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Published: March 31st 2007
Rogue camel!
Four men try to westle a camel into submission so they can put his reins on. The camel responded by spitting gross chewed-up grass all over one man's arm
Tom Griffith
Whirling Dervish! The first thing that hit me when I arrived in Cairo was the aroma of the place - that peculiarly Middle Eastern blend of perfumes, spices, nuts, apple tobacco, tea leaves, dust, with maybe just a hint of wee. The whole place smells like a Lakemba grocery store. Everywhere apart from my hotel room, that is, which has more of a cat urine odour; probably linked to the fact that when I arrived, I had to shoo a cat out who was sleeping on the bed.
The trip over from Berlin began in the smoking compartment of the Intercity train down to Frankfurt, which I knew was going to be fun when the fat guy opposite pulled out a bottle of spirits to share with his mate as we left at 7.45am. I got to the airport in plenty of time for my Cairo flight, only to be told I was on standby. They had overbooked, and the fact that I purchased my ticket nearly a year ago meant nothing. I then found out that Lufthansa pay handsomely if you volunteer to give up your seat, and take a later flight. 200 Euros, in fact. So I volunteered. And
Pyramid of Khafre
The second-largest pyramid, that of Khafre, is recognisable by the limestone casing at the top...and the camel who stands at the bottom then the flight they put me on an hour later was overbooked. So I ended up leaving Frankfurt four hours late, but 400 Euros richer. Which is roughly what I'd spend during the next 5 weeks or so in this part of the world. So thanks for funding my trip Lufthansa!
Cairo is eactly as you would expect - busy as buggery, with people and cars and taxis and stuff going on everywhere. Crossing the road safely requires the combined blessing of Allah
and Amun-Re, plus maybe a little bit of fancy footwork on your own part. The buildings are all about 8 storeys high, usually in fancy 1930s style but well in need of a lick of paint and some serious electrical re-wiring. They still have those old-fashioned cage lifts that feel like they should have been replaced in 1952. Driving is all done on the horn and accelerator, and there is the constant refrain of, 'Hello, friend' or associated phrases ('Hellowhereyoufrom?' and 'Heywhichcountry'), as you wander around the city.
The food is cheap and cheerful and ubiquitous. You can buy a felafel roll with hommus, tomato and onion for about 15 cents. A delicious bowl of
Under close guard
Every monument and artefact in Egypt seems to have an armed police escort. Here, a sullen cop sits beneath a small obelisk in the Egyptian Museum gardens kushari (rice, pasta, and spicy lentils) or a big mug of freshly-squeezed fruit juice costs twice that. A hotel room sets you back around five bucks, and most essentials are equally as cheap. The big expenditure here is admission prices.
I decided to check out the Egyptian Museum on my first day, as it is only about 100 metres from my hotel. The place does the usual touristy-developing-world thing of charging a different foreigner price - 50 Egyptian pounds, as opposed to 2 for locals. I went to the Egyptian ticket booth (not intending to cheat anyone, let me make that quite clear) and in my best Arabic, held up one finger. I handed 2 pounds over and the woman gave me a ticket. I couldn't believe it. She thought I was Egyptian. I walked away from the booth and headed for the ticket inspector. He took one look at me and said something like, 'blahblah Misr?', or 'Are you Egyptian?'. I nodded my head, but this time my sign language approach didn't work. I was marched back to the booth to buy a foreigner ticket. The poor lady who sold me the cheap one looked ever so humiliated
Amun, Sun god
The god Amun is depicted on a stone tablet at the Egyptian Museum to learn that a guy with no Arabic who had spent just 10 hours in the country had tricked her. I mean, accidentally misled her.
The Museum was absolutely fantastic. The collection, which covers over 3000 years of Egyptian history, totals some 120,000 items
on display. Apparently the place was going to be renovated recently, but I used a guidebook from 1983 and nothing had moved. Many of the galleries had a real ramshackle feel, like the statues and sarcophagi had just been absent-mindedly stored there; in fact, in some rooms, trolleys and half-opened packing cases were gathered around some of the exhibits. However, after a while, you get used to the layout of the place, and you can easily spend a whole day wandering the 100 or so rooms full of Ancient Egyptiana of all descriptions. I must admit, I did get a little tired of statues, but the Tutankhamun collection was unreal. Not only did this guy get mummified and then buried in a solid gold funeral mask, with gold tips on his fingers and toes, he also got put inside a solid gold coffin, inside another coffin partly-made from gold, inside a gold-coated wooden coffin, inside
The Fezinator
In the Old City - a real-life, actual fez-making machine! The Egyptians call them Fezinators. Well, they don't atually, but it would be good if they did another
four gilded wooden coffins. Seven of them, the largest the size of a room. And then you have the beds, the tables, the chairs, the jewellery, the weapons, the tools, the games, the statues... in fact, about one-eighth of the huge museum was devoted to the funerary objects of Tutankhamun. He must have been one hell of a 19-year old pharaoh...
The Mummies were quite spooky, especially the disfigured carcass of Pharaoh Seqenenre. This poor unfortunate got killed in battle, and his head has two massive sword blows that even the most dedicated mummifier would have had trouble concealing. Three thousand years later, he's not looking his best, I'm afraid.
Day Two was devoted to visiting a site you may have heard of before, the Pyramids of Giza. I hopped on a bus to
al-ahram, as they're called here, and somehow entered through the bus entrance and avoided the admission fee. I did get asked for a ticket inside a few times but just pretended I was in a group.
