Reporting from Tahir Square, Cairo and Cruising the Nile

Egypt Museum, Cairo (in background is Min of Interior building burnt during last January's protests)

 It is January 20th.  After a few days in Cairo we flew to Luxor where we rambled the streets behind the tourist area.  From Luxor we joined a four night cruise on the Nile Shams, a 70-room ship, finishing in Aswan and returning to Cairo on the overnight sleep train.  From Cairo we took a day's excursion via train to Alexandria.

A few observations about Egypt:

Despite appearances, (ubiquitous machine gun-carrying security guards and security checkpoints), we feel welcome and safe everywhere and in all conditions.

Enjoying views of the Nile as we cruise on the Nile Shams

 
Top Kapi chicken is the best of the breed ever eaten.  Chicken pieces, with bone, are stuffed with rice raisins, cinnamon and other spices, wrapped in foil, baked, and the tops broiled. Yum.  This was served at Doka Restaurant for Nubian style food in Aswan.  Of other Egyptian food, we also enjoy vegetable and rice stuffed grape vine leaves, Babaganoush (grilled eggplant, garlic, lemon, and a bit of yogurt), and oriental salad (tomato, cucumber, red onion, parsley soaked in lemon juice).

Nubian tea service

Radios blare pop Arabic music, yet are switched off upon the muezzin’s first cry to prayer.  Initially soothing, the first muezzin is joined or usurped by others.  When lucky this generates a lovely harmony.  However, more often, the competing chants, (many not melodious), grate like chalk on a blackboard.  We wake up, sometimes as early as 3:30 a.m., not to an alarm clock but to the first cry to prayer.

Beyond the melodious call for prayer, another sound fresh to my ear is the slap of slippers smacking the hard packed dirt road.  Part of the Muslim street costume includes the practical plastic or leather slippers that are so easy to remove before prayer, before nesting into a pile of cushions at a café, or before entering any home.

Rosy dust from the ubiquitous unpaved roads coats clothing up to the knee.

Pervasive cigarette smoke is cloaked by frankincense, when we are lucky.

In Cairo, shoppers port their purchases

A tourist cannot escape from the lures into scent shops.  Thrice we became captives yet were rewarded with insightful conversation.  We learned:
            - Minute details of the Revolution’s beginning days, January 25^th through 29^th, 2011, from a shopkeeper who sells wares directly on Tahir Square.  Mohammed, the shop owner, believes this Revolution will be successful because of two indicators:  1) A young man and a young WOMAN attended a table in Tahir Square where lost cell phones, wallets, etc were displayed for the owning protesters to come by and collect.  To his knowledge, no one stole from this cache of belongings.  2)  None of the stores surrounding Tahir Square were looted or damaged.  I saw a poster in one of the metro stops that advertised, (paraprhased), "President Obama wishes to see American students educated in the same fashion as the youthful Revolutionaries of Egypt".
           - Egyptians welcome the Revolution, recognizing it to be so badly needed:  “Enough is enough” they sigh in despair.  Most young Egyptians would rather emigrate than stay and fight, if they only could.  An emigration lottery grants 15,000 Egyptians a year to depart for the United States, one of the most preferred destinations.
            - The Nubian bride prepares herself for the wedding day with a cooked rice scrub, followed by a full body immersion in a frankincense steam bath, and tops off the treatment with a full body henna tattoo.
            - Concocting perfume from pure essential oils is straightforward, as is preparing and applying medicines from essential oils.

Plenty of columns, statues and hieroglyphs to see on a Nile cruise

We squirm in our shoes with the guilt of the blessed as we tolerate innumerable prods, literally physical, from desperate street vendors trying to make an Egyptian pound.  Tourism is substantially down during this high season.  Our Nile cruise boat was only 75% capacity and that was way more than any other we saw.  Of the fleet of 450 cruise boats, it is my estimate that no more than 50 are in operation.  We found ourselves dining alone in restaurants that would normally be swarming with tourists.  At some historical sites, we might be the only ones in any given square or room, when normally we would have been fighting for foot space, shoulder to shoulder.  We are surrounded by poverty and it is impossible to ignore it.

