*The view from our hotel - Downtown Cairo*
Nothing about your first day in Cairo is easy.
Taxis rides in Cairo are not easy. The driving is erratic. You're bombarded by smog. You're surrounded by calls to prayer. Traffic lights are suggestions. Crosswalks don't exist. Our driver, Muhammad, was friendly. "If you need to go anywhere, call me." He said. M was ecstatic to make a new friend. I just wanted to check in.
Checking into your hotel is not easy. We handed our passports to the clerk, a dead ringer for Harry Potter. He smiled at us, while the manager, a tall man with a thick mustache and bad teeth, pored over the reservation book. "I don't recognize your tour company." He said. The three of us looked like we just crapped our pants. The manager looked up and smiled. "Relax! You're in Egypt." Yes, of course, relax. Perfectly easy.
Ordering authentic Egyptian food is not easy. "We gotta get outta here," I said to M and J. We had spent two hours in our hotel room, wondering if this was even our room to begin with. The muezzin was beckoning all to the mosque next door. We had to leave.
Egyptian Harry Potter directed us to a place a block away. "Very good and very cheap." We stared at the menu above the counter, letters completely in Arabic. We hoped the letters would transform to English. Five minutes later, I stepped to the counter and said the only food item that I remembered from my guidebook. "Fool?"
"Eh??" The counter guy asked. "Fooooool?" I replied.
"Fuul?"
"YES!"
We ordered fuul and shwarma and waited ten minutes. Turns out, when the cashier hands you a receipt, you hand that over to another guy, who fills your order. Whatever. The fuul was good.
Even walking the quarter-mile back to your hotel is not easy in Cairo. In the evening, during the heart of Ramadan, the streets are lined with locals, sipping tea, smoking hooka. These locals are quite friendly. Especially if you look...non-Egyptian. Five of these locals waved to us as we walked past them. M, desperate for some local interaction, turned to J and me. "Why don't we hang out?" "Yes, of course." I say to myself. "This is totally normal. Shoot the breeze with five guys who look as if we're just dying to hand over all our Egyptian pounds. No worries at all."
Five guys turned into seven. They asked us simple questions; Where are we from. Where else have we gone, etc. A tray of glasses, filled to the brim with tea, appeared. They handed us a glass each. "Please, drink." I looked at M and J. I shrugged my shoulders. Hey, why not?
We continued our conversation. They spoke in broken English. We knew no Arabic. Other than "fuul". That was of no help now.
After half an hour of talking, they started to leave, one by one. "We'll be back!" One of the guys, Mohammed, shouted over his shoulder as he bolted across the street. Five minutes later, as the three of us stared down, into our cups, I turned to M and J. "They stuck us with the bill for the tea, didn't they?" An old man to my left cackled. My stomach twisted as the man showed me a picture of Omar Sharif on his cell phone. "Just get me outta here." I thought. "Take me back to Athens. Or L.A. Anywhere but here..."
Ten minutes later, they still didn't show. "Guys, I'll take care of it." M said, as he rose to talk to the shop owner about the bill. Then they appeared, our new friends, stunned that we could possibly leave so soon. They insist that we stay for a bit. I shook my head. "We have to get up early, guys. " We shook their hands, they waved goodbye, and we headed to our hotel. My stomach untwisted. Why was I so worked up? Those guys couldn't be THAT friendly, could they?
As I lay in bed that night, wondering if the next day would be any easier, I thought, "What kind of city is this? And why do I feel so alive?"
