Advertisement
Published: November 8th 2005
To say that Cairo is chaotic and overwhelming is an understatement. Noisy, crowded, dirty, aggressive, claustrophobic, and intrusive all apply to this city that's home to 20 million people--1/3 of Egypt's entire population.
From the moment we stepped out of our hostel on the first day, we felt as if we'd entered a different world. Here the streets are shared by taxis, pedestrians, stray cats, donkey carts, motorcycles, and tour buses. Most everything is written in Arabic, so finding something as simple as a cafe proves tricky. Policemen in crisp white uniforms stand around with big guns at gates and bridges; just what they're guarding is never quite clear. Garbage and rubble lines the sidewalks, which is largely ignored by the population. The buildings are tall, all brick and concrete and the color of the desert, with ancient elevators that are surprisingly silent. Through it all runs the Nile, colored a thick and soupy green, carrying its burden of ships and pollution through the city. There is a constant symphony of honking, revving engines, mosque chanting, children yelling, and street chatter that amplifies the feeling of chaos.
Nearly all the women wear headscarves, long sleeves and skirts. Some are
completely covered in black with only their eyes visible. Half the men wear suits and modern clothes while the other half shuffle around in sandals wearing "galabas"--billowy, pajama-like gowns in solid grey, blue, or white. Many wear turbans and some have dark marks on their foreheads from bowing in prayer.
And we thought we might be able to blend in.
To say the least, we stood out here more so than in Turkey. Overly enthusiastic men would attempt to befriend us on the street and offer unsolicited directions--which usually involved a detour into their perfume shop (or tour company, or trinket store, or papyrus gallery...). It's frustrating to be on constant guard, never knowing if kindness and curiosity is genuine or merely the beginning of a well-rehearsed sales pitch. Even the hostel workers will invite you for tea with one breath and pitch their camping and cruising packages with the next. Usually a firm "la, shukran" (no thanks) will do; sometimes you have to ignore the hustlers and keep walking.
Located in central downtown, our hostel was on the fifth floor of an office building that overlooked a busy street on one side and a mosque on
the other. From here we were able to walk to practically everywhere we wanted to go in Cairo during our week-long stay. The streets crossed each other at such odd angles and irregular intervals that--despite having a map--we were often lost within three blocks. It didn't help that the streets were either unmarked or the names written in Arabic. Using our compass we got by on approximations (walking approximately North one way and approximately South on the way back), and there were only a few times we had to "take the long way home," as we like to call it.
This technique guaranteed that every trek from one site to another was an adventure on its own. We passed through open-air markets where kids drove donkey carts selling vegetables and pita off the back, old men in galabas shared space with goats in abandoned buildings, and garbage was piled high on front door stoops. Other neighborhoods were lined with shops selling miscellaneous car parts, stereos, and used computer guts.
There's also the noise, the pollution, the heat, and the stares--which is why most tourists opt to take taxis or air-conditioned buses from site to site. Taxis are extremely
cheap, but you get what you pay for. Riding a taxi through downtown Cairo is like being on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland: fast, bumpy, and unpredictable. You feel like any moment people will start shooting bamboo darts and that big rolling boulder will drop behind you. There's no concept of lanes, speed limits, pedestrian crosswalks, or stoplights. One Egyptian told us there's no such thing as driving school in Egypt. We believe it.
The key to taxis is you have to haggle your price before getting in the car (they have meters but don't turn them on). Sometimes the driver will raise the fare halfway through the ride, in which case the haggling continues right til you get out at your final destination. The best thing to do is hand him the cash you originally agreed on and just walk away. Usually the driver will grumble but drive off; we only had to threaten to call the Tourist Police once (yes, they do exist).
Though the drivers are crazy, the pedestrians are crazier. We were told there's an ongoing battle between drivers and walkers to claim the right of way. Old women and children would step
in front of speeding taxis and weave confidently through the traffic zooming by just inches away. It took us a single step to realize that the little green man means nothing in Cairo. When we asked an Egyptian why there were so few accidents, he told us it's because everyone drives as if everyone else on the streets is drunk (which takes a great deal of imagination since Muslims don't drink).
We know no other Cairo than Ramadan Cairo, which was both stricter and more festive than what we experienced in Turkey. Tourists and Christian Egyptians (a 10% minority in an officially Muslim country) commiserate with empty stomachs as most restaurants are closed while the sun is out. At sunset the streets empty out as people rush home to break the fast--a meal called "iftar." The restaurants open and the shops close til 8pm, when people flock to the streets once again to eat post-iftar sweets, socialize, and shop for the new outfit they traditionally wear on the last day of the holy month.
Our stay also coincided with the annual "black cloud" phenomenon. The burning of fields in neighboring farmlands produces a hazy smog that hovers over
the city and causes respiratory problems for many locals. We managed to escape Cairo without any trinkets, but we took a couple of sore throats with us free of charge.
