First week in Cairo

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Cairo is chaos. Miles of low brown decrepit buildings, clothes hanging on wash lines across alleyways, a mass of taxis, children, animals, buses. The smell of sewage, sheesha smoke, exhaust, and body odor permeate everything. It is overwhelming and beautiful.

I arrived in Cairo close to 10pm. Immediately I was accosted by aggressive taxi drivers frantically begging me to get into their taxi. I eventually found one who claimed to know where “Arabian Nights hotel” was near Midan Hussein. The drive was chaotic and perhaps one of the most exhilarating things I have done in a long time; there are no rules, no lanes, nobody uses their lights even at night unless to signal other drivers. The taxi bumped a car in front of it for apparently no reason. There are no traffic lights and i don’t think any stop signs. Add to this a mass of pedestrians wandering through traffic, and there is a feeling of pure chaos. In Midan Hussein nobody had any idea where the hotel was. I had an address and nearby landmarks, but no one knows street names and there are a mass of cheap, unnamed hotels in the area. Finally I settled on one on the corner of Midan Hussein which I was sure I would be able to find again. 60EGP or about 12$ a night. The room bolted from the inside, and was private. Unfortunately it had only a cushion of the type you might use for insulation on a house as padding, had a dirty old blanket overtop of it, and was crawling with bed bugs. Outside there was literally a roar of honking horns yelling peddlers and a mass of humanity that would last essentially all night. That first night was not good, and if you had asked me then I would have said there was little chance this trip was going to last the full amount of time allotted.

Fortunately, a full night of sleep did me well. Each morning I was awoken by an ancient cleaning woman banging on my door. I think she must be King Tut’s sister, but nonetheless she walks up and down the five stories of steep staircase several times per day. She would talk a mile a minute in Arabic, which I eventually responded with “Anna mish fahim” which means “i don’t understand” and then she would repeat it again slower, which i appreciated but doesn’t address the fact i don’t speak Arabic, regardless of how quickly it is spoken.

Islamic Cairo is wild. The Al Azhar and Hussein Mosques are both hundreds of years old. They bellow the call to prayer several times a day, which seems to shake the buildings. Outside khan al-Kalil is a booming outdoor bazaar that is crowded with thousands of people from sunrise until well after midnight. It is also a tourist trap, as demonstrated by the steady busloads of primarily Europeans being dropped off, and the extortionate prices.

Al-Azhar Park is a nearby park that was built on top of a trash pile as part of an urban renewal project. I vaguely knew where it was but as I wandered around I found myself hopelessly turned around. A man, Faithi, came up to me and asked me where I was going. He was a small wild ball of energy. He rattled off in English a mile a minute, telling me how he loved tourists. We walked through a series of very crowded, very narrow back alleys until he finally arrived a doorway, which he opened. The room was the size of a closet, and he described it as his museum. Included in it was a copy of the original Lonely Planet Egypt book which has his picture in it. He then took me to one of the small tea houses, where we sat down and participated in the national pasttime of drinking Chai and smoking Sheesha while watching soccer on a small ancient television. I said it was interesting that men seemed to spend all day drinking Chai and smoking Sheesha with other men, which he said was the result of too many arranged marriages. As we continued our journey toward Al Azhar park he pointed out many things I would have missed on my own, such as the hands of Fatima carved on doorways, or that we were passing through the Bab Zuweila gate which is 800 years old and marks the outer boundaries of the ancient city.

I ended up at my first “couchsurfing”destination in El Maadi, a suburb of Cairo. Peter is a middle aged eccentric English man who has lived in Cairo for close to twenty years, though he is entirely removed from it. On his shelves are books on antiques and jazz music, but I didn’t see any on the people or history of Egypt. His apartment is immaculate, a refuge of comfort amidst a sea of dirt and trash. He speaks Arabic and French, gives language and music lessons, and is kind enough to host young dirty free spirited couch surfers a few nights per week. He was a very gracious host and it was a real pleasure staying with him.

Mica is another couch surfer who stayed at Peter’s the first two nights. He is tall, Greek, and equally eccentric though in a totally opposite way. Over the two days we spent wandering the city together he told me his life story, beginning at conception. His father was a Greek seducer who had his way with an innocent Dutch tourist, of which he is the offspring. His life’s purpose is following in his father’s foot steps by seducing foreign women. Additionally his story included everything from coke induced raves to ecstasy induced orgies before we moved on to conspiracy theories ranging from the basics about 9-11 and the federal reserve to some more far-fetched such as plans by the “powerful people” to reduce the world population to 500million. My favorite was his statement that upscale hotels in Egypt are frequented by Egyptian male prostitutes who make a living by satisfying the cravings of sexually frustrated middle aged English women. At 6’5, dressed in black silk pants, always wearing a tight “wife beater” shirt and with hair down to his waist you could not make up a person that stands out more in a crowd of Arabs. That being said, he is immensely likable and the two days we spent smoking sheesha and wandering the back alleys of cairo were fantastic.

Wednesday I decided it was time to see the pyramids. It’s a fairly straightforward process of getting there, though everyone tries to swindle you out of all your money all the time which becomes exhausting. i was also battling a stomach bug and decided not to eat breakfast, which was probably a mistake. After riding the metro to the Giza stop I hailed a cab and caught a ride to a small bedouin village, Nazlet es Samaan, that is nestled up to the side of the pyramids, shielded from the chaos of tourist buses and companies. Watching the pyramids rise up out of the backdrop of the city was pretty spectacular, and I was reminded of the first time I saw New York City and was awestruck at what people were capable of accomplishing. I was brought by the taxi driver to one of his “cousins” who conveniently arranges camel rides up to a hill behind the pyramids. After some haggling he swindled me for essentially all the money I had on me, 220 EGP or around $45. Luckily i had enough in another pocket for the taxi and metro ride back to Peter’s. With a guide I rode the donkey back to a small bedouin hovel that gave me flashbacks to Iraq. From there was a stunning view of the pyramids, and the two or three Arabs lounging on mats up there were kind enough to take my picture, offer some sheesha and some chai. In the end it was an exhausting day, but I was glad that I decided to see them instead of skipping it, which I had considered. Back at Peter’s he was incredulous at the price I had paid, yelling “you fool, you could have bought the donkey for that price.” Oh well, such is life.

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Comments

[heidi]

lol
i love how you start your writing with Cairo is chaos.lol.i love my country