If Egyptians are certified by travel guides -- and they unanimously are -- as one of the friendliest people in the world, it is a certificate that doesn't stand up and smack you in the face as you get off your aircraft, breathless with anticipation, and wind into the Cairo International Airport, like we did, thirteen of us. Emirates had flown us in through Dubai, and it was dizzying hoping for the Boeing-777's forward camera to pick up some monuments. The airport is a gloomy, grey excuse for a terminal building, speaking nothing of what lies behind its depressing interiors. Instead of a smile welcoming you to 5,000 years of civilisation -- and a nice little push to the Egyptian economy in the bargain -- you're immediately faced with a signboard warning you that if you've got drugs, you've made a serious mistake choosing to come to Egypt, and you know instantly they're not kidding. Kalashnikov-toting military police are your first friends. The immigration staff are surly. When I went off to look somewhat desperately for kitschy tourism posters (I mean, come on!), all I got was a large mafiosi-type gent hold me by the shoulder and shove me back toward immigration. For a whole minute, I actually thought we'd done something wrong.
Our guide for day 1 was a man called Ahamed (he spent 11.6 seconds driving home its pronunciation to us). Our mini-bus driver Aiman drove us out from the Heliopolis and through much of political Cairo. The grunge and dust that surrounded the exit we emerged from melted nicely into a slick six-lane highway that wound without so much as a turn through much of suburban political Cairo, including Persident Hosni Mubarak's official residence (yawn), the Baron castle (the architects have clearly stolen from Orissa-style temples), the October 6 memorial (which had a half-squad of MiG-21s mounted outside), the Citadel and a few other things I cannot remember now.
I remember wishing the guide would shut up so we could soak Cairo in. For the first 15 minutes in that bus, he just wouldn't let up. Then he began about Israel, and here I found myself on more comfortable territory. Egypt, he proudly pronounced, was the only country that had ever mounted a military assault on Israeli-held territory (the Yom Kippur war of October 1973 in which it snatched back parts of Suez under Nasser's rule). Six October, easily the most trumpeted date on the Egyptian calendar, is immortalised in a road, several government buildings, even a township to the West of the Capital. Either way, Ahamed said he could not understand why Israel "always attacking people". Coming from a pointy-toed shoe-wearing gelled-back hair, tight jeans and blazer John Travolta wannabe lookalike, this was jarring, but I opened the bus window just a slight bit to get some of the outside in.
The plush suburbs rapidly give way to undulating hilly road inexplicably barricaded on both sides by either solid wall or prefabricated iron sheets 10-feet high, and giving motorists (including us, this time) the unseemly feeling of being closed in upon. The walls, constructed not long ago, are actually part of a city beautificiation drive. Why? Beyond them lie as-far-as-the-eye-can-see slums, intermittently broken by spires of a garishly new or soft-focus old mosque depending on which part of the city you're in. That's the solution, we're told. If you can't fix it, hide the ugliness. Many in these slums have university degrees, about 40,000 of which are handed down by the Cairo University every year.
Over very India-like flyovers over fly-infested bazaars, crowds of afternoon lunch-eaters and fruit stores, our bus pulls with a grunt into Giza (pronounced Gizay if you're really getting into the groove), quite simply a part of Cairo but roughly South West on the Nile's West Bank as capital of the Al Jijah governorate (whatever the hell that means). Instinctively, I crane my neck to see if I can any of the pyramids, but Ahamed just shakes his head. We'll have to wait till tomorrow, though there are vistas strewn through Cairo that allow heart-stopping visuals, I hear.
We pull into Pyramid Street (it snakes along the Nile and finally does actually hit the superstrutures on the Giza Plateau) to our hotel, called Zoser, an incon
gruously luxurious addition to the road. Zoser, a corrupted version of Djoser, was a pharaoh from Egypt's third dynasty and famously made his architect Imhotep build the first step pyramid in Sakkara near Giza. The statue of him at the Antiquities Museum in Cairo is, according to some, the oldest life-size statue found during state-sponsored excavations in 1925. The hotel, at any rate, is quite seemly. After a small interval in the lobby (flooded by Asians), we get our rooms, but there's something about heading to a hotel room that gets me a little edgy. How about getting out for something to eat first?
