Cairo in August

Egypt is one of those places I always wanted to go but always postponed because I could go there anytime since it is close to Turkey. Thus I also wanted to go there overland but when finally the opportunity arose it was the middle of August and I didn't feel as crazy as I used to be. 35 degrees of sunshiny days in Istanbul contributed to my decision to fly and postpone visiting Syria and Jordan to some unknown future.

Fast breaking during Ramadan, El Azhar, Cairo

Egypt Airlines, 220 euros return, what a rip off. Nevermind, it was a comfortable ride and as we arrived in Cairo I could feel a cool breeze. Hey wait, didn't the weather report show Cairo 5 degrees hotter than Istanbul? And didn't I feel all fainty from too much sweating there? And this is supposed to be just by the desert, right? Hmmm, dryness! As soon as you're in the shade you're cooled off by a little wind but the sun can pierce you when it's right on top.

Little streets of many surprises near the main market area.

I met a Spanish guy on the plane who's been living in Cairo for a couple of years which is one of the best things one can hope for when arriving in a new place. With his Arabic skills we managed to get a taxi with a reasonable price and the taxi was a Turkish Şahin. As we entered the city I started to have this feeling of going back in time to my childhood, with all flatness of roads without the underpasses and the overpasses, the chaos which is worked out by people and not by traffic lights or machines, the taxis which were mostly the Turkish Fiats which are out of production in Turkey.

Khan El Khalili, the main "touristic" market.

Then I had my first big surprise. Although I am from a nearby country and quite sensitive about cultural prejudices and misperceptions, for some strange reason I still expected Egypt to be a backwards country. After all we in Turkey feel insulted when Westerners confuse us with Arabs, and this comes from -as well as it leads to- Arabs being seen as the Saudis, uncivilized, rich and recently islamist. Although I had a few Arab friends who were not like this at all, I thought it would be reflected in the overall feeling of the society. After all I know the feeling in Turkey sometimes deserves all the prejudice. That’s why I believe everyone shall travel. Anyway Alberto took me to an old teashop which was still somewhat familiar with only a couple of major differences. On the outside some people were having their coffee and teas, playing backgammon and chess and some were smoking waterpipes. Among the people smoking were some women in conservative dress, with a headscarf and all. In my modern Turkish reality the least it would take for a woman to sit by herself in a tea shop which are all dominated by men and smoke is lots of courage, for there is a great chance that she will be approached by the men sitting at the next table. But apparently this was not the case in Cairo. As we entered the indoors I realized that half of the tables were occupied by university students and they were mostly having Stella, the local beer. In fact, I was hoping that there would be beer in Egypt but again I wouldn’t imagine it being so public and neither so tasty. So my first drink in Egypt was a Stella beer.

The old cloth market, somewhere near the main bazaar.

Then I walked a bit and found this Lotus Hotel on the 7th floor of a building. It was a 50 years old hotel which had this instant time travel effect on the newcomers with all the retro furniture, the paintings and posters on the walls and even the bell boys themselves. As I said I’m from Turkey the receptionist started speaking good Turkish. His family was Armenian from Turkey, one of those who survived the genocide and found their way south. Although I have had many Armenian friends who are citizens of Turkey, I haven’t met many who were forced out and I didn’t know what to expect. After all they were banished from their homeland, for whatever reason, and had to endure living in far away lands as complete strangers. But this guy in particular –as well as the few others I later met during my time in Egypt- seemed happy to be able to practice some Turkish. We got along well.

Al Azhar Mosque

I had a huge room, big balcony, cheap room service and a very exciting schedule. So I had a good sleep and had my breakfast and started to discover the city by walking. Cairo is one of those perfect cities to walk because it is almost completely flat and there are more pedestrians then cars. But the traffic is quite crazy and crossing a street can be seriously dangerous at the most unexpected times. Well, I walked and walked. First I let myself get lost, like I usually do, and ended up in some strange places with no tourists at all. But I discovered little teashops, had a couple of little chats and had some sugarcane juice (my favorite). Then I found the old market area and the street where they sell all the fabric and tents. I had been ordered a tennure skirt, which is a big colorful skirt used in a sort of whirling dance derived from the Mevlevi whirling of Turkey. But I didn’t come across any and I walked on until the market changed into a fresh food market, with vegetables, chicken, dried fruits, whatever you like. As the ground was getting stickier with all the rubbish and the air getting balmy with all the smells I had a break and discovered my first Egyptian food koshery. Of all the great Indian food my favorite is kitcheri which is rice and lentils cooked together in a mixture of spices. This koshery is even better than that, it is rice, pasta, lentils, chickpeas, fried dried onions, tomato sauce and spicy sauce mixed together. Exactly what I like.

