Familiar Faces in Unfamiliar Places

by Shiam Mohamed (Egypt)

Making a local connection Uzbekistan

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"Where are you from?" It wasn't asked quite that fluently, but that's the question we made out from a few hand gestures and a word or two of broken English. We'd already tried our luck at another restaurant, but the menu was all in Cyrillic and the gentleman manning the counter wasn't so patient with the sign language. It was the end of a long first day in Tashkent and we urgently needed some grub, so we followed our noses across the street to find a friendly gentleman with a friendlier grill where skewers of delicious looking meat were hissing and sizzling and causing our empty stomachs to rumble with the inviting smell. After a smooth affair of pointing, holding out two fingers and then a thumbs up to confirm our order, our grill master proceeded to inquire after our whereabouts. "Egypt" was met with a blank stare. "Misr." The blank stare continues. "Pyramids?", accompanied by my miming a triangle with my thumbs and forefingers. Still nothing. "Pharaohs?" A blink and an inquiring tilt of the head. "The river Nile?!" Only the sound of imaginary crickets fills the silence. I'm at the end of my rope and about to give up, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpse it: a Pepsi cooler sitting on the sidewalk. The muses smile upon me and bestow their inspiration. With certainty, I turn to the man and say, "Mo Salah!" At last, his face lights up with recognition and a smile. We start gesturing like angry Italians, having an entire conversation about how he's a good player who has interesting hair before he points us to a table at the side of the street where, not so long after, we have one of the best meals we've had in Uzbekistan. Mo Salah also kept us company in this new and exciting land. Everytime after that when we were asked where we're from and Misr (that's how it's pronounced over there) was met with a shake of the head, I immediately dropped Mohamed Salah's name. All along the Silk road, from the shy shop owner's son in Samarkand to the curious passerby in the cobblestone streets of Bukhara, they knew his name. Small kids walking home from school in a small village in Fergana valley thought he was 'a good footballist' and one of Kokand's most notable discussed him with us over coffee in his fancy mansion. I wonder if Salah is aware that he has made it all the way across the world to the hearts and pepsi cans of the good people of Uzbekistan. And most importantly, that to us, two Egyptian girls away from home, he was a familiar face in unfamiliar streets.