a tale of two cities

So there are many different Cairos. It's such a huge city, that the different neighborhoods have vastly different characters. On friday, we went shopping, a day Kathryn appropriately entitled a tale of two cities. We met at 2 (ish- meaning around 230) at Hussein mosque, outside of Khan al-Khalili, the old, very touristy bazaar in old cairo, where all of the vendors will "Kill my wife for you!" unless they are "already married, just want your money." But Khan al-Khalili was not our destination, instead we went to Ruba Bekya market, ie the Friday markey next to the City of the Dead. (city number one).
Ok sidenote- ruba bekya= the cry of junk collectors that roam the Cairo streets. apparently it is an ancient Italian art of trash collection ( i think in italian its veccia or something with a v that got lost in arabic) that is very prevalent in cairo today.The bekya men are a mild obsession of a lot of the people I know, probably because of the crazy calls they've developed.
Back to the Friday market. so basically it's just a big market, it wasn't what i expected. people said "you won't feel comfortable if you don't cover your hear and go with an Egyptian" but i didn't feel like that was necessarily true. Though the little place we stopped for a soda apparently we were the first westerners to have been there, which I guess is why they made the guy sleeping on the bench move so that we could sit. But basically you can buy anything there, socks, sunglasses, faucets ice creams, doorknockers, broken toys, broken everything, sheets, old magazines,live desert foxes (endangered), you know, the usual. So whatever, seeing the foxes was a bit strange, right next to cages filled with lizards piled on each other. Afterwards we wandered a bit in the city of the dead, a huge graveyard of mausoleums where a lot of poor cairenes live. It was strange seeing a school in a graveyard. I mean there are sort if like street and everything, because of the way the graveyard is organized. It always feels a bit strange, though, going to look at places where people live like that, people are living there because they can't afford to live other places, it's not like tlc look how i turned this barn into a house, but well i don't know, i guess most people didn't seem too bothered. We took a bus back downtown, mohamed taught me some arabish: deletaha= i deleted it, finidishtaha= i finished it
ok 2 hours later-ish we met back at tahrir again to go to city stars ie city #itneen. ie 2.
citystars is the fanciest mall in egypt, probably the fanciest mall everrrrrr. A steep 20 pound cab ride from downtown, it is definitely worth it to trek out there every once in a while to people-watch and windowshop at all the fancy stores (where, unlike clothing stores downtown, there is a very unegyptian lack of extra glitter, sparkles, goldspangliness on the clothes)--or go see a censored movie or eat at Egypt's Mexican restaurant. Its amazing how many people are shopping on any given night. I went to the mall around midnight one night and it was packed. So that's basically all there is to the tale. I was going to buy some clothes, but the guy at vero moda who told me he would give me his employee discount wasn't there. So I bought a book in arabic that hopefully one day I will be able to read...