Cairo-the arrival! (10.20.07)

Juliana in lobby

From hotel restaurant balcony
From my window in Giza - Al Haram Street
At the Light Show
Cheesy musicians at the light show
On a mountain to the east of the city
Street vendor on the mountain...we had soup!
Khan el Khalili

Streets of Khan el Khalili
Looking around
Juliana & Kirk
I left Barcelona this morning at 6:45 am and was honestly shocked at what I saw in the streets when I left the hotel at 4:15 am. There were more people in "La Rambla" at that ungodly hour than are on the streets of Winston-Salem at lunch hour. The temperature in Barceona as I left was around 60F. When we changed planes in Zurich, the outside temperature was probably less than 40, and I watched everyone in the planeside bus pulling on sweaters and jackets as soon as they could. Four hours later I was in Cairo, and we all stripped down again as we stepped off the plane. And at that point my Cairo adventure began.
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The first snafu was that I needed to purchase an entry visa but did not have any Egyptian pounds. The dozen or so money changers before customs wouldn't take my traveller's checks, and the bank machine was OUTSIDE of customs. It took me several attempts and I finally got a baby-faced policeman to walk me out to the ATM and then to walk me back to finish the customs process.
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The second adventure involved finding the hotel. I must have looked like fresh meat to a taxi broker who quickly singled me out as I came through customs. We agreed upon a price to my final destination in Giza and he led me to a small newish car and my young driver, Sanah. We headed out and chatted during the drive, but from the beginning he freely admitted that he had no idea where the hotel was. We ended up driving to the very end of Al-Haram Street in Giza (at which point the pyramids appeared out of no-where amongst the crazy traffic and dusty old buildings of the city) and we couldn't find the hotel. We stopped at east 5 times to ask people on the street for information, and I had finally broken down and called Omid back home get him to look up the phone number when we finally found the Husa Pyramids Hotel.
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I checked in with no problems and had no fewer than 5 people telling me that my friends were looking for me and would be back soon. I headed up to my 5th floor room to check it out. Probably by Cairo standards it is a pretty nice room, but by American standards it looks like something you would rent out by the hour. The walls are yellow-brown and odiferous from years of smoking in the room, the king bed is sagging and covered with a bed-spread that looks like it was last replaced in 1965. Each room of my two room suite (I lucked out!) has its own AC unit which clicks and whirs constantly. At first I was a bit annoyed by the sound, but later I realized that the units provide a welcome white noise against the incessant honking of car horns outside the window.
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After I was in the room for less than an hour the phone rang. It was Juliana, a friend & student from home, and her boyfriend Kirk who happen to be in Cairo for a few days calling from the lobby. At that point I realized how relieved I was that it worked out for our travels to overlap. Not only am I on my own for the next three weeks, I am also in a totally foreign culture with a foreign language, and being alone could easily morph into feeling deeply lonely. I met them down in the lobby and we spent about an hour chatting and catching up before heading out to catch the 6:30pm English language version of the light show at the Pyramids. To get there we had to contend with Ahmad, a young driver/self-proclaimed tour operator, who they hooked up with on Thursday and have apparently been stuck with ever since for disappointing tours at highly inflated rates.
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We made it to the show by the skin of our teeth and I have to say that the narration was pretty awful - booming British voices and overdramatic horns and drums literally rattling the stones of the viewing plateau it was so loud. However, I do have to admit that it was very very impressive to see the pyramids lit up so spectacularly.
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On the way back I argued with Ahmad about taking us to the Parisienne nightclub that we had passed on the way to the Pyramids. A fairly well-known dancer by the name of Lucy works out of the Parisienne and I am bound and determined to get as much exposure to Middle Eastern dance as possible. We talked about it before the Pyramids, we talked about it in the car after the Pyramids, and we ended up debating it again when he dropped us off at the hotel for a quick rest. Ultimately he convinced me that that nightclub is NOT a tourist joint, that it will be filled with unpleasant drunk men, and unless we are with an Egyptian, the staff cannot be trusted not to price-gouge, thus leaving us penniless or in jail. I relunctantly relented, but am still working on finding shows to see. Juliana and Kirk were NOT impressed with the dancing on the Riverboat cruise they went on.
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At about 9:00, we got back in the car with one of Ahmad's drivers, Hisham, who took us to the dusty and seedy looking top of a local promontory so that we could take photos of the city spread out before us. The photo opp was a flop, largely because the haze of 17 million people and their attendant car exhaust, refuse burning, and other byproducts resulted in a gray haze partially obscuring the city. It had its moments though...we got to see young lovers sitting together in the dirt at the edge of the cliff and "talking", and Hisham bought us some very spicy chickpea soup off of a vendor that had set up shop.
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From there we went down to the Khan-El-Khalili Market before it closed up at 11:00 and we wandered among the stalls that were still open. There is a LOT of bellydance stuff and I am realizing the stress of my mission. I could buy a TON of stuff at a steep discount to my students, but if people don't end up wanting the things, then I am the one out of $$$. This will be a project to work on during the next two weeks. We ended the evening with kababs, hummus, and baba ghanouj at an outdoor cafe with Hisham and then made our way home around 12:30.
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I have so much more to write about the pulse of Cairo as I have experienced so far, but I will save that for tomorrow. But here I am! In CAIRO!