Cairo Magazine - Anatomy of a firecracker

Ahmad Hosni

Eid has many blessings. The firecracker is not one. Firecrackers are illegal. But every year you can see the same scene: old women quicken their step as they pass packs of teenaged boys. Bawabs stare disapprovingly.

Kids growing up in the dark days of socialism had to content themselves with small packs of gunpowder called, grandiloquently, “bombs.” Today, thanks to the Chinese occupation of the Egyptian market, kids have options. In all fairness, the Chinese did invent gunpowder and the firecracker.

You can still buy the “bombs.” Bombs are comprised of a small envelope full of gunpowder and small stones, tightly closed with a thin metal wire. You throw it like a grenade and it makes a big sound when it hits the ground. Sound a like a fun toy? You can have a whole bucket of 50 for a mere LE4.

Or perhaps you’d prefer one of the new Chinese toys? Young boys were thrilled a few years ago when little, yellow Chinese sticks hit the market. You light one end, and three seconds later it explodes. Sometimes. Or sometimes it explodes too early. Or not at all. What do you want? At LE0.10 a throw, you’re getting what you pay for.

For a mere LE0.15, you can play with the “Red Rocket,” which arrived in Cairo soon after the yellow sticks. It’s basically the same thing, but for your extra five piasters (what’s five piasters, anyway? Not even a stick of gum), you get a louder explosion.

If all this sounds like kid’s stuff, you might wish to try the “Spinning Rocket,” a circular band with a fuse that, when lit, hisses, spits sparks and spins around for 15 seconds. This is for older children or those with generous older brothers who can afford the LE.75 sticker price.

And it’s in the LE.75 range that things start getting really interesting. The “Dirty” is a small, green rocket with eight or more small explosives that fire like a machine gun. The “American Rocket”—so called because it is decorated from tip to tail in the American flag, not because it was made in the United States—produces circular explosions before it flies 20 feet or so in whatever direction it’s pointed.

Lucky rich kids, and those old enough to know better, might be able to spring for a quiver of colorless rockets. It doesn’t look like much for a full LE1: just a tube of yellowed newspaper. But, as one group of young guys playing with them reported, “You get what you pay for.” Colorless rockets fly high in the sky and make pretty explosions. “They may,” one reviewer mused happily, “be used by a lost warrior as a signal, or to announce victory at the end of the battle.”