With the help of a hanger-on businessman called Amr Adel El Shaer (he hangs out outside the hotel to lure tourists away to his papyrus and perfume shop down the road), we find a dhaba-like outfit in a grungy little lane opposite Hotel Europa called Ghazawi. Not particularly clean, but full of affable and large Egyptians, we're treated to pita-bread and a spread of fillings. After accidentally knocking over a large pan of chopped greens (the owner didn't let me pay him back for the loss), I settle for the hummus-filled ones and quickly push about four in. The others tuck into fried eggplant and salad. I said I liked the eggplant, but I actually didn't, but this was Day 1 in a new country, so everything really did seem good. We then trudged back to the hotel for a bit of a nap. I hated this whole nap business to be honest -- I thought i was a crying waste.
After a couple of hours in our rooms, we met in the lobby and were introduced to our new guide -- a peculiarly engaging man called Meleka Shaker, a 40-year-old Copt with a degree in archaeology from Cairo University, a point he would make repeatedly as our companion -- and saviour in some cases -- over the next week or so. Virtually blind in one eye, about five-feet tall and armed with a loquacity that would dispel most into stupors if what he was saying wasn't actually interesting. That was the whole point -- this was an interesting chap, really. He said we could call him Michael, which I personally thought was a little sad, but then tour guides need to do this sort of thing -- anything -- to make stuff easier on their tour groups. Malik was another option, but I suggested (maybe a little emphatically in hindsight) that we call him by his real name. I mean, seriously, how difficult is it for Indians to remember and pronounce Mel-Eck.
We're driven through night-lit Cairo to Khan El-Khaleeli, an Arabic suq (market) that began in 1382, making it one of the oldest markets in the world. Named after the Emir Djaharks el-Khalili, it remains now a bustling, bright and startlingly compact shopping area. Meleka warns us not to buy souvenirs here -- that they're bad quality -- but he couldn't be more wrong. This
place rules. Flanked by two mosques on either side of its cafe-lined rampart, Khaleeli bazaar is also where Egyptian Nobel-winning writer and legend Naguib Mahfouz frequently partook of a sheesha and coffee (it is also the location of his Midaq Alley). Mahfouz died on August 30 this year after a lengthy illness following a fall on his head. It's not hard to imagine being transported in every sense just sitting here.
I wander through the narrow serpentine alley-way that bisects the market and after quickly buying some silver jewellery, find the others, all nestled comfortably at one of the cafes up front and pulling with aplomb at a handful of sheeshas being passed around the table. I see them from a distance, and I have to admit it took me whole minutes to convince myself that I was in Cairo. Cairo, itself.
The sheesha (presumably named so for the glass hookah its smoked from) is not new -- it's part of pseudo bar culture in Delhi already) though here there's tobacco apart from the clingy, permament smelling tablets of green apple, apricot or whatever else they've thought of. I grab one and am asked not to inhale. To hell with it -- i pull in deeply and I haven't ever felt better. The apricot gets under your skin though, so if you're ever going to try some, take a few drags and retreat to normal tobacco or you might feel ill.
We are picked up by our bus and leave a still bustling (it always is, apparently) Khaleeli bazaar and wind out back across the Nike bridge through downtown Cairo to a restaurant called Fish Boat, a permamently docked vessel converted for the season into a restaurant. For some reason, nobody wants to eat there (I still have not been able to satisfactorily learn why -- this place looked superb) and are driven by befuddled guide and driver to Peace, a resturant owned by the same people who own Fish Boat, but located in a quietly commercial strip on Pyramid Street itself. The head waiter, who looks uncannily like Stanley Tucci, plies us wit
h beer and cold-drinks first and then brings on the food -- our first proper meal in Egypt. First we're served pita bread and hummus bi tahina (a dip of chana paste and tahini or sesame seed paste, with olive oil, lemon, garlic and chili powder), fresh salad and pickle, a spread that will come to define and encompass this country for me in more ways than one. Humus bi tahina (HbT from now on) is one of the finest things I have ever had the pleasure of sticking down my throat. The rest of the meal includes a rather depressing-looking vegetable soup (I learn it wasn't bad) for the vegetarians and for the others, a platter of rice, seekh kebab, beef chunk and lamb kofta, all frankly quite good, but with that lingering and unseemly smell of meat. For desert, we get some baclava, a sweet pastry of Ottoman origin, but very much like kesar halwa, only better and probably just as unhealthy. After coffee, we say bye to Stanley Tucci and leave. Back to our hotel for the night.
