The call to prayer drifted across Cairo’s late afternoon haze, winding its way through tangled alleys and stone arches until it reached the heart of Khan al-Khalili—the market that never sleeps, never softens, never forgets.
Three women walked together beneath its ancient archways.
One wore a crisp white blouse tucked into high-waisted jeans, her sunglasses resting in her curls, her laugh rising freely above the clatter of coins and the rattle of tea trays. The second, a little older, moved more slowly, her long skirt brushing the dust as she ran her fingers along the hammered brass of a lamp vendor’s cart. The third, wrapped in a pale blue hijab, walked just behind them, quiet at first glance—but her eyes caught everything: the flicker of a lighter, the spice of cumin in the air, the way the gold bracelets shone under the vendor’s awning.
They were not from the same city. One had grown up in Cairo but now lived in Montreal. Another was visiting from Amman. The third had never left Egypt but had seen the whole world pass through this market—tourists and traders, pilgrims and poets, lovers and liars. Their bags were heavy with scarves, coffee, dried hibiscus flowers, and promises they hadn’t meant to keep.
Everywhere around them, the souq throbbed with its ancient music: the bargaining voices, the hiss of grills cooking liver and kebab, the clink of glass perfume bottles lined up like jewels. Shopkeepers called to them in Arabic, English, French, sometimes all three at once.
“Beautiful sisters! Come see—real silver, good price!”
They smiled, but kept walking. They had not come for souvenirs. They had come for the company of one another—for memory, for story, for the kind of conversation that blooms only in the company of old friends or almost-strangers who feel like kin.
They ducked into a coffeehouse with wooden lattice windows and a thin ribbon of smoke coiling through the ceiling. The waiter brought three glasses of mint tea without being asked. The youngest of them snapped a photo. The oldest of them sighed. The one in blue whispered a verse from Mahmoud Darwish, and the table fell quiet, for just a moment.
Outside, the sun dipped lower, and the call to Maghrib began.
But inside Khan al-Khalili, the market beat on—ancient and endless, wrapping its gold and dust around three women who had come not to shop, but to remember who they were in each other’s company.