Cairo revisited

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Days 71-97 Thur 5th Apr-Tue 1st May

These days I spent in Cairo whilst enduring the long and ultimately fruitless wait for my Libyan visa which I had applied for back on the 25th of March.
I visited various sites including the proud Mohammed Ali Mosque which sits within a protective citadel on an elevated site overlooking much of the city with the great pyramids visible in the distance. Another city sight I visited was the Abdeen Palace museum which includes a vast collection of historical weaponry. Many of the guns there were extremely cleverly designed and technically sophisticated for their time and I was both impressed by the extent of Man's ingenuity and saddened by the use to which it had been put.
I made a couple of visits to an area of Cairo called Heliopolis which contrasts with the dirty and untidy downtown areas by being quite wealthy and having more open space and many elegantly designed and well-kept colonial era buildings. Another beautiful area I explored more than once was Islamic Cairo where there are many ancient mosques and other stone buildings dating back many hundreds of years, and many of which are being restored.
I also shared a taxi with an aussie called Karl to visit the pyramids at Darshur, about an hour south of Cairo. There there are two pyramids, one of which is a less steep version of the well known ones at Giza and which had a tomb which we could access with the added benefit of there being only a dozen tourists rather than the hundreds which swarm around more famous sites. The other pyramid there, which we were only permitted to see from a distance, was the one known as the 'Bent Pyramid' on account of a change in angle of the sides part way up. It looked in perfect condition and it was a disappointment that we could not go closer.

One day I took a train north east to the pretty town of Ismailia which borders a lake which separates the northern and southern sections of the Suez Canal. There were some pleasant gardens there, something which there is a sad lack of in Cairo, and although I could not see the actual canal, I couldn't fail to miss the huge tankers making their way along the lake with some valuable booty on board. On another day I visited Suez which is at the southern end of the canal, but seeing the canal itself was a flat disappointment as it was just a featureless stretch of water rather than an obvious triumph of engineering. With my limited arabic I think I understood from some of the locals there that the canal is different at the other end, but tourists I later met gave descriptions of the canal's northern end at Port Said which made it sound identical to what I had seen. It seems that the only interesting thing about the canal are the ships!

One evening I was walking between cafes with my egyptian friend Adam when we got talking to a middle-aged french woman called Marie-Christine and her son Simon who had turned twelve that day. Marie-Christine was a very enthusiastic and interesting woman whos second sentence to us was 'what are you going to do that's good in the world?'. Thus she and I were straight into a philosophical conversation while Adam just looked on bemused. It turned out that she was an artist and writer which explained the slightly manic randomness of her conversation. Simon was interesting too because young as he was he was already fluent in Arabic, French and English, and was in the process of learning Italian. He is a smart kid who has a great head start in life. When we gave up the topic of what we should do with our lives, Marie-Christine suddenly asked whether Adam and I knew anything about repairing typewriters revealing that one of the bags she was carrying contained a beautiful typewriter in a deep red and perhaps fifty years old. I love technical things and so I didn't hesitate to say 'I'll fix it', quickly adding the caveat 'if it's fixable'. I didn't know whether I could fix it, but I knew that I would be able to find and understand the problems at least. She entrusted the machine to me and gave me a phone number so that I could let her know when I'd made any progress with it.

I was keen to have a technical challenge to get stuck into, but it did turn into a bit of a saga. I solved one of the technical problems relatively easily, but the other was due to some worn rollers which needed renewing. I went on a mission around Cairo to try to find a shop or workshop which might have two rollers for a very old typewriter. The mission had the odds stacked against it, but I was intent on making that machine work again because I knew it was technically possible and I knew how to do it once I got those parts. I really wanted the satisfaction of making something work, especially when most people think it impossible.

However, on my second day of following up leads to find the parts I made a mistake. I trusted a man who I met in the street and who'd offered to help me with the result that he disappeared with the typewriter rollers and some money. I had believed that he was acting on good will and was getting the parts restored at a workshop, but once he had the money he just vanished. I felt pretty stupid for being so trusting, but in a land where everyone seems to be very friendly it is an easy trap to fall into. Such people do their honest fellow countrymen a disfavour as from that day on I never trusted anybody in Egypt again.

When I met Marie-Christine again she said she was not at all surprised. It turned out that she was deeply suspicious of egyptians as she had had numerous experiences of their deceptive ways and generally didn't trust any of them. Over the next few days I attempted to help Marie-Christine to get replacement parts by following up some leads I had, but in the end it became frustrating doing it her way. She made the quest unnecessarily difficult by looking at the negative side of every encounter we had with shop staff, not following up the leads I had for the slightest of reasons and ultimately getting annoyed with the whole situation rather than sorting it out. Thus it got to a point where I got annoyed too and realised that the only way to sort out the problem was to take it on myself again and ignore Marie-Christie's irrational approach by which the problem would probably never be resolved. I had offered to take on the challenge, and I would see it through to the end.

Channelling my annoyance into determination I set out intent on getting the parts made. I had considered doing this when I originally had the parts stolen, but at the time I had thought that the language barrier would have made the task too difficult. Now though I would not let anything stop me achieving what I'd set out to do. I found an area of Cairo full of industrial stores and workshops, and by a method of indicating what I wanted by pointing, making gestures and drawing pictures, I was directed from store to store until I found one which sold exactly the right material in exactly the right size for what I wanted, this being stainless-steel bar. Thus the first step was achieved and having got two pieces of the steel cut to the right length I set about finding a workshop with a lathe because I needed to have the bars machined to a particular shape. I managed this too and was pleased that I had succeeded in getting some relatively complicated parts manufactured with only a very slight knowledge of Arabic. English was less useful than it normally is on the main streets of Cairo because people who work in industrial workshops in back alleys know no english at all. My quest continued as I had to find some rubber tubes to fit the bars I had had made, but by a lot of careful searching in an area where a diverse range of materials and techniques were to be found I acheived my goal. Thus I was finally able to return to the eccentric french artist and reassemble the antique machine she was so eager to start writing on. I had proved that if you are determined and focused enough, and have the belief that you can do something, no matter how hard it is and no matter how many people tell you it can't be done, you can do it. I had gained the satisfaction I was after, as well as made somebody happy.

As for the Libyan Consulate, I visited them a total of five times; the time I applied, two weeks after that, three weeks after, four weeks after and five weeks after. As each time they could only say 'There is no news about your application, come back next week' I became more and more convinced that their remit was to waste as much time as possible whenever Westerners apply for visas. If they had been able to say 'No' after a couple of weeks I would have been able to make other plans, but instead I waited and waited and waited holding on to the hope that I would get it. In the end though I despaired and came to despise the whole affair and not want to visit Libya any more. Perhaps that is the reaction they want us to have, but it makes little sense.

And so it came to be that after five weeks I could wait no more and I had to reluctantly abandon my dream of making my whole journey to Egypt and back without flight. I opted for the best compromise which was to skip Libya by flying to Tunisia. The travel experience I missed by doing this was a 36 hour bus journey across reputedly featureless desert from Cairo to Tripoli, plus another long bus journey between there and Tunis. So there is the consolation that the only flight taken on this journey did not cause me to miss much of great interest. Of course, not having the experience I can never know that for sure. The main thing though is that I will still have the feeling of travelling all the way from Africa to Europe and on to home by land and sea, and that will give me a feeling of connectedness and a true sensation of travel that could never be achieved by flying.

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