Feeling small at Karnak Temple
These were some of the sentiments my son Marcus and I expressed as we walked the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, and Port Said back in November, 2010. We had come to Egypt not sure what to expect, but with open minds, ready to explore and learn.
At the halfway point of our trip, when I wrote my postcards, I began by saying, “Three words to describe Egypt: Crowded. Dirty. Noisy.”
Crowded: Our first impression of Cairo was how very crowded it was. At almost any time of day its streets teemed with people: many going to work or shopping, but seemingly the same number just hanging out. Groups of men, standing around in front of shops. Groups of men, sitting on kitchen chairs in front of apartment doorways. This in itself was somewhat intimidating, but what made it worse was the fact that as Westerners, we could not take more than a few steps without being accosted.
“My friend, are you looking for Egyptian Museum? I will show you.”
“Come into my shop. No buy. Just look. Very good things.”
“Where you from?” “Canada.” “Canada Dry! You want to go Egyptian Museum?”
An hour of this was enough to teach us to look straight ahead as we ploughed through the crowds and to ignore any ostensibly friendly overtures. Sometimes, however, even when we rebuffed our would-be guides, they insisted on walking with us, following in our wake, offering advice, directions, or suggestions, and then when they decided they were finished, they’d ask for tips. How to win friends and influence people? I don’t think so!
English is not widely spoken in Egypt, even in the tourist areas, but anyone who is anyone knows the word “Tips.” The young man who led our camels as we rode to the Pyramids spoke reasonably good English, but when the tour was over and we were on the way back, he too he said the magic word – no, not “Please,” but “Tips”. I gave him 100 Egyptian pounds. (We had paid dearly for the camels, and 100 pounds seemed more than adequate.) This was, you might think, his cue to say “Thank you,” but you would be wrong. He saw it as his cue to complain: “This small money,” he whined. And the whining and complaining continued as we rode back to the stable, as we met up with our taxi driver, and even as we waved goodbye. Do modern Egyptians have so little dignity, we puzzled, thinking of the tomb paintings of proud scribes and priests. Doesn’t this young man realize how pathetic his attitude makes him look?
Dirty: I remember once, years ago, reading about what I thought was an unspeakably sad situation: families in Egypt who lived in a garbage dump. Of course I still think this is sad, but after seeing garbage scattered and mounded on the streets of several Egyptian cities, it no longer seems quite so dramatic. Once again, a short time on the streets provided all the incentive we needed to cast our eyes downward regularly to ensure we did not step on discarded tea bags, potato chip wrappers, empty kosheri containers, rotten tomatoes, or worse. By worse, I mean hoofs or even entrails, the leftovers of animal sacrifices. Our visit took place during the post-Haj holiday commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. At this time, Muslims around the world celebrate by sacrificing animals. I witnessed this when I lived in Istanbul in the early 1990s, but guess what? Immediately afterwards, people cleaned up the mess. Not so in Cairo, Port Said, or Alexandria. To be fair, I’m sure some of the people cleaned up, but those who didn’t bother made life mighty unpleasant for the rest of us. How can they stand this, we wondered, as we watched the endless crowds of people strolling along, oblivious to the mess beneath their feet. Just another day on the Corniche (waterfront street.)
Speaking of the Corniche, the one along the Nile in Cairo sounded tempting, so we ventured out one day to take a look. Our disappointment upon seeing the river cluttered with water bottles and other garbage was rivalled only by our disgust as we picked our way through the garbage on the sidewalk. Do Egyptians have no pride, we asked each other. Don’t they realize that people from all over the world are coming here and looking at this famed river? Don’t they care?
Noisy: Grown men standing around on the streets till four in the morning, talking and shouting. Horns honking, not because someone is in the way, not because another driver failed to move when the light turned green, but Just Because. And I am convinced that car alarms are installed not to deter thieves, but as a form of entertainment. Policemen stand at intersections, shouting and issuing blasts of their whistles, ignored by drivers and pedestrians alike.
On Fridays the streets echo with the sound of voices broadcast from the minarets of mosques. Within a city block, there might be two or three mosques, and from each issues an imam’s voice. Kind of like having three TVs, each tuned to a different channel, in the same room. With the volume turned up All The Way! Mingled with the everyday sounds of shouting, honking horns, car alarms and sirens, the resulting din perfectly illustrates the term “cacophony.”
