Just about the time the weather starts to improve in Cairo and you think you might want to open the windows and let in a little fresh air, the farmers out in the Nile Delta start to burn their rice chaff. The air quality in Cairo is bad on a good day and the smoke that comes from the farmers doesn’t help anything. It leaves the air hazy and acrid. My husband and daughter get congested and my own eyes burn.
I’ve become accustomed to line drying my clothes in my years in the Middle East and in fact prefer it now. When the weather is warm or it’s breezy, things will dry in a matter of a few hours. But it’s not much fun to go out to collect the clothes and find them sprinkled with particles of ash and soot.
Some mornings it is so hazy that it looks like fog. During the day, the smell isn’t as noticeable so I try to pretend it isn’t an issue and open the windows anyway. But the air is still dirty. And with each breeze, every surface in the house is coated with grime. I have to clean our dining table before AND after our evening meals. Our white dishrags turn black with the muck. We won’t talk about the floor – or the bottoms of our feet.
Keeping the windows shut doesn’t help anyway – the windows are so warped and badly sealed that the dust and grime just comes in through the gaps. I washed my off-white sheers this weekend, streaked with black where the dirt blows in through the cracks.
At night, when the air is still and the humidity settles in, the smell of smoke permeates the air – and our apartment. With all the cautions of the hazards of secondary smoke that I’ve heard over the years, I can’t help but wonder what affect this is having on my health and the health of my children.
Still, the good things about living in Egypt still outweigh the bad. It is still pomegranate season – of which I’m taking full advantage. And there are still lovely sights such as this in the neighborhood :
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is called a Silk Tree. Lovely, isn’t it?