Oh man, I'm thinking. A whole night in a hotel room and all of Cairo just sitting out there. What a crying waste.
Our guide for day 1 was a man called Ahamed (he spent 11.6 seconds driving home its pronunciation to us). Our mini-bus driver Aiman drove us out from the Heliopolis and through much of political Cairo. The grunge and dust that surrounded the exit we emerged from melted nicely into a slick six-lane highway that wound without so much as a turn through much of suburban political Cairo, including Persident Hosni Mubarak's official residence (yawn), the Baron castle (the architects have clearly stolen from Orissa-style temples), the October 6 memorial (which had a half-squad of MiG-21s mounted outside), the Citadel and a few other things I cannot remember now.
I remember wishing the guide would shut up so we could soak Cairo in. For the first 15 minutes in that bus, he just wouldn't let up. Then he began about Israel, and here I found myself on more comfortable territory. Egypt, he proudly pronounced, was the only country that had ever mounted a military assault on Israeli-held territory (the Yom Kippur war of October 1973 in which it snatched back parts of Suez under Nasser's rule). Six October, easily the most trumpeted date on the Egyptian calendar, is immortalised in a road, several government buildings, even a township to the West of the Capital. Either way, Ahamed said he could not understand why Israel "always attacking people". Coming from a pointy-toed shoe-wearing gelled-back hair, tight jeans and blazer John Travolta wannabe lookalike, this was jarring, but I opened the bus window just a slight bit to get some of the outside in.
The plush suburbs rapidly give way to undulating hilly road inexplicably barricaded on both sides by either solid wall or prefabricated iron sheets 10-feet high, and giving motorists (including us, this time) the unseemly feeling of being closed in upon. The walls, constructed not long ago, are actually part of a city beautificiation drive. Why? Beyond them lie as-far-as-the-eye-can-see slums, intermittently broken by spires of a garishly new or soft-focus old mosque depending on which part of the city you're in. That's the solution, we're told. If you can't fix it, hide the ugliness. Many in these slums have university degrees, about 40,000 of which are handed down by the Cairo University every year.
Over very India-like flyovers over fly-infested bazaars, crowds of afternoon lunch-eaters and fruit stores, our bus pulls with a grunt into Giza (pronounced Gizay if you're really getting into the groove), quite simply a part of Cairo but roughly South West on the Nile's West Bank as capital of the Al Jijah governorate (whatever the hell that means). Instinctively, I crane my neck to see if I can any of the pyramids, but Ahamed just shakes his head. We'll have to wait till tomorrow, though there are vistas strewn through Cairo that allow heart-stopping visuals, I hear.
We pull into Pyramid Street (it snakes along the Nile and finally does actually hit the superstrutures on the Giza Plateau) to our hotel, called Zoser, an incon
gruously luxurious addition to the road. Zoser, a corrupted version of Djoser, was a pharaoh from Egypt's third dynasty and famously made his architect Imhotep build the first step pyramid in Sakkara near Giza. The statue of him at the Antiquities Museum in Cairo is, according to some, the oldest life-size statue found during state-sponsored excavations in 1925. The hotel, at any rate, is quite seemly. After a small interval in the lobby (flooded by Asians), we get our rooms, but there's something about heading to a hotel room that gets me a little edgy. How about getting out for something to eat first?With the help of a hanger-on businessman called Amr Adel El Shaer (he hangs out outside the hotel to lure tourists away to his papyrus and perfume shop down the road), we find a dhaba-like outfit in a grungy little lane opposite Hotel Europa called Ghazawi. Not particularly clean, but full of affable and large Egyptians, we're treated to pita-bread and a spread of fillings. After accidentally knocking over a large pan of chopped greens (the owner didn't let me pay him back for the loss), I settle for the hummus-filled ones and quickly push about four in. The others tuck into fried eggplant and salad. I said I liked the eggplant, but I actually didn't, but this was Day 1 in a new country, so everything really did seem good. We then trudged back to the hotel for a bit of a nap. I hated this whole nap business to be honest -- I thought i was a crying waste.
