Cairo

Cairo

One day recently, a friend of mine decided to go to Egypt and invited me to come along. It just so happened that they were having a massive uprising against the government at the time. I decided to join of course, especially since he offered to pay my way. How could I say no?

We left four days later, took an eleven pm flight that offered us a 7 hour lay over in Istanbul. We left the airport and made our way to the Sophia and the Sultan Ahmet Mosque. Sophia was closed for the evening, but we did manage to make it into the mosque. It reminded me a lot of the Byzantine style architecture that I saw at the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. After, we wandered around the narrow cobbled streets and found a fitting pub, had a beer and listened to Chris Isaac streaming through the sound system for the better part of an hour before heading back to the airport to catch our connecting flight. We opted for public transportation rather than a taxi for the way back. Boarded a very crowded tram around rush hour and stayed smashed in the train-car for about 45 minutes. Turkish is a completely foreign language for me. I couldn't make heads or tails of even one word. An absolutely different language family than Arabic.

After a relatively calm wait in the airport and an uneventful plane trip to Cairo, finally the adventure really began. The airport was not the zoo that the news had reported from days before though there were a number of people in the main lobby waiting for a plane to take them out or a taxi to take them in. Two paranoid ladies from the plane were planning on camping out in the airport till morning and were encouraging us to do the same noting all possible worst scenarios. "Two people were shot in Tahrir Square!" In a city of nearly 7 million, that really did not to seem to bother us two travelers who had both been in Lebanon with all its civil unrest, protests, and war. What's a few folks on the street after all?

We decided to take our chances.

I contacted a friend who lives in downtown and we got a cab to agree to try and take us. Leaving the airport was no problem. Even the police and army check points were easy to get through. Where we ran into issue was with the groups of youth that had decided to control the streets at night, setting up road blocks with rocks, dumpsters, fallen branches of trees, chairs, fallen lamp posts and over turned buckets. They stood in small groups smoking cigarettes waiting for cars to drive up daringly at which point they would wave us down and approach bearing home fashioned batons, clubs, and sometimes knives. Every time waving us through with smiles and "Welcome to Egypt, sorry for the situation." Quite cordial actually. We passed through most of these with not too much issue, till we arrived at one that finally really stopped us.

Three of them got in the van with us, and had Mahmoud, our cab driver, take us around to a local police station. Upon which we had to get out of the car, and also bring our luggage in. This place was really ramshackle, but considering the checkpoints was actually quite legit. Brown aluminum desk, a few chairs scattered about, stubbed out cigarette butts littering the floor a long with a few used and since dried up tea bags as well as the occasional smashed cockroach. They kept asking us why we were there. Didn't we see the news? It turns out that my friend Ahmed's mother had passed away the day before after being ill for a very long time. Fortunately and unfortunately, this served as a great excuse. They eventually dropped the question and focused on Rob's suitcases. After much ado, the police started to search through all of our things. Rob for some reason, had decided to bring his entire house with him including various electronics that these men were baffled by:

1. One white silk hankie, brand-new.
2. Brand new airport hub, MAC
3. I Pod docking station
4. Remote for I Pod docking station
5. Digital picture frame
6. Remote for digital frame
7. European adapter power strip
8. 5 bottles of booze from duty free
9. 3 dubdoob (teddy bears given to taxi driver in lieu of extra 3 hour wait at police station)
10. Various CDs containing downloadable software programs
11. BBQ poker ("you want it, take it, for my uncle in Beirut")
12. Power cords for all devices
13. Portable printer with 10 extra ink cartridges
14. 3 extra care bags from Turkish airlines with night blinds and ear plugs
15. Turkish delight from TJ max
16. Baby blanket (S)
17. Jack Daniel flask
18. Mini wine bottle from the airplane
19. 2 large Suitcases
20. I small suit case
21. 2 spare brief cases
22. Various activist bumper stickers
23. Did I mention various adapters
24. 3 flash drives with superfluous Zanzibar photos as well as two movies
25. He did happen to forget his pillow case however
26. Did I mention the power cords (15)
27. External hard drive
28. I Pad and MAC Air
29. 2 I Phones
30. A few books (activist in nature of course)
31. Doting a Lan Nasmat (we will not be silent) T-shirt
32. Various tote bags with peace signs and pink might I add
33. 1 deck of UNO playing cards
34. Remote ear piece and charger
35. And a few clothes including one plush velour bath robe
36. Oh and a solar charger incase the rest didn’t work along with 2 universal adapters

After spending about two hours digging through all this paraphernalia, we sat and waited. Waited. And waited. Along come 3 fair skinned Latvian guys who happened to have been on our plane. This raised curious suspicion in the main security officer. "Why you have same stamp same day?" These guys were reporters and had their camera confiscated at the airport. Then we all sat and waited. A milieu of Shabaab (youths) from the neighborhood and other curious men continued to arrive in the station to get a gander at the scene. An older man wearing a drab green suit with a black shawl keep offering me cigarettes. Rothmans. Be careful, these will kill you.

Another man kept carrying around all our passports and Rob's business card holder full of names and numbers of contacts in Jordan. Jordan red Crescent Society, director of Peace Corps, International Orthodox Christian Charities, regional director, USAID, Office of Transition Initiatives. Highly suspicious.

Finally, after some ruckus outside and a lot of wondering, a brand new officer in charge entered in civilian clothes and said, "You can go, sorry for that. Welcome to Egypt."

Eventually we get out of there, haul all Rob's luggage (I have my purse and my backpack) back to our "Airport Limo". Now leaving the neighborhood, we continue to get stopped every 30 seconds (or at each end of every block) by more Shabaab at their checkpoints. At about the 4^th such check point 2 get in the van with us and proceed to wave us through the next 4 checkpoints only to stop at an army checkpoint. By now, I am exhausted and starting to get irritated. The army guys (also a bunch of youths) want to start checking our luggage again. I have had it. "3n jud? Khalas. Leysh." (Really, enough. Why?!) They all look at me with confused blank faces, almost smiling out of bewilderment at me saying anything at all. "Ana ta3bani ou jou3ani bes. Khalas." (I am tired, and I am hungry only. Enough!) Some how that worked and they stopped attempting to recheck our luggage. I think they were just dumfounded, first that an American woman was in Cairo now at this time in the back of a taxi in the middle of the night (3:30 am by now) and that I was complaining in Arabic with a Lebanese accent.

We finally make it to a hotel, nowhere near where we were trying to get to. Mahmoud just kept telling the checkpoints that he was taking us to the airport. Seemed to work. We now find ourselves at Hotel Oasis, very far from any oasis I have ever seen. No worries. Cheap rooms (exactly the amount of dollars we have on us, they don't take charge) Internet, clean beds, shower, and breakfast with Nescafe of course. Not to mention that the young guys that work here are handsome and very sweet.

We give Mahmoud the amount of Gineh that I took out at the airport as well as the 3 teddy bears for his three children in light of his spending all night away from them at the police station with us.

After showers and a long nap, we venture out into the afternoon sun and the dirty streets of Helliopolos to search for a working ATM. To no avail. I am grouchy from apparently waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I attribute it to complete exhaustion and the lady outside our door talking loudly, but whatever. We end up in a restaurant that takes visa. Eat marginal food and manage to attain a tiny bit of cash as extra charge on the Visa to help us get a taxi into downtown tomorrow.

We are now back at the hotel, listening to my Ipod on the docking station, which is plugged into the European power-strip along with all computers. Proved handy after all considering there is only one socket in the room. Note to self: it never hurts to pack for all and any circumstance, even if you get held up in a police station.