Cairo, Part 1

 Egypt Part 1

  

I didn’t sleep much the night before leaving France. I didn’t sleep at all on the red-eye to Cairo. I know for most people this wouldn’t be a good situation for embarking on an intense effort to squeeze whatever possible out of a seventeen-hour layover to one of the world’s most popular destinations. I knew from experience, though, that my own excitement is indispensable in powering through in these situations. I’ve never liked sleep all that much, anyway. Plus, I was getting an opportunity to see, perhaps the world’s most celebrated ancient monument at a time in which tourists were terrified to go.

I had always imagined that if I ended up in Egypt I wouldn’t even bother with the pyramids. So many destinations around the world are ruined by the droves of tourists and all the evils that accompany them. Hustlers, fanny packs, pushy guides, tour buses, souvenir vendors and an over-abundance of cameras can mix to form a hellish environment that kills the mystique of many of earth’s incredible destinations. There’s a McDonald’s near the pyramids, and a Pizza Hut that you can actually see the pyramids from. I’ve been lucky, a couple times, to see how much better a destination is during a tourism drought. So I was going to finally see the pyramids, and only because it seemed that most tourists were too scared to visit. Awesome.

I asked a close friend who had spent way too much time in Egypt while waiting for a visa what I should do. He hated the place, so I didn’t expect him to have much good advice. He railed against the national museum, which seems to be the country’s second biggest attraction. He said the best thing to do in Cairo is to hang out with old men in cafes and play backgammon and smoke shisha. That was exactly the advice I was looking for, even though I don’t know how to play backgammon.

My plane landed at 3AM. I got my visa, made it through customs and was shaking off persistent taxi drivers by 3:30. I took an airport shuttle bus that supposedly went to a nearby bus station. I was hoping to save about $10 by getting a bus into town instead of a taxi. As we pulled into the station, it didn’t look promising. It was completely dark and empty save for a couple of parked private cars and two or three men. I said to the bus driver, “Midan Ramses?”, the name of the area in central Cairo that I wanted to get to. He shook his head. An old man walked up, offering his taxi services. The bus driver seemed to be indicating, with a little bit of worry in his eyes, that I would not be able to get a bus at this hour. I wondered if waiting 2 or 3 hours would be worth saving $10. Definitely not.

The driver was all sorts of sketchy. I would guess he was in his mid-50’s, mustachioed, had a pock-marked face and unkempt clothing. This, however, was not what made him seem sketchy. It was his gruffness. And his car. His first offer to town was actually below what I had expected to pay in the first place. Honestly, this should have raised an alarm, as Cairo taxi drivers are notoriously full of scams, and to get a fair price right off the bat when he was the only driver available just does not make sense. I went along with it, though, already getting excited to get to town. When I saw his car, an alarm did start to go off in my head. It was clearly not a licensed taxi. It was a small car, full of dents, rust and probable danger. That was the moment where I have to make a snap judgment and get in without asking questions or just get out and wait for the next airport bus to take me back to the airport. Again, I didn’t want to waste any of my time here, so I decided to go for it. Before I entered the vehicle, I said to the driver “No parking fee, no parking fee.” I had heard that the scam of charging a “parking fee” on arrival to the city was common. It was a scam that I had fallen for on my first trip to India, and I didn’t plan on repeating it. He looked at me confused. He spoke almost no English. I repeated myself and again, he didn’t seem to understand, so I got in. If he doesn’t know the word for parking fee, there is no way he can convince me to give it to him on arrival.

 The driver’s hands went under the steering wheel. He grabbed two wires and hot-wired the car to ignition. We jerked along for a moment, past piles of garbage, small fires and people sleeping on the sides of the street until we got onto the highway. The roads were mostly empty. I felt like we were going at breakneck speed, until the occasional, more functional car would go whizzing by us.

I was on edge. I actually had very little idea where I was going. I just wanted to get to the closest metro stop to the airport to reduce my taxi cost. I also knew that the metro wouldn’t open for another 2 hours. I also was not so up to speed on the current political situation on the ground. I knew that Cairo was a big city and the odds were that I wouldn’t be hindered by the secluded, but violent protests. Still, reading AP and NY Times articles don’t give a very good picture for people like me that want to know how dangerous it really is, and where. All I knew was that Tahrir Square was important. By the end of the day, though, I would know a lot more, just from exploring and reading local newspapers.

Suddenly, the driver exited the highway, while saying, “One minute, one minute!” Honestly, he could have neglected to say anything for the time being, and I wouldn’t have questioned it. Then we started going through some dark, narrow streets and alleys. This did seem strange. Then he started saying something in Arablc. “Enta Amreeki”. I knew that it had something to do with being American, but I couldn’t tell what exactly he was asking. At first I thought he was just stating, “Anti-American, Anti-American.” This, of course put me on edge. Then I somehow went into the deep recesses of my brain to the tiny bit of Arabic I knew and realized he was asking, “Are you American?” It was the first time in my life that I considered lying about my nationality. I couldn’t do it. I just pretended not to understand him. He gave up after asking a few more times.

