Egypt and the Egyptians

Any New Yorker who says “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” should spend a month in Cairo. It bustles like any other huge city but it’s brand of chaos is particularly… relentless. As you walk around, air conditioners from the overcrowded apartments above drop big juicy beads of water directly on your head. When you cross the street, cars and motorbikes indifferently zoom around you. One time we were walking on a narrow crowded street and a woman standing outside of an essential oils shop was spraying big plumes of perfume in the face of every person that walked by, presumably performing some kind of urban baptism under the guise of salesmanship. Most relentless of all is the desert sun – the dry heat makes it quite manageable in the shade, but you can easily find yourself stranded on an unshaded road feeling completely exposed.

This feeling of exposure is pretty common, because to complement its relentlessness, Egypt doesn’t do much to protect you. A few of our hostels have had little balcony views or pretty rooftop catwalks, often several stories high with a pathetic single rope or knee-level guardrail separating us from the abyss. The showers have a hot water knob that may not work, or may at the slightest nudge spew water so scalding I’m pretty sure it would be somehow illegal in the US. Just getting in a car comes with peril—not a single one we sat in had a functioning seatbelt—but driving yourself is a non-option: even if you could make sense of the diverse communicative functions they’ve invented for the car horn, many of the roads are such a free-for-all that they don’t even bother painting the little white lane markers. These encounters all seem to converge on the same message – look out for yourself, because no one is going to do it for you. Keep your guard up.

As a tourist, it’s hard not to feel the same way about the Egyptian people. There are men here whose sole job is to spot a tourist and befriend them with conversations about Egyptian culture so that they can lead the foreigners to “my uncle’s gallery, not shop, art gallery” and trap them into buying exorbitant fake papyrus. This isn’t just one or two people, we were approached by a person like this at least once a day. People approach you offering directions or handing you something you were already reaching for and then expect a tip. A horse carriage driver followed us for an entire city block insisting that we needed his services. We once took a private sailboat ride on the Nile at sunset to get away from the hubbub, only to have a child on a paddle board latch onto our boat in the middle of the river and start singing the Macarena (hoping to be paid for what? His talent? The absurdity? My best guess is simply to make him stop).

In this environment, we found it impossible not to start looking at everyone with distrust, always sizing up what they wanted out of us and how we could guard against it. But this small slice of the tourism sector is hardly representative of the whole population. We met people who, when asked for directions, insisted on walking with us to make sure we got to our destination safely. I once ran into our hostel frantic that I didn’t have enough cash to pay for our taxi and the young guy at the desk didn’t hesitate to pull out his wallet but had to be pressed to let me pay him back later. When we missed our train to Aswan (the online ticket did not list the station and locals are rather loose about directions, time estimates, and the actual names of actual places), we were reluctantly led to a “police officer” whom we appraised with almost rude suspicion as he kindly arranged a new cheaper ticket and hosted us in his air conditioned office while chit-chatting about marriage and family. We learned over time that while we had to be wary of anyone who approached us, we could almost always trust anyone we approached.

Now that it’s time to say goodbye to Egypt, I feel sad but comfortable with the thought that this might be my last visit. When I left last time, I was confident I’d be back. But this time I’ve seen the temples of Luxor and Aswan. I’ve camped in the moon-like White Desert and learned that Bedouin guides can make better food over a campfire than most Cairo restaurants. I’ve been on a luxury “5 star” Nile cruise and stayed in a Nubian village surrounded by goats and hand-built stone homes. I’ve chatted with everyone from juice shop owners to wealthy engineers about politics and culture and women’s rights. My heart is full.

I don’t post about everything we do. Check out the Photos tab if you’re interested in seeing more detail!