It was late afternoon by the time we landed, and got to our hotel. We were staying in the Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo, which is located on a long strip of land in the middle of the Nile. We picked this area because it’s a little quieter and less hustle and bustle than the center of the city. We checked into our room and then wandered around the neighborhood. Aesthetically speaking, Cairo isn’t the prettiest of cities. From the map, it appeared that there was only one large public park in the city and fortunately for us, it was right down the street. Since Beirut has no real public park space in the city we were looking forward to seeing it. But our hopes were dashed when we got to what we thought was the large, neighborhood park. As we tried to enter the park, we were informed that it was actually a large green area full of expensive private athletic and park clubs. If you didn’t have a membership, you couldn’t get in. Basically we felt like Snoopy when he runs into the ‘No Dogs Allowed’ sign. So to compensate, we just walked along the edge of the Nile River.
Civilization in this part of the world pre-dates 3000BC. For centuries before this, communities had been developing along the Nile River Valley and down into the Nile River Delta on the southeastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually, these communities developed into two separate states. One was the length of the Nile River Valley (Upper Egypt), while the other was the Delta itself (Lower Egypt). In 3100BC, a pharaoh named Menes unified Upper and Lower Egypt for the first time and around 2800BC what is believed to be the first Step Pyramid in the world was built. It still stands in Saqqara, about an hour’s drive south of the modern day city of Cairo. As the next 500 years rolled by, the ruling power of the pharaohs would be matched only by the size of their pyramids. Finally, around 2600BC, the largest pyramid in Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, was built in an area called Giza, now on the outskirts of Cairo. The pharaohs would build their pyramids just south of the Nile River Delta, where present day Cairo is, until about 2000BC when the center of power would shift south to the city of Thebes, now the modern day city of Luxor. Luxor and Giza are connected by the 4,160 mile long water highway known as the Nile River. The river’s headwaters start far to the south in Ethiopia and travel north to the Mediterranean Sea.
For now, Amy and I focused on just walking a mile or so of it without getting hit by a taxi or hassled by a tout. The Nile River cuts through the center of present day Cairo and has at least 7 major bridges crossing it. Its water is dark and murky with pollution. A section of the river in downtown is lined with permanently anchored ‘cruise’ type boats that are now bars, restaurants and nightclubs. On the river itself, smaller wooden tour boats called feluccas carried tourists up and down the river while blasting Egyptian pop music. Oh, the pharaohs would be proud.
The first thing the next morning, we set off in a taxi for the pyramids of Giza. It was about a half hour taxi ride from where we were staying. We thought we would be driving across open desert to get there, but instead the cab made its way through city street after city street and then suddenly, the pyramids popped up, right there at the edge of a neighborhood. The cab driver mentioned that in the last 20 years, the development in the city sprawled out and threatened to engulf the pyramids. Fortunately, when the buildings reached the pyramids, zoning laws were put in place keeping the development from going around them. But even with that, there are apartment buildings right at the foot of the hill that the pyramids are built on.
The pyramids at Giza are all that and a bag of chips. Incredibly impressive to look at and to imagine what it took to build them so long ago? You realize, standing there before them, that you’ve seen pictures of these things since you were a little kid and that over time your adult mind began to think of them as some imaginary thing that didn’t exist anymore and yet here you are looking up at them wondering when the aliens were coming back and whether Richard Dean Anderson would be able to save you.
There are three large pyramids at Giza. The first one I mentioned earlier, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, is the largest, followed by the Pyramid of Khafre. Although Khufu’s pyramid is bigger, it is more likely that you have seen a photo or painting of Khafre’s because of its unique limestone cap on top. When the pyramids were first built, they were covered with a smooth layer of limestone. Over the millennia, the limestone façade wore away leaving the rough edged pyramids we see today. Only on Khafre’s pyramid is the top portion of the limestone still intact.
The third, The Pyramid of Menkaure is much smaller than its two partners. It’s easy to see why the pyramids at Giza were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Not to mention that they are the only remaining one of the seven. Down the hill from these three pyramids, right in front of a line of apartment buildings and store fronts is the Sphinx.
Somehow, I’d always imagined that the pyramids and the Sphinx were spread out over a vast expanse of desert, but here they were, jammed together at the edge of town just a short walk from the KFC. Nothing says ancient wonder of the world like fried chicken.
