Starting to sightsee (& my first Egyptian wedding) (10.21.07)

Taxi at night on Al-Haram in Giza:

Wedding Zeffa in Lobby:

I consider this my first "full" day in Cairo despite the fact that we didn't leave the hotel until 2:00 ;-). I woke up in Cairo and went to sleep in Cairo, so I think it counts.

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First I am going to give a broad outline of the days activities, and then give some impressions of Cairo: We had a 10:45 breakfast but then didn't make it out of the hotel until 2:00 to go downtown by black-and-white taxi. We toured the Cairo Museum from 3:30-5:00 (highlights were King Tut and mummies), 5:00-6:30 dinner on Sharia Talaat Harb at Felfela Restaurant, 7:00-8:30 pm suck in toxic hydrocarbons during traffic jam back to Giza. When we returned to the hotel, Juliana and I went shopping for about an hour at a boutique next door, then she and Kirk disappeared for a nap and I ended up attending an Egyptian wedding/engagement party until 11, at which point I headed up to the local internet cafe until 2:00 am to try to catch up on the Spain blog.

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Going to the Egyptian Museum was an adventure even before we ever saw our first artifact. We traveled by black-and-white taxi (see below) and once we finally found it we were met at the gate by some guy who told us that the museum was only open for tour groups and wouldn't re-open for travellers like us for another hour. We lost about 10 minutes talking to this guy before I finally figured out that it was one of the scams listed by the Lonely Planet guidebook in which you are told that your destination is closed for whatever reason, but this gives you the opportunity to come to their store/shop/kiosk where there is, coincidentally, a big sale going on. As soon as we broke free of that, we headed into a mob scene of over 300 people in the courtyard outside the museum. I am sure that it has a minimum of 1000 people on its grounds at any given time. We managed to run the first gauntlet of "guides" offering us to show us the museum and got into the musician through a metal detector only to be kicked back out because we hadn't checked our cameras at the entry. When we made it back in we had to run a second gauntlet of guides before we made it upstairs to the relics from King Tut's tombs and the mummy exhibit. The collection is amazing despite the minimalist display (glass and wooden showcase - signage optional). The sheer amount of gold and jewelry was amazing, but what was even more phenomenal were the actual pieces of dried fruit and intact flower bouquets from 1500 BC. Also, even though the art that I typically associate with pharonic times is flat and two-dimensional, there were mummies displayed with 3-D portraits of the deceased pasted to the head. They were amazing! On our way out we made a quick look around the first floor to get a sense of what else is in the museum, but considering the museum has 120,000 items on display (and another 150,000 more in the basement), the museum warrants another trip.

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Lunch and shopping were fun but not worth writing about. But I do have to mention the wedding.

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I found out about it when we came in from shopping and I saw a video crew in the lobby. I asked the front desk and they told me that it was a wedding and that I should come down for it if I was interested. I went up to my room and starting to take a bath, but upon hearing music and drums floating up from 5 floors below got me moving. I got into my new clothes from the boutique next door (see photo above) and headed downstairs. The first thing I saw was a mass of people in the hallway. This was the zeffa. A group of 8 musicians were dancing and playing in a circle around the couple, and they alternated between regular music and the traditional zeffa rhythm. There was an additional 20 minutes of music, and then the whole group was lead en masse down the stairs into the reception room. At first I was just going to see where they went, but one of the guests invited me several times to come down and see. I noticed a couple more gringos downstairs as well, so I headed downstairs and watched the bride and groom have their photo made while the rest of the guests went into the reception room. I did find out that they were in their mid-20s and that this was actually an engagement party. The wedding contract won't be signed for another 2 months.

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I was struck not only by the couple itself, but by the young women attending the wedding. Though most skin is covered, they wear a lot of fashions that we would wear (spaghetti straps, halters, and cropped tops), but they wear tight neutral colored turtlenecks underneath them. The headscarves at this affair were elaborately folded, wrapped, and gathered, and the eyes were absolutely gorgeously made-up. I wondered how the women don't end up smelling like locker rooms after wandering around in the heat in turtlenecks and long pants, and I discovered them spraying perfume under their arms in the bathroom. No wonder Egypt is known for their perfumes.

