Ode to City Stars Mall

Ok, now that I've posted my Calendar you can all see how terribly behind I am in updating the blog with my adventures. Well a large part of that is due to the fact until the last few days I have been so busy LIVING my adventures I've barely had time to eat and sleep, never mind sit down and WRITE about them. Also, since we were staying in hotels for most of the last 2 weeks the times in which we have access to some form or another of internet were quite few and far between. SO, now I am scrambling to catch up!

One place that I must make mention of is Cairo's newest and most fabulous mall called City Stars. (Which just HAPPENS to be only a few blocks down the road from us... WOOHOO!!!) City Stars has been like a home away from home. It has been our meeting place for many local Cairians who I now consider friends and a crash course lesson on the life of the average Egyptian (in a big city).

Egypt has been a place where I have witnessed many striking juxtapositions - unfathomable wealth and desperate poverty; unstoppable bulldozers of civil rights movements and centuries old oppressive and barbaric practices; wonderful acts of kindness and those looking only to take advantage.

City stars is not excluded from this pattern. When Donia and I walk out the front door of her family's Condo building we see a street lined with small shops, open-air stands and carts pulled by donkeys. They sell everything from bread and fruit to lingerie and jewellery or services of barbers, handy-men and pharmacies. Only a few blocks farther takes us to the gates of City Stars - a huge polished gem of a building in a sea of disintegrating apartment buildings. A tall fence of stone walls and iron gates surrounds the building with automatic rifle carrying guards and bomb squad sent dogs at every entrance. Once through the outer wall you proceed to the actual building itself where everyone goes through metal detector and has their bags opened and thoroughly searched before you are actually allowed to enter the mall.

Once inside though you feel more like you're in a palace than a regular mall. Seven stories of floors hosts over 250 stores and a plethora of restaurants and cafes. The centre courtyard features beautiful water fountains and a view of all 7 stories with their beautiful winding staircases, escalators and glass elevators, all the wall up to the pyramid shaped glass ceiling decorated with hundreds of sparkling icicle lights. In short it blows ANY North American mall I’ve ever been to WAY out of the water and is quite the contrast to the simple carts and shops we meet on our walk only a few blocks away.

Not that pictures have been able to do justice to ANYTHING I’ve seen on this trip, but here is one to give you a sense of it…

Now some of you are probably saying “Kat, you’re in EGYPT! Why would you waste even a SECOND of your time in a Mall!! You can go to malls all you want at home!”

Well I stand by my statement that spending a little time here and there as a mall rat has been a wicked lesson in modern Egyptian culture and we have had some pretty awesome experiences there. I think the most memorable would be the night we went to eat dinner at City Stars with Hillali and Ahmed on the first night I had met them.

We were STARVED after a long session of jamming with the band (in which we wrote 2 new songs which are WICKED!!!) and decided to hit Chilis’ for dinner (their traditional after-jamming hang out spot at City Stars). This evening happened to be the same night as the final game for the Egyptian Football cup. Egypt, like everywhere other than Canada and the US call Soccer Football and it is impossible to truly convey how Obsessed with the game they are. (They even put Jack’s obsession with his first and strongest love Hockey to shame.)

Try to imagine a seven story mall, packed with people hanging on the games every minute. When a team would score a goal the entire building would irrupt with cheers or groans. There was extra security everywhere to prevent fights and entire halls of the mall were made completely impassable by crowds of people gathering around an electronics store or restaurants with TVs to watch.

I should also mention that those were only the ‘soft’ football fans. The REAL fans were glued to their televisions at home, poised to riot the streets in their jerseys and painted faces the minute the winner of the game was announced.

It was pretty cool.