Khosery, macaroni, rice, lentils, chickpeas, fried dried onions,
tomato and chili sauces, my favorite dish in Cairo.

Cairo is on the Nile basin which is almost like a wide canyon in the desert. This basin which was flooded once every year used to be the only fertile agricultural land along with the delta of course. So it is flat and the sides go up like walls which extend to the horizon. On the Southeastern edge of the basin is one of the hills where the citadel is located and in the citadel was something quite familiar, a replica of Sultanahmet Mosque in Istanbul. It was strange to see this one sticking out as unique because all the mosques in Turkey look pretty much the same. In fact, since the Turks took Istanbul and saw St.Sophia Church, all this 550+ years all the mosques built in Turkey look like byzantine churches. It kind of became a rule to make a dome which stands on an elevated rim on a square base mostly supported by half domes, that’s it. I envy the countries like Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia where people are free to design different houses for God. Some 20 years ago they made this architectural competition to design the biggest mosque in Turkey. The jury was mostly other architects and they chose a very modern looking project with a main enclosure made of triangles. A year later the ministry or the municipality decided that it didn’t reflect the Turkish mosque (perhaps because it didn’t look like a Byzantine church) and commissioned it to be redesigned as another replica of St.Sophia. Meanwhile the architect of the first project sold it to the “Islamic Republic” of Pakistan and they made it bigger and built it in Islamabad where it stands today as one of the biggest mosques anywhere and the main landmark of Islamabad.

The replica of Istanbul's Sultanahmet Mosque in the Citadel.

The citadel has a great view of the whole city from the top. Although the desert dust and the pollution had created mist, the other side of the basin could be seen and some five kilometers to the west, rose the great pyramids of Giza. It was my first gaze on the real thing and it was very mystic. The whole modern city were in this pit of the basin and above all rose the grandeur of thousands of years. Cairo has its share of modern high rise buildings but all were down the hole and were dwarfed by the pyramids. And all the new development were really new, built in the last few decades. How much more stunning the pyramids must have stood in the rest of their 5.000 years of history. It had a mystic effect even seeing them as shadows behind the mist. I couldn’t wait to be next to them.

Then I walked to see the sunset by the Nile and had a view of the more modern Cairo. Somehow the city looks like it was built with enthusiasm some 30 years ago and was never maintained. Everything looked run down, all buildings seemed to need plaster and paint, most older cars had scars and the roofs had all sorts of refused stuff which could have been sitting there for decades. I thought it looks like this city had its heyday and now is rotting slowly but fortunately by the dry desert nothing rots, they just get buried under the dust and that was exactly what looked like the destiny of Cairo.

When I finally went back to the hotel I stopped by the internet cafe to learn a little more about the few things I had seen and on Google Earth checked out how far I had walked. It was no surprise that I felt my batteries were completely dry because I had walked 17 kilometers the first day I arrived in this new climate with a temperature of over 35 degrees. But that’s the way I like discovering new places. I had traveled with people who are more conscious of their personal energy efficiency and won’t go walking unless they know there are nice things to see on the way. For me this just kills the magic of spontaneity. Each new place has its surprises and walking around is what makes it different than a photo. If I would be taking taxis everywhere I go, I could as well sit home and watch Discovery Channel.