The buildings themselves are absolutely breath-taking. Your first glimpse of these behemoths comes as you drive through the bustling streets of Giza, Cairo's westernmost suburb. They
El-Nil
A passenger boat moored on the East bank of the mighty Nile River emerge from behind the slums and apartment blocks, and then you're in the desert and they are just
there. The first one you encounter is the largest, and the oldest: the Great Pyramid of Cheops, or Khufu. This guy didn't do things by halves. The pyramid measures about 140 metres high, with each side about 230 metres long. 2.5 million stone bricks were used in its construction, which took 20 years. The original limestone casing has been plundered to use in other buildings, so it has shrunk since it was made about 567 years ago. Some of the limestone remains on its slightly smaller son, the Pyramid of Khafre. Although slightly higher, it is in fact smaller, as it has steeper sides and therefore less bricks were used in its construction. Khafre was Khufu's son, and probably didn't want to completely outdo his dad. The third, and definitely the smallest pyramid, is that of the grandson, Menkaure. This poor chap only had a tomb about half the size of his antecedents, and it didn't even get completed.
Around the three pyramids are six smaller ones (for the Pharaoh's queens), plus the Sphinx. This is the famous man with a
Sphinx's bum
Ever wondered what the Sphinx's backside looks like? Well, it's big and has a man sitting on it lion's body, who sits at the end of a causeway from Khafre's tomb. The face, which indeed is missing its nose, is modelled on Khafre - in effect, he is guarding his own pyramid.
Also around the huge site are countless camel and horse drivers, armed police, and touts of all descriptions. Everyone is out to make a buck. After about the fifteenth, 'Hello you want camel ride', I decided to pretend I was a Spanish guy named Tomas from Barcelona. This worked on many occasions, except those where the Egytpian hawker spoke better Spanish than me. Then I would just wave my hand, mumble, 'No gracias', and walk off.
Even the cops are in on the action. Every now and again, one walks over pretending to tell you off for walking in the wrong area, or to check your ticket. He then leads you to a brick with some hieroglyphs, or a good spot for a photo, or an old hole in the ground that he swears is a tomb, and asks for some baksheesh.
You can actually pop inside the funerary chambers of the larger two pyramids, and so I decided to crawl along the
Like father, like son
The Pyramid of Khafre stands in front of daddy's tomb, the Great Pyramid of Khufu 1.4-metre high tunnel into the heart of Khafre's tomb. As you can imagine, it was like a sauna deep within those millions of bricks, and there wasn't much to see except Khafre's empty sarcophagus. All of the pyramids were emptied of their pharaonic corpses and afterlife goodies millennia ago. Why? Well, if you were an Egyptian crim after some easy gold, where would you look? Easy - the 150-metres-tall building in the middle of the desert, full of treasure. That's why the pharaohs stopped building pyramids over 4000 years ago - and decided to have themselves interred in the relatively innocuous hillsides of the Valley of the Kings.
The most unexpected sight at Giza appeared as I was leaving the complex. Standing near the Sphinx as I sauntered past was a guy in immaculate Ayatollah gear, surrounded by gun-toting heavies and a few limousines. I moved in for a closer look, and realised it was Mohammed Khatami, the former Iranian president. That explained why an Egyptian Army helicopter had buzzed around the complex half an hour before.
Any city the size of Cairo (16 million-plus, and counting) is more of a jumble of localities, rather than one single
The Sphinx has no nose...
...so how does he smell? Awful. Sorry, bad joke entity. There is the Downtown area, or CBD, where the hotels, airlines, and stores are, and where most tourists stay. Then there is swish Zamelek, the embassy zone, and the middle-class suburbs south of town such as Nasr City. Heading east, you hit the Old City - or Islamic Cairo, as it is known. Basically a labyrinth of merchants, minarets, markets and mosques, the bustling alleyways are easy to get lost in. If you manage to find your way into the centre of it all, you find the remains of Saladin's city walls, the South Gate, or Bab Zuweila. You can climb the narrow steps to the top of the gate's soaring minarets, and look out over the old part of town, and the impressive citadel and mosques in the south-east of the city.
Perhaps the weirdest section of the Old City is the Northern Cemetery. This huge Islamic burial ground consists of thousands upon thousands of house-sized mausoleums, arranged along streets, just like normal residences. Originally just the domain of the dead, the poor masses of Cairo began to move into this large mass of valuable real estate, and now hundreds of thousands - possibly millions - are
Ancient and modern
An army helicopter scopes out the site before the visit by former Iranian president Khatami squatting in the old tombs. It is called the City of the Dead, but is better described as a City of the Living. Scattered amongst the gravestones and funeral chambers are shops, mosques, and regular houses. You forget it is a cemetery until you see the tombstones in what are now people's backyards.
The people here are wonderfully friendly. Every now and again, a store-owner will pop his head out of his shop and slowly say, 'Welcome to Cairo!', and old men smile and give you a heartfelt
salaam alekum. The other day one chap even walked over to me in the street and gave me one of his bananas as a welcome gift, and two seconds later a group of kids gave me a handful of nuts.
So that is Cairo. Sorry for boring you for so long. But I will close with an Egyptian riddle that Dad posed for me, and I think has been solved. Many of the blokes here have a fairly prominent discoloured indentation in the centre of their foreheads, often bigger and more scarred in the older gents. I did some investigations, and yes, it is from praying five times a day,
Mohammed and the gang
A group of lads, most of whom were called Mohammed, pose beneath Khafre's pyramid every day. Now
that's dedication.
Ma'a salaama for now. Next stop - hopefully somewhere along El-Nil...
PS: Anyone contemplating drinking one of the local spirits, called, rather disconcertingly, 'Dry Kin' (rather than gin), please don't: I think it may actually be the embalming fluid used in muumification.
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Sam in Bris Vegas
non-member comment
Cheap bastard
Tom, as an Ambassador of Australia could you please stop breaking local laws and regulations in your attempt to cheap out of the admission fees. Am I going to hear about your detention somewhere in West Africa only to discover you're only being held because you refuse to tip the hotel doorman?