Cairo, Egypt 21.4-24.4

israel behind the mask alex

...but not by eating dinner at the Marriott Hotel, a very posh palace-cum-hotel on Gezira Island in the middle of the Nile. Stuffed pigeon may be a traditional Egyptian meal, but that doesn't make it a very usual one, at least not if washed down with a pint of surprisingly good Stella Export beer. (I was later informed that in Egypt, pigeons are considered aphrodisiac. Yet another reason not to travel alone.) And then a few leisurely hours of mint tea and shisha (apple tobacco through a water pipe). Not a bad introduction, not bad at all...

You know it's hot when the bar of dark chocolate you brought along melts into a puddle at the bottom of your bag. Thankfully Safeway rescued the other stuff in my bag from damage by practicing environmentally incorrect heavy plastic-and-foil wrapping.

Today it was time to pick off the top two sights in Cairo: first the Pyramids, then the Egyptian Museum. The Pyramids weren't quite as impressive as I expected, partly because the mind boggles at their sheer size (they look quite a bit like easily climbable staircases, until you get close and realize that each 'step' is well over a meter!), partly because they're crawling with other silly tourists in silly clothes taking silly pictures, and also being pestered by camel/ postcard/ water bottle/ Day-Glo pink pyramid paperweight sellers. We chose not to venture inside, but opted for the Solar Barque Museum instead. A 'solar barque' is the large wooden boat the Pharaoh is supposed to sail away to heaven with, so burying them into the tomb along with internal organs neatly sorted into alabaster jars is quite logical. Just the same, the boat was impressively big (evidently the wood is from Lebanon, as trees of the required size don't grow in Egypt!) and remarkably well preserved. And I even found shoe coverings big enough for my size 46 combat boots.

On the other side of the hill and in comparison downright diminutive was the Sphinx, that famed object of target practice during the Ottoman era. It would benefit considerably from a full restauration though, currently only the paws are sparkling new... unfortunately all those classic photos of the Sphinx set against the pyramids are only a trick of photography, the Sphinx lies at the bottom of a hill and the pictures carefully screen out the paved road, modern buildings and gazillion Italian tourists surrounding the ground-level view.

The hidden side of King Tut

Boo!

Horus & friend

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is clearly a spiritual sibling of the Ägyptische Museum in Berlin ***link, most objects are usefully annotated with insightful labels like "8376A". Fortunately -- or unfortunately, depending on your point of view -- unlike in Berlin most of these objects are not pot shards, but statues, sarcophagi, and jewelry. The contents of King Tut's tomb alone occupy most of the upper floor, and the famed mask is indeed worth every bit of its fame. The surprising part is that very, very few of the multitude of other burial masks and other antiques contain even a fraction of its artistry... and when an insignificant underaged twerp like Tutankhamen was buried in no less than six increasingly large gold coffins containing several dozen kilos of jewelry, it can only make you wonder what the treasure of a Ramses II must have looked like before it was looted and melted down.

The museum was packed with other tourists, including a veritable mob at the entrance to the museum. Firm believers in "security", every single museum, hotel and government office in Egypt is equipped with a walk-through metal detector, but although my steel-capped boots invariably cause the things to beep, nobody has yet paid the slightest attention. The museum itself was full of girliez dressed in shoulderless midriff-baring tank tops, skintight shorts and other apparel that would quickly merit a whack of the stick in most other Islamic countries, but oddly enough the museum guards didn't seem to mind this little alleviation of their otherwise deadly dull job...

The day's official program out of the way, I hit the streets of Cairo alone, first of all in search of lunch. Picking a place to eat is no trivial matter if you intend to avoid the Pharaoh's Revenge, but thanks to the ever-helpful Lonely Planet guide I located an excellent little kushari joint nearby on Sharia at-Tahrir. Kushari is a uniquely Egyptian dish consisting of rice, various types of noodle and macaroni, black lentils, tomato sauce and spices all cooked together and ladled out at two pounds per bowl (and even that price probably contains about 100% khawaga tax). Mumtaz! And then I headed back to Doqqi on the Cairo subway, which would have cost me all of 50 piastres if the ticket seller hadn't seen it fit to tip himself another 50. It may not look like it, but the subway is so new that the two newer lines (including the one I used) aren't even marked on most maps, and despite not being quite as spic and span as your average European subway, everything (except the prices...) is quite well marked.

Once again, being a two-meter, blond-haired, pony-tailed khawaga draws stares, especially when outside the immediate vicinity of the usual tourist haunts. The constant calls of "Hello!" and "Welcome!" are even more irritating: it feels rude to simply stomp past and ignore them, but neither am I in the least interested in being sold carpets, perfumes or their underaged daughter. And maybe one in a hundred is actually genuinely interested in something other than my money, but how to sort them out? Sigh. Cairo would be quite a bit more pleasant in the company of a local... I'll have to brush up on my meager Arabic before venturing out into the old town.

I never knew satellite TV could be so interesting. Forget Bruce Springsteen's lament about 57 channels and nothing on: with satellite TV, the number is closer to 570, including Iraqi state TV, Slovenian test signals and the even more improbable sight, or maybe that should be sound, of phone sex ads in Arabic. Yes, there appear to be entire channels devoted to this. And I thought whispering sweet nothings in Hebrew was weird.

Exciting Egyptian programming

Today's menu item:

And in a suitable spicy sauce, too. Yum! A soul more musical than I could probably find inspiration for a sequel to the Chef's classic Chocolate Salty Balls here.