The next day was my day at the museum. Cairo has a very old Egyptian Museum built by the British Empire. I had passed by it and I had thought that after all it is a building, like any other museum and it wouldn’t be that hard to see it in a day. Obviously I had forgotten about my day at the British Museum in London, and that was 22 years ago and I was still knocked out. This one was also one of the most interesting museums I’d seen with a great big collection of all sorts of things from the early kingdom to the Greek times. One thing was that it was too crowded with tourist groups which was not that bad sometimes when I stopped by to listen to what their tour guides had to say about the artifacts. It was amazing that ancient Egyptians buried so much stuff, mummified people and animals and carved so much out of stone. Well, Turkey is also full of ancient Roman, Greek and pre-Roman stuff but they are usually what is found near the surface or is buried by nature rather than people, so they are mostly not as intact as the Egyptian stuff. Especially stuff like those from the burial chamber of Tuthankamon looks like they were made a couple of years ago, all the gold shining, the chariots and the beds in usable condition. I had heard that when the British built the railways in Egypt sometimes they used ancient mummies as fuel. It was hard to imagine there being so many mummies but now I could see how.

For the next morning I arranged for a taxi to take me to the pyramids in Giza and Sakhara and the old capital Memphis. Is Memphis in Egypt or Egypt in Memphis? I searched Google Earth for “Memphis, Egypt” and all I could find was a little place called Egypt in Memphis, USA! The taxi took less then an hour to go from the center to the western edge of the city where the pyramids are. And as we got closer the pyramids got bigger and bigger but I was surprised that we couldn’t see the Great Sphinx. When I finally entered the area of the historical park first thing I saw and my first surprise was the Sphinx, which was not great at all. Maybe if you take it down to the city streets it could look big but next to the pyramids and by the empty vastness of the desert it looked quite small. The reason they call it the “Great” Sphinx was because they were other sphinxes of all sizes but never this big. And it would be a great welcoming statue to the three great pyramids, had it not been walled and fenced inside it’s own little yard. Poor thing.

Then I walked to the biggest of them all, the pyramid of Khufu. It looks like a medium size hill with very clear straight edges. It’s a pity that people took the white lime plastering to make other buildings but even with the stone blocks it looked massive. I have to say though that these blocks didn’t look like they needed alien technology to be moved around. Their average size were 2x1x1 meters but I had read somewhere that some places there were 40 ton ones and of course those were carried there by aliens or something like that. I decided to start with one of the smaller pyramids next to the big one and walked down a narrow shaft to a burial chamber. It was hot, airless and empty. I saw a small empty room in it. Wow! And I ran out for a breath. When I saw the long lines of people waiting to go into the pyramid of Khufu I decided to appreciate it’s beauty from the exterior. One of the most interesting things by this one was the boat museum. The ancient kings were buried along with lots of things to accompany them in the other side and among them were boats. They dismantled the boats and made big pits just by the side of the pyramids and buried them. One of the big boats of Khufu was excavated from such a pit, reassembled and put into this special building only for itself, with special temperature and humidity controls. It was hard to believe that this boat was almost 5.000 years old; it looked like it could sail anytime. That’s the desert, there is no humidity to rot anything. If something can dry properly, like wood with enough resin, then it is protected forever. And this boat radiated the timelessness of life. I felt I could suddenly be transported to that time and could find the same things I experience today.

Khufu's boat, buried 4.500 years ago, rediscovered, restored and reassambled.
Looks almost like ready to sail.

It was not easy to pull myself out of the tourist crowds so I was taking the paths less walked and on one of them, just when I was taking photos of camel one old camel man, Moosa, asked me if I wanted to go “over there”. He was pointing out to a kind of sand dune on the other side of a depression away from the pyramids and crowds. I got on the back of his camel and he grumpily moved us away. It was indeed a good place to go for a clear view of all the pyramids (there are 9 just in Giza and tens of them further south). I have ridden camels before but this was my first time on a camel in the desert :) And the desert on the other side looked endless and completely empty.

Camelman watching Khufu's Great Pyramid

One hour south of Giza is Sakhara where the first pyramids were built. There is a new and very well designed museum telling about all the firsts in the area, the first stone columns, first stone ceilings, first porticos, etc. It was in a way surprising that even the first columns and first ceilings looked like they were upgraded versions of older ones but the museum claimed that they were all derived from wooden buildings. The Step Pyramid of xxx was not in a very good shape and the one of xxx was just a pile of rubble but seeing that there were no tourists around I went into that. The walls were covered in hieroglyphs and the burial chamber actually has a tomb. All these were nice but it was not so easy to understand why the ministry of tourism decided to put multicolor lights in this plain looking pyramid. Perhaps to help tourists not to be bored with all the stones!

