Canal of Dreams

Waterloo, Ontario

14 October, 2016

Mr. Fraser, my grade 9 geography teacher, was a short man with short brown hair. Most days, he wore one of a seemingly unlimited number of garish, flowery shirts. He spoke with a soft nasal voice, and had a ship’s bell on his desk that he tapped with a small wooden rod when he wanted to get the class’ attention.

Most of our class time was spent colouring maps. Some of my class mates were especially good at it. They would start with a dark outline around a particular region, and then fill it evenly using a subtly lighter shade, all without leaving any visible marks from their pencil crayons. I was a more haphazard with my colouring. I never mastered the gentle art of using a rubbing the paper with a rounded tip, using oval strokes to get a smooth field of colour. I did my best to colour inside the lines, which means there were times when I did not. My indifference was rewarded at the end of term with a middling mark. Fortunately, I have never been questioned about my map colouring skills in any subsequent job interview.

I wonder if kids are still subjected to this exercise in school, or whether it has passed into history like cursive writing and mental arithmetic? If you were to ask my young nephew for a map of the world, I think he would hand me his cell phone with some image the size of a large postage stamp (another relic of auld lang syne). Computer maps may excel in accuracy, and you can scroll in any direction for as long as you like, but they do not encourage the reader to stare at a certain spot and imagine what it must be like in whatever faraway land your gaze settles on. Open a good paper atlas of the word, and find Egypt. Follow the Nile south from Cairo, past Asyut, past Sohag. Look to where the river abruptly meanders to the east before curling back and resuming its north-south course at Luxor. That’s the Qena bend. On the east side of the river, find the agricultural road that follows the course of the Nile. It runs beside an irrigation canal, which some maps show, while others do not.

Now, a canal is not a line on a map. It is a blue-green watercourse in a vast sandy beige landscape. Its shores are green where date trees and shrubs have enough water to survive the heat of summer. The line where canal meets shore is smudged with dark green reeds that reach twice as high as a person stands in order to cast their seeds in the wind. The reeds are topped by fine light brown tassels. When you drive past them, they are easy enough to see, but there is something about them that makes them look blurry and indistinct. Rubbing your eyes does no good. The plant fibres are simply too thin to make them out individually. And so, when passing them at speed, they can only appear as a frustrating blur.

Frustrating, that is, until you decide that it’s OK for them to be blurry. A reed by a canal owes you, the viewer, nothing. It is under no obligation to reveal itself to you. Just go with it. It won’t be the only thing in your life that you can see, but not fully comprehend.

The road beside the canal is paved, but the car will still throw you back and forth because of the speed bumps embedded in it every couple of kilometres. There are more of them where the road skirts a village or at police checkpoints that mark regional boundaries. There are no traffic lights or “stop” signs to impede your progress, just the speed bumps, and sometimes people crossing the road, alone or in in pairs, on foot or donkey. Every type of vehicle uses the road: motorcycles, cars, minivans (the local system of shared transit), pickup trucks laden with large bunches of unripe bananas or red bricks or corroding tanks of welding gas. Enormous transport trucks roar through as well, filled with who-knows-what, their contents hidden by cheerful advertising graphics.

Occasionally, a car with foreign tourists rolls through. I wonder what the locals make of that. Children will wave if they notice us. Teenagers will too, but adults seldom bother. I like to wave back. For one, it makes me feel important (why deny it?), but also I don’t want to anyone to think that the outside world isn’t friendly and human, just like they are. Once, I waved to a young man by the side of the road, but received only a sullen stare in return. Did he see me? Was it wrong of me to wave first?

Maybe he was simply not in the mood for waving to simpering tourists. Who would be?

I sank a little deeper in my seat.

* * *

Scenery passes, and keeps on passing.

Weeks ago, we were in the north, driving between Giza and Dashur. The agricultural road there also runs beside a canal, but it couldn’t be more different from this one that runs from Luxor to Esna. In the north, the canal is sluggish, and often its banks are covered in garbage. In places, the canal is covered with broad green weeds that give the impression of health, but if you look more closely, you can see they obscure a floating layer of trash below. Somewhere near Saqqara, I saw a dead horse floating on its side with snow white egrets perched upon it.

