A summer’s day in the ME must be experienced in stages. I woke up from a nap at 9 PM after my first day of exploration. Sweat-drenched clothes become freezing in an AC world. Since I had to leave Cairo the following evening on a “midnight train” to Luxor I though I should experience some Ramadan nightlife before I left. I must admit I was scared to go out by myself at night in a metropolis that I barely knew. But the second I turned the corner out of the alley which housed my hotel I walked into a world of light and life. I’ve never seen a city so alive. Families, creeps, groups of teenagers, and every other demographic washed over sidewalks and cars flooded the streets, but no one was really going anywhere. The metal panelings that protected the glass of family storefronts in the daytime were rolled back. Merchandise spilled out from each door and shops competed for attention with a mixture of neon and Christmas lights. Those guys that I’d seen with their tarps and cardboard boxes earlier in the day had quadrupled and fought for every available inch of space. The smell of shwarma, sweets, popcorn, and incense met me at ever turn as I penguin walked shoulder to shoulder with an entire city down winding allies. I’ve never felt so un-alone. They were indulging themselves after a day of neglecting the body of every human need water, food, and, in the case of just about every Egyptian, cigarettes. I ate Kosheri, an Egyptian dish that consists of rice, macaroni, garbanzo beans, spicy sauce, and crispy onions. It sounds weird and is weird but I found myself eating it time and time again during my trip. At about 12:30 I wanted to go back to the hotel because I planned on getting up early the next morning but had no clue where I was. I asked some random teenager for directions. He refused to give them to me but instead grabbed me by the hand and walked me four or so blocks delivering me safely to my home away from home. Arab culture is an excise in opposites.
Day 3 I thought I’d beat the heat and crowds at the pyramids by getting there early in the morning. My lonely planet travel guide assured me that taking the bus there was a real possibility, but failed to explain that the concepts of bus schedules, stops, and routes are not in the Cairo transportation vocabulary. So, I’m standing outside of the Museum waiting for a red bus with a white circle. Two of them pass by what I thought was a bus stop at the same time. Five minutes later another one passes. Fifteen minutes later I see one going the opposite direction. After another ten or so minutes I saw what I was determined to be my bus approaching. I waived my arms. I yelled. It kept going. Thirty seconds later another red bus stopped, I checked for the white circle and hopped on, paid an equivalent to 20 cents, and was off to the pyramids. However, the first thing I though when I sat down was, “these guys don’t look like tourist,” so I asked the guy in front of me with the giant bag of flat bread, “does this bus go to the pyramids?” He shook his head yes so I sat back and experienced my first urban slum. Forty-five minutes later the bus stopped and the driver shooed me off and I’m standing in a world that my Western concept of living couldn’t possibly compute. This defiantly wasn’t the Giza Plateau. I thought I’d survived the dirty and poor aspects of one of the world’s dirtiest and poorest cities upon my arrival. And after some acclimation and perception adjustments I began to write it off as “not-so-bad.” But, this was something different, this was human waste un-attended, this was dying cats everywhere… everywhere, this was a world of refuse. There were a lot of people there and they were all staring at me, all of them on both sides of the street, with a look that said, “you definitely don’t belong here.” I wanted to run and I did, the first taxi I saw drove me off to resume my vacation. And I felt like a very small person. Arab culture is an exercise in opposites.
The pyramids were slightly tainted after all of that but I still enjoyed them thoroughly. They are immense and they are very old. Armed soldiers stand guard at every corner and are quick to start screaming at my fellow Americans who decided that the “DO NOT CLIMB” signs were referring to the signs themselves and not the ancient monument that they were attached to. Everyone that has visited the pyramids has something to say about the touts and pestering entrepreneurs that swarm tourist of all nationalities. And I do too… these guys are ridiculous. One kid grabbed my hat from off my head and ran off toward some small ruins. I followed him determined to get it back and luckily he promptly stopped affront some dusty hole next to a pile of stones as quickly as our chase had begun. This kid then proceeded to pitch me his 10 EGP tour of the pharaohs’ real tomb. I grabbed my hat from his hand and walked off to confront my next scam. Although it’s extremely annoying to be haggled for a camel ride or private tour and picture at every turn it’s also quite an amazing thought that most of these people come from families that have been doing this for hundreds if not thousands of years. So with that in mind I tried to maintain a smile on the inside because wearing one on my face would have attracted even more unwanted attention. I stood in front of the sphinx and I starred up at the colossus’ of the ancient world. Although, I battled my way there alone, inside the grounds I moved in swarms of tourist and for the first time in Egypt I really felt like one. So, I decided to leave.