Then I went into a couple of mastabas, burial buildings for the rich which were the most interesting. All the walls were covered with scenes of daily life, of hunting, of ceremonies, of all sorts of things. They were all carved and painted and amazingly they all survived thousands of years for me to see and touch them. I felt really small in time.

I knew of Memphis the old capital from a couple of Ramses books I had read and my expectations were high. Unfortunately the city had fully been eaten by a modern town and what remained of it were some statues and offering tables in a small museum. But it was nice to see the great Ramses as the last thing of the day. As I went back into the taxi I was almost fainty but the ride took over 1 hour. It was also sweet that this 6 hr taxi rent was only $22, though the tickets plus the camel ride was $46. I went to my room and fell asleep.

Ramses in Memphis.

Every Thursday and Saturday night there is a tennure dance and music show by the Al-Azhar mosque. It is in a beautiful old building called Wihara Al-Ghauri and the whole event is organized by the cultural ministry and is free. It made me feel like they wanted to show a bit of the Muslim Egyptian culture when most of the tourists attention is on the ancient civilisation. And the whole thing was very well prepared and performed with many musicians and dancers. Tennure is a whirling dance derived from Mevlevi whirling but is more colorful and in a way free-style. After the initial drumming and music the first whirling of one man lasted for 45 minutes without stopping or even slowing down. My special mission there was to learn where I could buy one of those three layered skirts with which they did all sorts of things such as lift them up their heads and turn them into a giant hourglass or take them up completely and play with them like a lasso. But I learned that they are always made on order and are pretty expensive.

The Tennnure dance and music event at the Wihara Al-Ghauri.

The show ended about 10 PM and I thought I’d just go home and crash but the streets were so lively I started walking around and discovered the main market, Khan El-Khalili. It is a very touristic area where everybody tries to rip you off but it is also a good place to have a complete showcase of Egyptian artifacts from jewelry to clothes, from waterpipes to copperware. I had a tea and walked till the end of the main street. It was already midnight and the main road was more crowded than any place I had so far seen here. I waited for a taxi which wouldn’t come because there were too many people waiting, so I ended my day at the pyramids with another long walk on the busy midnight streets of Cairo.

The next day I decided to leave for the Sinai and went to the bus station to get a ticket. I was expecting a chaotic place where lots of men will scream place names to me and try to put me on the first bus that’s leaving but hey this Turgoman station was not like that at all. It looked more like a shopping mall and there were screens and only a few ticket windows. The lines were not very long and the ticket person spoke English. It was so easy, so unexpected, I wanted to stay there for a while.

However when I returned from Sinai the bus dropped me somewhere more out of town, right under a huge billboard with Kevin Costner saying “Flying with Turkish Airlines makes you feel like a star”. How would he know, he’s already a star! I had only one night in Cairo and I had a few hours on the back streets of the main market buying costume accessories for my performing friends and some gifts. As I arrived there it was the fast breaking time and all the squares were
covered in tables and people preparing to eat which was perhaps the best time to walk around without being hassled by the shopkeepers. But bargaining was really hard. I could feel the price they told me was maybe twice or thrice the real price but it was embarrassing for me to offer so little in comparison and they knew it and they abused it. I did bargain and got some discounts but I don’t have a doubt that I was also properly ripped off like any other tourist there. And this time I walked upstream where I managed to find a taxi to the cafe I discovered the first day to have a beer. But they said during Ramadan it is illegal to sell alcohol. That is so utterly stupid; there is nothing that says consuming alcohol is a greater sin if done during Ramadan. If you see it as a sin, you should just not do it but if you do it then there is no difference about Ramadan. It reminded me of my dad hiding from my mom when he drank during Ramadan. Religions always develop such idiocy in one way or the other.

Cairo street food.

My overall impression of Cairo after 7 days there is very positive. It is a big, crowded, chaotic, polluted city, that is true but in comparison to other such cities it has its charms. I find the people very positive and helpful. It is generally peaceful and secure, even in the middle of the night. It’s a city that starts the day late and stays up all night and that’s 10 points from me also. Just like Istanbul I wouldn’t want to live in Cairo but I can recommend it for a short visit. It has its little surprises for everyone.