Here in the south, the canal flows strong and clear. That much is plain even from the window of a speeding car. When you look out, away from shore, you can see the shape of the water’s surface – spreading and puddled – where it reflects the brightness of the sky. In places, ripples suggest unseen turbulence. Sand bars? Unseen rocks? The sun’s glare is too strong to make out anything more.

The sun shines in the sky, but sparkles on water. It’s mesmerizing. Always changing, and yet always the same dazzling brightness.

On the far bank, a man has brought a herd of sheep herd to the water for washing. He stands waist-deep in the canal, rubbing one animal’s back. The other sheep, a mass of black and white, watch from the shore.

* * *

There’s always some activity where the road crosses a local street. Often, you can see groups of men, each dressed in a grey or brown galabiya, each sitting idly on a painted wooden bench under the shade of palm trees. Teenagers play nearby if there isn’t any traffic, running on foot, or riding on bicycles, darting from one side of the road to the other, swooping like finches.

At one intersection, I saw a man standing in the road. He wore a dark galabiya which was spotted with patches of sandy dust. His hair was long, curly and uncared for. It was the colour of his hair that caught my eye. Light brown. Almost all Egyptian men have black hair. It’s a rule that can’t be escaped until the grey years of middle age. But this man had brown hair. Wild brown hair. I stared at him as our car passed, and for a moment, our eyes locked and he stared back. I expected an indifferent glance. but instead, found his focused and penetrating gaze. Its clarity was unnerving. The car lurched as it hit a speed bump, tossing my head forward, breaking the contact. Although we saw each other for less than a second, that brief moment has stayed with me. I wonder if he gave me any more than a passing thought?

* * *

Over on the far bank, a passenger train approaches at speed then passes swiftly. The carriages are silver and worn. The train leads with ones marked as second class, followed by shabbier third class ones. In second class, there is air conditioning. In third, the windows are open to the hot summer wind. There is no sign of first class.

The train passes with a hissing roar that is mostly lost in the distance across the canal. And then only the tracks remain. When the angle is right, the sun glints off the rails which must be highly polished under the passing wheels.

Many of the larger towns have rail yards and platforms. Many of the platforms look new. The yards do not. The first yard I saw had at least one siding which was home to the decaying shells of disused tankers and freight cars. Rusted, and with gaping holes in their sides, they looked as if they had been abandoned there decades before. I saw a small two-story brick building that looked to be the same vintage. It had been painted a number of times, to little effect. The ground floor windows had been covered by plywood; the upper windows were uncovered, but had no glass. I was ready to assume that it too had been left derelict until I noticed a young man in a window, leaning his elbow on the sill. His body was in shade, making it difficult to tell what he was doing, if anything. I imagined that he was staring into space, lost in thought. Perhaps he was listening to the radio.

Another city, another rail yard. And another identical two-story brick building. Only the first one was obviously occupied. The rest were empty, or were occupied only by ghosts in search of shelter from the noonday sun.

* * *

The canal ends at the Esna locks. I lost sight of the rail line on the outskirts of Aswan, the last Egyptian city before you reach Sudan. I like to tell people that Aswan is my favourite place in Egypt. It’s quiet, despite being a city. The air is clear. The Nile is clean. Almost everyone lives on the east bank where block after block of apartment buildings reach up from the corniche into the eastern hills. From there you can look back to the date palms and ficus trees at the water’s edge, and then to the golden cliffs on the west bank. That view has not changed much in hundreds of years. Thousands of years. I am just a visitor here, someone passing through. Come back in a week, and I’ll be gone, but the hills will remain. The sun will still cast shadows as it moves across the sky. Chirping birds will still greet the morning and sing the fall of night.

I love watching the Egyptian countryside as we drive though it. With nothing in particular to do, you’re free to take it in, without judgement. What do you see? What do you notice? Remember it if you can. Let it remind you of who you are. Let it change you if you need changing. And when you come out the other side, don’t worry about the next thing. Just be here for a moment, and be content with your own sense of wonder.

