Gehen Sie wie ein Ägypter

Well boys and goyles, I've finally gotten around to procuring and retyping that letter I wrote while I was visiting Brandon in Egypt. I've neglected to edit it for readability, so I apologize ahead of time for my excessive use of parentheses. Since I was writing in ink when I originally wrote the thing, I wasn't able to reorganize my sentences at will, so I just tacked on afterthoughts as parenthetical asides. So here it is in all its glory:

I’m happy to report that I made it to Egypt safe and sound. This is my third day here (the very beginning of it) and Brandon and I have already made the foray to Alexandria and back to Cairo. Before I mention anything about that little expedition, I’ll give you some of my first impressions of Cairo from the first few hours after stepping off the plane.

The first thing I noticed – and it hit me like a brick in the face (or the lungs, as the case may be) – was the air pollution. At first, I thought that perhaps it was a localized pocket of smog around the airport, but when we got out of the taxi near Brandon’s dorm, I still felt like I was breathing air with a consistency approximately equal to that of a concrete slurry. Of course, just as I was thinking this and quietly gasping for some O2, Brandon was telling me how that particular area, the island of Zamalek in the middle of the Nile, is where the rich Egyptians move to because of its relative cleanliness and dense foliage (both of these are extremely relative measures). I’m not surprised that over 30,000 people in Cairo die every year due to pollution related illnesses. From what I can tell, its almost entirely car pollution that hangs in the air like pea soup with occasional chunks of ham and pork fat. Brandon said there are a few power plants in the area that contribute to the problem, but that industry accounts for only about 13% of Egypt’s economy, and, so I gather, isn't large enough to produce that much floating filth. (On second thought, I now recall reading somewhere that there are several foundries in the city that aren’t controlled with regard to their pollution output. I suppose I could believe that to be a significant factor – I’m pretty sure most foundries that used to operate in the US have been moved to other countries, since it was virtually impossible for them to meet American environmental standards.) Anyway, you get the idea. I guess you get used to it though; I didn’t have so much trouble breathing last night. I guess it’s probably a bit like taking up smoking.

The second thing that struck me, or rather, would have struck me were it not for my excessive agility and dexterity (yeah, right) was the traffic here. I thought driving in Mexico was crazy! Oh, how sheltered a life I have lived! Brandon and I just about bit it when we crossed ten lanes of traffic in Alexandria, none of which showed any signs of slowing. Perhaps the cities here are designed to be so hazardous to pedestrians as part of some sort of sick eugenics program meant to weed out the slow and weak members of the population. To be honest though, I haven’t seen any pedestrian/car accidents since I’ve been here. Perhaps all the slow people have already long since become human pancakes.

Though I expect cities to have their fair share of litter, I’m sad to say the beaches of Alexandria have an even worse time of it than the city streets. Not only were they choked with the random bits of garbage blown from the streets, they were also host to whatever flotsam happened to be carried in by the waves. The result was a sandy strip of land that bore far more resemblance to the top layer of a landfill than a sunbathing area (which I guess isn’t that much of a problem, since Egyptians don’t really sunbathe.)

I will balance all these negative observations with a couple of very nice things I’ve noticed. First off, most people here (with the exception of minor bureaucrats, whose only job it is to stand outside national points of interest (i.e. The Great Library (the new one that is)) after closing hours and prevent people from so much as even getting close enough to look at the building’s façade) (yay nested parentheticals!) are extremely friendly and helpful. A disclaimer about the shopkeepers should be made though. I just came back from the Egyptian Museum a few minutes ago, and on my way about four or five “friendly” people came up to me – apparently I look kind of Egyptian, but my camera bag was a dead giveaway that I was a tourist – and proceeded to ask me if I needed any help, ask me where I was going, and to tell me that they thought the US was an awesome place and that I was a cool guy. Then they’d tell me that they wished me a pleasant journey, and of, why don’t you come by my shop so I can give you some tea, etc., etc. I’ve heard this whole spiel from Brandon – rather, stories about it- so I knew what to expect. I actually did go into one guy’s shop where he sold perfumes and colognes, and they actually seemed like quality products at fairly reasonable prices (although that’s by US standards, so they were probably hideously expensive by the Egyptian metric), but I really wasn’t interested in buying anything. After turning down the tea, politely chuckling at the invitation to visit the guy’s family’s cottage off somewhere outside of Cairo, sampling different fragrances, sitting through the demonstration of all the perks of alcohol-free perfumes, etc., etc., I lied and said that I had only 50 Egyptian pounds on me, 10 pounds less than the cheapest product and told him that I needed to go meet a friend, which was not entirely untrue. Concerning the money though, I had just gotten cash out from the ATM the night before and had about 250 pounds on my person. So, this is when I said I would come back another day to which he replied that he would be away at a trade show for two weeks, but he would sell the small bottle for 50 pounds. When I got up to leave, realizing he was going to make a sale, he told me to stop by during the week and maybe he’d be there. Heh… trade show? Yeah, right.

