While many other exchange students flocked to European destinations there were a few of us that decided to delve further into the Middle East. After a decision made on a whim, I decided to travel to Cairo with my friend Melody to experience the wonders of Egypt. Little did I know it would be the start of what I have come to refer to as the Cairo Diaries.
From the first day, the problems with the trip were apparent. Booking my taxi early because it was Bayram was all for naught when the taxi company called me to cancel my reservation 3 hours before our flight. Luckily I was able to flag down a taxi dropping off a Koç student and negotiate a deal with him to take us to Atatürk Airport. Luckily for us our flight was delayed 3 and a half hours due to the dense fog that descended on the city of Istanbul. Luckily there were other exchange students going to Egypt and conversation in the newly found free time made the delay fly by. After keeping our pickup waiting for 4 hours, we had to go through Egyptian customs and purchasing visas. Unfortunately for me, the banks of Egypt did not exchange Turkish Lira for Egyptian Pounds. I don’t think that I loathed not having any American currency more. Luckily for me, Melody was able to access her account and we were on our way.
Our first views of Cairo came into focus out of the back of a 1970’s Diesel Mercedes with our hosts Amad and his cousin Fatma. The crowded streets of 18 million people with the sounds of incessant honking and clouds of black smoke were, putting it lightly, overwhelming. Completely submerged in the Arabic speaking country and the swirls of youth that surrounded us wherever we went, we made our way to a district of Cairo called Heliopolis where our hosts lived. Our generous hosts prepaired mountains of food for us, the weary travelers. Plates of salted fish, eggs with beef bacon, warm pita, and hummus were complimented by the travel stories that we heard. Our hosts would not let us leave until we downed our 3rd plate of food and insisted that we were too thin and needed to eat more. Needless to say, we were both uncomfortably full, but happy that we had made it to Cairo in on piece. Masha-allah(Maşallah)!
There wasn’t enough room for me to stay with the family. Luckily, I booked the closest hostel to where Melody was staying to make getting together more feasible. After what seemed like 2 hours of driving through the crowded downtown streets of Cairo, in what seemed like the 1970’s from all the black and white checkered taxis, we arrived at the Jasmine Hotel. So far, the language barrier had not been an issue, but deep down I knew eventually it would…
The next day I arranged transportation to the Pyramids of Giza. Driving down the highway in the back of the hotel manager’s friends car at speeds faster than taxi drivers coming from Taksim, we caught our first glimpses of the Pyramids looming on the horizon after crossing over the Nile river. The pyramids were on the outskirts of town and upon reaching them; we used our ISIC cards to wrangle discounts on both the enterance fee to the area and on Camels to take us through the desert!
The greenery that we were once surrounded with completely replaced by desolate desert! Tourist police on Arabian horseback patrolled the area like vultures and we were only able to climb up to the 10th or 11th stone on the smaller pyramid before getting yelled at for climbing a priceless structure.
I would say that the biggest problem with our travel was the fact that Melody and I were not married and just friends traveling together. It was such an alien concept to them that we just said that we were married in order to belile their speculations. This worked until we got to Alexandra after riding the Egyptian rail. We decided to get dinner at a restaurant famous for its seafood and walked along the port sea wall to get there. Apparently, we had not got the memo that a white girl from Canada and a black guy with dreadlocks from America was such a big event. Swarms of children, their parents presumably at Friday prayers, turned into our official entourage and proceeded to follow us and yell at us the only English that they knew. Unfortunately for us, it was either ‘where are you from?’ or a colorful swear word that they presumably learned from American television. It wasn’t until we heard ‘white and black’ from one of the young children behind us that we understood our situation. While the calls made us uncomfortable at times, our hunger was our motivation to press on.
Reaching our destination, we proceeded to order, in English, grilled, whole fish, calamari, while plate after plate of meze were set in front of us. Pickled carrots and peppers, hummus, babaganush, brown rice, salad, and pita were stacked 2 high on our table. Needles to say, we were in food heaven. Finishing off our epic dinner with tea we dropped 120 Egyptian pounds, roughly 23 American dollars, and explored more of the city ending up at the fort at the tip of the city before proceeding back to our hotel.
Our travels, which did infact correspond to the Muslim holiday of Al-Hajj, only really hampered our aspirations to visit the Biblioteca Alexandria, which was closed for the duration of our time there. Luckily, we turned disappointment into time spent on the white sand beaches of southern Mediterranean. We saw a fully burkaed woman splashing around in the water with her husband and his friends and a lifeguard dressed in street clothes yelling at the kids swimming that he was not dressed to save them if they needed help. Sleeping on the beach, we soaked up the warm sun while our clothes dried.
Returning to Cairo late one afternoon, we decided to go to a quaint French and Egyptian restaurant in the heart of downtown Cairo. The crowds and crowds of people and the fact that we were literally elbow to elbow with people for almost half a kilometer made getting to the restaurant quite difficult and aggravating, but completely worth it when we were seated in the almost completely empty restaurant. After escaping Turkey, I thought I would take a break from eating meat with every meal. Sadly, the waiter did not accept my sentiments and after thoroughly convincing me to eat meat proceeded to bring our order with a stuffed pigeon. The food was incredible with the expected mezes close at hand. The pigeon was definitely a good recommendation a dish that I will surely not forget.
Rounding out our trip, we returned to Cairo in order to pick up souvenirs for our friends in Turkey and our families back home. Conveniently, many of the shop owners did not speak Turkish, which gave us a separate language in which to haggle while we were bargaining with the vendors. It was a perfect opportunity for us to practice our Turkish as well as getting the base price on all the items we brought back.
After what seemed to be a trip free of language complications, we tried to take a taxi back to Heliopolis. Unfortunately for us, he didn’t know the area we wanted to go in Heliopolis and between Melody and I being able to speak English, Spanish, French, and Turkish we were not able to get anywhere without speaking Arabic. Luckily for us, the cab driver had a cell phone and we were able to contact our hosts and were successfully able to navigate our way back to their place.
With the troubles that we had in getting to Cairo, leaving it was thankfully uneventful. This was offset by our complications with transportation in order to get us back to campus. Thankfully after only a 30 minute setback and ending up in Bakıköy, we were able to get back on the right track.
Gürüşürüz arkasaşlarım!
You are what you eat, and I am eating the world!
JMMD
