for better from there.

Ramadan brings a world of paradox regarding moods and mannerism. One the hand, it's the holy month, and everyone is supposed to try extra hard to be extra nice and to act in the best and most charitable of ways. On the other hand, everyone is so damn hungry and thirsty and nicotine deprived (thou shalt consume nothing, including water and cigarrettes) that simmering beneath that gracious exterior is a wave of fury ready to knife you in the gut. We're only one day in so the worst hasn't come out quite yet... though the writer next to me at work today did find it prudent to take her McDonalds to the other room so as to decrease the chances of veins or eyeballs popping.

Speaking of eyeball popping, but not really, my cab driver home seemed to be compensating for the lack of food in his belly with excessive car honking. In a month where you're supposed to be more forgiving, especially in your car, the amount of road rage decreases considerably as does the incredibly obnoxious amount of car honking that this city prides itself on. But not this guy.

I'm pretty sure he actually honked at a wall at one point. I'd say he was crazy, as evidenced by the bugs bunny stickers scattered across his dashboard, but unfortunately thats pretty normal in Cairo cabs. As are other really cool accoutrements like this easy to use back seat basketball hoop. Also featuring bugs bunny, a masculine favorite in this town. 

And no, I don't usually take creepy pictures inside cabs, but my camera is broken so I don't have any other pictures, so I had to think fast and use my phone. Because as you should all know by now, I don't blog without pictures, because thats excessively boring.

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One other small note, many Muslims attempt to read the Quran in its entirety by the end of the month. In solidarity, I thought I might have a go at the Bible in that same period of time. At 1602 pages with 30 days on the clock, I should achieve my goal at approximately 53.4 pages a day. Lord help me.

Ramadan Karim everybody!