When we got to Giza, the air was cool and relatively speaking, there was hardly anybody there. We were actually able to get some photos of the pyramids without people in them. I was figuring that the place would be packed with thousands of people, like a Disneyland in the desert. But fortunately, it was empty enough that we were able to climb up into the inner chamber of the Great Pyramid with only a few other people around. The access to the inner chamber is through a long, steep and very small, claustrophobic shaft that brings you into the center of the pyramid. You are practically down on your knees climbing up this thing, it’s so narrow. Once inside, the chamber is a large room, about 30’ x 50’ with a high ceiling. Needless to say, the gold and jewels of the chamber have long since been emptied out by the locals who built the pyramids, their descendents and foreign archaeologists. You decide which is the worst. The only thing remaining inside was the three ton, four sided, stone box and a half a dozen new-age Norwegian freaks, all holding onto it, deep in a trance. I say freaks not so much to criticize their little séance but because they were all standing shoulder to shoulder encircling the box so that no one else could see it or get near it. I elbowed my way in and was able to see the stone, coffin like structure, complete with a balled up Norwegian inside of it, humming away.
After we had gotten our fill of pyramidal energy there in the chamber we headed back down the long, narrow tunnel. By now the morning rush of tourists had arrived and the tunnel was choked with people going in both directions. We felt like miners trying to make a run for it before the cave in. Finally, we reached the tunnel’s opening and gasped at the fresh air. We could now see the tour buses all lined up just a hundred yards from the pyramid.
We were working our way to the second largest pyramid, the one with the limestone cap, when a young man approached us and asked us for our tickets. We just said no and kept on walking because we could tell he was a tout. He came up to us again and asked a second time but when we said no again to him, he said we had to because he was with the government. I got pissed. I went up to him and told him that if he was with the government than he wouldn’t mind coming with me to talk to the uniformed police officer standing by the entrance gate. He immediately backed down and I offered him a few colorfully descriptive words that aren’t fit to print here. A few minutes later he would come back up and apologize to us, saying that as a token he would tell us where the best place to take a photo of the pyramid was and then pointed to it. I told him not to worry about it and thanked him for the advice on photo positioning. He then asked for a tip. Amy and I laughed as we walked away. I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s persistent. The thing is, though, out of all the touts I ran into in India, and there were far more in India than here, none of the Indian touts would attempt some sort of lie to steal our tickets. The India touts just wanted to overcharge you for their products or services. No, these Egyptian touts were much more devious and shifty. We would run into a few more that tried to get our tickets before leaving Egypt.
From the last pyramid, we worked our way down the hill to the Sphinx, the God of Terror, sitting there in front of all three pyramids, protecting them from grave robbers, or at least trying. The Sphinx was really cool and as big as you imagined. Entry to the immediate area around it is restricted so you can’t actually touch it, but you can get within about 30 yards of it.
After spending the morning poking around the pyramids, we headed back into Cairo to check out some old Coptic Christian churches. The history of the Coptic Church begins around the year 42AD when Saint Mark (one of Jesus’ Apostles) travels to Egypt and starts spreading the word. In about the year 451AD, the Coptic Church of Alexandria (Egypt) split from what was then the Western and Eastern Orthodox Churches (the western and eastern hadn’t split yet). The Coptic Church has its own hierarchy including its own pope and is the belief of most Christians in this part of Africa. One of the churches we visited was supposedly the place where Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus (8 pounds, 6 ounces) hid from Herod the Great until Herod’s death. A church was built on the hiding spot years later. There was also a massive gift shop down the alleyway next to this church that was packed with shiny brass Egyptian pharaoh memorabilia. I’m assuming the gift shop was a lot smaller when the Holy Family hid out.
One of the other Coptic churches had a large museum attached to it with some pretty old religious paintings in it. Many, of course, were of Jesus. The thing I found most interesting about the paintings of Jesus is that the ethnic look of Jesus in the painting changed depending on where the painter was from. Meaning that if the painting was done by a Roman painter, then Jesus had very distinctive Roman features including the classic Roman nose. If the painter was Greek, then Jesus looked Greek. If the painter was Middle Eastern, Jesus had olive skin (probably closest to accuracy) and if the painter was from Egypt, Jesus had darker skin. It reminded me of a giant painting I saw of Jesus in a Latter Day Saints’ church I visited several times while in San Francisco a few years back. It was a modern rendition and Jesus had sun-bleached blonde hair, pale white skin and sharp blue eyes. These paintings here in this Egyptian museum just reconfirmed to me that throughout history people want to believe that their god looked just like them and that they looked just like their god, no matter how improbable it might be.