We pulled up and parked on the side of a small shop. I could only see the light from its entrance, but it seemed to be the only place open. He got out and said again, “One minute, one minute!” When he was out of site, I opened the car door and slowly got out. I was that nervous. I waited, and he returned in a moment with a plastic bag of something and we left. A moment later he said, “10 pounds, 10 pounds!” I said, “When we get to Midan Ramses”. He said, “Petrol, petrol!” I had changed money, but the smallest bill I had was 100 pounds. The whole taxi ride was 60 pounds. We pulled up to a gas station and I told him, “10 pounds only.” I saw him order from the attendant exactly 10 pounds and pay him with the hundred pound note I had given him. When he to back in, he tried to only return 40 pounds to me, so I was basically paying for my whole ride in advance. I grabbed the rest of the change from him, and said, “When we get there!” I don’t know if he understood my words, but he understood what I meant, and he didn’t like it.  Then he demanded another 10 pounds for cigarettes. I refused.

When we got within a few minutes of Midan Ramses, he said, “10 pounds, 10 pounds! Parking fee!” Of course I told him, no, and tried to explain reasonably why I wouldn’t pay him the “parking fee”. He interrupted me with “LA’ LA’ LA’ LA’ LA’!!!” or, “NO NO NO NO NO!!!”, as he wagged his finger at me. We argued for a moment, then went silent. We arrived at my “destination” and he again demanded the fee. Now that we had purchased gas, I had gotten smaller bills, so I shoved the balance of 50 pounds into his hand. I opened the car door and tried to get out. He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back in. I shook him off and lunged out. If he had paid for the gas himself in the first place he would have had a lot more leverage to rip me off. Instead, I was able to use his trick against him. He drove away, yelling at me.

Now, I was alone again, and fairly lost. I just hoped this was indeed “Midan Ramses”. As I walked through the lot of silent mini buses and vans, I saw blanket-draped stalls of a makeshift market show the first signs of life. Sunrise was still a couple hours off, but with the first call to prayer approaching, the city was on the verge of waking. In no particular direction, I walked, in search of a functioning food stall or café. Ten minutes later, I was sitting at a tiny table in front of a café, waiting for a coffee. Luckily the first thing I wanted was one of the few things I knew the Arabic word for, since the staff didn’t speak any English. The café was empty save for a well-dressed man reading a newspaper and drinking a tea, and an old man in a djeleba puffing from a meter-tall hookah.

As I reached the thick sludge at the bottom of my cup, the call to prayer started to ring out from the mosque that towered over us nearby. The coffee, the street awaking in front of me and the devotional prayer penetrating the silence combined to ease the tension that had grown in me during the taxi ride. It had transformed into a feeling of eagerness and confidence. I walked back to the vans and mini buses. Now, a few men were around, yelling out destinations. I knew the metro would not open for another hour, so I started to look for a bus heading toward the pyramids. I went from van to van saying, “Giza?” I was slowly pointed farther and farther down the road, from bus cluster to bus cluster. Then I heard a man yelling, “Haram! Haram! Haram!” That was it, the road that runs through Giza towards the pyramids. “Giza?” I asked. He pointed inside the van. 20 minutes later, we were full of passengers and bolting down the still empty boulevards of Cairo.

A guy a little younger than me asked me in Arabic where I was getting off. He then realized I was a non-Arabic speaking foreigner. He knew a little English and I sheepishly told him I was going to the pyramids. I always hate when I realize I am going to the place that everyone expects me to go. He got out before my stop, but explained to the driver where to drop me off and to instruct me upon arrival. Five minutes later, the driver stopped, gave me directions in Arabic and I just nodded, paying close attention to the motions his hands were making.

I kind of thought it would be obvious where to go, but all I saw was a major boulevard continuing forward and smaller roads branching off into neighborhoods. Before pressing on, I went to a tired-looking tea vendor and asked for a cup. His setup was shoddy, and his family slept under blankets on pieces of cardboard next to him. His young boy was the only one else awake, as the father was sending him on various errands. He barely looked at me as he gave me the plain black tea with sugar. When I finished, I tried to hand him a pound, but he refused to take it. I would have been happy to pay this man triple the price for his tea, just because it looked like he and his family were struggling, but he was adamant about refusing my payment. Was it the hospitality to travelers that is so common in Muslim countries, or maybe some sort of superstition about the first customer of the day? I’m not sure, but whatever it was, it really touched me.

