I’m walking home. It’s close to ten two nights ago. Twenty feet from my building, a man approaches. “Money.” “What?” I’m on guard. He grabs my shoulders with both hands, grunts in my face, “Money!” I shout “GET YOUR F___ING HANDS OFF ME!” and punch him hard in the stomach. He stumbles off. I take no chances now since I was last robbed.
An older man sees us and is laughing. He shouts to the money man in Arabic something like, “Look how scared he is!” He runs up and slaps me on the chest. I take a swing but he is already running across the street, laughing, laughing.
-
Later that night I see a bull, bound by its hooves and tied to a tree, throat cut and bleeding to death. A man soaks his hands in the fatty red river and slaps a bloody palm print on the pure-white smock of a screaming toddler. He smears the rest on the child’s nose and cheeks. The boy is laughing now.
It’s takes five minutes for the bull to stop kicking against its fetters.
-
Next morning I am walking the deserted streets, looking for the famous Azbekia book market. Two ten- or twelve-year-olds, a boy and girl, are arguing. He punches her in the head; she falls to the ground. He punches and punches and punches again. Finally two men from a cafe pull him off her. She is silent throughout. Nearby groups of men are hacking cows heads with hatchets, standing barefoot in pools of stagnant blood.
The book market is closed.
-
I am greeted at home by the sounds of someone screaming and banging on doors. A well-dressed, middle-aged woman, hijab askew, is on the top flight, sitting among the dried cat diarrhea and gray dust that blankets everything in Cairo. She is weeping, hysterical. I try to calm her but she’s terrified. I offer to call the police, ask if she needs help, a cup of tea, anything, but she is already down the stairs and out on the street, off to an even sadder stairwell where no one will embarrass her with his pity.
-
Today, I am walking the still-empty streets when a man half a block from me yells out, “Hey! White chicken!” I give him a shooting signal with my hand and keep walking.
He’s closer. “Your skin is white like chicken meat. Get it?”
“Got it,” I say, not breaking my stride.
He’s in my face now. “What time is it, white chicken?”
“F___ off.” I’m past him now, walking briskly towards witnesses.
“Hey, what’s your problem?!” he yells after me. I am half a block away and hear him scream, “Scheisse Leute!”
Some variation of this happens three times a day.
Well, I’ve had a pretty rough few weeks here in Cairo, but I’m on the mend and getting back on track. While I’m working on new posts, enjoy an article I wrote about the “Black Cloud” that visits Cairo every year.
Through many hours of careful observation, note taking, and inductive reasoning, I have determined when it is socially acceptable to honk your car horn in Cairo. Here are the rules that I will submit as law:
It is acceptable to honk in Cairo when:
- You are approaching a busy intersection
- You are going through a busy intersection
- You have just gone through a busy intersection
- A pedestrian is crossing the street
- A pedestrian has just crossed the street
- You see someone you know
- You see someone you don’t know
- Your favorite sports team has won
- Your favorite sports team has lost
- There’s a wedding
- There’s a funeral
- You want to pass
- Someone wants to pass you
- You want to make a turn
- You want to go straight
- You are angry
- You are happy
- When traffic is heavy
- When the streets are clear
- There’s a really great song on the radio
- You want to pick up a taxi fare
- You want to drop off a taxi fare
- Daytime
- Nighttime
When not to honk:
- You are not in your car
These rules should help the confused foreigner when he or she decides to undertake driving in this peaceful, quiet, ordered city.
“They’re the first protests after Ramadan!” my roommate, G. informed me, as if I needed an excuse. Of course we’re going to go down to Tahrir. (Sorry, mom and dad.)
Lesson 1: Always bring a real camera where ever you go in Egypt.
Lesson 2: Don’t ever use a Motorola RAZR for anything.
(Video taken 8/31/2011)
After dropping my two massive suitcases in my dorm room. I was too wired to sleep and pretty hungry. So I took a casual stroll through the local area. When exploring a new place, I tend to make right-hand turns so that I could find my way back and, usually, this plan brings me back to where I started. I knew nothing about this part of Cairo and I certainly didn’t want to get lost.
Zamalek, it turns out, is a very confusing place. It was about 11 o’clock at night when I set out. It was also Ramadan, which meant nothing was open and there were very few recognizable landmarks. Additionally, the street signs in Zamalek are rare and are typically located on a random building between blocks and not, as reason would permit, at street intersections. Add to this inconsistency in transliteration of street names and, well, you guessed it.
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It was about 10 p.m. local time; sixteen hours after leaving JFK airport. I was met at the airport by a driver hired by the American University in Cairo. He was taciturn and no-nonsense and didn’t respond to “Hello.” When his other charge arrived, A., a female graduate student in Egyptology, the driver rushed ahead of us through the throngs of desperate, pushy taxi drivers to our van left idling diagonally across two lanes of taxis.
We followed and immediately two men in reflective vests grabbed our bags and threw them into the back of the van. My naive self thought that this was nice; they had staff here to help us. Once the bags were loaded, however, I turn to see A. and the driver had already jumped in the van and I was left with two very surly Egyptians with their hands out. “Dollars! Euros!” they kept shouting. I had neither, so I handed over two Egyptian pounds which elicited loud protestations. They even began physically patting my pockets which brought out my reflexive New York back hand threat. Terrified and angry, I jumped in the van and almost shut the door on their outstretched arms. “Crazy men!” our driver shouted at us over his shoulder as we set off into frenetic airport traffic.
Lesson one: No one at the airport is there to help you for free.
–
It has been four years since I was last in Cairo and I had a vague memory of traveling by car akin to to the vague memory of the sharp prick of a vaccination needle. You have a concept of the pain, but it’s not until you’re completely committed that the muscles twitch and nerves scream in anticipation of what’s about to come. Our little van, piloted by our native driver, careened through elevated highways and 6-lane roads, dodging motorcycles, BMW SUVs, Tuk-Tuks, and the occasional seemingly suicidal pedestrian. I couldn’t help but think back to my first terrifying arrival in Cairo. In an attempt to ignore our Willy-Wonka terror-ride, I made small talk with A., who seemed unperturbed by the chaos surrounding us.
A. had been to Cairo before and had even studied abroad a year at the AUC during her undergraduate career. She also returned a few years ago to… – Holy hell, that guy just cut off four lanes of traffic! – …and believes that getting a Masters degree here is unparalleled to anything she can get back in the… – No way our brakes are going to hold! – …so she’s glad to be back but she’s not sure if she’ll pursue her Ph.D. her because, well, it doesn’t look good on the transcript and besides… – Is that a stroller? Who in God’s name would be pushing their kid across the highway at this time of night?! – …and over there is the 26th of July, her favorite street in… – Where’s my seatbelt? No seatbelt! – …and this is her favorite building in Zamalek; it used to be a palace but now it’s the Marriott and…
After forty minutes, we had made it to the relative calm of Zamalek, a large island in the Nile just a couple of miles north west of downtown Cairo and Tahrir Square. The van slowed and coasted gently through the narrow streets made narrower by rows of double-parked Fiats and other ancient imports. I asked A. if she knew anything about the dorms. “Oh, yeah, I lived in the Zamalek dorms during my year abroad. They’re nice, but in that modern style of architecture from twenty or thirty years ago that’s trying to be Middle Eastern but just doesn’t quite make it so…”
“Did you like it?”
“It was all right.”
The van pulled up to the 7-storey dorm and I hopped out. I saw that A. wasn’t moving. “Aren’t you getting out?”
“Hah! No. I found an apartment through a friend of a friend. I wouldn’t want to live in these dorms again.”
Lesson 2: Put your faith in the driver and don’t look out the window.
