Friends, New and Old

Thursday, January 7. Cairo.

Getting over jet lag is never easy, and sometimes the best thing to do is to get out, do some walking, let your eyes see the sun, and hope it will be all right in the morning. And so that was the plan for today.

Maureen and I took a stroll through downtown Cairo, visiting some favorite places that The Insider and I explored on our sojourn to the city in 2000. We started at Tahrir Square (home of the Egyptian Museum), and went north-west along Champollion. This shady street was known to us as “automotive alley” because of the great collection of auto repair shops. I doubt a lot of tourists bother with it, so the atmosphere is relaxed and the locals were content to mostly ignore two foreigners out for a stroll. We found my favourite kosherie shop (still there, still very minimalist and friendly) and cats galore – sunning themselves under parked cars and finding what food wherever they can.

Turning west on 26th of July Street (Sitta w'Ashrin Yulyu), we found “The American Cafe” where, ten years ago, I had possibly the best Turkish coffee in my life. Still there, unchanged. Another right-hand turn put us onto Tal'at Harb, a busy street full of clothing stores and the Metro Cinema which is showing “Dragged Back to Hell” as well as a number of other less lurid features. (Ten years ago, it was playing “Mission Impossible” and sported a poster of Tom Cruise which was one or two storeys high.)

This is the point where Maureen and I started to make a lot of Egyptian friends. At one street corner, an old man introduced himself as a retired engineer who was in the city on holidays. “You know the Blue Mosque?” he asked. It's just down this street! You have to see it! We had time to kill, so we made the two block detour to a small mosque which turned out to be the burial place of a Islamic saint (or something), and then “Please let me give you my business card. It's in my son's shop across the street. Please come in, I am offering hospitality.”

“How are we going to get out of this?” Maureen asked me quietly. Easy. We said no in the nicest way we could, that we couldn't visit his shop at this very moment, but that he had been very kind to show us to the mosque, and that we really should be on our way now. “If you wait here, may I give you my card? Two minutes.” Sure. He disappears for no more than two minutes, produces a card for his son's shop, then sends us on our way with a handshake. No problem, right?

Cue our next Egyptian friend. A man who had been cleaning the sidewalk in front of the mosque taps me on the arm, and then launches into a good minute of very energetic but slurred speech in a language I don't recognize. I catch the word “demain” (“tomorrow” in French), but not “bokra” (the Arabic equivalent.) I make an apologetic shrug and try to make it clear that I don't understand a word of what he said. He smiled a bit, took a breath, and then went through the same harangue, word for word. If I had to guess, I'd say the sense of it was: “You foreigners always say that you'll come back tomorrow but you never do. What's wrong with you people? That man was just trying to show you some hospitality and you threw it back in his face!” But as I said, I have no idea what he was really saying, so it could have been “The nerve of that guy! Trying to hustle you into his shop in front of a holy mosque. He tried the same thing yesterday, and he'll do it again tomorrow.” Whatever his meaning, he eventually gave up with me and went back to his cleaning.

Cue our next Egyptian friend, a young man in his early 20s who had watched our exchange with some amusement. “He's not right in his head,” he said, adding that we shouldn't worry about it. He asks us where we're from, and tells us that he's a recent graduate from university who has been studying commercial art. I asked him what the job market was like in Cairo, and he said it wasn't bad but that he wanted to leave the country and work in Europe because the pay was better. More conversation ensued where he talked about the obligatory military service in Egypt, and how going to university could cut a year from the time you had to spend in the army. Eventually it was time for us to move on, but at that moment, he offered to take us to his brother's shop which was just nearby. (We didn't go.)

I have no real point in recounting these chance meetings, other than to illustrate the skill by which people direct people to favored stores, or to show how strongly retailing is represented as an occupation in the extended families of Cairo. Take your pick, or be like one of the cats and sun yourself under a car fender.

For the weather-obsessed Canadians in the audience, the temperature here is mid 20s with moderate humidity – it's the warmest I have experienced in Cairo in January. On the last four trips, Cairo in January was so rainy and cold that gloves and a scarf were a must. Instead, it's like May in southern Ontario, and I for one will take it.

In the afternoon, Gayle handed out our archeological passes. These are the things that allow us to get into museums and archaeological sites with a merry wave. Each pass has a passport photo on it, so we all look like humorless thugs, but as I meet more and more of the people in our group, I realize this is pretty far from the truth. They're all quite lively and jolly despite having just traveled 7 or 8 time zones to get here.

Passes in hand, we walked over to the Egyptian Museum. I showed Paul around the building (he's one of the newbies to Egypt); that's about all you can do in two hours. Tomorrow we'll go back and do things carefully. There's a special exhibit celebrating Hungarian Egyptology which is small, but well-lit and very good.

But here's the real scoop: The Nile Hilton has been bought and renamed the “Nile Hotel” and its adjoining mall has been demolished. That includes the bookstore and souvenir shops next to the hotel itself as well as the part with the drug store, scarf shop, the internet cafe, and the food court. Not the food court too! The best place in all of Egypt to get a Thai green curry with chicken! A convenient and calm haven for weary museum goers! Gone! Woe! (and I mean it). Even the bookstore on the corner right outside the museum is now just memory (or rather, rubble.) It's there in my mind's eye, on a movie clip I shot two years ago there, and in a few snapshots of me and my mother in the basement food court, each of us grinning, showing off our meals to the camera.

The news is so grievous I don't want to write any more.