Cairo 3

Consensus about Cairo seems to be a love-hate relationship. So far, there is nothing about Cairo that I love. I do however hate being hassled on the street by cab drivers and little kids who want food or money. I hate the pollution, getting ripped off, the stares I get mostly for being an American, the trash on the streets, not being able to go most places without a male, the unfortunately small size of the Sphinx, not being able to show my skin and not being able to drink the water.

I reached my ultimate low point Wednesday and Thursday. Tuesday night I got sick from whatever I ate or drank (or just a combination of the water and my body not being used to eating what I’m eating, etc.). Wednesday I had to leave my Survival Arabic class early because I felt so sick. When I got in the cab, I had the sudden realization that I could not communicate with anyone here, I didn’t understand why things work the way they do, I don’t look like everyone else, I don’t walk like everyone else, I don’t feel any connection to the call to prayer that I can hear from my apartment numerous times a day. I came back to my apartment and just cried. After taking some medicine, I felt better, enough to meet up with some people, but by the time I got back, I was sick again and got only worse the next day because of side affects from medications including stomach ache, heaviness in my entire body and, my favorite, nose bleed. I slept it off and feel much better now. That doesn’t mean I can communicate any better or understand why anything works the way it does in this country.

To distract ourselves from the craziness of this city, we decided that touristy activity was probably our best bet. We walked around a bit of Coptic Cairo, saw some nice Churches and took a felucca ride. Feluccas are little boats that go up and down the Nile and are pretty nice assuming you don’t completely overpay the driver, which we did. Today we did the pyramids. Some friends have told me that they are disappointing, but I would have to disagree. The pyramids themselves are massive and it is unbelievable not only that they had the technology to build them however many thousands of years ago, but that they are still standing. The sphinx is a huge disappointment. According to Lonely Planet, it has cancer. For an unknown reason, it is being I guess eaten from the inside and is slowly deteriorating. It is also very small, relatively speaking. Men who wanted you to pay them to ride their camels or horses or buy whatever they were selling would follow and harass you even when you kept walking and continued to ignore them. This more than anything else drove me crazy. From what I’ve heard, the best way to do the pyramids is on horse. I plan to go back, ride a horse, go in a pyramid and even stay for sunset.



Restaurant behavior is something I have either taken a liking to or have begun to hate. More than anything, I think I just find it funny. Fast Food restaurants are high class. McDonalds and Pizza Hut seat you, take your order and are big hot spots for birthdays. No matter where you are, restaurant owners or workers insist that you sit down and the check never comes quickly. The only reasoning I can see behind this is a cultural one. For example, when going into an Arab home, it would be rude not to sit and enjoy yourself. People don’t rush with food or drink here like they do in America. There is no reason it would or should be any different in restaurants.

Drinking is legal but no less expensive than in the states. In fact, drinking is so legal that they even deliver it to your house and bars are pretty common. I was very surprised by this considering it is a Muslim country. In so many other ways, religion is so apparent. Drugs on the other hand, as we have also read in Lonely Planet, are very illegal. Penalty can be execution by hanging and we are not exempt. This is something that has been in practice for the last fifteen years. If you’re looking for some great pot, I’d say Cairo’s not the best place to come, though I’m sure it does exist in large quantities.

Things in this country still don’t make any sense to me and probably never will. I think I have to accept the fact that they don’t need to. I will never understand the logic of walking in the street when there are perfectly fine and completely clear sidewalks nor will I ever understand the logic of having traffic lights or lanes if you’re not going to use them. There’s also no use in trying to get me to buy things from you or take your cab or go into your restaurant because when you chase after me, I just want to go less. So just stop asking and get the idea when I ignore you and walk away from you. It’s really quite simple. And not only that, if you had set prices for cabs, no one would have to worry about the money. I still have a very long time to ponder all of this.

Cairo 2

We have two guides here in Cairo --- one for everything practical and one for hang out spots, shall we say. The practical works like this: we needed an apartment so we got in a cab and went to the other side of the Nile to an area called Doqqi where we wanted to live. Rather than getting a landlord (although they do have the equivalent here called a simsar), you ask someone in the street if there is anyone (probably a bawaab, or doorman) who can help you find an apartment. The bawaab will then take you to a few apartments that he knows of and if you choose to take one that he shows you, he makes a profit, if not, ma'a salaama. Problem with this scenario, if you don't speak Arabic, you're screwed. If you don't know how this works, best of luck finding an apartment. Luckily, we have someone who is not only an amazing person, but speaks great Arabic and knows how the city works. We found a very cute apartment in Doqqi. It is on the 8th floor of building with a Nile view from both the sitting area and my bedroom. It's a bit noisy because it is right off the main street, but for its location, it is fairly quiet. It is about two blocks from a grocery store and only a few mintues walk to the metro which we will be taking to school.

Overall, from what I've experienced, Cairo is a hard city. No one is in a rush to get anything done. Things are very slow and people are not fast paced. Sometimes I love that attitude and sometimes it can be unbelievably frustrating. They walk slowly (and through moving traffic --- something I'm getting better at by the day), the machine to make student ID cards at AUC broke and they aren't getting a new one until April, we were told to show up at one place and were then walked to two different buildings and probably four rooms before finding the actual room, etc. People work until they have enough money. It's not like the US where people work and just want more money. Men walk arm and arm (a fad Naamah and I want to bring back to the states). Because there are so many cars and people here, cars a lot of times double-park on the streets, and people leave their cars in neutral so that the person they double-parked in can push the car and get out. There is less of what we would consider structure, but things seem to work out and get done. Everything is relative.

