Cairo

We arrived in Cairo bundled for New York weather, and soon discovered that we needed to shed our coats. Winter in Cairo is a relative term, a long-sleeved tee was more than enough warmth, if you stayed in the sun. The weather was as you’d expect for Egypt, bright clear skies and dust everywhere. Our whole entry process was pretty painless, the visa only costing 15 dollars and the checkpoints quick.

I was introduced upon landing to Andrea, a student from last year who had returned to work as a ceramicist, who had just barely made it on the plane. When we arrived at the airport around 4 our instructor Ellen Morris had called to check on her, only to find that Andrea thought we were leaving on Jan. 2^nd! She managed to make it on the plane by the skin of her teeth, but is feeling the effects of the 5 minutes she had to pack.

In a ragtag mass, we collected our luggage, exchanged our dollars for Egyptian Pounds (about 5 pounds to the dollar, and .5 pounds can get you a loaf of bread!) and headed out. We loaded our bus (through the window) and set out into the crazy traffic of Cairo.

Cairo traffic is easier to visualize if you think of the cars as a stream of people walking through the sidewalks near Time Square. There’s order to it, but you’re likely to see people bump into each other, or cut against the flow at any interval. Imagine a major U.S. highway if there were people lined on either side ready to run across Frogger-style if they see an opening. It’s surprisingly fun once you get into it; running a little, letting a bus wiz by so close it whips your shirt-tails, and running past to the sidewalk. The drivers ARE looking for pedestrians, so I feel safer crossing a street in Cairo than in Houston.

Cairo has a unique feel. More than any other major city I’ve been too, it has its own vibe to it. Dov and I discussed how you could take a few blocks, cover them in English street signs and advertisements (not that there aren’t plenty of English ads everywhere you go, alas yon halcyon days of traveling past) and still know that you’re in Cairo. In some areas I would look over the rooftops we drove past and easily see thieves or djinns skirting along the rooftops of a city from Arabian Nights, if I ignored the thick carpeting of satellite dishes.

We drops our luggage off at our hotel, Happy City (sounds like it should be in China doesn’t it?) and explored the surrounding blocks for a bit. We wanted to find a snack and a hookah bar, but our little group set out in a random direction that happened to be the worst possible route for what we were looking for. We didn’t mind though, as it meant a little more exploration of the city. Cell phone stores were ubiquitous, but there were many unique shops. Locksmiths worked out of shops set a foot into the wall next door to shoe stores where men were crafting the leather shoes on the sidewalk. Fish fried in the open air next to clothes shops whose displays spilled into the street. Everything in Cairo, no matter the beauty or the bright paint, looks a little worn. The dust and smog that coat the city make it impossible to keep clean, but this peccadillo adds to the feel of the city, rather than detracting or confusing it. Which is not to say that Cairo is only dirty in the way of sand; there are more scents to assail your nose than any city in America (even L.A., which is a dirty, dirty, city) and I am pretty sure that I have never seen a pregnant cat before I went to a market near the American University (a market built into the shell of an old warehouse).

We managed to find a hookah bar, and were quickly ushered upstairs to a niche overlooking the street. I say niche, because 9 of us were crowded into an area about 6 feet wide and 2 feet tall. They didn’t have bottled water there, so they sent a waiter to a local store to get us some. Soon, we were smoking contentedly at 2 hookahs, blowing smoke rings and trying to have a conversation with the waiter using an Arabic phrasebook (not terribly successfully).

We returned by a slightly different route to the hotel, only to pass by dozens of restaurants and hookah bars right by the hotel. We dined on the roof of the hotel, brightly lit with colored bulbs on wires crisscrossing the roof. Although it is set in Spain, I feel that Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” described the feel of the place that I got. It was eerily close to the image in my head as I read the story (I have never been to Spain, so my picture is probably a world away from H’s).

Sleep was difficult that night, punctuated by constant noises of traffic, conversations, and even singing from the street below. I was already awake at 5 when the call to prayer sounded, but things soon quieted and I was able to get a couple more fitful hours of sleep before my next day started.

Getting Here

Welcome! This is my blog about my trip to Egypt to study archaeology with a Columbia University program. If all goes well, I will be here 3 months. I'll be on the Dakleh Oasis for 2 months, taking classes and participating in the excavation of Roman-era ruins at Amheida. In March I'll be traveling around Egypt looking at important historical sites, though we'll be based out of Cairo.I left New York the evening of January 1st:

The days before my flight to Egypt were some of the craziest of my life. I won't go into detail in this blog, but let's just say I was relieved to get out of the country. That relief was tempered, as I learned that my Uncle Bear died the morning of my trip. It's a hell of a thing to miss a funeral ( or party in Bear's case), and this makes three that I've missed while overseas. The actual trip was pretty uneventful, discounting the HUGE line for security (we checked in 2 and a half hours early and still had to be rushed through the line). It's amazing how anticlimactic air travel makes going half-way around the world. Sit in a chair for a while and BAM you're in Egypt. We stayed in Cairo for a couple of days; I'll talk about it in my next entry.