Downtown Cairo

---

So, I'm absolutely shattered.

How to describe Cairo so far? Mother of all cities. City of cities. Cairo is not a city with a little c, it is pure, raw, unadulterated City.

Being a geek, I am reminded of various things in the Unknown Armies game system, such as the Nomad Raphael and the school of Urbanomancy. Green spaces are few and far between here. The buildings are now-dilapidated grandeur and splendour, stretching storeys high into the sky. The pollution here is phenomenal. I havent seen the full blown Cairo cloud yet but I have walked alongside the roads by the Nile in the evening (and crossed the insane Cairene road traffic, gaining a +1 percentile bonus to my Dodge skill each time) and felt the fumes choke me and the grime swirl around my skin. Today I can smell the stink of petrol and, for some reason, cheap perfume from inside the internet cafe. If you have any kind of serious respiratory problem, for heaven's sake don't come to Cairo. Mine is mild and Ive been having serious problems when the evening air cools and the fumes sink.

When leaving Tunis, I picked up a flight magazine that mentioned the average per capita income of a Tunisian. Those rich Tunisians earn on average...wait for it...$9,630. Thats less than half our minimum wage.

The Egyptians earn per capita $5,491. But in actual fact this is shifted by the few rich Egyptians.

Heres an insight for you:

Over 40 per cent of Egyptians live under the poverty line of 1,854LE per year, or five LE per day, while 10 per cent live in absolute poverty on less than 2.7 LE per day.

For a better understanding of this, a good approximation is 1 pound sterling equals 10 LE. Yes, thats right, that's one in four people earning under 50p a day, and one in ten earning 27p a day.

It's...awe inspiring. It's incredible. It's shocking and it's being driven home every day. Sure, everything costs less here. But not so you could live on that kind of a pittance. A bed at a youth hostel costs the equivalent of 1 pound 40, bread 10p, a litre and a half of water 15p. Or you can drink the tap water for the parasites of your choice.

There are so many hustlers, con men and scammers, its true. But they cant be compared to Tunisian hustlers because this is Cairo, in Egypt, cradle of civilisation, and these people are incredibly sophisticated. Avatars of the Merchant who, rather than bullying you into buying and leaving you angry and aware you have been mistreated, sweet talk you, are friendly and ease your money away from you in an almost blissful experience. These aren't people giving obviously false smiles or being smarmy or nasty - these are people who can seem absolutely honest and completely friendly and genuine as they con you.

But it is easy to understand why, because even the poorest people in England earn more in half a day than so many people in a month. Sure, taxi drivers try to charge you 80 LE (about 8 pound) for a taxi ride that should cost 5 LE (50 p). But then you have to realise, they're probably paying off the loan for the car and they know you can afford it. That extra money can pay for a child to have better school books or help have a better life. Education is free, but female literacy rates especially are frightening (2005 estimate 59.4 %!)(MISSING). In England I had generally reached the conclusion that on the whole, if anything, it's men who are discriminated against, not women. Here...no. Most of the women I've met in sophisticated Cairo of course have been just as liberated on the whole as any woman in England...but see here for more on this.

I have had the most sweet, cute child beggars come ask me for money and be grateful for a single Egyptian pound (that's 10p). I have also had a lot of irritating people pester me, but however irritating it is and however much I feel like they're taking me for a ride, I can understand why it feels to them like positive discrimination. After all, in England I was earning more in an hour than they earn in a month.

It is odd indeed to feel fabulously wealthy. But here, I am. After a long day at the Egyptian Museum we crashed at the nearest restaurant....which happened to be the Hilton-on-the-Nile's restaurant. Now back in London I would probably need to take out a loan to eat out at the Hilton, well maybe not quite but you know what I mean. Here? A 2 course meal (we didn't have desserts) cost the equivalent of 25 quid for two. We ate at Felfala (absolutely fantastic, with veggie and vegan expertise) and the whole thing was the equivalent of 8 pounds sterling. That's including a generous tip both times. Yet there doesn't seem to be the same simmering hostility and resentment as there was in Tunisia...just a determined will to survive.

I mentioned the museum didn't I? Yes, we have now visited the museum with it's incredible jumble of artifacts (It cost us 25 LE to get in, each, and another 60 LE for the Royal Mummy rooms). The place is so chock full of artifacts they were literally squeezed in whenever there was space, I loved it. I had never been really into Ancient Egypt in a big way before but boy, am I now! It's very hard to explain with words but I finally understood that Egyptian magic was trying to capture with symbols eternal and powerful concepts. They weren't literal truths, but truths of our minds and hearts. To look on a sarcophagus with a little insight is to grasp something greater than words can convey. I don't know if that makes sense.