How can water taste so sweet?

How can a warm breeze ease all care?

How can something so peaceful be so exciting?

"How's Egypt?"

Sunday, October 10, 2016
Basma Hotel, Aswan

I got a Facebook message this morning: “How is Egypt?”

As I write this, I am sitting on the terrace of the Basma Hotel in Aswan. A warm breeze is blowing, and I can hear birds chirping, and somewhere, a rooster trying to wake up any late sleepers. Although Aswan is large enough to be called a city, the wind still carries the smell of wood smoke, and it is amazingly calm and quiet. There is a primary school somewhere nearby. I can hear a class of children repeating times-tables (the cadence is universal) and reading aloud, in unison. Looking out to the west, I can see Elephantine Island with its mud-brick walls and the gateway at the southern tip of the island. Farther out, the high sandy hills of the west bank is home to the tomb of the Aga Khan, a modest square building with a dome on top. Looking right, to the north, is Qubbet El Hawa, home to the rock cut tombs of the local governors of the 6th and 12th dynasties.

The western hills are golden in the morning light, capped with darker stones, some of which has fallen downslope. The river here is a deep blue, and runs fresh and clear so you can see plants growing in the shallows if you look down. On the riverbank, massive bunches of green reeds, some 10-15 feet high, provide shade and shelter for egrets and blue herons. If you're lucky, you may see a flock of white storks fly overhead, sometimes in formation, but sometimes scattered across the sky.

And then there's me, in a chair, under a shady awning, taking it all in.

That's how Egypt is.

Eddie Murphy and the Mosque of Abu el Haggag

Friday, October 10, 2016

Basma Hotel, Aswan

“Excuse me, mister! Hellooo!”

You hear this a lot in Luxor.

 “Taxi? Kalesh?”

You hear this a lot too.

“I am Eddie Murphy.”

This — not so much. But it was true. The man standing in my way was a dead ringer for comedian Eddie Murphy. He was about 5’6”, with receding hairline, a thin moustache, and a lopsided smile. He handed me his business card. It read: “Eddie Murphy / Car & Fluca / Welcome in Luxor”. There was a small colour mug shot too. It reminded me of something a real estate agent might give you.

“Is this your first time in Luxor?” he asked. I said that it wasn’t. “Welcome back,” he said, smiling broadly. “Do you need a taxi?”

If you stay in Luxor long enough, you can really get tired of answering this question. The best you can do is smile (it prevents you from feeling annoyed), and keep moving.

“Good morning madame!” he said, directing himself to Gayle, who was walking with me. “Where are you going today?”

“To the temple,” she replied, and pointed across the street to where the temple stood – a series of columned halls and carved stonework. “No need!”

“Maybe later?” Eddie asked. “Take my card. Call me if you need anything.” He gave us a friendly wave, and was gone.

(The actual exchange was somewhat longer than this. The real Eddie was a touch more persistent than the one I’m telling you about here. He’s just not that important to the story. But how many times do you meet someone named Eddie Murphy who has a card to prove it? Well. There was a guy in Cairo in 2000 who called himself Eddie Murphy. He didn’t much look like his namesake other than having a similar moustache and build. And a few years later, I was introduced to a camel called Eddie Murphy, but he looked nothing like Saturday Night Live alum. But I digress.)

We were on our way that bright and warm morning to visit Luxor Temple. On our last few visits to the temple, we had only seen it at night when it is dramatically lit. This is fine if you want to experience the romance of Egypt, or if you want to immerse yourself in its “mysteries”. It’s also good for viewing the wall reliefs because the raised reliefs are lit from below at night, which makes them much easier to see. Nevertheless, today I wanted to see it in full sun, in part to get a look at the recently cleaned Roman frescoes, but mostly to get a proper, clear-headed, scholarly look around.

