My Introduction to Ahmed
In an instant, all of the fear stored up in my clenched muscles evacuated itself, a seeming light pulsated around my body, and, as if being slowly beamed into some errant alien's grounded UFO, I felt myself gliding forth toward the Nile Deli's propped-open door. For years during the aughts, I knew Astoria's Nile Deli carried hundreds of Arabic cassettes and CDs, but avoided the place as if my life depended on it. The owner -- short, stocky, brusque, with dark no-nonsense "stare-eyes" -- gave off immediate "get the fuck out of my fiefdom" vibes every time I stupidly slinked my way in, hands shaking in excitement, looking to fill an existing hole in my growing Oum Kalthoum collection. Given numerous other Egyptian, Lebanese, Moroccan, and Algerian markets dotting Steinway Street from Broadway up to Astoria Boulevard, it hardly mattered. It wasn't long after I moved to the neighborhood in 2010 that those many alternatives began, one-by-one, to shutter t