Letter from Egypt: hot dates

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/letter-egypt-sharqia-date-harvest

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The road runs north-east from Cairo alongside a wide irrigation canal. At intervals, a cable has been strung from bank to bank, and a small flat-bottomed barge winches itself slowly from one side to the other and back again, carrying women laden with shopping bags, gaggles of schoolchildren, delivery boys pushing clunky black bikes and slick-haired youths on Chinese motorbikes. At one point, a flock of dusty sheep was being ferried across – they nervously huddled together while the shepherd and the ferryman leaned over the railing, smoking and squinting in the harsh sunlight.

The road skirts a date palm plantation, where the harvest is under way. Barefooted men are up at the top of the trees, leaning back on the loop of rope slung around the tree trunk. They hack with long knives at the stem of the knobbly yellow strings of dates. The whole cluster drops into the basket held by women and children on the ground. These are the delicious Zaghoul dates – about as long as your thumb but fatter, and deep red in colour. We stop and buy a string – the skin is thin and crisp, and the flesh firm, sweet and slightly grainy.

Most of the other traffic moves much more slowly than we do, and is of the rural variety. There are ancient wide-hipped tractors chucking clods of dried mud from their tyres, and ghostly donkeys balancing panniers piled with fresh green alfalfa – usually with a boy of about eight atop the load. Battered black-and-yellow tuktuks, newly imported from Asia, careen madly around the potholes, with mothers and children crammed on to the little rear seat.

The streets of our destination, a small town in Sharqia, are shaded by towering eucalyptus trees. Tiny shops open right on to the street. The fruit seller rearranges his wares – lemony guavas, green and purple grapes, six varieties of mangoes.

We slip off our sandals and go through the courtyard to the diwan, where a dozen young women wait for us, their colourful headscarves like blossoms in the dim room. With one voice they sing out Nawwart Sharqia! meaning "Your visit has lit up Sharqia." The appropriate (and true) response is "It is lit up by its people!"

Every week Guardian Weekly publishes a Letter from one of its readers from around the world. We welcome submissions – they should focus on giving a clear sense of a place and its people. Please send them to weekly.letter.from@theguardian.com

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