Before that guy was another one who was trying to get me to buy some beer and cigarettes for him from one of the nearby hotel duty-free shops, but I got my way out of that one by telling him I didn’t have my passport on me (another lie). After both of the above guys, some more tried approaching me, but I pretended to not speak English, replying to them in German.

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, if you neglect the people who are friendly because of profit seeking motives, people here seem to be genuinely enthusiastic about helping other people out. I think an easy way to separate these two categories of people is that the former group tends to approach you, while the genuine ones are the people you go up to in the street and request help from. In the US, people will give you the information you request of them, but here, the people you ask are really, really excited about the fact that you’ve just asked.

I’ve gained another perspective on this matter today. Brandon and I went to the Coptic Museum and then wandered around the Coptic quarter of the city (this is Cairo I’m still referring to). The neighborhoods we ended up walking through were what Brandon said were probably middle to middle-upper class areas, a fact apparently indicated by the mere presence of tress, since the poorer sectors are so densely populated, there simply isn’t room for foliage. Anyway, as we made our way through the area, many people just waved to us and said hello - in English, since I guess we were pretty obviously tourists - and then went along on their business. Many of the people who said hello to us were kids, some of whom did end up asking for money, but most of whom were just being outgoing and terribly cute.

Two other things I enjoyed about this less affluent part of the city were the reduced level of traffic and the apparent absence of government oversight and intervention. As I mentioned before, traffic in the wealthier areas of the city is rather frightening and over whelming, but in this sector, a good part of the car traffic is replaced by donkeys and horses, generally drawing carts of produce or hay (or something that looked vaguely like it). Though one has to be careful where one steps, with natural land mines abounding, it was a nice reprieve, not having to worry about becoming a fly on a windshield.

The second item, which I only noticed after Brandon mentioned it, was the complete lack of visible security forces and other governmental personnel, In the part of Cairo where we have been spending most of our time, there are one or three or five police officers with AK-47s or some other automatic weapon positioned every half block or so, and while I’m sure this is very effective at preventing any trouble by would-be criminals, it’s also more than just a little disconcerting. It seems to be a direct instrument of the authoritarian government for use in quelling not only crime, but any sort of political protests or uprisings as well. There’s definitely a Big Brother effect here, always being observed by government cronies. One redeeming thing about the situation though, is that it seems like many of the security forces don’t take their jobs too seriously, and are therefore often more preoccupied with eating an ice cream cone than observing my potentially suspicious / subversive activities. (My pen has run out of ink, so it’s time for an exciting new color!)

Back to the point though. These somewhat poorer areas seem to not be on the Egyptian government’s list of high priority security zones, so one can walk around those parts without the stress that comes with passing through such a heavily armed area as the main city center. This is not to say that I have panic attacks when I walk around the heavily guarded areas, just that I can’t say it’s my favorite thing in the world. Brandon just mentioned something – there are 140,000 US troops in Iraq, while Egypt’s security forces number around 1,000,000; one of these countries has an insurgency, the other does not. Perhaps he has a point.

I had some much more organized thoughts on this particular point, but they’ve completely escaped me, so I’m going to quit and avoid slipping into redundancy, if I haven’t already done so.

Something I’ve grown used to in the past couple days is the call to prayer five times a day. If it’s a good crier doing the singing, it’s actually quite soothing, especially when napping around 9:30 in the evening, just after the sun has gone down.

I forget if I’ve mentioned the taxis yet. I could go reread what I’ve already written, but quite frankly, I’m just too lazy for that. I’ll just assume I haven’t and apologize if I have. Anyway, all the taxis here, except for the shiny new looking ones by the airport, are these imported, secondhand Italian and Soviet tin can taxis, mostly made by Peugeot in the late 70s and early 80s. I don’t think I’ve seen a single taxi with a working speedometer or clock, but about 75% of them have some sort of colored LED lights build into the headlights, color changing lamps in the headliners, or musical brakes. For some reason, the taxi drivers didn’t seem to care if little things like door handles worked, so long as they had a tricked out car.

You know what makes me sick? How people back home complain about how taxes are too high and how the government is stealing their livelihood, when there are people – so many people – around the world who make only a fraction of what the average American can afford to pay in taxes. When I was in London several years ago, I had dinner with my friend, Sanjay, and his aunt at an Indian restaurant where the bill came to 110 British pounds for the three of us. Now, this was in fact the most expensive meal I’d ever eaten, but the fact that I could afford to have it (actually, Sanjay’s aunt paid for the whole thing, but the point is that I could have paid for it) is what I want to use for the sake of example. The conversion of my portion of the bill comes to 440 Egyptian pounds. According to Brandon, the average monthly wage for a lower class Egyptian is 300 Egyptian pounds, or about $55 USD. I was able to eat my way through a month and a half of someone’s wages in an hour or two. Yesterday, a little boy came up to me and tried to sell me some tissues for 25 piasters (about 6 cents), but I didn’t have any bills smaller than a 20-pound note, so I refused. He followed me for about a quarter of a block, and at one point tapped me on my arm and looked me right in the eye while making motions that he wanted money so he could eat. It just about broke my heart. If there weren’t so many like him, I would have given 20 pounds, but I can’t help all of them. I feel bad now though. I really wish I’d given him something.