Of course, we couldn't leave Cairo without seeing the Pyramids. Although we figured that the more significant the attraction was, the more persistent the hustlers would be, we weren't quite prepared for the level of sophistication involved in the rackets. On our way to the Pyramids at Giza, our cab picked up a friendly and English-speaking second customer who appeared to know the driver--just getting a ride home ("it's on the way," he explained). He started out with small talk and portrayed himself as a local who wanted to confide to us the "Egyptian way" of seeing the Pyramids. In the cab he talked of how to avoid the hassles and get the student discounts (nobody here guesses we've graduated, and who are we to correct them?). Needless to say, we were intrigued. Little did we know we were about to be rerouted to a back road stable and pressured into buying his buddy's camel rides. At that point we knew we'd been misled, but we were there, so
we went for the least expensive option ($10 each for 3 hours of loping along the sand dunes on the backs of "Moses" and "Mickey Mouse"). They tried to push us for the ride that lasted til sunset (which cost triple), but Randy reminded them that the sun sets for free every single night.
Thus we found ourselves doing the exact opposite of what we'd expected: a classic tourist camel ride around the Pyramids with a "real Bedouin guide" (whose cel phone kept ringing throughout the trip) and plenty of photo ops. It was hot, dusty, bumpy, and bright--no wonder there were so few other tourists along this route. For Randy, the ride was neither necessary nor pleasant. Jenny, ever the optimist, got into the swing of things and was nearly convinced by the guide to sign up for the next camel race.
The real highlight of the day (and the only thing that made it half worthwhile for Randy) was when Moses spied an opportunity to make a break for it while we had demounted and were taking pictures a bit up the dune. Blissfully rider-free, he started trotting back down towards the open sands where he
was chased by the guide and his assistant as they shouted and waved their arms. Every time they got near, Moses turned a different direction and cantered away, evading capture. Then, out of nowhere, a Bedouin man who had been praying not ten yards away from us mounted his own camel and started galloping towards the fugitive. He came right up alongside Moses and--without warning--leapt from his galloping camel to the other. He held on halfway up the back of the saddle and, like a professional stunt man, climbed his way up to the top as Moses was in full sprint, and grabbed the dangling reins. The whole spectacle was amazing--we giggled and watched the whole thing from the top of the sand dune.
After the ride dropped us off near the Sphinx, we finally had the opportunity to explore the site for ourselves. The massive Pyramids are truly as majestic and impressive as photos make them out to be--but what snapshots don't tell you is that this only remaining Ancient Wonder of the World is sandwiched on both sides by urban development that intrudes right up to the space in front of the Sphinx, where up until 100
years ago the Nile used to run. Neither do the pictures show the number of kids selling cheap trinkets, men badgering you to buy yet more camel rides, and air-conditioned tour buses winding their way between sites. Overall we enjoyed the experience--but we're not clamouring for a second visit.
The Egyptian Museum on the other hand can be visited every day for months and you still wouldn't have seen everything. The inside of the museum was almost as chaotic as Cairo itself. Artifacts were scattered seemingly carelessly and piled up unmarked in the corners of every room. It was as if they had more treasures than they knew what to do with. Our student ID cards, as ancient as some of the sculptures, got us in at half price. Cameras weren't allowed inside. We skipped the famous mummy room (for which they were charging an extra $10) and marvelled instead at the mummified animals--pet monkeys, lizards, dogs, birds, fish, cows, snakes, beetles, and crocodiles.
While in Cairo we took the opportunity to contact the brother of one of Randy's mom's colleagues, who is a retired Egyptian officer from the Air Force. Colonel Zohar, whom we've taken to calling
"The Colonel," turned out to be one of Cairo's most entertaining--and most generous--attractions. We chatted for hours on end in the Colonel's office, which happened to be not a block from our hostel; we'd start talking over tea, which turned into coffee, which evolved into dessert, which became lunch. Our conversations covered everything from travel to American foreign policy to a colleague of his whom he fondly described as "fat like penguin."
The Colonel gave us invaluable help with getting train tickets, sending letters home, and lifting our smog-dampened spirits with his irreverent sense of humor. According to the Colonel, the most dangerous thing in Cairo is asking for directions--Egyptians will never say "I don't know"; instead they'll give you directions that are false, contradictory, or incomplete. On the beauty of Egyptian women, he said that "when God made Egyptian women, he had in his mind the image of a sack of potatoes."
On top of everything else, he also booked us a heavily-discounted cruise on the Nile from Luxor to Aswan, and even gave us a ride to the train station at 6:45am. We could not thank him enough.
Between Ramadan, the black cloud, and it
being partially an off-season for tourists, we felt like we experienced Cairo at a strange time. But maybe that's the nature of the city--that feeling of restlessness, of being unsettled, of being at odds with everything. Cairo seems to make more sense from outside the city, which is where we'd rather stay.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.203s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 19; qc: 92; dbt: 0.1303s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Wendy in Michigan
non-member comment
Wow!
I was addicted to a blog on this same sight by Bedreddin (I'm wondering if you've read any of his entries), and he hasn't written much lately. I was getting lonely without his blog; but now I have your journals to look forward to. Your blog is extremely well written, objective, and very entertaining. Best of luck to both of you, and keep up the good work. Be safe. Wendy