The Interplay of Transit
Backgammon Culture in Cairo

On my first semester i Cairo, I took a course called "Professional writing". I wanted to do a feature on Backgammon, and so I strolled the cafes fro a suitable group to cover. It turned out everybody were playing the dominos, and I was just about to give up when I stumbeled upon the cafe opposite of Windsor hotel. I watched the players for some time -trying to pick up the game, when they invited me to join. I proceeded to see Fathi and his friends weekly for several months, resulting in this article.

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Fati is waiting. When you are waiting, one place is as good as the other. Fati Abu Mira spends his time waiting at the Telegraph cafe. While you are waiting, one game is as good as the other. Fati spends his time playing Taula. After waiting for 33 years, he has become quite good at it. Playing Taula, that is.

Taula is the Egyptian version of Backgammon. Or rather, Backgammon is the western version of Taula. Its value for killing time was well known by the Pharaohs, who brought the game along on their way to afterlife. The Pharaohs might have turned in their pyramids had they known the game after this showed up in Rome. Despite being where all roads led, the game then spread to Asia and back over the next thousand years. It returned just in time for the crusaders to pick it up on their sporadic and rather destructive visits to the area. Following the game in its great tradition of movement, Fati knows his destiny:

"- My God has told me that I will travel. But I'm still here waiting," he says while throwing the dice.

It is not that he questions the mysterious ways of Allah. He is not in a hurry, and he is doing quite well as an accountant for Sherk insurance. His likes his job, and he knows his time will come. Besides, he knows what to do in order to shorten the waiting period. He goes to his favourite cafe every day. He does not have to walk for too long, for the Telegraph is just across the street from his office.

If Taula playing is what you do while waiting, it competes with the glossy magazines of a doctor's reception hall in its ability to kill time. Just as the magazines in the doctor's office never change, the boards at the Telegraph stays the same. The once light wood has been burnished dark by the counting of thousands of fingers. The chips have been moulded like pebbles on a beach to lose all sharp features. The triangular-shaped counters would have been long gone had they been painted on the board rather than made from a darker wooden material.

Though the boards are just as ancient as the doctor's magazines, they differ in one respect. Whereas last year's fashion stays the same, the Taula always bring something new. Each player has his characteristic style, and it is the merging and the interchanging of different approaches that polishes the game. In the beginning, the atmosphere is usually very relaxed. The moves are simple, and luck is cursed or blessed.

" - Ham du li le! Praise the almighty!

After a while the chatting slows and eventually comes to an end. It becomes crucial to occupy certain spaces. Sometimes to enable your own leaps, sometimes to halt the opponents charge towards your home base. When Fati fails to occupy the lots he wants, he shifts his style. Either he becomes more aggressive, or more defensive. His physical appearance does not change, nor does his speed of movement. He simply moves different chips. An outsider would not think twice about it, as it is obvious he is only moving according to the dice. Each player is so eager to see what the next throw will bring that the dice are automatically taken off the board the moment after they have landed - and then thrown again. In the short moments in between, the players analyse the situation, count the alternatives, and are ready to move when the dice land.

"- Arba, Arba, Arba," prays Fati. Four, four, four.

But when the dice are thrown, it is not Fati who moves. It is Mohammed, one of the other regulars with whom Fati is playing. Fati had shifted his strategy to blocking every fourth move Mohammed could make, except for one. So when Mohammed finally got a four, he had to move the only one he could. This particular piece was a thorn in Fati's side, and he was happy to see it go. And until Mohammed gets a better spread on his pieces, Fati controls which particular piece he will squeeze. And again, the outsider would simply see the obvious - that Mohammed had no other choice.

Mohammed Kamal wears a light orange shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the two top buttons open. His long, thick black hair is thinning at the temples, but is combed to the side with enough Brylceem to mask the thinning. He has been doing his share of waiting, for the space between his teeth has turned black after years of smoking Marlboro reds. Except for a plain but gold watch around his wrist, he wears no ornaments at all. The exceptionally long nails on his little fingers add to the impression that he doesn't have to - he is a wealthy man. When you look at his hands you notice he wears no rings. He is unmarried. Unless the family laws in Egypt start allowing men to marry each other, he will remain so. As the family law in Egypt is the only law subject to the holy Islamic law, Sharia, this is highly unlikely.

"- Wahed Sisha," he demands.

The clicking of the Taula pieces is not the same without the bubbeling sounds of the waterpipe. The water cool the smoke and removes the tiny leaves of the tobacco that otherwise might get into your mouth. The tobacco is heavily flavoured, most often with apple. The flavour makes the tobacco so wet that it is impossible to light unassisted. Coal is being used to keep the leaves glowing. In any one Ahwa, there is at least one waiter responsible for keeping the coals warm. The Sisha-savers might still slumber on their way to each pipe. The Garcon has developed a very impressive air-swing of the coal in to counter this.