Further down the road, I found myself mingling with some fat, semi-sleazy middle-aged men at a stall selling sandwiches. I ordered a small beef liver sandwich, garnished with tomatoes with herbs and pickled carrots and radishes. The sandwich was delicious, and the pickles were amazing. It was a flavor that I’d never had before. The sensation of something new was something I hadn’t had in a couple years and it was exciting. A little more joking with the fat men, and I was on my way again, walking in the general direction I thought the pyramids might be. Time was not of the essence, as it was 5:30 AM and the pyramids don’t even open until 8 AM.

Around 6 AM, the road ended and I arrived at a police post. There were big riot shields scattered about. I assumed I had arrived at the pyramids, or a military installation. A police officer popped out and I greeted him in Arabic. He wasn’t sure for a moment what to make of me. He probably knew I wasn’t Egyptian, but it wasn’t normal for tourists to arrive on foot so early in the morning. He tried Arabic first, but this of course didn’t work. I told him I wanted to go to the pyramids, and he said I couldn’t because it wasn’t open yet. I knew that already, I just wanted to know if this was where I would go, if I wanted to see them. He kept telling me it was closed, so I turned around and walked back where I came from.

I turned onto a side road and kept walking as the sun finally started to rise. This was more interesting as it wasn’t just a lifeless boulevard. A few cafes were open, and I was tempted by more coffee, but this walk was starting to get interesting. I started to notice souvenir shops and sphinx-themed businesses. I realized I was getting close to a back entrance to the pyramids. I noticed a couple of horse carts and camels. There was a big truck piled high with grass. It was making deliveries. I couldn’t tell if I was in some old neighborhood that still kept it real, or if this was simply indicative of being in a touristy area. It seemed to turn out to be the latter. A man and his boy on a horse cart were aggressively pursuing me, insisting that I go with them. I had to be rude to get them to leave me alone, and of course they acted so offended when they finally left.

I branched off into some side streets filled with sand and animal excrement. The ruggedness of the buildings were charming. I saw a lot of posters supporting ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi. Throughout my day in Cairo, and especially in this neighborhood, I saw many ambiguous signs of destruction and chaos. The occasional roasted car or destroyed building. I really had no idea, though, what could be blamed on the tumultuous past two years and what was simply the result of it being Egypt, a country that has been poorly run and neglected for decades. At seven AM, I arrived at the entrance gates to the pyramids. Suddenly I looked up, and through the haze could see the top of one of the pyramids towering over us. The initial shock of its size was huge. I could even see the Sphinx. People around started to give me light pressure to hire guides or camels. Someone claimed if I took their camel they could get me in. I knew that it was most likely to be a scam and the hassle wouldn’t be worth it. I went back the other way. I bought a fresh squeezed orange juice near a bakery that was distributing giant piles of hot pitas. I wandered the neighborhood a little bit and found a newspaper vendor. He scrounged around and found and English newspaper. I went to a nearby café, sat in the front and ordered a hookah and a coffee. I was enjoying luxuries that I would rarely if ever get in Rwanda: a cheap newspaper that was well-written and not a mouthpiece for the government, quality coffee, the ability to just sit and enjoy a beverage in plain sight, and of course a cheap hookah. I was really trying to pretend like I was a local. Cairo’s café scene is legendary and I wanted to pretend for a moment that I was a part of it. I got to chatting with a man at a nearby table. He spoke decent English, so I hit him up for info on what was going on in the city. He told me that city center should be calm today and I would have little to worry about. I was a little nervous and excited about the prospect of something big happening. It was Friday, the day of prayer and protest. We were also very close to the two-year anniversary of the beginning of the Arab Spring in Egypt. It seemed like a volatile moment. He told me there could be protests in places, but that the center should be ok. He told me to be careful and not to tell people that I was American. He said it would be better to claim to be Canadian or Australian. He wouldn’t be the last person to tell me that either. It really goes against my grain, but I considered that if I got in a serious situation, I might lie, though I didn’t know what difference it could make.

I paid about 4 pounds for my coffee and two shishas, just over $.50. I know it is lame to constantly marvel about the low cost of everything in developing countries, but this had to be one of the most grossly marked up products between its native land and places it is exported too. Even in Rwanda a single head of shisha is about $8, while in Cairo it was about $.20. In Seattle it’s between $15 and $20. Ok, I’m done marveling over that.

