My Egypt Trip - November, 2009

at the Souk

In Luxor

On the Nile River

If my father had not immigrated to the US, these could have been my granddaughters posing for tourists at the pyramids 

I began writing about my Egypt trip when I arrived in Cairo but never finished it.   The 10 day trip took place in November, 2009, long before the upheaval in the Middle East began.  I went with my friend Gerri and we both felt very safe there and enjoyed the trip very much. Uniworld Travel worried about the details  and we went along for the ride.  The least favorite part was the cruise on the Nile River on an Egyptian built cruise ship....yuk!.  Still Uniworld did an excellent job considering that we were in a third world country and we had to live and travel within the context of the environment.  Of course, my most favorite part of the trip beyond the wonderfully cooked and familiar tasting food, was the pyramids.  But it was all amazing to see so many wonderful sites in Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, etc, and I felt proud that at least one Arab country took pride in its past enough to preserve at least some of it for the world to see.

Nevertheless, I must admit that I feel a little odd and maybe a little guilty. Long before I was an adult; one might argue that I have not reached adulthood even now.....I traveled a few times to the Middle East on my own accord.  I remember visiting Beirut  just about a  year before it was torched during the Lebanese Civil War of 1982.  While I was grateful that I was not at the wrong place at the wrong time, the timing of my visit followed by the mass destruction of the city made my skin crawl from the coincidence. It is clearly something that I cannot articulate, but as an American born Middle Easterner, I have some poorly defined connection, not only to the Arab countries in the Middle East, but also to Israel.  Now my past has revisited me again in another Middle Eastern City.  Thankfully, I have not been in Syria or I would somehow take the blame for that too.

By the way, all of the pictures were taken by the fine camera work of Gerri...I really suck at taking pictures. And for the record, I have not edited the document below.....it is there with all of its run on sentences for all to read. And as I read it over and over, I can't  help but wonder what my blog would look like if the trip had taken place in November, 2011 instead of two years earlier.

Egypt -  half way around the world and back means around the world once.

Chapter 1

I never wanted to go to Egypt before, mostly because I had other priorities in the middle east including communities like Ramallah, formally Jordan and most recently occupied Israel, where my parents were born and grew up…on the west bank…and others close by like, Jerusalem, Nablus, Bethlehem, etc.  The truth is that I am a little afraid of the Middle East, especially occupied Israel.  The Jews take me for an Arab which I am but what is really scary is the Arabs including many of my distant relatives who don’t recognize me at first glance take me for a Jew.

In any case, besides the attraction of the pyramids and the rich history of Egypt, I had no previous or compelling reason to go.  I was always told it was a hot, poor country whose streets smelled like urine.  Beggars and others on the street are constantly harassing tourists and the streets are super congested with traffic, the stench and magnitude of car emissions are overwhelming, although it had the positive benefit of shielding some of the intense sun from scorching your flesh while singing and mutating your epithelium. 

So far, with only a few hours into my stay, my initial impression is one that is very positive and nothing even remotely akin to my previously conceived bias.   The airport was new and modern; the road travelling from the airport to my hotel was a well lit 4 lane highway that was clean and graced by palm trees and other green borders.  The mosques and train station that I passed were exquisite and well lit, and the Marriot was a converted rich sultan’s palace (Khedive Ismail), nestled on the bank of the Nile River on a peninsula protected from the hustle and bustle, congestion, fumes, heat, and sensory blizzard of Cairo proper…..laced with intricate ceilings, beautiful tapestry, and wonderful views.  This is not to say that my impression will not advance with time as this world unfolds for me but I am satisfied that Cairo is not the slum I thought it was going to be. 

In some ways, so far, this city is very advanced and seems a cross between Europe and India.   Many youth look like the youth of any town…girls dressed in tight clothes, lots of make up, texting and concentrating their efforts on their hand held device and nuclear look alike friends.   The boys wear loose clothes, tending to their friends, eating and drinking and oblivious of their surroundings.  But mixed into to this scene is a spattering of others with traditional garb, not the wildly colorful dress of Indian women, but more conservative body coverings that are usually one color, but some have a palate of colors that are more muted than the bright pastels of Indian dress. Nevertheless, in this respect, India and Egypt are similar, not to mention many other aspects as well.  Many words are similar sounding like the word for shirt…chemise…, and the music while sang in different languages, still has the same tempo and soft dreary and moaning intonations and quality which in my circles, would appeal to someone drunk silly after inhaling a mega dose of hashish.  Parenthetically, I was never a fan of this type of music, I must admit, and always was annoyed with my sisters whose music collection consisted entirely of Arabic music from the past.  Perhaps Cairo can use India as a type of role model in advancing its modernity agenda…..indeed, maybe we will see the development of Bellywood to complement a triad of movie mega sites, to compete with the Indian Bollywood and the American Hollywood…

Chapter 2

This chapter finds me sitting at the airport in Chicago waiting to board to my flight to Honolulu after spending 10 nights in Egypt.  It was truly a world wind experience filled with early morning excursions with visits to most of the important sites in Egypt except the magnificent Ramses II .........