CAIRO — The McDonald’s here has golden arches, the same golden arches as anywhere else in the world. The food is prepared the same assembly-line way, too. But there is an invisible, or more precisely, divine, element in bringing that burger to the plate that the uninitiated may not be prepared for.
“Inshallah,” or “God willing,” the counterman said as he walked off to see about a burger without onions at the McDonald’s on the Alexandria Desert Road, 30 miles from the center of Cairo.
Egyptians have always been religious, from Pharaonic times to the present. Any guidebook to Egypt alerts tourists to Egyptians’ frequent use of inshallah in discussing future events, a signal of their deep faith and belief that all events occur, or don’t occur, at God’s will. “See you tomorrow,” is almost always followed by a smile and, “inshallah.” (more…)