After a couple of hours in our rooms, we met in the lobby and were introduced to our new guide -- a peculiarly engaging man called Meleka Shaker, a 40-year-old Copt with a degree in archaeology from Cairo University, a point he would make repeatedly as our companion -- and saviour in some cases -- over the next week or so. Virtually blind in one eye, about five-feet tall and armed with a loquacity that would dispel most into stupors if what he was saying wasn't actually interesting. That was the whole point -- this was an interesting chap, really. He said we could call him Michael, which I personally thought was a little sad, but then tour guides need to do this sort of thing -- anything -- to make stuff easier on their tour groups. Malik was another option, but I suggested (maybe a little emphatically in hindsight) that we call him by his real name. I mean, seriously, how difficult is it for Indians to remember and pronounce Mel-Eck.
We're driven through night-lit Cairo to Khan El-Khaleeli, an Arabic suq (market) that began in 1382, making it one of the oldest markets in the world. Named after the Emir Djaharks el-Khalili, it remains now a bustling, bright and startlingly compact shopping area. Meleka warns us not to buy souvenirs here -- that they're bad quality -- but he couldn't be more wrong. This
place rules. Flanked by two mosques on either side of its cafe-lined rampart, Khaleeli bazaar is also where Egyptian Nobel-winning writer and legend Naguib Mahfouz frequently partook of a sheesha and coffee (it is also the location of his Midaq Alley). Mahfouz died on August 30 this year after a lengthy illness following a fall on his head. It's not hard to imagine being transported in every sense just sitting here.I wander through the narrow serpentine alley-way that bisects the market and after quickly buying some silver jewellery, find the others, all nestled comfortably at one of the cafes up front and pulling with aplomb at a handful of sheeshas being passed around the table. I see them from a distance, and I have to admit it took me whole minutes to convince myself that I was in Cairo. Cairo, itself.
The sheesha (presumably named so for the glass hookah its smoked from) is not new -- it's part of pseudo bar culture in Delhi already) though here there's tobacco apart from the clingy, permament smelling tablets of green apple, apricot or whatever else they've thought of. I grab one and am asked not to inhale. To hell with it -- i pull in deeply and I haven't ever felt better. The apricot gets under your skin though, so if you're ever going to try some, take a few drags and retreat to normal tobacco or you might feel ill.
We are picked up by our bus and leave a still bustling (it always is, apparently) Khaleeli bazaar and wind out back across the Nike bridge through downtown Cairo to a restaurant called Fish Boat, a permamently docked vessel converted for the season into a restaurant. For some reason, nobody wants to eat there (I still have not been able to satisfactorily learn why -- this place looked superb) and are driven by befuddled guide and driver to Peace, a resturant owned by the same people who own Fish Boat, but located in a quietly commercial strip on Pyramid Street itself. The head waiter, who looks uncannily like Stanley Tucci, plies us wit
h beer and cold-drinks first and then brings on the food -- our first proper meal in Egypt. First we're served pita bread and hummus bi tahina (a dip of chana paste and tahini or sesame seed paste, with olive oil, lemon, garlic and chili powder), fresh salad and pickle, a spread that will come to define and encompass this country for me in more ways than one. Humus bi tahina (HbT from now on) is one of the finest things I have ever had the pleasure of sticking down my throat. The rest of the meal includes a rather depressing-looking vegetable soup (I learn it wasn't bad) for the vegetarians and for the others, a platter of rice, seekh kebab, beef chunk and lamb kofta, all frankly quite good, but with that lingering and unseemly smell of meat. For desert, we get some baclava, a sweet pastry of Ottoman origin, but very much like kesar halwa, only better and probably just as unhealthy. After coffee, we say bye to Stanley Tucci and leave. Back to our hotel for the night.Oh man, I'm thinking. A whole night in a hotel room and all of Cairo just sitting out there. What a crying waste.
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