After the churches, we headed to the very large Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the oldest Mosque in Cairo. Unfortunately, Amy and I couldn’t go in together since there is a women’s entrance that is separate from the men’s. Amy had to don her head scarf and we both took off our shoes as we entered, as is customary. Inside it was peaceful and dimly lit with men praying or reading one of the many holy books shelved in there. Amy’s experience was much more limited than mine, since women are only allowed to jam into this small room in the back with no view of anything.
We finished up our day with a subway ride back towards the hotel. The subway stopped at one of the stations and an announcement came over the address speaker in Arabic. Since we didn’t speak Arabic, we had no idea what it was saying. Several different passengers on the subway car made a point of telling us what it said, even though many of them didn’t speak English, and let us know that everyone had to exit this train and wait for the next one. It was nice to see how helpful and nice people are once you get away from the touristy areas.
The next day we headed to the Cairo Museum. This museum is famous for holding many of the artifacts and mummies taken from the various tombs and pyramids around Egypt. On our walk there from the hotel, a man who was walking behind us came up and started chatting with us. We were immediately suspicious of what he wanted. He asked us where we were going and I told him, ‘nowhere’. He explained that he worked at the Marriot hotel and was on his way home from working the night shift and if we needed any advice he would try to help. I told him that we didn’t and that we were just heading to the museum, which was a short distance away. He told us that the downtown area around the museum was closed until 2pm (it was currently about 9:00am) because of a big political meeting of various Arabian ministers. He said that the museum would open up again at 2pm. This sounded reasonable to us, since this frequently occurs in Beirut, so we told him “thanks” for the advice. The man then told us if we wanted, there was a particular market on the other side of the river that was nice to see. We said no thanks. He said, “I’m not going to take you there, I just wanted to let you know that the market runs free shuttle car rides from around the city to the market. The free shuttle cars are blue, that’s all, now I’m going home.” And with that he walked on ahead of us. Then suddenly he turned and said, “Look, there’s one of the blue taxis.” And there on the side of the road was a blue car. He went up to it and spoke to the driver. He turned to us and said, “Yes, this is one of them.” We in return paused and then said no thanks. The guy then said, “Not all Egyptians are the same and want to rip you off.” Then he walked off and we didn’t see him again. Amy and I started talking about whether to go to this market, when the blue taxi driver said, “If you have any questions, you can ask me.” I said, “Why is the museum closed today?” The driver said, “I don’t think it’s closed.” We said, OK and walked away. We decided to walk to the museum and see whether we were being scammed or not. On the way to the museum we kept debating whether it was or not. If it was, why did the guy walk away? Was it a coincidence that the blue taxi was right there? When we got to the museum we saw that sure enough, it was open. We then noticed in our guide book a section warning about scammers who hang around the museum telling people that the museum is closed and that they can visit a market across town by taking a special cab. The scammer then gets a commission from the cab driver and the market. Wow! We were shocked that the scam would be that elaborate to involve the guy walking and a guy in a car. The worst part about it all was the guy trying to make us feel guilty for not trusting us by saying all Egyptians aren’t the same in trying to rip us off, when in fact he was. It was an all time low on the on the lowly scammers snake scale. We knew not to trust anyone before, this just sealed it.
The Cairo Museum was definitely worth the visit. We started out, of course, in the “mummy room.” This room is full of about 11 temperature controlled glass cases that contain the mummies of various pharaohs, queens and servants. It was pretty wild, especially since some of the mummies were over 3,500 years old. On some, you could still see the fingernails, teeth and hair along with the leathery looking skin. If those pharaohs only knew that instead of going to the other side peacefully on a golden chariot they were going to end up on display, almost as a circus freak show, I’m sure they would have opted for cremation. It was a combination of having a bothersome feeling thinking about someone robbing their graves and putting them on display, mixed with the awe of seeing their ancient bodies there under glass. The star of the mummy show was Ramses II, one of the great pharaohs of ancient Egypt who Percy Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias” speaks of. Other things of interest in the museum were the many golden statues and furniture that were stuffed into the various pharaohs’ tomb chambers. I guess I always thought that the furniture and supplies in the chamber were laid out like a bedroom setting, all neat an organized so that when the pharaoh made it to the other side, he could have a comfortable place to stay. Not so. There were large photographs up on the museum wall showing what the chambers looked like when first opened by archeologists. There was nothing organized about it. Things were just jammed in and stacked on top of each other, without an open inch of walking space in the place. Kind of like my sister’s basement.