I had a second mission too. In addition to a massive pylon, colossal statues of Rameses II, and peristyle courts, the temple is home to the Abu Haggag mosque. The mosque was built some time ago, before the temple had been excavated, when street level was higher than it is today. From inside the temple, the mosque now appears to have been built inexplicably high. There is a door at the back of the mosque which used to let out into a street, but now opens into space about 40 feet above the temple floor. I have visited Luxor Temple at least five times, but I have never made it into the mosque. This year, I resolved to go.

As Gayle and I approached the temple, I wondered what the protocol for visiting a mosque was. Is it OK to take pictures? Is there anywhere we shouldn’t go? Do you just walk in?

As I was thinking about these logistical concerns, a man I hadn’t noticed approach us said: “Welcome! Do you want to see the mosque? I’m the imam.” A middle-aged in a grey galabiya smiled at us and gestured to the steps that led inside.

“Yes, we would!” I said. “That’s why we’ve come.”

That was easier than I thought.

At the top of the stairs was a modest outdoor landing with green astroturf. A dark wooden cabinet by the wall had a number of cubbyholes – the sort you see in primary school class rooms. “You can leave your shoes there,” he told us. When we had done that, he motioned us inside.

You can’t help but sigh with relief, going from brilliant sun and unrelenting heat to cool indoor shade. As our eyes adjusted, we made out a small room which was mostly filled with a large wood enclosure lit with green lights. “This is the shrine of Abu El-Haggag”, the imam told us. Abu el-Haggag was a Sufi who came from Baghdad to Egypt. Now, he is considered a saint, but I don’t know why.

“Take pictures if you want,” he told us. I took a few of the shrine, before he led us through to another room with a number of worn carpets over a stone floor. Above us was a canopy of coloured fabrics that moved slightly in the breeze from outside, and moved more when a large electric fan looked its way. Muted light came in between gaps in the canopy and through three or four windows which looked out onto the ancient stone pylon. Large stone columns inscribed with the name of Ramesses II marked the corners of the space. I got the impression of being outdoors, despite indoors. Or possibly, the other way around.

He took us over to a window covered in a wooden screen. “Until 80 years ago,” he said, “this window was at street level. Now, it is very high. Please look.” I knew this window very well. It’s the one you see in the Ramesside court behind the first pylon.

While I can’t be sure, I have a feeling I was humming at this part of the tour. Apparently, I hum when I’m in my happy place. It’s usually some pop tune from my youth whose title has some oblique connection to where I am. Now that I think of it, the main character from The English Patient does the same thing. It was an unconscious act for him as well.

The imam took us into the main part of the mosque where the prayers are held. I asked how many people come to pray. “About 700,” he said, “but only on Fridays.” He gestured to us to come a bit closer. “Abu Haggag was a Sufi,” he said. “For Sufi, there is one god. Adam, Eve, all people – they are the same. You understand? No difference. Christian, Jewish, Muslim: all fine. Everyone is the same. Other types of Islam . . . “ He shrugged in a way that indicated a slight annoyance. “Other types of Islam are different. But for Sufi, everyone is the same. Equal.”

He introduced us to a colleague who had been reading a book when we came in. He introduced himself and shook our hands in welcome. This man organizes aid to local orphans, we were told. “If you would like to make a donation for the orphans, you can give it to him. Or not – as you like.” Gayle slipped him a few bills which he gratefully accepted.

We were shown an outdoor deck that looked out into the temple. “Take as many pictures as you like,” he reminded me. “Anywhere you like.”

From that vantage point, you could see the larger-than-life statues of Ramesses II in his peristyle court, and the even larger seated statue of the pharaoh at the entrance to Tutankhamun’s pillared hall. It is a view of that statue that I have never had before.

I was probably humming quiet loudly at this point.

The imam gave us as much time as we wanted in each part of the mosque, and answered all of our questions freely and openly. He talked about peace and being good to people. It’s thoughts like this that make me hopeful for the future. “More of that,” I said to Gayle.

“OK?” the imam asked. We nodded. He led us back the way we came, back to the entrance of of the mosque. We retrieved our shoes, and thanked him for the splendid tour.

On the way out, Gayle turned to me. “Yes?” she asked.

"Yes," I said.