It was finally time to see these silly pyramids. The man at the ticket booth told me it was 60 pounds, but I asked if there was a student discount. He asked to see my student ID. I gave him my old, faded Seattle University ID card with a picture of me when I was 18, and no expiration date on it. He seemed displeased. He asked where the date was and I just kind of ignored the question and said I am a student at Seattle University. He passed the card to someone outside the booth for examination. He asked me the same question. I told him not to worry, that it was just how the ID was made. He called a random unofficial-looking young guy over. He took it, walked around the corner and then came back and said with confidence that my ID was fine, and I would be charged the student rate. I don’t know why this guy was able to approve it and the guy in uniform wasn’t, but it seemed to be working. As I handed over the 40 pounds ($6.80), the young man instructed me to give include 10 pounds of “baksheesh”, or tip. I ignored him and continued on through security.

A view of the pyramids from an adjacent neighborhood at dawn.

Pyramid and Sphynx from outside the entrance gate

I was in, and seemed to have the whole place to myself. I walked on a road toward the sphinx. A man close to the entrance to the sphinx called me over, saying he needed to see my ticket. I knew that this was a hoax, but wanted to see the sphinx anyway. I showed him my ticket. He tried to take it, but I held it firm in my hand, not allowing him to take it. He told me to follow him. And just like that, I was being escorted by a false guide. He was young and dressed in trendy clothes. He asked if it was my first time there and I said of course not. He instructed me where to stand to take the best pictures, which, as a photographer I was certainly offended by. After a few minutes, I decided it was enough. I knew what would happen if I let this go on much longer.

“What’s your name?” I asked. He seemed a little caught off guard.

“Spicy, my name is spicy.”

“Ok, Spicy. Look, I told you that I have been here before. I don’t need a guide. I would really just like to enjoy your country’s great history by myself. I am not looking for a guide, and I don’t have the money to pay for one.”

This actually worked. We shook hands and he left me alone, save for one or two more later attempts at selling me camel rides, because, as they all said, “you won’t see anything if you only go on foot.” Right. Unfortunately I would not have the same tact and patience with the various false guides and swindlers I would meet along the way.

 

I don’t think it would be right for me to give my commentary about the pyramids, considering my lack of knowledge and the fact that they are about the most archetypical ancient monument the world has to offer. I will say, though, that in the moments that I was completely alone to admire them, I was far more enamored than I had expected. 

Selfie with the Sphinx. I didn't have a wide angle lens that day.

For the first two hours after meeting Spicy, things were lovely. I was wandering around, captivated by this site, completely forgetting that I was just hundreds of meters away from a megalopolis and the second biggest city in Africa. I walked and walked and walked. Occasionally I came across little side ruins that were in various states of excavation. As with many of the world’s greatest sites that I’d visited, it seemed surprisingly unprotected. It was easy to wander among some of the ancient alleyways sunken into the sand and the lower blocks of the pyramids had plenty of modern etchings and graffiti on them. I like when sites aren’t so cordoned off, so I make an effort to respect them, in hopes that they will remain this way. At some point a random Egyptian wandering around between the pyramids told me I should go climb the shortest of the three biggest pyramids. It was an exciting idea, but I knew it was forbidden. When he ran into me again, next to said pyramid, he assured me it was a good idea to climb it. I felt it was better to leave it alone. Who was this guy, by the way?

Not all of the hustlers were bad. At times I engaged them. One child on a donkey was trying really hard to get me to take a donkey ride. I repeatedly refused, and even the older man with him told him to leave me alone. For whatever reason, I had said I was from Spain. I thought they might know Spanish. Only a few words. Anyway, we had a nice conversation, and the man seemed genuinely interested in having a conversation with me, and kept telling the boy not to keep offering me a ride. Before finally leaving, I got into a long discussion with a tour guide who owned several camels. I don’t think he ever held too much hope in me becoming a client, since it seemed clear I was on my way out. He bought me tea, though, and talked to me about how much the tourism industry had suffered because of the revolution and two recent coups. I felt his pain, but that is the nature of tourism industries in the developing and unstable world. And as a tourist, I liked it better this way. By this hour, the main entrance was actually getting overrun by what I thought were hoards of tourists. He disagreed. He waxed nostalgic about when the tour buses were endless and all his camels were constantly in motion. He has even had to sell some. This of course put me in an awkward situation. I hate the droves of tourists and everything that accompanies them. At the same I am part of them, whether I like it or not. And this is a poor country that desperately needs every job it can get.  I just don’t know who is right or wrong in this equation. The tourists who allow themselves to get ripped off by endless hustlers, disrespect the monuments and lack reverence for such an incredible piece of history. The tour guides, hustlers, and trinket vendors who sell out their country’s history for an easy buck, while simultaneously destroying the very atmosphere that people travel thousands of miles to experience. Or the government, who, for decades, neglected its people, failed to provide sustainable job opportunities and allows the unfettered and unregulated tourism trade to go on in a fairly ugly manner. No, I bet it’s America’s fault. It usually is, right?