Cairo to Alexandria

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The second Couchsurfer I stayed with was Nawar. I had been somewhat skeptical about staying with natives due to the fact that many of the men reportedly use it as a dating site to meet foreign women on vacation, and though I am a man I found this idea sort of unnerving. Nothing could have been less accurate about Nawar, he was extremely hospitable, a true diamond in the rough. He picked me up from our arranged meeting spot and we went back to where he lives in an extremely nice apartment, furnished with everything from Persian carpets to a Concept 2 rower. Nawar is a Syrian who looks like an Irishman and has lived in Egypt his entire life. He gave me a tour of Heliopolis, the massive suburb that he lives in, helped me to buy a prepaid phone, gave me tricks for staying healthy, and figured out the train schedule and how to buy a ticket to Alexandria. We may hopefully meet up again in Dahab, he is into diving and has some connections at the local diving areas there that we may get to explore. I was very happy to meet Nawar, he was among the friendliest, most thoughtful and accommodating people I have met, and I was very lucky to stay with him.

That night we went out to “City Stars” a mall that is comparable is elegance and size to anything in the united states. It is seven stories high, bright lights, intricate escalator system, stores with all the western and Asian brands from clothing to electronics to food courts that were the same as anything in the United States. We went out to a restaurant with two of his friends and were given menus in English. Later we would see “Town” a movie about bankrobbers from Boston. All the movies playing were Hollywood blockbusters.

I enjoyed my time with Nawar and his friends and they were open when I told them what a troubling experience it was entering into City Stars. The problem was that there was nothing remotely Egyptian about it. Everything was in English, from the menus to the signs to the movies. Nawar and his friends were educated in English schools and were closer intellectually to middle class people living in D.C. than the the throngs of impoverished who spend their time driving taxis or sitting in coffee houses across Egypt. What does it say about a society when the modern economic centers offer nothing other than an imitation of others? What does it mean when you educate your elite not in the ways of your own society but to fit in in the United States or Britain? Is that all that Egyptians can aspire to, a shallow imitation of others? One of Nawar’s friends made the analogy of a movie star. When a movie star goes out to eat, all the people in the restaurant stare at the movie star but the celebrity doesn’t necessarily stare back, or even notice the people looking. When a celebrity wears a type of designer clothes other people follow suit, but the star may not care what others are wearing, the fact that they are the star means that what they wear is, by default, what is popular. In places like the United States, Germany, and Japan, these societies don’t have to worry about imitation, there is such an abundance of native creativity within these societies that they can blaze their own trail and know the rest of the world will follow their cultural, technological, and economic path. Where is that native creativity in a place like Egypt, where the well educated elites are taught to imitate the west, and the mass of impoverished dwellers are too busy figuring out how to feed themselves and their families to be truly creative, much less export any aspect of their culture?

I decided to go Alexandria a day earlier than I had originally planned, since Nawar was going to Lebanon later in the day and could only house me for one night. The train station was pure chaos. Thousands of people packed in like ants wandering in a million directions. Additionally the Ramses train station in downtown Cairo i being completely renovated, so there is an abundance of trash, dirt, scaffolding, and construction equipment roaming around. The dust is suffocating and the throngs of people enough to give you claustrophobia. I found my way to the ticket counter and asked for Alexandria, the man stared at me a minute, looked at my bag, grunted, and handed me a ticket. It was all in Arabic, and I had no idea when the train was leaving or from which of the eight platforms it would be departing. Finally I found a person who spoke broken English and I discovered that the train I needed to be on was sitting there and was going to be leaving in a few minutes. I walked over and got on. Nobody checked the ticket until the train had already left the station, and I really didn’t know if I was in the right area or, actually, even on the right train. A few people tried to talk to me but since i speak zero functional arabic (The arabic I learned in Iraq, like “put your hands above your head” and “stop or I’ll shoot” are not very applicable to negotiating taxi fares or figuring out mass transportation) i don’ know what they said. In the end it didn’t matter, I sat first class (I am assuming I bought a first class ticket or they would have made me move) and ended up in Alexandria a few hours later.

Alexandria is a breath of fresh air compared with Cairo. Literally. The breeze off the coast is wonderful and I could feel my lungs healing from the suffocating madness of Cairo. I walked along the waterfront, or Corniche as the road is called, and stopped in at several hotels. Finally I found a keeper, SemiRamsis. You really can’t beat it, a balcony facing the sea, spotless rooms, and a private bathroom for $25 a night. I am planning on staying here for another day and then figuring out how to get down to Luxor and Aswan before spending the last two weeks in Egypt diving along the Sinai.

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Comments

[Fatima]

Your post seems to resemble my exact thoughts when I went to Egypt a few years back. Egypt and the Middle East in general is rich with culture... and a beautiful one at that. I always imagined this area of the world to be totally separated from the rest, but in reality its full of people who are desperate to fit in and as you say imitate the West. And for what? They just come off as naïve,cheap copies. 'City Star' wasn't very interesting to me at all, if I wanted to go shopping in a mall that boast the likes of 'Zara' and 'French Connection' then I would have stayed in London. The problem is the massive class difference between the rich and poor. The rich are all educated in international schools taught and sometimes attended by foreigners. So it's not suprising that they seem to adopt a foreign culture so easily. It's a shame really... and it's not just egypt