A Few Words on Egyptian Real Estate

September 28, 2016

Horus Hotel

Minya, Egypt

Our guide Remi told us a bit about Egyptian real estate.

You see many apartment buildings, he said, where the outside is just brick, and maybe one floor is finished and has windows, and another floor might still be empty. The easiest apartments to sell are the ones on the top floor. The ones lower down maybe aren’t sold.

What happens is: someone – typically one person – pays to put up the shell of the building. When you buy an apartment, it’s up to you to finish it. So that’s the electrical, the plumbing, and so on. The owner of the building is responsible for paining the outside, but everything else is up to you.

Some people, he told us, when they’re in their 50s, or even in their 40s, buy an apartment for their son or daughter. It may sit empty for many years, but some people say that it is better to put your money into real estate than to put it in the bank. If something happens to the bank, you lose your money, but real estate holds its value. They are usually right.

You may finish the apartment as you go – as you can afford it. A little now, a little later.

And this is why you often see unfinished apartment building in Egypt.

City of the Dead

26 September, 2016

Movenpick Hotel, Giza

Yesterday, we drove by the City of the Dead in Cairo. This is a massive cemetery, started when the Arabs conquered the City in 642. It has been growing ever since. Here’s a picture.

This is just one small part of the City of Dead. In the foreground, you see hundreds of two-room buildings. Each structure belongs to a family. When a family member dies, they are buried in the “house”, which functions as a mausoleum.

For many years now, people have been living in these structures. People who have emigrated from the countryside, or who have been displaced from somewhere else in the city, or those who simply have no where else to go, live here. It is a real “city” within a city.

Remi, our local tour guide and fixer was asked whether his family had a mausoleum in the City of the Dead. He said that they did.

This raised the question: If there are people living in your mausoleum, what do you do when someone in your family dies? Remi looked off to the side for a moment. His mouth turned up in a quizzical expression. “We have a gentleman’s agreement with the people who live there. When someone dies, we call them up and tell them we’re coming. They move their furniture and stuff out of one of the rooms, and leave. Then we come in, and have the burial. After that, we call them to say that we are done, and they move back in.”

This seems like a sensible and fair arrangement. Had this been Canada or the United States, could there be any doubt that lawyers and the courts would have been involved? Or that there would have been some attempt to evict the inhabitants? What would that accomplish? If you never visit your family mausoleum, what difference would it make?

“Bread and social justice” was spoken of frequently during the revolution. Food feeds the body, but treating those who have less than you as human beings – that feeds the soul.

Street Art

September 24, 2016

Rameses Hilton, Cairo

Fridays mark the start of the weekend in Cairo. Traffic over the 6^th October bridge was noticeably light. Light for Cairo, that is. The stream of cars was steady, but the honking, which is synonymous with Cairo drivers, had all but disappeared. Drivers honk when they want another driver to know something – usually that they are about to overtake them, or that they are changing lanes, of that they are about to hit you. It’s a friendly way of exchanging information. It’s noisier than the way we do it at home, but it works.

This Friday morning, we hired a car and a guide to take us out past the City of the Dead to see a recent piece of street art by the artist who goes by eL Seed. It is a very large circular mural in white and bright colours that spans a neighbourhood of red brick apartment buildings in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Cairo. To get there, our minivan had to navigate narrow streets filled with pedestrians, cars, and in a few places, livestock. We saw pickup trucks carrying bags of garbage up from the city to this neighbourhood where it is processed, and where some recycling is done.

Mustafa, our guide, told us about the problem Carienes have had getting their trash picked up. In the beginning, you paid the city for electricity and garbage collection on two different bills. This was mostly fine. Then, the city decided to put both services on one bill – for efficiency perhaps -- so you paid for electricity and garbage in one lump sum. And that was mostly OK until the garbage collectors stopped coming. What did people do? They refused to pay their bill. Which meant the city turned off their power. In order to show their disapproval, people dumped their garbage in front of government buildings.