Much of our thinking power is absorbed with negotiating prices for even the smallest of purchases or determining the appropriate level of baksheesh.  The U.S. dollar is now worth 6.7 Egyptian pounds.  Given slow tourism and general unemployment, demand is low making prices low as well.  It is impossible to apply U.S. tipping or pricing paradigms here.

Practically all vendors and service providers are men.  On a rare occasion I overpaid for a small bag of peanuts just because I was thrilled to be negotiating with a sales woman.

Dinner Club boats on the Nile in Cairo

Buying an embroidered Egyptian cotton tee-shirt as a gift for a five year old Italian friend, I was (unusually) enjoying the banter and lengthy fussing over price that is the expected means for making a purchase.  With the price differential at my offer of 10 and the seller’s asking of 70, bored Karoline and Gerhard meandered on to the next store.  Some five minutes later I had reached the final handshake at 20 Egyptian pounds when Gerhard returned to the scene.  The salesman bellowed, “How much, sir, is your final offer for this tee-shirt?”  Gerhard, thinking it would be helpful, pulled a stern face and growled, “Never more than 40!”  The seller caught me groaning and rolling my eyeballs.  Fortunately, he had enjoyed our little game and, grinning broadly, honored our handshake.  Winking, he informed in parting, “If you wish to have another husband, I am at your service Madame.”

I have learned to fold small bills into the size of my thumb nail so as to discreetly slip “thanks” into open palms.  While baksheesh is expected, a frontal display of the tip is considered terribly gauche.

Experiencing sheesha at a tea house in Cairo

We experiment with the tea house scene and indulge in samples of Turkish coffee, mint tea, hot hibiscus tea, falafel sandwich and a sheesha.  As for the sheesha, I found puffing on the hookah to be a relaxing pleasure.  However, upon learning that one serving is equivalent in nicotine consumption to five packs of cigarettes, I refrain form all subsequent offers.

Egyptians may very possibly be the world’s most friendly and outgoing of all peoples.  Folks on the streets approach us for formal introductions and a chance for friendly banter.  My favorite:  a married Muslim woman, and fellow traveler who is about my age, catches my eye on the train platform.  She is covered in black drapes from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes.  From behind her chadar her eyes twinkle with curiosity.  She extends her right gloved hand and we shake heartily in greeting.  She speaks—jibberish to me—and, taking a cue from street kids who like to practice their elementary English, I ask, “What is your name?  My name is Karen.”  She hears my jibberish and her eyes fog with confusion, then fear, then disappointment.  However, her male escort (husband?) murmurs something to her and replies on her behalf, “She name <something like> Chilia.”  I direct a reply to her, “It is nice to meet you Chilia.  My name is Karen.”  She beams upon hearing her name repeated by me.  We lean in to kiss one anothers cheeks and my heart warms.  The train whistles and carries me away.

Magdi tour guide with Nubian school teacher

Men are more becoming than women here.  While not seriously preening or prancing, the general presentation is well groomed and with a pleasing aesthetic sensibility.  There is something rather handsome about the galabeya gown and kefiyeh head scarf, or shawl casually laid on the shoulders.  Many women are over weight and seem to struggle with their step.  With wincing faces, they stomp side to side rather than glide forward.  I wonder if this is related to their enforced indoor and sedentary lifestyle.  When a woman is attractive, she can be exotically so.  The unmarried woman may be colorful, even if forced to drape herself from head to toe.  The rare beauty knows how to defy Islam’s modesty code with curve-clinging full length gowns, sparkling head scarves framing delicate kohl-ringed eyes and brightly painted pouty lips.  Get one to smile and the surrounding men can do nothing but melt into submission.

