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Published: August 8th 2007
Rule #1: Protection and worship go hand in hand Today, we get up really late (11am). After a “morning” of fruits, croissants, TV, and the Google, Khaled arrives to take us out for what will end up being a day of immersion into the Egyptian way of life.
At 2pm, we hop in the midnight blue Jeep Liberty, our pimped out ride for Cairo, complete with driver (Khaled), captain and first officer (Tito Armando and Tita Marie), and gringo passengers (us). The first stop is the home to Cairo’s rulers for almost 700 years, The Citadel (Al-Qalaa). Sitting on a hill, it provides spectacular views of the city and the Nile. From almost anywhere in the city, you can see the 19th century Mosque of Mohamed Ali—and no, I’m not talking about Cassius Clay—that dwarfs everything. M. Ali came to power in 1805, when Egypt was a “backwater province of the Ottoman Empire. By his death in 1849, Egypt was a regional superpower, in the non-nuclear sense of the word. His mosque was a grand gesture meant to echo great imperial mosques of Ottoman capital, modeling a classic Turkish design.
The large open
Sahn (courtyard) is peaceful, with a
central ablution fountain and an ornate clock on the western wall opposite to the doorway of the
Beit al Salah (House of Prayer). The clock was a gift from King Louis-Philippe of France, in exchange for the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Many people think Napoleon stole it (shame on you!). The clock was damaged on delivery and has yet to be repaired.
The inside of the mosque is full of tourists snapping pictures and peering into Mohamed’s marble tomb draped in silk. We overhear a guide saying that not many people pray here because it is far from the city, mainly just the people who work at the Citadel or who live nearby. Step out of the tourist mentality and you can spot someone in the corner praying. A handful of worshippers will actually get as close as they can to the
mihrab (prayer niche) and prostrate there. Adjacent to the
mihrab is a
minbar (pulpit) decorated in green and gold. (One anomaly that I have noticed is the dark mark in the center of the foreheads of many men Cairo. I later found out that this is common in Islamic countries, where people get a
Cairo Citadel
Meme and Tita Marie hiding in the shade.“forehead bruise” from praying a lot. In fact, it is a mark of piety.)
We wrap up our tour with a brief look at the Al-Nasir Mosque, a green domed mosque dating back to the 14th century and one of the only surviving structures in Cairo from the Mamluk period.
Rule #2: Bull or bear market, know how to negotiate a deal in your favor Khan al-Khalili market is next level. This Oriental bazaar of fable, built in 1832, is one of the Middle East’s largest bazaars. Gold, silver, brass and cooper goods glitter enticingly in cave-like interiors, sacks overflowing with exotic spices fill the air with pungent scents. Traditional Egyptian crafts abound. Come here prepared to bargain hard or get ripped off. And by the way, be wary of the bread sellers roaming about. Tito Armando and I saw a seller drop one on the ground and totally adhered to the 5-second rule and put it right back. The next piece of bread you buy on the street might be gritty. You’ve been warned!
I put my skills to the test. The goal is to buy a couple perfume bottles. And we’re off, “£E 10 each,”
the seller quotes. I ask for a discount if I buy a few and he nods. At this point, I don’t ask what the discount will be, I’m holding. I take my time picking out my favorite ones, five in all. “Give me your best price,” I challenge. £E 8. When I want something, the walk away is hard, though necessary at times. He doesn’t budge from £E 8. I’m preparing to walk out when my secret weapon enters, Meme. “How much is he charging?” she asks. I tell her. “The guy across in the next store is selling them for £E 6.” Really. I turn to the seller and tell him that I at least have to check out the competition since he’s not backing down, and we head for the door. “Ok! Ok! £E 6!” What Meme didn’t mention, until we were out the door, was that the perfume bottles for £E 6 across the way were smaller!
Meanwhile, Tita Marie and Meli are in the market for belly dancer belts. Tito Armando and I stayed outside, only to find out that no good sell is made without some sleazy, Egyptian salesman trying to pull the 4th
grade sneak-a-feel on your lady.