It’s outside of the area where the garbage processors work where eL Seed created a work called “Perception”. To see it, we drove up into the hills, up to the Church of Saint Marcus and the nearby monastery. Mustafa spoke to the owner of a local restaurant, who let us into their second story dining room, the ideal vantage point to see the artwork. Here is what what saw:

It’s a remarkable achievement – all done unofficially. Lovely. You can listen to eL Seed discuss the project in his TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/el_seed_a_project_of_peace_painted_across_50_buildings

On the drive back to the hotel, Mustafa asked if there was anything else we wanted to do. “More street art?” he suggested. We said that we were up for anything.

He took us a couple of blocks from the south end of Tahrir Square, the site of the largest protests during the revolution. It’s near the American University in Cairo. There, you can still see some of the street art that was created to speak out against President Mubarak, and then later, President Morsi. Under the Muslim Brotherhood, making art that was critical of the government was punishable by up to six years in prison. The police kept watch and detained anyone they thought was involved in such work. Street artists would have someone stand lookout as they worked, and would raise the alarm if they saw the police approaching. The police later changed tactics and instead drove by in unmarked cars, trying to photograph the artists at work. Political art was routinely, and in come cases, repeatedly painted over by the police.

Despite the police crackdown, but also because of the revolution that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood, some of the artwork remains. Here is a sampling:

The demands, illustrated: Social justice and bread. The skull-headed figure with the eyeballs on the far right alludes to a disturbing practice of collecting eyeballs from those caught protesting the government.  The red eyes of the man eating a piece of pits says it all.

The puppet depicts then-President Morsi as a puppet of sinister forces.  I asked Mustafa about the significance of the cat-face stencil -- I saw it in a number of works -- but he did not know.

A harrowing depiction of mothers grieving for the children, killed while protesting.

Sheep brain. This may be my favourite for its brevity and arresting visual style.

After seeing this, what is there to think, other than: Jesus.

Who is the Most Interesting Person You Met Today?

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Rameses Hilton
Cairo

Who is the most interesting person you met today?

My knee jerk reaction is to say Tohary Elkerdawy, a man I met on the observation deck of the Cairo Tower. The tower is a tall, slender concrete structure with a lattice exterior – an arabesque – with diamond-shaped holes every few metres which expose the building’s inner core. It rises 187m above Zamalek, a large treed island in the Nile that is home to the Cairo Opera House, an athletic club, a few large western hotels, and the Tower, which you can see from Tahrir square and the Egyptian Museum. It is the tallest man-made structure in the city.

A flight of polished steps leads you up from the garden that surrounds the tower to a lobby where a small grey elevator takes you up. It is a modern building, but the elevator still has an operator, a throwback to the days when elevators were cantankerous mechanical organisms that needed care and attention. The operator was a young man in a uniform – dress pants, a collared shirt and a vest. He ushered us in – five young and mostly slim Egyptian men, my mother, and myself. He pressed a button that any of us could have pressed, and when we had reached the top, ushered us out. I am a firm believer that all work is honourable, but that said, I would rather not have the honour of his job.

The observation deck encircles the tower, and is wide enough for two people to walk abreast if they are friendly. I suppose hostile parties could turn sideways and imagine the other does not exist.

Cairo in September is warm. In the middle of the day, with the sun beaming in a cloudless sky, the temperature runs in the high 30s. On the tower’s exterior deck, it was at least that warm, possibly warmer because we were high in the air, that much closer to the sun.

From this height, you can see that Zamalek is an island, and that the Nile passes it on either side, grey-green and placid. Farther out, over the iron railing that prevents you from walking out into space, you see Cairo: mile after mile of dun coloured apartment buildings and mosques. From this height, there doesn’t seem to be much difference from one block to the next. Almost everything is about 8 stories tall, and is made of brick. Some of the big hotels are taller, as is the massive Mogamma, an artless government building that embodies what George Orwell had in mind when he wrote 1984. And it goes on for as far as the eye can see, which is limited by smog, and eventually, the hills to the east. You can see the pyramids if you know they’re there. They are three grey triangles on the south-west horizon, two large ones, and one noticeably smaller.

