shouldn’t have gone down that street

I went to the bookstores by a shortcut along Rue Monsieur Le Prince. For some reason I stopped in front of an open door and smelled a familiar aroma. I walked in sniffing, and the waiter approached me: yes, it was apple shisha. The place had the strange name “LE NEW BAGDAD.” I had to try the place.

They not only served a little bowl of peanuts with the shisha and tea. They even brought a little madeleine, making it a sort of Proustian experience.

I’ve actually done really well in kicking the habit this time, barely touching it over the summer despite doing tons of writing (which is usually when I relapse, during writing breaks). No, I did very well this summer of 2010 on my recurrent anti-shisha campaign, which has failed many times before. It’s really, really very hard to avoid in Cairo. There’s just too much of it.