If you follow this website with any frequency you will have noticed that I have been in Egypt for most of the month. Here are some notes about my experiences…
I spent the majority of time in Cairo with only a few days down the Nile to Luxor, the capital in the Pharaoh’s time and now a kind of historical Disneyland. There were two reasons for this: one, my son – a Junior at USC – is spending a semester abroad in Cairo; the other is that no matter how interesting the history surrounding a place is, I am always most interested in what’s happening right now.
With my son Ken acting as tour guide and running interference on the constant bargaining involved in almost any transaction, we went off to see the sights. We experienced the melodious anarchy that is Cairo’s traffic, sampled the local delicacies: shish kabob, lamb, veal, pigeon, rabbit, koshary (a bowl with every carb imaginable), Turkish coffee and hookah; all very tasty and generally very cheap.
Throughout Egypt and the Middle East there is a constant hustle by people offering you something: a taxi, souvenirs, help with your bags, a guided tour… you get the idea. At my first experience with this several years ago I was turned off and upset, but after a while I started to see this in the larger context of a service economy, people trying to help you do what you need to do, to get you something better than what you might get on your own, and of course to profit from their assistance.
Walking into any ancient tourist attraction with my large camera resulted in quiet offers to take pictures where they were not allowed, advice on the best vantage point for a photo, or even help climbing to the top of a small pyramid with a commanding view. Of course there was always an open palm extended at the end of these offers, but it seemed these people were at least as interested in the brief conversation and friendship as in the bakshish, or tip. Are you happy? Yes, I was.
Almost everyone I met was very friendly — sometimes too friendly — but all spoke enough English to have a simple conversation with and most spoke English well. Where are you from? America? How about Obama? was a frequent course of conversation, and a positive comment about our new President was always greeted with a large smile and sometimes a reduced price. The President’s address to Turkey’s parliament while I was in Egypt only improved the already buoyant attitude towards America version 44.
While most visitors are interested in the antiquities from thousands of years ago, Cairo itself is an antiquity of sorts. The newer buildings date from 1860-1930, in a number of European styles including quite a few art deco buildings. But they seem frozen in time, with no effort at modernization other than the air conditioner outside every window. These buildings seemed to be in a slow decay just like the pyramids at the city limit, and everything is coated with a fine layer of desert sand like a sepia filter on the entire city. (Just to clarify, there are many new buildings especially in the outlying areas, but the overall impression is generally old and rundown.)
Cairo goes about it’s business under a lackadaisical kind of martial law. Everywhere you will encounter armed police of all different jurisdictions, from “Tourist Police” who make sure visitors get along okay, to “Antiquities Police” who guard the temples and tombs. All have AK-47-type rifles, but seem half-asleep most the time — in any case there is no tension in the air about their presence whatsoever. I heard their weapons are not even loaded, although I was not able to test this out firsthand ;-)
Whether because of the Police presence or not, Cairo is a very safe city. There is no robbery, assault or theft, the major crime is agreeing to pay too much for a taxi ride or other price negotiation. Tourists will always pay more, although Ken was able to pay less by negotiating in Arabic and being more aware of the going price for things.
There was another thing that was eye-opening. My family are Jews from Iraq, and as in Baghdad there was a large Jewish community in Cairo until the establishment of Israel in 1948. In fact there are several synagogues in Cairo that are open for visitors. Growing up in New York we were always taught about the bonds among Jews and how the Arabs were the bad guys. But walking around Cairo, seeing one person in 10 that looked like a distant relative while reliving scenes from visits to my grandparents, I started to question the part about being more a Jew than an Arab. While of course the average Egyptian is outraged by the behavior of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians — as are a growing number of Jewish Americans and Israelis — Egyptians do realize the contributions that Eqypt’s Jews made to their country, not only in ancient times but also in the 19th and 20th centuries. After living together in peace and prosperity for hundreds of years, I left with hope that relations between Arabs and Jews could become friendly once more, if only the Palestine issue were resolved. These people are much more similar than than they are different.
Posted by hermosawave 
Posted by hermosawave 
Posted by hermosawave 
1984, the year of Big Brother, was 25 years ago. And on January 24,1984 Apple introduced the Apple Macintosh, the computer that changed everything.