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I was befriended by a young guy of 20 who invited me into the hall, told me about the couple and the wedding. He insisted that it was okay that I was there, and kept insisting that I dance with the bride to share in her happy day. If everyone were dancing, maybe. But the way it was done was that everyone was crowded around a tight circle, and one-by-one close friends and family made their way in to dance with either the bride or groom. I might have done it if there were an open bar, but this was a Muslim wedding and the most I got was some kool-aid tasting punch. After about an hour, Hassan and the groom's brother dragged me into the circle to dance with the bride, but with my Western hang-up about wedding crashing and the thought of being included in this girls wedding video, I was absolutely mortified. I slowly backed out of the circle red-faced and with a palpitating heartbeat. I told Hassan that I needed to go the WC. He asked earnestly if I was coming back, to which I replied "maybe," and then ran out. I still feel bad that I never went back in, but I seriously was feeling bad about crashing the wedding and didn't think I could handle any more humiliation. Anyway, perhaps I will get a chance to go to another one!

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Now I am going to ramble about Cairo itself. The Cairo that I have seen thus far is a dusty, grimy, and loud place. Littering is rampant and unless you are in some tonier suburbes that I have yet to see, green is a very rare color. When I woke up this morning, I sat at my table and studied the traffic outside my window on the main street of Giza: Al-Haram Street.

As I may or may not have mentioned before, Cairo traffic is CRAZY. I think most of my photos over the past two days have been of the traffic because it is such a major part of life. If you are not sitting in it, then you hear it. If you don't hear it, you know its there by the smog. I bet young kids from Cairo think that the sky is brown, since you can't even see clearly from one side of the Nile to the other. *At least one third of the cars on the roads are Cairo's ubiquitous black-and-white taxis. These are mostly 10-year old Russian cars with no air-conditioning and are likely held together by putty and duct tape. The cabbies are aggressive drivers, and when they are not honking for other reason, tend to honk everytime they see someone walking down the road as if to say "Hey, I see you walking! Wouldn't you rather drive?" The next 33% of internal combustion engines in Cairo probably belong to the microvans. These would be 10-passenger vans in the Western world, but hold as many as 22 Egyptians during Cairo's rush hour (which seems to lasts from 7 am-10 pm). It is a fascinating system to watch - the buses are operated by a driver and his assistant. The assistant hangs out of the open side door either calling out the buses destination or making a hand signal to indicate the same. I think half of Cairo's traffic problem may have to do with the fact that at least one full lane in each direction is taken up by people trying to get in or out of these microbuses. The passengers creep into the roadway trying to find a bus going in their direction (using the passenger version of the secret handshake) and when a match is made the passenger needs to be ready to run. The vans never actually come to a complete stop and quite often the passengers have to run down the road trying to jump into a moving van. The last 33% of autos on the road are either individual drivers (who have no business driving alongside the professionals) or the city buses that are crammed tight and look like NYC subway cars at 6:00 pm. The whole experience of getting from one place to another is a big combined game of "Chicken" and "Double-Dog-Dare." You need to make a u-turn across 5-lanes of traffic? No problem! Just get your nose into a brief space between bumbers and hope the oncoming traffic yields. Missed your exit on the interstate? Also not a problem! Just give your horns a few toots and back on up. Headlights are optional at night. I think maybe 5% of cars use their lights. Rather they are used to supplement the conversational honking. Did I mention that Cairo is loud? Not only is the horn used to get attention by taxi driveres, but all drivers are constantly honking to signify other things like, "Get moving!" "Get out of my way," "I'm on your left," "I am planning on turning," and "There is more than a 12-inch gap between you, oh car ahead of me, and the car in front of you. Wake up!" Last night we actually saw yellow flames leaping out of stalled car engine, and rather than clearing a wide path around the car, traffic was bunched up at the car, honking and beeping like there was no tomorrow. I do have to admit that it is much rarer here to see a donkey or horse in the road, but it does happen. One of my favorite sights today was a pick-up truck loaded to the brim with sitting camels.