I didn’t want to spend the money on another taxi ride because the pyramids are a really really long ways away from downtown Cairo. So, as stupid as it may sound, I tried the bus again. However, this time my decision turned out better. Although, the bus broke down and it took nearly two hours to get back to my hotel, I met Mahmud, a civil-engineering student at the American University of Cairo who explained to me life in an Islamic society better then any class or book could ever hope to do. His father wasn’t rich but had enough to ensure that his eldest son could go to a private and fairly expensive university. He decided to study engineering because like me he could see that with Cairo’s ever expanding population it was on a collision course with an infrastructural meltdown. However, what sounded to me like a fail-safe career plan was in fact just simply a roll of the dice in Egypt. Mahmud liked to explain things in metaphors, in perfect English none-the-less, saying that to live in Cairo was like being a stone piece on a chessboard. A person can fool themselves with intentions and life plans but the invisible hand, made up of the city or Allah or history, was the true mover of things. All he said a person could do was enter a door and hope that when you exit on the other side you’re at a place better than where it was that you started. This concept was hard to comprehend within the framework of my Western ideals of the self-made man were hard work and determination are the only ingredients necessary for success. You know Uncle Sam’s catch phrase. But, here was a kid my age fluent in English and Arabic about ready to graduate as an engineer and he was considering starting a taxi route a couple nights a week. Needless to say as a 23 year old with limited Arabic and to be honest questionable spelling and grammar in my native tongue studying liberal arts, I once again that day felt the sting of privilege. I asked him about Mubarak, Nasser, and thoughts on the future and he explained that after hundreds of years of imperialism followed by fifty years of socialism, virtually all opportunities found themselves manifest in either the government or transnational industries. This meant that the only people making money were foreigners, people who find favorable positions in the government, and some working in tourism. He also expressed concern about an ever-increasing conservatism that Egypt had been experiencing over the past few decades. In his opinion, this was due to the fact that groups supporting Islamic revivalism had been able to provided many of the welfare services needed by the city’s poor. While the state failed to offer neither support nor opportunity. Choosing to spend national revenues stemming from local production and international aid on expanding a military that was used more often then not to protect the ruling class from politically minded citizens then citizens from any external threat. The way he saw it, millions of young people across the whole of Egypt lay in wait for a single spark to ignite them in the name of some as of yet unheard call. So yeah that was one of those life changing conversation. But I jumped off the bus a briskly as I had gotten on.
Instead of going back to the hotel for a much-needed nap before making my way to the train station I tried to visit Al-Azhar mosque in Eastern Cairo. After getting off the bus I rode the metro as close to the sight as I could and then hopped into a taxi. As we drew near the mosque the streets began to clog with pissed off looking people. My taxi driver said, “you no go to mosque today you go to a different mosque.” At first I thought this guy was just trying to drive me around for a few extra bucks, so I was resistive, “I don’t think so buddy, I want to go to Al-Azhar.” But, after he said, “I won’t drop you off. I take you back no extra charge.” I realized that the increasingly large mob was the reason for his concern. Later that night at the train station I learned that the Israel police had shot an allegedly unprovoked Palestinian in the West Bank and those Palestinians living in Cairo were out expressing their despair.
At this point I only had two hours to gather my things and be at the train station so I headed back to the hotel and checked out. During the taxi ride to the station I saw Arab generosity in full effect as every mosque I pasted had lines of poor people breaking the evenings fast for free. This was that communal support that Mahmud suggested was utilized by Islamist organizations for support, for better or worse the future will tell I guess. I found my platform at the station and had a little time to just sit and think about everything that I’d experienced over the last few days. However, I found this to be quite difficult because no matter where you are in Cairo you are submerged in sound. It bounces off everything and works its way into the stones buildings. The sun and the sand are the same way. Actually, that is the defining essences of the city, once your there you can't escape it. It takes from you things that you never intended to give and stays with you for better or worse. I was happy to get on the train heading South into a totally different Egypt.