A few nights ago, Brandon and I met two American girls and a Swedish girl at the hostel we were staying at here in Cairo, with whom we quickly became friends. One evening, we all went out for shisha (none for me though), drinks, and then went dancing at the Hard Rock Café. Well, one thing led to another and the following night (maybe it was two nights later), Brandon found himself in charge of doing laundry for one of the girls, since he had free access to a washing machine in his dorm. (Now, if you’re wondering why I haven’t just been staying in Brandon’s dorm this whole time, it’s because they would have charged me $20 USD per night, which would cover only the privilege of staying in the building and not such exorbitant luxuries like a bed, or even a pillow. For a smaller fee, we’ve been renting a private, two bed room at a hostel, which even includes breakfast, if you can call a hardboiled egg and a piece of bread “breakfast.”) Anyway – excuse my handwriting for the next little while, as I’m currently on a train bound for Luxor, and it feels like the shocks on this car are probably the original equipment from the 1970s – we were going to start the laundry, go to dinner, pick up the dried clothes, and then bring them back to the girl at the hostel before 1:15am, which is when she needed to leave for the airport. It was all according to plan, and we were in a taxi, merrily making our way back to the hostel when I realized it: Brandon had forgotten to grab her bra, which he had hung up to dry in his closet. Since we were already running slightly late, per Brandon’s modus operandi, it brought an “oh shit!” expression to his face. We were faced with the choice of making the girl late getting to the airport by turning around and fetching the lost garment, or being accursed of being bra thieves. Clearly, the only option was to turn back. This would also make for an interesting situation back at his dorm, since the male and female wings of the dorm are segregated to the point of having armed guards protecting the entrances, ensuring that there is absolutely no fornication. In an environment like that, a guy walking around carrying women’s underwear is likely to draw more attention than a raised eyebrow, and is unlikely to go unnoticed, if not by the gender police, then by the three to five armed guards monitoring the metal detector at the front door. Fortunately, Brandon had the good sense to stow the contraband unmentionables in a bag, and had the good fortunate that bags are only inspected on the way into the building and not on the way out. After a taxi ride back to the hostel fraught with traffic violations (but what taxi ride here isn’t? The trip to the train station this evening involved a shortcut that constituted driving about a kilometer down a single-lane, one-way street in the wrong direction), we sprinted our way up the stairs in the building and conducted a high-speed hand off, as we ran unto the girl on her way down to catch her taxi. Hmm… As I read that story again, I realize that perhaps it was one of those ‘you had to be there’ incidents. Oh well.

After so proudly resisting the scams of shopkeepers and street vendors for almost a week, I’ve finally fallen victim, completely of my own doing. When we were walking to the main square near the hostel to catch a cab, I saw one of the street merchants selling cologne, one of which was in a bottle of the same brand my dad used to wear, but hasn’t been able to find anywhere in about 15 years. (I’m going to take a break here because the bouncing of the train is making it bouncing of the train is making it way hard to write. Don’t get your hopes up though; I’ll be back soon! * Alright, I’m here again, this time with better penmanship. Did you miss me?) On an impulse, I bought a bottle of the stuff for 15 pounds without even smelling it to make sure it was real. Well, the fact that I paid about $2.75 USD for it should have been my first clue that something was fishy, but had I taken the time to examine the goods before running off with them, I would have realized it was an old, dinged up bottle that had been refilled with cologne of the proper color, but smelled nothing like the real thing. Though it was really an insignificant sum I was swindled out of, it still serves to rekindle my frustration with the Egyptian approach to business. Except for a very small minority, I don’t think Egyptians are familiar with the concept of making money by selling legitimate goods and services rather than tricking people into buying crap. When Brandon and I were going to the Egypt Air ticket office to book a flight from Luxor back to Cairo, we had three or four people come up to us and try to convince us that their friends could get us a much cheaper flight, and besides, the Egypt Air office was closed, a complete and flagrant lie, since I could see it across the street and there were clearly people inside. When we got to Luxor this morning, some guy volunteered to show us where our hostel was – which is incidentally called “Happy Land;” ‘Yes sir, could you please take me to Happy land? I love padded walls!” – but en route, he told us he was the owner’s son and that they had just had a large group come in and fill all the rooms and that he was going to take us to another hotel, also owned by his father. Again, yeah, right… As Brandon would say, “And I’m Hosni Mubarak’s son!”

Oh dear. I think Brandon needs to see some bikini clad women, stat! He seems like he’s dealt with it fairly well until now, but I think going on five months of living in a country with a national policy of near universal sexual repression is starting to wear on him. We met this girl at our hostel tonight, and later on he kept talking about how attractive her ankles were. He said something to the effect of, “That much ankle is like porn to me.” He’s getting desperate here and needs immediate treatment.

Well, I think that’s all the news from Lake Woebegone, or at least all that I care to write for the time being. I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!

Sincerely, honestly, truthfully, and sometimes hyperbolically yours,

Michael