Carrefour: The Mall or the Supermarket?

"So . . . I'm confused. Is Carrefour the name of the mall or the supermarket?," I asked my roomate.
"Both," she answered.

I pondered her answer. I came to the conclusion that the name had to be because of the massive size of the Carrefour supermarket that was nestled in the mall (its namesake) . Imagine Walmart on steriods and you've pretty much pictured the Carrefour supermarket. It's the size of two super Walmarts back-to-back. Conspicuous yellow signs hang above each aisle advertising specials. They say (in Arabic, mind you) what the new priceof the item is and what the old price was with a strike through it. The aisles are three carts wide. Oh and variety is no problem. You can choose from like twenty kinds of rice. Want nuts? Plain or flavored? Almonds? Peanuts? Walnuts? In the shell or out? Prepackaged in styrofoam or in bulk from the 20 gallon wooden barrel? If nuts aren't your thing, how about ironing boards or bicycles? They have a huge selection of those too.

As for the mall part of Carrefour, it's like most other malls. Overpriced clothes (some way too Western for here) are part of glitzy displays in the windows. Small kiosks dot the center aisle. They boast things like Egyptian-made lotions and English books. Carrefour in Maadi isn't like the super malls of Tokyo that boast fourteen floors of fun. The mall here is only one or two stories. There is one exceptional thing about Carrefour though. Tucked down a small non-descript hallway, there are two rooms. One is for men and one is for women. Inside the women's version, there are three separate areas. There's a restroom complete with showers. There's a shoe room where everyone leaves their shoes and purchases before proceeding into the prayer room. In the prayer room, women in vivdly-colored headscarves prostrate themselves before Allah and all the socioeconomic divisions between them fall away.