Sham El Nessim

Yesterday, the park in front of my house on the Gamat-al-Dwal al arabiya road was filled with families out on a picnic. They were carrying baskets of food and drinks and had laid out mats on the grass. The children were busy playing whereas their parents lazed on the mats and enjoyed the salted fish, coloured eggs and spring onions.

It was Sham-el-Nesseim, a non-Muslim, non-Christian festival that has been celebrated in Egypt since the Pharonic times (around 4500 years ago). “Sham” in Arabic means “sniff” and “Nessim “ means “breeze”-therefore this festival literally means “sniffing the breeze”.

The day starts with families having breakfast together-salted fish (fiseekh), boiled coloured eggs and spring onions are the staple on this day. These foods have Pharonic symbolism-for example salted fish symbolizes fertility and welfare, eggs symbolize new life and green onions are thought to keep the evil eye away. Families spend the day together, going to the parks, near the river Nile or by the sea.

My landlady’s mom who stays just below us offered us some boiled eggs-she called it the “Egg of Upper Egypt”. Apparently this form of coloring the egg is very popular in Upper Egypt-the egg is boiled with onion skin and kohlingen, an Egyptian spice. The onion skin imparts the eggs with a brown colour. She served it with “dukka”, another Egyptian spice, which has as its base hazelnuts or chickpeas together with pepper, coriander seeds, sesame seeds and cumin seeds. The ingredients are ground together to a coarse powder. “Dukka” can also be used as a dip for breads along with olive oil. There are many recipes available for dukka - you can find one of them on http://shopping.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,1591304,00.html