If you remember from previous posts, fuul is a beany paste.
You can eat ful for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And everyone loves it. It's cheap, popular, and filled with protein.
If I ask, how are you doing? A common response is "like fuul."
If you eat a lot of fuul, you can go "blackout" -- a term understood better by college kids than grown ups... the term speaks for itself. If you're day dreaming in class, a professor might ask you if you ate some good ful.
Fuul is "bad ass." Sorry for my French, but that's the best translation.
If you see a strong dude, you might say, wow, he must eat a lot of fuul.
A ful sandwich is 3/4 LE ~ $0.14.
And, an inspiring story...
Yesterday, I was in a taxi in Giza on a street overflowing with traffic. The cab almost hit two cars (the driver wasn't the best in the business), and on one particularly crowded stretch, I hear a loud CLACK, and I see the side view mirror bent backwards towards the window. The driver had just swiped an old woman dressed carrying her bag of whatever in her dirty robes with his side view mirror. He immediately came to a stop, and we turned our heads around to make sure she was ok. Someone shouted curses at the driver, but the woman seemed fine -- although, the piercing stare she gave to the driver looked like something that might have come out of ancient Egypt. Seeing that she was ok, the driver looked at me and said, "She must eat a lot of ful." I laughed at the absurdity of the situation. He laughed at the fact that a westerner is sharing a joke about beans with him. And, we drove off.
Update: In this NYTimes article, Michael Slackman talks about a band called fuul.