In fact, Egypt is full of magic and power, not least that it was and remains the one of the last places on earth for the true (gentlemanly?) adventurer (ok, mebbe tomb robber) to truly find adventure, and that is a magic all of it's own.

Which brings me nicely onto the Pyramids of Giza.

I won't go too much into the gazillions of touts and hustlers trying to sell us camel rides, donkey rides, pictures or pyramid-related bric-a-brac (please read, 'tat'). It was irritating, mostly because they don't leave you alone even after you've said 'no' several times, and because we even got hassled by kids, and I found that immensely depressing. In Egypt tourism accounts for about 20%!o(MISSING)f GDP and as a result children are being trained to keep on at someone until they give in - that is what they are being taught to do with their minds and their lives. It feels like tourism killing human potency to me...but I digress.

The Sphinx was noble and beautiful, but sad, because it's already decaying due to causes as yet unascertained and has suffered poor quality restoration attempts on it's paws. I had already been warned that the plateau of Giza is in fact a patch of desert in the middle of a heavily built up suburb but it was still entertaining to see high rise buildings behind us, in fact you can frame photos with the Great Pyramid (Khufu) with a cityscape in the background over the desert. The pyramids themselves didn't impress me as much at first, although more on this later. What was absolutely fantastic was the interiors.

Ok. Think Lara Croft. Think Indiana Jones. Viewing the interiors is definitely not something to do if you are a) a tall person, b) have any kind of physical injury to your limbs, c) disinclined to sweating like a pig. I would add d) are unfit except that I managed it ok, so I will rephrase to 'infirm'.

A long scramble down a narrow shaft at a steep angle, maybe 4 ft high. This involves bent over, and bent over double if you are tall. The floor has a wooden surface with raised slats to function as steps and there are wooden handrails for most parts of it. Then inside a tall narrow chamber, then hauling yourself up a slop with high parallel walls stretching away from you into a shadowy ceiling on either side. I can't now remember all the rest of the way except that the last 20 metres involved actual genuine crawling, a stand-up break point, then crawling again. Incidently, the 'lighting' was designed in places so that as soon as you started to get your dark vision, you lost it again.

The tomb was actually a fairly big anticlimax for me, considering that the DUNGEON I was so totally in before was so cool. I was expecting the 'lined-with-treasure-wall-to-wall' type of affair and of course, the tomb had already been robbed, someone else had gotten there first hadn't they? The second pyramid (Khafre) was similar although without the big crawl, and with the name of the explorer who discovered it written across the side of the final tomb room. There was an undershaft that looked really interesting, going down and to the right that was locked (as off limits to tourists) and I remember Owen saying, 'Damn! Didn't bring a rogue!' 😊

The weather was extreme muggy (as in white almost-fog over Cairo) and caused me a little difficulty breathing even on the metro. Combine this with narrow spaces, strenuous physical exertion and the intense heat (today, a reasonably cool day as I have acclimatised to it, has according to the BBC a maximum today of 37 Celsius). I spoke to an exhausted gentleman coming back the other way, British chap, beefy and unfortunately for him well over 6ft, and he was red faced and dripping, actually dripping sweat, not just a bit of dripping but dripping all over. Owen was in a similar state, though not as bad, and while not dripping I was slick with sweat. The Khafre pyramid being less famous has a less well maintained interior, and the wooden handrails were slimy and gross.

It was all fantastic.

Menkaure's pyramid was closed at the time (presumably for repairs or something) so we looked at a couple of the tombs and the solar barque museum instead. In the museum a friendly gentleman homed in on us and for only a little baksheesh walked us around and told us some things we didn't know. It was thoroughly pleasant because it was clear from the off what he wanted, he was actually helpful and useful (I didn't know that the Nile had come up to near the Pyramids when they were built, for example) and he didn't argue with the amount of baksheesh we gave him (5LE - that's 50p), he even offered to give us change!

After about 16:00 the tour groups were mostly gone, the camel pushers listless and disinclined to serious hassle, and the whole place very quiet. Such a difference...then, finally, I could appreciate the Pyramids for what they truly were. By moving to the right place you could convince yourself that you were alone, alone in the shifting sands...and the Pyramids rose majestic, silent and awesome before you, alone in the desert, mounted by the slowly sinking sun.

PS I haven't mentioned Matmata in Tunisia I don't think. We went back - getting flights was difficult because apparently the end of August and early September is Arabic holiday time, so we spent the extra few days in Tunisia's south - and stayed in Hotel Sidi Bou Said, which was one of the filiming locations for Star Wars (Lars Homestead). We got some cool pictures and talked to the waiter - named Snoosi - for absolutely hours, on linguistics, education, religion, politics, culture, sexual protocol and his 20 day old baby amongst others things. He was lovely.

---