As Naamah said, being here as Americans (especially at the American University) is colonialism at its best. AUC is in the middle of downtown but has huge cement walls surrounding every building and inside of the cement walls are very green, grassy areas, benches and chairs as well as all the classrooms you need to be at to get to class. Guards are constantly surrounding the building and check you every time you go in, but it's a little bit of a joke. We are pretty convinced that the metal detectors don't actually work and they didn't even unzip my bag once when checking it. Embassies are scattered all around the city and look like huge mansions surrounded by pretty crappy looking apartments. It's the remains of colonialists laughing in the face of Egyptians.

About 80% of the women are veiled which is a little weird to me. Sometimes I think if I wore something on my head I would stick out less, but I don't think that's true at all. I think I tell myself that to make myself feel better. You hear the calls to prayer which I really enjoy. Religion is not as apparent in some ways as I would have thought though. You can buy alcohol almost everywhere and everyone smokes. At the same time, I won't walk by myself and I pretty much cover up completely when I go outside. And then there's other small things...like when I learned, don't go outside with wet hair. Showering is mandatory and ritual in Islam after a specific act...so for a woman to go outside with wet hair, well, you know...A lot of men (every so often you see a woman) walk around with this spot of dirt on their forehead. It took me until today to ask what it is and even then, I only asked an American who didn't know. But someone did give me a very interesting guess today, that being, it is from bowing down and putting your head down during prayer. Something I never would have thought of.

The hang-out spots are like this: Egyptian food, downtown and markets. One of the main Egyptian foods is called koshri. It is basically a mixture of pasta, little noodles (I haven't quite figured out what they are yet), lentils, rice, hot sauce and maybe some burnt onions. The key drink is mango juice. Both of these are delicious. In Egyptian restaraunts, they take your order, you pay them and then they bring you your food. I discovered downtown for the first time today. I had this low point last night of me sitting on the couch, not wanting to make friends, falling asleep with a book open on my lap and waiting an hour and a half for bad, overpriced Indian food to be delivered while hating Cairo. Then I saw downtown and realized there so much more to the city than I'd thought and so much more to find. We also went for the first time to a market. It is in some ways like nothing I have ever experienced. My favorite lines from being there are "I'm already married, all I want is your money," and "For you I kill my wife." Sitting down, one of my favorite things included the woman who came by, dropped peanuts on the table, walked away, came back realizing we weren't going to eat them and therefore not give her money, so she took them back.

The weather here relative to, oh, let's just say Michigan, is beautiful. I have been taking a "survival Egyptian Arabic" class which thus far has been helpful but also extremely overwhelming and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to learn all those words and remember the ones from Modern Standard. I have not yet done the Pyramids or any other very touristy things but I do plan on doing them before Monday. I do believe that I got my first illness from Egyptian food today although it is not nearly as bad as it could be. I hope to soon begin to adjust to everything and feel more at home. During my better hours, I do believe that it will eventually come.

Cairo 1

One thing I was told before I left for Cairo was that five cars will fit into three lanes. It wasn't a joke. There are lane lines drawn but cars do not drive in them. There are traffic lights but cars seem to not care. Police stand on major street corners and have to stop cars so people going the other direction can drive. Somehow though, cars seem to be organized in their own way and people get where they need to be. For Egyptians, crossing the street is like, you know, taking a stroll. For us, Americans, it is like trying to get through a war zone alive. At one point, a soldier had to cross the street to where we were standing and walk us to the other side. Or there was the man who walked across the street through moving traffic with no problem and turned around while we were still standing on the other side of the street and laughed at us. Or the time I literally had to have my hand held to get across the street. Every so often you will see a crosswalk at the intersections where the police are stopping the cars.

Looking across the Nile, dust and smog leave an unclear view of the high rises. When the wind blows, so does the dirt. You can not only see it blowing around but you can feel it in your eyes and mouth. Breathing seems to be quite difficult and when walking around streets crowded with cars, the air you breathe is even worse. Between the dirt under my finger nails and the way my hair feels, I pretty much constantly feel filthy. Something online said that being in Cairo is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. This is not a joke.

To avoid harassment, the best advice I've been given (aside from dressing conservatively) is to avoid making eye contact. The only way I've found I can do this is by looking down when I'm walking. The problem I have with looking down is that I miss everything around me. From tomorrow on, I am going to try to wear my big Lindsay Lohan sunglasses for two purposes: to avoid getting excessive dust in my eyes and to be able to look around and avoid making eye contact at the same time. Harassment does happen although I have found that it is not as excessive as I would have thought. Thus far, the phrase of the trip has been (with a very Egyptian accent), "Ya, Arabic. You look Egyptian." More than anything though, it's just the looks and smiles you get from men. Other than that, if a man starts talking to you, keep walking. It's pretty much common sense.

I am staying in an apartment right now in an area of Cairo right now called Garden City. Garden City (also called "Garden City" in Arabic) was built by the British. Supposedly, the roads were built in a very winding manner as to confuse the "locals." Unfortunately for me and my horrible sense of direction, I can pretty much guarantee you that it confuses me more than the locals. The area is filled with all sorts of embassies...the most memorable being the American and British blocked off by cement walls, road blocks, etc. for safety purposes, especially since 9/11.

I suppose I have discovered one of the best restaraunts in Cairo having been taken there both last night and tonight for dinner by two different people. It is in fact, quite good Middle Eastern food but more upscale and more Westernized. I am thus far very scared of both the food and water because although it is pretty much unavoidable, I have no desire to get sick. Sadly, that means eating in local places, etc., is out of the question for now. Other than eating in the same restaurant twice, I have pretty much only apartment-shopped, gotten my cell phone situation completely worked out and walked around trying to discover a bit of the city. I think that eventually, if I can orient myself based on the location of the Nile, I will be able to find my way around the city (so long as it is not Garden City). Eventually, I also hope to be able to cross the street and speak great Arabic.