Cairo Bustles

Cairo Bustles. It bustles with people, with energy, with rusty black and white taxi cabs that carry spare wheels on the roof. It bustles with electronic, neon lights and Coca-Cola signs, cell phone advertisements displayed hundreds of feet in the air on top of buildings whose architecture better matches London or Paris than what one imagines in Egypt. The streets fill and throng with veiled women, wearing anything from a full burkha to a decorative scarf. They are passed on the sidewalk by businessman dressed in suits, who walk along oblivious to the street vendors hawking anything from Kleenex to slippers to decorative scarves and jeans. Camera toting tourists snap photos of the Nile, the pyramids, scarved women and taamia, the word in Egypt for falafel. They timidly speak, but after a few days are not surprised to be greeted back in English. Even so, those brave of heart continue to assert themselves, guidebooks in hand, throwing in shukran and salam alekum to their new found friends. The city is alive with city sounds, horns honking, people’s voices, businesses going about their business. All the while exuding mystery, power, and history as people focus on making their way from today to tomorrow.
Signs fluctuate between Arabic and English, some written in both, the English looking clear to me and progressing logically from left to right. The Arabic, beautiful, flowing, and to my eyes unintelligible, surges gracefully from right to left. The signs point out streets and historical sights, banks and juice bars, fast food restaurants. The West and this modern Arab city converge on an unassuming street corner, where the familiar roof of the pizza hut logo hovers above striking Arabic letters, signaling posters and interior décor that seems more familiar in Indiana than Egypt.
Kris, Jackie and I met for four days to explore the sights, scenes and contradictions of this modern and ancient marvel. Egyptians seem to be welcoming people. Most brim with smiles, asking where you come from with unconjugated verbs, impressive since many have learned there English simply talking to tourists. “Egypt good?” they ask. Very good, we reply. Jackie and I remained perpetual tourists, she from Korea and me from England, while Kris was spoken to in Arabic and told by everyone we met that he had an Egyptian face and must have had an Egyptian parent. Even though his Latin roots place him firmly on another continent, he was everywhere welcomed as a brother from another mother.
We wandered through downtown, trying to look as if we knew where we were going. Our hostel, on the sixth floor of an antiquated eight story building, was full of tourists of all ages and nationalities, in Egypt for varied periods and reasons, many on their way to somewhere else. The friendly Egyptian staff were keen to teach us belly dancing and to pick up some of our salsa moves.
We explored the Egyptian museum, whose more than 160,000 items would require a four and a half month commitment if one where to look at each for only one minute. The paper explanations glued to the windows of rustic wooden and glass cases explained in Arabic and English what was to be found inside. We tried multiple times to join tours to get more details and anecdotes, alternating between guides speaking lilting English, Spanish, or Korean as well as translating for each other. Here we were bemused by the hundreds of small mummies, by the explanations that hundreds of other important objects were to be found in Britain and France (who goes to Britain to see Egyptian artifacts? Shouldn’t they be in Egypt?). We were awed by jewelry of gold and turquoise, connecting us directly to a world five thousand years old. We stood open mouthed at Tatankuman(sp?)’s golden and turquoise sarcophagus, whose eyes of ivory and ebony still seem as if they might track you as you move stiltedly out of the impressive presence of past kings.
We explored Cairo’s mosques, removing our shoes, Jackie and I putting on the hoods of our sweatshirts so that we could have permission to enter. Al-Azhar, one of Cairo’s most famous places of worship led us through a millennia of history, from the courtyard built in 971 to the second room of worship facing mecca, built in the 1800’s and still used five times a day by Muslim men from all over the city. Just after we left, the call to prayer beckoned countless followers into the mosque, just as it has done for hundreds of years.
These and our many other adventures provided us a glimpse into another world, one where ancient and contemporary cultures, artifacts and lives merge on a daily basis. As other tourists, I felt both an integral part of the city and a bystander as things rushed around all around me, people making their lives, getting their groceries, going to work. In all, both I and everyone else, bustled along.