It was here, while working up the nerve to leave the security of the tower wall, and step out towards the railing that I saw a man in his 40s taking his own picture with a cellphone. I carry a massive SLR around my neck that is impossible to miss, even if you have turned sideways and are trying to imagine that I don’t exist. It screams both “tourist” and “photographer” -- serious photographer, even. So I often get requests from other tourists to take their pictures because I must know what I’m doing.

“Could you? Selvie?” The man held out his phone to me. “No problem,” I said. He struck a pose, and I snapped a picture of him with apartment blocks and haze behind him. “Let me take another,” I said, and moved to get his other side, which was in better light. I handed the phone back. “You’d better check,” I said. “Did I do it right?” He looked at what I had done, and then motioned for me to join him at the railing. He put one arm around my shoulders, and with the other, took a picture of the two of us. Selvie, I thought. Oh. Right.

“Where you from?” he asked.

“Canada,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. He paused, and I could see his face shift and twist the way it does when you try to think of a word. “You speak English?” he asked. I said that I did. He responded with a slightly disappointed expression. “French?” I suggested. “Italian?” I asked, holding my thumb and index fingers apart to show that I spoke only a little. “Arabic,” I said, pinching my fingers almost shut. We laughed. From then on, he simply spoke Arabic to me, most of which I did not understand. I did catch that he was from, or was soon going to Ad-Dahar in Hurghada, a resort destination on the Red Sea. “In your plan?” he asked.

In your plan. This is not really what he said to me. A native English speaker wouldn’t word the question that way, and I doubt even the most misdirected English-as-a-Second-Language course would either. In your plan. From the context alone, I could tell that this was not what he said, leaving me to surmise that somewhere, in the Arabic language, there is a string of words which, when said 187m in the air, sound exactly like the English words “in your plan.” Douglas Adams suggested this very thing was possible in one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books, but in his book, it happened on a distant world between alien species. Here in Cairo, it was between two middle aged tourists who were trying to find words to communicate under a scorching sun.

“Fadze,” he said. “Fadze book.” He held up his phone and pointed to a white lower case letter “F” on a blue background, the icon for Facebook. I lit up with recognition which encouraged him. “Facebook, What’s App, Learn,” he said, showing me the apps he had on his phone. He started “Learn” which turned out to be something that teaches you to read and speak other languages. He tapped the screen, and a woman’s voice said “The girls play basketball,” in clear English. Words appeared on the screen as the voice read them out loud. “Cool!” I said, and I meant it. “I need this to learn Arabic.”

Tohary and me.

“Number,” he said. “Fadzebook number?” Was he asking me for my Facebook page? I’m not even sure how to do that. Does it really have a number? I have no idea. Facebook is a program that I sometimes look at, but I have never really figured out how to use it properly (whatever that might mean. Do I imagine it has a wealth of untapped features that, because of my ignorance, are only for the cognoscenti?) “I don’t have a phone,” I said. This was almost true. I have a phone, at home, seven time zones away, which I sort of know how to use, but not really. It does not have Facebook on it.

I ended up shrugging. “No cell phone. My sisters have cell phones”, I said, for no particular reason. “They use their phones all the time. They’re young. I’m too old for them.” He said a few more things in Arabic to me, which were tantalizingly familiar. Ana min . . . – I am from. I heard him say the number one, and “Hurghada” again. Neither of us really seemed to mind that we were having almost no success in language.

“Have you walked all the way around?” I asked, gesturing to the walkway. He shook his head. I made a gesture that I hoped would be seen as “Let’s walk”, and so we slowly headed back to the other side of the platform where we could see a different, but similar view of the city. By then, my mother had found me. She had been off speaking to a group of happy young women from Cairo and Palestine who were taking in the sights. “This is my mother,” I said. They shook hands and after a few smiles, he suggested we take another picture, this time with the three of us.

I pointed to the indistinct pyramids off in the distance. He did something with his phone which brought up pictures of himself at Giza: Tan pyramids against a deep blue sky. A friend standing in front of an Old Kingdom tomb. Himself, in profile, slightly stooped, appearing to kiss the Sphinx on the lips, even though it was actually off in the distance. We all had a good laugh when we saw it. I have seen a lot of silly tourist pictures, but I hadn’t seen that one. There were pictures of a party, and in some of them, a young man in his 20s, with an open face and short dark hair. His son. “Nice,” I said, nodding in approval. Look at any cellphone, anywhere in the world, and this is what you’ll see: Pictures of good times, good friends, and the people you love.

