EGYPT; One Night In Cairo...

I'll start the first few blogs with intros to the various countries I've lived in as an international educator. Though not in chronological order, I'll begin with Cairo, Egypt, as it was one of my favourites.

"One Night In Cairo..." was written some time in the third month of our 2-year stint at Futures American School.

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ONE NIGHT IN CAIRO...

Let me recount for you a Friday evening that reflects the Cairo I’ve come to know. We start with a taxi ride downtown to lounge at a posh hotel that hugs the Nile. I love the architecture of majestic Arabian archways, ornate wooden mashribiyas, gilded antique light fixtures and de rigueur earth tones: cinnabar, saffron and steely blues. The outside patio of the hotel is where one goes in Cairo to linger with the beautiful people. And for the best visibility, the tables near the entrance are prime real estate. They come here to vogue with a cosmopolitan cast: hirsute men from the Gulf States in flowing white galibiyas, Calvin Kleined Americans, European polyglots in French, German, Dutch and a rainbow of other languages. We came because it was recommended in our guide books and once there we were lulled by its ambiance and by the sweet night air beneath the canopy of banyon, fig and ficus trees.

Quite some time after finishing our fresh mango beverages, we decided to do some more exploring. As much as we enjoyed the place, there was something about it that felt like an artificial resort. So we headed for Khan El-Khalili, the major souk downtown. In the heart of the souk is a Cairo institution called "El-Fishawy", a coffee house that serves great ambiance and excellent people-watching along with coffee and shisha. We had tried a shisha (or hooka pipe) before and enjoyed it. It was quite an experience, though, to do shisha in a setting dripping with Middle-Eastern character. There were ornate fixtures and wooden frames much like the hotel, only here everything was weathered and alluded to a rich history. Our waiter told us the seat that Mike was sitting in was occupied by none other than literary Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfouz then rattled off some other notables that had once intellectualized in Fishawy. Swarthy men puffed on their shisha pipes, some dressed in common galibiyas, others in very distinguished summery suits. Women were in every manner of dress, from head-to-toe coverage with a slit for the eyes, to simple hijabs (head dress), to slinky "Western" attire. Panhandlers sold the strangest assortment of objects: "real" Rolexes, "solid gold" necklaces, cheap plastic dolls with demonic-looking eyes, stuffed baby animals from some enterprising taxidermist - stuffed goats, foxes and sheep were paraded in the coffee house!

And the music! Not canned music, not artificial mood music piped through tinny speakers but live, spirited music that would start spontaneously from people who would come to the coffee house with their drums, flutes or string instruments. The biggest surprise of all was when a Dickensian urchin who had previously tested our patience with his rude and tenacious attempts to sell us some cheap plastic trinkets, started crooning spontaneously to a tune being played by a nearby flute. Only five minutes before, we were ready to kick his behind and yet when he sang, his face gave a cherubic glow and we were held motionless by a voice as sweet as rosewater.

Quite an incredible evening. It would have been nice if it had ended with the El-Fishawy coffee house experience, but it didn’t. We hopped into a taxi, expecting a 10 to 15 minute ride, but it wasn’t. We’d been told the school’s residence was in an area called "Muqattum Gideed". It wasn’t. So, for an excruciating hour and a half we looked for familiar landmarks to re-trace our route home. We took countless wrong turns, second-guessed ourselves, re-traced wrong routes, asked for directions from passers-by and followed their wrong directions. At one point we were only one minute from home but since it didn’t look familiar, we turned around and went back. It was 4:30 a.m. and I was smack dab in the middle of a nightmare.

What saved us was a God-send in the form of a rough-looking teen-aged boy, who had an amputated finger, and wore a T-shirt picturing an extended middle finger with the caption "Fuck You!" beneath it. How, at 4:30 in the morning was there any one out in our area of Cairo? And how did he happen to speak flawless English? The teenager, our saviour, knew all the landmarks we described to him and was able to give correct directions to the taxi driver. We were in our apartment 5 minutes later.

A kind passer-by with expletives on his T-shirt, a Dickensian waif with the voice of an angel; it is these incongruities and ironic juxtapositions that have come to characterize our Cairo experience so far. At times Cairo is exasperating, frustrating. We give it a minute, though, and we see a different face. Here we observe and marvel at the complexities of human cultures. Here we witness dynamic tension at every corner and can not help but be affected by it viscerally, if not intellectually: the donkey-drawn wagon beside the BMW, the new beside the old beside the ancient, the palatial beside the dilapidated, the acrid fumes beside the jasmine blooms, the Egyptian beside the Filipino-Canadian. If the last two and a half months are any indication, it promises to be a fascinating two years.