Cairo Post

David came to Egypt for a week, and left last Saturday. I’ve been offline a bit with his visit during ‘Id and midterms the week before to close out Ramadan. We went to the Sinai for a few days, where we lost and then found a passport near Taba after we arrived, and rode in a minibus full of hotel workers for 6 hrs from the Sinai back to Cairo when we left two days later. The details of the ride  boiled down to Khalid, a cab driver who lived at Castle Beach in Ras Shaytan, where we were staying, befriending us, helping us track down David’s passport via cell phone calls to what seems like an expansive network of Sinai cab drivers, and then agreeing to drive us to Cairo. Only, at an exhorbinant price, as he told us on the road. After getting the price down in increments, only to find out that he didn’t really want to drive all the way, and that we didn’t what to drive all the way with him for what he was asking, he arranged for us to overpay still to ride instead in another minibus. It was like any of the minibuses that buzz around Cairo with four full rows of seats and little wheels. Taking digital photos with a little Canon camera in a bus of men who work for a week in Taba for 300 Egytpian pounds, and pay 30 pounds for the ride, didn’t seem appropriate. That David and I had been duped into paying far more than that was not so much a surprise — prices for tourists are always higher, most of all in the Sinai, where on the stretch of beach camps between Taba and Nuweiba, on the border with Israel, cab drivers expect  American dollars. I saw one couple pay with a crisp 100 dollar bill; we only had pounds. 

We went to Giza on David’s last day; my first daytime trip to the Pyramids. It’s a park, really - walk around, and pay to go inside - we climbed a narrow shaft in the Great Pyramid up to the clammy burial chamber - soon you realize that all these old burial holes, or whatever, scattered around the Pyramids and in the sand are full of garbage. The Sound and Light Show stage, and the tourist cafes, face the Pyramids, but across the street there are the stables where you can rent camels and horses, and slums. The contrast is overwhelming but there flocks of people and tourist buses - a road cuts been the two big Pyramids - none of which seems to react. Guides holding laminateed, numbered group signs lead packs of tourists under the Sphinx, trashy looking British and American women huff cigarettes in the sun, their backs to Pyramids, men on camels and horses try to shuffle you on for a ride, best rate, and across the street in the unpaved allies behind KFC poverty Egyptian children wearing old dot-com tee-shirts. Old women sell packs of tissues, and a steady stream of tourists - Egyptians, Americans, Europeans - ride through on horses, on their way to the open desert and the big view of the all the Pyramids.

Last Saturday, after seeing a Fayrouz-soundtracked dance concert on the war in Lebanon (more to come on that), I packed into a cab with 4 others and went to Giza. We arrived around midnight. After a few unpleasant offers - men running alongside the cab and holding the driver’s side door, shouting in that yes, they could give us horses - we were in a back alley, where there was a stable. I have never been on a horse other than pony rides, but soon 5 of us were trotting through narrow alley ways, past one room houses, resting camels, quiet shisha cafes of old men, and a few kids smoking hash sitting on a dumpster. The Pyramids were in sight after we left the alleys, heading up a trail past an old cemetary and up into the sudden desert. There is a high fence guarding in the protected area of the Pyramids, and we cantered along it, then turned more to the open sand. Our horses started a few brief gallops and the Pyramids loomed in the dark on our right, casting twin shadows even in the dark. The lights of Giza and Cairo stretch in dots all around, and the Pyramids are partially lit. Even from a distance, and in 1am desert dark, they were commanding, though not enough to come out in a photo (though my newest roommate took a long exposure shot that I’ll post later).

We stopped for tea at the top of a large, rockier dune, a planned part of the excusion on the part of our guide, who would ride alongside throwing tiny firecrackers or cracking his wip to make our horses gallop. The were a crowd of rocks and a man boiling hot water and extra sweet mint tea for the various horse riders who come out to the desert late at night. We galloped back across the expanse of desert to the alleyways, a 30 min trip, thereabouts. On the return, I was on a different horse who took off - I was 100 yards or more ahead of everyone else, galloping more than I had on the way to the tea, the Pyramids on my left horizon this time. Cantering hurts - I am still a little soar from all the quick ups and downs - but galloping, you flow more, the horse feels lighter, even if it’s dark and the sand is a little shapeless, and you can’t hold your camera for proof.