Now, wait a minute! Before you feel sorry for me because I spent a couple thousand dollars traveling to such a terrible place, let me assure you that there is another side to the story. Most obvious is that in November the temperature was consistently in the high twenties or low thirties (Celsius, that is.) For a resident of northern Alberta, this alone makes the trip worthwhile. Add on the privilege of seeing Hatshepsut’s temple, the Pyramids, the Sphinx, King Tut’s treasures, the Valley of the Kings, the Suez Canal, six-hundred year old mosques and churches, and the value-for-dollar increases dramatically. Swimming for hours in the Mediterranean is almost enough to make up for any other deficiencies.
And the people. True, we had some negative encounters, but we also met some wonderfully friendly, cheerful, pleasant Egyptians who took pride in their work and their country. On our first morning at the hostel, two burka-clad young women and their male cousin surprised us by inviting us to join them at their breakfast table, and in a combination of broken English and sign language, we talked about Canada, about their home on the Mediterranean, and about the fertility treatment one of the young women was undergoing. The young man even asked Marcus to friend him on Facebook.
I was sorry I couldn’t speak Arabic and actually engage in conversation with people, but I made do with the next best thing: People Watching. Truth be told, I kind of like crowds, and there was plenty of scope for the imagination, as Anne of Green Gables would say, in every Egyptian crowd. I was fascinated -- in a Muslim country -- to see hoards of young couples, walking hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm, talking amiably. The female half of these couples almost always wore the Hijab, the Muslim head covering, but I was impressed with the individuality displayed. In Turkey the “covered ladies” wore drab colours: browns and greys and dark blues, but Egyptian women seem to favour bright colours: hot pink was popular, along with yellow, sky blue, and red. Even the women who wore the black “abaya” glammed it up with sequins and metallic embroidery, making an otherwise all black garment festive and pretty.
But back to that first day in Cairo. We did eventually make it to the Egyptian Museum, even without accepting directions from the man on the street; and its collections are every bit as impressive as one would expect. Yet even there, a world-renowned museum visited every year by thousands of tourists, decay and decrepitude were evident. Renovations were underway, so presumably improvements were anticipated, but in the meantime, neglect and indifference seemed to dominate. Many of the exhibits were not labelled, and of the existing labels, not a few were peeling or illegible. In the Sarcophagus room, a thick layer of dust covered everything. But really, how could we complain? We were seeing In Real Life items that had been handled by the ancient Egyptians, treasures three and four thousand years old. A little dust or a few faded labels – who cares?
What we didn't realize at the time is that we were seeing not only ancient artefacts, but also a foreshadowing of future events. The dissatisfaction, the lack of pride and dignity, the dirt and noise and restlessness -- all were early warning signs of a disease that is now full-blown.
When I first heard about the crisis in Egypt, I had an eerie sense of having visited the country at a pivotal time in history.
Back in November, we could tell something was wrong, but we didn’t know what it was. It seems evident now that until Tunisia started the ball rolling, not even the Egyptians themselves knew the cause of their malaise. We knew we were looking at a puzzle, but we could not even begin to assemble it. But as I listened to this report (partially transcribed below) from the BBC‘s Jon Leyne, the puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place and I look back on my time in Egypt, the things I saw and the people I met, with new eyes. Now I read the news about Egypt every day, hopeful that from the ashes of these disastrous events, a Phoenix of new hope and vitality will emerge, an Egypt ready to offer freedom and opportunity to its citizens, in the place of oppression and despair.
“[The feeling is that] Egypt has not progressed under Hosni Mubarak’s rule, that he’s brought stability, but people believe Egypt has lost influence… it’s really in quite a bad state of decay in many ways, with the infrastructure, and the economic situation… education, even though it’s improved, it’s still very poor by world standards. And also people tell you that Egypt doesn’t have a dream. Egypt in the past has always had a dream… as far back as the Pharaohs … and now it’s very humdrum, and they don’t really have any vision for the future of this country. And above all, people here, they can’t express themselves anymore, not so much for lack of freedom of the press, but the lack of openness of the political system, so there’s no way to vent that frustration.” (Jon Leyne, BBC, Jan 25, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12272836)
And for those who don't believe I really rode a camel:
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