(BTW, the kushari and the accompanying glass of tap water caused a few rumbles, but so far -- sheep balls notwithstanding -- I have managed to avoid greater intestinal distress. Knock, knock.)

Oh Lord, the troubles I got, oh Lord, the troubles I got
Don't nobody know my troubles but God...

-- Moby, something

Talk about inflation, mere entry to Cairo Tower -- a Nasserite monument built by Soviet engineers with American money originally destined for the Aswan High Dam -- now costs a ludicrous £30 (and you can throw in an extra £10 for a "free" beer!). No wonder the place is deserted.

Now I finally feel like I'm in the Third World. Mostly for yucks, I went to check if my passport needs to be registered at the Mogamma, a gigantic 14-story government complex housing no less than (parts of) 15 ministries, including desks 48-50 of the Interior Ministry's Passport Department's Immigration Division's Registration Section. It would've been a Kafkaesque nightmare if the people hadn't been amazingly friendly and helpful to the poor little lost khawaga. Unfortunately my camera was confiscated at the entrance, the stacks of white paper thrown out the windows onto the roof of the central courtyard would've made a great picture...

And now I sit outside, flies buzzing over me, watching a 5-year-old boy trying to mind his little brother and hawk soft drinks to passersby.

Party time, Coptic Cairo style

Ornate mashrabiyya window shield

One of many monasteries in the area

Maybe coming to the center of old Christian Cairo on Palm Sunday wasn't such a smart idea after all -- although I'd thought that the main festivities would be next week, the Coptic calendar being a week behind. At least this disused synagogue provides some much-needed peace and relief from the hectic palm-leaf toting crowds outside. Amazing woodwork abounds here as well, and prayers in Arabic echo from the nearby churches.

A miracle: I found a large bazaar that contained a well-presented large selection, where most items contained price tags and the staff didn't pressure buyers in the least, despite speaking English quite well. Hillary and Chelsea Clinton grinned toothily in a framed photo on a wall. The price tag on a shisha said 125 pounds (in Arabic numbers only), but when I asked the price to check the honesty of the staff, they quoted 100 pounds! A shame all their models sucked, but at least I have an idea of the prices to aim for when I head for Khan el-Khalili tomorrow. No food in sight though, except a wizened granny sitting in a gutter, scooping up soaked yellow beans into paper cones with her blackened claw...

I crossed the subway tracks and headed through the suburbs towards the Nile, obviously a land not much frequented by tourists. Almost all the kids I walked past smiled and shouted Hellos -- and not a single one tried to sell me anything! I took the river boat aback to the center (the ticket seller failed to overcharge me and actually gave me change back for my ticket) and walked to Doqqi.

Odd episodes: one of the ubiquitous traffic policemen stopped me and asked for a pen with a toothy mustachioed grin. (I had enough presence of mind to not give him the one emblazoned with "Welcome to Israel!" in Hebrew.) He scribbled something in his notebook -- without asking a single question, mind you -- then handed the pen back and told me that I was beautiful. Ooookay. I smiled non-committally and walked off.

Daily fun fact: today is Sinai Liberation Day here in Egypt. And silly little me thought the Israelis gave it back because they had no use for it...

My first target was the Museum of Islamic Art, rather inconviniently located halfway between the center of town and the bazaars of Khan el-Khalili. To make navigation a bit easier, I took the new green metro most of the way there - I just hadn't counted on every single street around the station having changed its name since my map was published! It took me close to half an hour to establish both location (I wasn't quite sure if the station's position had changed as well) and direction (all the street signs being written only in the uber-decorative Quranic style didn't help). But I found my way eventually, and the museum turned out to be an overpriced chaotic mess. As usual. However, the building did contain a truly memorable work of art -- an absolutely amazingly beautiful unveiled Arabic girl, one of a horde of art students busily copying some of the designs. Wili, wili, ya wili, looks like I'll have to convert to Islam...

With sightseeing out of the way, it was time to get down to shopping. Even before passing through Bab Zuweila (the impressive southern gate currently covered in scaffolding), the quiet streets start to mutate into hectic bazaars, goods spilling out from tiny shops onto the sidewalks. On a tip from Lonely Planet I snuck up to the 3rd floor of a shoe store and duly located the Said Delta Papyrus Center, an operation so clinically sterile it was hard to believe you have to walk through an unlit piss-stained corridor to get there. Prices were marked but negotiable, albeit not quite as much as usual; as their Sudanese smooth-talker will explain in excruciating detail with a female assistant flashing examples and a radiant Vanna White smile, this is "first class" stuff, not the one-pound banana leaf you get "in the bazaars". The craftsmanship was excellent though, I was originally looking for the 99 Names of God (Bismillah irrahman irraheem...) but I was so struck with one calligraphic masterpiece expressing gratitude to the prophets that I bought it instead. After a cuppa and the usual protestations of poor studenthood I took two for LE 55 (down from a posted 80), both the exemplary pieces posted on the wall and not the ones they'll try to give you from the back room.

The above, by the way, took about five hours, so I decided to leave shopping for silver necklaces, T-shirts and exotic spices for another day. (And why is it so difficult to find halfway decent postcards in Egypt?)

Thanks(?) to the clouds of pollution hover above Cairo, it's practically impossible to get sunburned. However, despite protestations to the contrary from people who should know, those 5-hour jaunts at midday do always leave me with the tingling of a mild suntan.

on to alex