Nile in Aswan from Old Cataract Hotel

Exploring Egypt is like partaking in a multi-day excursion to Disneyland, Sea World and the zoo—only this is the real thing.  Of all that we have seen of Egypt, I find the views of the islands on the Nile at Aswan to be the most beautiful, especially at sunset.  My favorite activities have been snorkeling at the Blue Hole in Dahab, walking the halls of the Egypt and Islamic Art museums, and observing the scenery from the top deck of the cruise boat as we glided along the Nile.

Gerhard has decided that living Hell would be reincarnation as a Cairo taxi driver.  I posture that if we had stayed in Cairo much longer I would become another one of the scarf-clad chain smoking coffee drinkers--scarf to dodge the stares, cigarettes to reduce tension generated from dealing with the chaos of the city, and coffee to help cope with the many times during the day when things don't go right and patience is the only recourse.  

Train's comfortable sleep car from Aswan to Cairo

We leave Cairo happy for the experience, yet hoping to put behind us the constraints of hotel living, street grime, pollution, crowd congestion and constant probes for baksheesh.  Coincidentally, we depart on the eve of the January 25^th anniversary of the Revolution, which will be celebrated in Tahir Square.  The feeling of jubilation is in the air.  When looking for Tabouleh, a famed Lebanese-Egyptian restaurant, we found ourselves caught in the foot traffic of a pre-celebration protest.  Youthful crowds rumbled towards Tahir Square while official looking buildings and international hotels were protected by well equipped police guards.  Wondering about our safety, I asked a café owner what was causing the protest and learned that the issue is that reparations to families of victims slain by military police a year ago remain unaddressed by the court system.  He advises, “Don’t worry; today’s protest is very peaceful.”  This soothed me, until he added, “Insha’Allah”, (“God willing”).

Egypt Travel Resources
Travelling in Egypt is currently very cheap.
Wireless Internet service is crappy on landlines yet is ubiquitous.  We didn’t do it, but maybe quality is better when buying a 3G cellular card for the laptop?
The Lonely Planet Guide was our most helpful resource and we managed to hit all the touristic highlights using it as our primary information source.  While guided tours abound, we tended to prefer exploring on our own.
Longchamps Hotel, in Zemalek district of Cairo, was indeed the right choice of lodging in Cairo—for a chance to be close to real street life, yet offering an oasis of calm, clean large rooms, English/German/French communication, the best yet still slow Wifi internet service, and a guaranteed nutritious breakfast.
Mara House was a fascinating place to observe local person’s Luxor.  Away from the tourist hotels in a working class neighborhood is this well appointed Egyptian version of a B&B operated by a verbose Irish woman.  Insightful recommendations are on her hotel’s web site.
Selecting a Nile Cruise via the internet without an agent saves so much money, yet is nerve wracking and a bit arbitrary.  We lucked out and loved the Nile Shams for it’s luxury, creature comforts, quality of meals and service, and sound touristic itinerary that hits all the highlights through semi-private guides, and includes the fun of horse carriage and felucca rides.
The Dahab Paradise hotel was a perfect choice for a relaxing stay in Dahab:  luxurious; walking distance to town; short taxi ride to the Blue Hole for snorkeling (or diving).
Barbara Fudge is an ex-pat American living in Cairo and offers a casual travel agent’s service.  She was my primary aid in determining what to see and how long to stay in any one place.  If I had wished it, all could have been booked through her.  However, I preferred to be more hands on and engaged in choices. And even without her earning agency fees, she was a big help.  Of course, I managed to say thanks through a shared dinner out and a gift brought from Sifnos in gratitude for her own generosity of spirit. barbfudge@gmail.com

February 10 P.S.  Since writing this post, we see in the news that a) two American women were kidnapped by Bedouins while with a private driver going from St. Catherine's Monastery to Sharm El Shiekh, and, b)  66 people were killed during eruptions at a soccer game in Port Said.  Family members dangerously crowded Ramses train station in central Cairo to make sure their beloved returned from the game.  In both of those cases, it could have been us caught in the action.  Despite feeling safe, the risks need to be considered.