He tried his Facebook question one more time. In desperation, I reached into my knapsack, and brought out a pen and a small notebook. It got a good reaction. He wrote his name in English and in Arabic: Tohary Elkerdawy, followed by his Facebook something-or-other, which he wrote entirely in Arabic. I can recognize Arabic letters when they are carefully printed, but handwriting is subtly different, and is more of a challenge. “Thank you,” I said. Shokran. I pointed to my mother and my self, and then to the elevator. It was time for us to go. We shook hands, and went our separate ways.

I can only hope that tonight, Tohary is with friends, and that when he shows them pictures of the strangers he met today, high atop the Cairo Tower, that he will have kind things to say about them, and that he will talk about how we came together over his cell phone more than how we didn’t come together when it came to language. And that he will laugh when he tells the story.

A Small View of a Large City

21 September 2016
Rameses Hilton, Cairo

It is the equinox today. That probably means little to most people other than the fact that it’s the first day of autumn, but to a science nerd, it means that the length of the day is the same as that of the night. You could see it illustrated quite neatly on the flight yesterday, if you had been paying attention. The panel built into the seat back showed a map of the world, with “Toronto” and “Cairo” picked out at either ends of a cartoon arc that ran from west to east. Under that, the line that divides the day from the night snaked across the world, running almost exactly north and south, which it does on only two days in the year: the equinoxes. It’s because the line runs north-south that there are equal amounts of light and darkness.

Did you know that? Do you care? Be honest. You have no one to impress or offend.

Anyway, look: It’s night time in Cairo right now. The intense heat of day broke a bit after sunset at 6:05, but the stop and go traffic on the 6^th October bridge hasn’t seemed to notice. The honking, the exhaust, the casual attention paid to lane markings all continued into the evening, except that now, one side of the roadway over to Zamalek is marked out with a line of bright taillights.

South of the bridge, blue, ping, and green neon lights line the river:. Floating restaurants and nearby hotels are lit up in colours as deep as the sun was bright a few hours before. Two long party boats work their way up stream and back. Although their hulls are decorated with frantically flashing pink and green lights, and despite the background of car horns, their motion on the black unseen water is smooth and stately. Calm. Regal.

I am on the hotel balcony as I watch the traffic, many stories below. I take a deep breath. Nowhere else smells like this. The air is is warm, but not humid, a cocktail of diesel, dust, and wood smoke. There is less wood smoke than in 2000, and there was more horse to the mix. Breathing the scent of the city is an intimate act, like standing close to a lover. It elicits a small surge of excitement.

To the south, just past the elevated roadways that leads to the bridge and the corniche, you can see the pink dome of the Egyptian Museum. Past that, is Tahrir Square, site of the revolution in January 2011. Surrounding all of that is the part of the city I think of as “downtown”, though I have no idea if that is anywhere close to the truth. From here, roads run like spokes away from the square, filled with Belle Epoque apartment buildings, and street level shops, and parked cars, and the occasional spindly tree that makes a valiant attempt to live despite the heat and the dust and smog.

I have heard twice today that 100 million people leave [sic] in Cairo. The number is closer to 20 million; the population of all Egypt is approaching 100 million. I must have misunderstood, although I did not mis-hear. A Cairene says the word “live” as if he is saying “leave”. When I first came here, 16 years ago, these two ideas were being exercised simultaneously by young Egyptians. Without many opportunities for work in the country, many were choosing to leave, first for education, and then to make a living. In order to live, you had to leave. I wonder if that has changed since the revolution?

So many thoughts tonight. The thread of one, when picked at, frees another, and another. Ideas flow from one to the other, unhurried, and barely examined.  Cairo may still hum into the night, but I’m beat. I slide the heavy balcony door shut, and go to bed.