After restocking each pipe with red-hot coals, the Garcon fills his little metal container with incense. He then makes a new round. The thick, sweet smelling oriental aroma immediately overpowers any previous blend of apple, coal, tobacco and coffee. When coffeehouses were introduced as a marketing place for the fresh black-hot substance from Yemen five hundred years ago, Shisha and Taula became instant members of the Ahwa society. They have remained in high regard ever since.

Though the Telegraph hardly is as old as coffee, it was probably there for the newly cleansed to enjoy after a visit to the Ahmem just opposite. The English turned the Turkish bath into an officers club. It was there to witness the dramatic assassination of Lord Moyne in the beginning of World War II by Palestine Zionists. The Britsh Minister of State in Cairo had outraged the Israelites by expelling illegal Jewish immigrants. The highest imperial British representative was not very popular amongst the Arabs in general either, and even the Telegraph regulars might have disliked him. Churchill, not yet aware of all the intricacies, temporarily abandoned his long-standing support for the Zionist cause. Being a good friend of Lord Moyne, it is also not surprising that he never visited the Telegraph after this.

The surrounding buildings shelter the Telegraph from the modern world, with its cars, exhaust and buzzing city noise. Its corner position makes it visible from two small streets. A tree is standing just off the corner, and will eventually threaten the pillar it was planted to decorate. It was supposed to be surrounded by tiles, but these never arrived. The sidewalk is a 20 cm deep concrete trench just wide enough to fit each of the six outdoor tables with four chairs. Telegraph al Cafe is cut in Arabic script into the back of each chair. The chairs not attached to a table are placed in the street facing outwards. Here the guests can watch the tourist traffic to Windsor hotel which, incidentally, used to be a club for British officers. If the tourist season has yet to come, they can watch the shoe shiners or the bouquet decorations in the neighbouring flower shop, instead. The florist isn't there. But whenever the florist observes potential customers, he gets up from his seat at the cafe and strolls over the street to make a sale. Most of the time though, he follows the games going on at any one time.

The game is quite easy to play. There are 24 triangles in four pockets on the board. The first pocket is your home base and the one directly opposite is your opponent's home base. Each player has fifteen white or black counters, which are placed in the first triangle of the respective player's home base. Each triangle represents one eye on the die, and you move one or two counters according to the two dice in the direction of a tilted U. When the dice match, you move four times instead of two. The objective is first to move all fifteen pieces into the last pocket - the opponent's home base - and from there off the board. The catch is that when a triangle is covered by at least one of the opponent's counters, you can not land or transit there. The more counters one of the players manage to place in a consecutive order, the more difficult it will be for the opponent to pass them. When there are six pieces in a row, the path is completely barred. The winner is the one who manages to move all of his counters off the board first. The number of counters the opponent has left on the board then makes up the score of the winner, and you don't really win until you get 31 points. Though the players immediately knows how the dice add up - and where each piece will land - the adding works a lot less smoothly when it comes to sum up the scores.

"- Seventeen plus faaaaaiivvv, uhum, eeehh, aahh, twenty...Three. Um, Eh."

"Aaanndd yyoou haaad... " they continue, hoping to be cut off before they lose the remainder their breath.

"- You know this piece," Fati comments after catching his breath.

He is holding up a backgammon chip.

"If you break it in two, you will find Mohammed inside"

Though Mohammed is very good at playing Taula, Fati is merely explaining why he lost. As he begins work early in the morning, he does not want to start another game. It is time to go home. He calls Mohammed the waiter for the bill, who in turn calls his superior.

"- Abdul feloooooooos," he shouts.

Abdul the moneyman. His lean face and his greying hair give an impression of authority. Whereas all the Garcons wear blue uniforms, his is a clean white khaki coat. The "Telegraph" name is printed above his left breast pocket. He keeps a short pencil behind his ear to help him visualise the math when collecting bills. Some future archaeologist might confuse by Mr Abdul's arithmetic scribble with that of a school, as he writes on the white walls of the coffee shop. Nobody seems to mind the writing; they are more concerned with the ludicrous amounts of coffee, tea, lemon juice and shish he is trying to make them pay for. After a proper time of protest and collective argument, they agree upon his figures and pay the eight pounds he is asking. In addition, they pay him about a pound in baksheesh, or tip, knowing that tip makes about three quarters of the salary for all the nine people who work there.

When it is time to leave, the Taula is folded together and left on the table for someone else to open. When Fati leaves for good, he will take the game with him.

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