If you ask anyone in any city in the world how long is the journey to the airport or any other destination, they'd say that on Sundays it would take a third or a quarter of the time it usually does, depending on the city. But in Egypt, the length of any trip is not related in any way to the weekend, when the roads are just as crowded as they usually are on week days. This rule, however, is only broken on special occasions that come once a year: either Eid Al-Adha in the Islamic month of Dhul-Hijjah or in iftat time during the holy month of Ramadan. Since Dhul-Hijjah and Ramadan fall around 11 days earlier in the Gregorian calendar every year, it's difficult to give an inquiring tourist an accurate answer because the empty roads of Eid in one year will never fall at the same time in another, which makes the issue rather complicated. During the last few days I received some Swiss friends who were visiting Cairo for the first time. They were simply ecstatic walking in the streets, enjoying the relative calm and the organized traffic. "Cairo is usually at its best this time of year, I told them. "It's more like the good old days of the 50s and 60s. "So we'll advise our friends to visit Egypt in December, they said. "But Eid Al-Adha doesn't always fall in December, I said. "It could fall in December, April or August, depending on the month your friends decide to visit. "Then we'll suggest they come over during Ramadan because you said that Cairo is this beautiful during iftar. "But Ramadan too falls 11 days earlier each year. Besides, the calm only lasts about an hour before which the streets are over-crowded with racing cars and drivers yelling the worst curses at each other, which, it seems, doesn't defeat the whole idea of fasting, I said. "As for taxi and microbus drivers, they would simply leave their vehicles in the middle of the road and grab each other's throats in a dramatic and spectacular cacophony of yelling and cursing before returning to their vehicles. And after iftar, Cairo turns into a big carnival of food, music and dance that continues, unsupervised, until the wee hours of the morning. At that, my Swiss friends brought out their calculators and said: "All we need to do then is subtract 11 days from each coming year to figure out when the Eid will fall. "But it's not that simple, I said. "It's not exactly 11 days, you see. It could be one day more or less depending on when the crescent moon is sighted to signal the beginning of each month. That's why some Islamic months are 28 days on one year but 29 in another. "But why's that? they asked. "If it's related to the sighting of the crescent, then this can be figured out astronomically. All we need is a calculator. "But this doesn't apply to the Arab and Muslim world because we must see the crescent with the naked eye, not with calculators and astronomical devices, I said. "So when should we advise our friends to come over then? they asked. "If you're asking about when Eid Al-Adha will fall in the next few years, I'm afraid no one can help you there, I replied. "Your ways are strange, they said. "We'll just tell them not to come at all. "That could be better in more ways than one, I said. Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Arab Writer's Union and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo. This article is syndicated in the Arabic press.