Rule #3: Find a beautiful, loving companion to share it all with. The more volatile, the better One of the main roads leading out of the market is barricaded off, so we are forced to leave the same way we can, down narrow alleyways with enough room for one car. Twice we are forced to back up to yield to oncoming traffic before we cover some ground. It’s not a one way street, but if you get there second, you have to yield. A hundred meters to go and the road widens a tad. The curbs are high, so going SUV style over them is not an option. We are behind a compact car that barely squeezes by a sedan. Again we have to back up to let the sedan pass. Twenty meters from the exit, another car is blocking our path. This time though, we have a pickup truck filled with sacks of cargo behind us (making it much wider, like it had a muffin top hanging over) and a motorbike behind it (i.e., no backing up). The guy in the car in front of us is a jerk. He would rather have
all of us back up than him. Tito Armando firmly tells Khaled not to move, but the driver shifts to reverse. “NO KHALED!” Tito Armando turns off the car and takes the keys out the ignition. We are in a line of three vehicles and the driver in the line by himself won’t move. He sees us and raises us: he turns off his car too. The stalemate continues. Tita Marie is fuming. It doesn’t make sense for us to back up and we can’t. The rear passenger side door opens and out pops the “docile” wife of a U.N. diplomat. Tita Marie yells at the guy. “Why don’t you back up…it’s one of you and three of us…” She slaps the side of his car with her hand and then proceeds to curse him out in Arabic! We have come to learn that Egyptian men are proud and NEVER want to lose face. Little does he know, he is about to be TKO’d by a woman (unheard of in the Muslim world). Is anyone selling popcorn in Khan al-Khalili, what a show?! The angry, feisty Filipina outside the car disappears and the smiling, loving Tita Marie joins us again
on the back seat. Tito Armando is still in the car with us, and turns to us and says, “She’s got a bit of a temper.” Understatement of the year. He then gets out of the car calmly and repeatedly tells the man to back up because he has shorter to go. Tita Marie is about to get out of the car again, but Meli grabs her arm and pleads, “No, Tita Marie, you might get hurt.” She stays in the car. The other driver is saying something to Khaled in Arabic, but finally a policeman makes the guy back up and we are out.
Rule #4: To be a Pharaoh, you have to eat like one…then sail the Nile during sunset Khaled drives us around Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo before taking us for koshari. We pass by the Qasr al-Baron (the Baron's Palace), which was built in 1910 as Baron Empain's Cairo residence and designed to resemble a Hindu temple and Baron Empain's Byzantine-style Basilica. Koshari Hindh (spelling? Hindh is a person’s name, probably the name of the owner’s daughter) is a restaurant that only serves koshari. The orange sign outside the cafeteria-style joint is written only
in Arabic - Khaled has taken us to where he believes the best koshari is, and I doubt very many gringos will ever find it again. Koshari is an Egyptian dish of pasta, lentils, rice, and tomato sauce, topped with crispy fried onions. The meal for the four of us, plus servings for Khaled and his family (wife and 3 kids) came out to £E 37, about U$ 7. It was crazy good, and the local Egyptians in the place with us were all friendly (and definitely curious about how we found the spot).
The guidebook says no trip to Cairo is complete without a felucca ride on the Nile River. For £E 50 you can rent a private boat for an hour, captain included. So before heading home for a nice bottle of wine and a screening of Adam Sandler’s “Click,” that’s what the four of us did. For an hour, we watched the sun set on the Nile River. For an hour, we escaped the traffic and city noise of Cairo, letting our gaze meander over the river banks and its papyrus plants. For an hour we were pensive and pondered the future. For an hour we
Mosque of Mohamed Ali
Tito Armando and Meli in the Sahn reflected on our travels and the paths that led all of us to this moment. For an hour, we were Egyptian royalty.
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jak
non-member comment
rabble rouser
you two look like your having an awesome time! can't wait to see you upon your return. both of you are more than welcome to crash for graduation.