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Published: September 16th 2006
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Boban and the Nile
My partner Boban Durmic and the Nile, the stuff of legends... My first adventure overseas, 10 years after I was due to leave Australia I finally made it through the International Terminal at Perth and into a new understanding of the world... I had meant to go to the UK the month I finished highschool, but then postponed to work and earn some money. Then I went to University (just one year - then I'll take off before finishing), then I got involved in politics, then marriage and children and divorce... Finally, with a new partner, I was going to travel. I'd travelled a lot in Australia, even worked in Parliament House Canberra, but it was a deep desire to experience "the other" (as my anthropology professor had explained it), that drove me, and to this day drives me. I'm a migration agent now, and I help other people experience my dream of living in new lands, of becoming and knowing "the other". If only more people were less afraid, I think we'd all learn something... I can't tell you how many people said we were mad to fly on September 11... first anniversary of
the September 11. And to the middle east too... Best thing we could have done!
Cairo is not for the faint hearted. Stepping of the plane into the September heat, its the smell that hits you! 20 million people and god knows how many millennia crammed into a narrow stretch of magnetic fascination bordered by endless oceans of sand. I've never smelt life before, not real life, something not sugar coated and edited. They say smell is the most primal and deepest of our sensory factors for memory, and I will never forget that smell. It wasn't good, but it was like a pheremone! I was and am addicted, waiting for my next hit...
We had booked a cheap flight on a spur of the moment, when Emirates began flying out of Perth. Deciding to have an adventure we booked only the first few nights and to set our schedule to adventure on arrival! In the meantime I became a travel-net addict... I read everything I could get my mouse on, and two more guide books to that, becoming more and more fascinated each day...
We chose to book the Windsor Hotel on Al Alfy because it had hosted that intrepid traveller Mr Palin. I'm not sure if Mohamed the concierge was more grumpy or me, having survived a 13 hour transit in Dubai... However after being shown a couple of rooms, none of which matched the description and not being able to continue standing, we settled for a large and shabby double room with a Juliet balcony and shutters, and collapsed into a dead sleep in the humid darkness trying to ignore the nagging thoughts of bedbugs and malarial mosquitos embedded by too my reading and an over-anxious doctor as oblivion overtook me...
At four am I awoke. Peaceful quiet and a cool breeze was broken by the soft sound of hooves on cobblestones... Looking outside I saw what was to become my ritual and quintisential image of Egypt, a donkey drawn cart delivering the morning's vegetables to the souk... Soon, the call of the muezzin joined and then the slowing building hum of the traffic, as the machine of the ages that is Cairo awoke into the desert morning...
The meuzzin call is to me one of the most beautiful and haunting sounds and immediately arrests me. Whether it is the fact I was raised in a profoundly religious family with a strong attachment to the spirituality of ritual and tradition, or something deeper, I love travelling to the Middle East for this reason. Some people dislike the overt demonstrations of Islam, but I believe if the Judeo-Christian world stopped to pray 5 times a day, and believed in peace and hope enough to observe the lenten period, just maybe we'd not be so frightened...
They say Cairo was the first tourist destination, and that there has always been "the hassle"... The hassle is the continuous pressure of the sale, you want something they can get it, what do you mean you dont want? You just dont know you do, but hey, your lucky day 'cos I know what you want... Like most newcomers we thought we knew better!
Within 5 minutes of being out, heading towards the Egyptian Museum area, we were becoming the targets of some serious hassle. Standing at the lights, steadfastly ignoring one very persistent chappy and congratulating ourselves on our success, a local man standing next to us asked, "You're Australian? My wife's Australian! Come meet her, she never meets any Aussie's here!" ... and that was it! Hook, line and sinker we were in, chatting away, and then down to his shop, out he went to "look" for the wife, "no, she'll be here any minute, just doing banking it seems, have a look at my perfumes whilst I make you tea..."
We paid I don't know how much 20 minutes later just to get out of the shop, the wife never appeared. The photo probably one of many... With wounded egos and a lesson learnt, we trotted of to our morning's walk and little poorer, a little wiser and knowing it was not going to be easy. There are no threats, and you can just walk away. But if you are essentially "polite" by nature, these situations are never easy to deal with as he Egyptians are so hospitalble and will inevitably bring out tea just for entering their shop! Drink it, but politely decline to buy if you really don't want to. They don't mind...
And neither did we! 5 minutes later it was forgotten as we glimpsed the Nile, that mythological figure which is oh-so-real! And we were here, in Egypt, in Cairo...
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