About 3 or 4 hours later, Amy and I had thought that we had covered pretty much all of the museum exhibits when we realized there was no King Tut display. The guide book showed which rooms it should have been in, but there was no sign of it there. Disheartened about not seeing it, we just figured it was out on tour somewhere and headed for the door. Just as we were about to leave, we noticed a doorway that had “Tutankhamun” over it. We peeked inside and there it was. It was completely marked wrong on our guide book map and we almost left without seeing it. The good thing is that we saved the best for last. It was really impressive, especially that gold death mask that seemed so familiar when we finally saw it. It’s the one that we’ve all been seeing for years on every TV show about ancient Egypt. The detail is incredible.
From the museum we headed south of Cairo by taxi to see the Step Pyramid of Zoser in Saqqara, the oldest pyramid in Egypt.
It is a step pyramid, meaning it looks like it has large steps going all the way up it, and it looks really weather worn. It’s considered the oldest standing manmade structure in the world at about 5,000 years old. In that same area is the “Bent Pyramid” which actually narrows more quickly at the top than the other symmetrical pyramids, giving it a ‘bent’ look.
And the Red Pyramid, which we were able to go into via yet another narrow, claustrophobic tunnel. The difference with the Red Pyramid’s tunnel is that it goes down into the base of the pyramid as opposed to Khufu’s which went up into the center of the pyramid. The Red Pyramid also had a little added attraction to it: it wasn’t lit all the way in so the last stretch of it is the pitch black AND it’s got bats. So you get to listen to the little guys chirping at you as you pass by. And the smell of bat guano is so acidic and strong it even keeps the Norwegians away. Needless to say, it was a quick visit.
The next day in Cairo, we went to the old Islamic part of town. We started off by visiting the Al-Azhar Mosque which is not only one of Cairo’s oldest mosques, but also one of the world’s oldest Universities. Both Amy and I were able to go into this one (after paying a tout to guide us in there).
While the mosque was very nice inside, one notices that it is not that elaborate, which is part of the Islamic culture. There is a huge difference between the plainness of a mosque and the exuberance of many of the Christian churches: mosques are meant to be much more humble and much less ornate. From the mosque we headed into the famous Khan al-Khalili, the Great Bazaar. Everyone spoke of needing to go see this bazaar as part of any trip to Cairo. We figured it was going to be where the local people of Cairo bought their produce, goods and textiles. Instead we found touristy, gift shop central with every tout in Cairo trying to jump on you. After a quick swing through and the purchase of a knick-knack pyramid, we were out of there. (Since we’ve been back in Beirut, a bomb, targeting foreign tourists, went off in a café in this bazaar, killing one person and injuring twenty others). We checked out some of the neat old architecture of the surrounding buildings and then headed south of the bazaar into the neighborhood. This turned out to be the area where the locals came to shop for vegetables, goat, chickens, rabbits and cloth. No one hassled us or tried to sell us anything. Some just looked at us confused that we might be lost. It was pretty cool. We continued south until we came upon the southern gate of the old city of Cairo. The gate is framed by two minarets. We climbed to the top of one these minarets via a very narrow spiral staircase which eventually turns into a rickety metal fire escape type ladder. The ledge at the top is about two feet wide with a knee high railing. The view was great and we could see Cairo in all directions, as well as down onto the apartments below.
Walking around the city, I noticed an interesting thing about the way parking meters are enforced. If your car is parked in a spot with a meter at it and you leave your car there past the time that your meter runs out, a big yellow metal post will pop up out of the ground on the street side of your car. The post pops up just about at the left front wheel, preventing you from driving away (because there’s always a car in the spot in front of you and in back). Once you pay the meter, the post retracts into its hole in the road and you can drive away.
One of the negative things about Cairo, especially for women, is that many of the men are really, really rude towards women in a sexual way, especially if they are foreigners. As a woman, you will constantly get hissed at and have kissing noises made at you. Men will say rude things in Arabic right in front of you. Even if you don’t speak Arabic, you know what they are saying is rude. It’s the Egyptian version of the old construction worker whistling and shouting lewd comments, but it comes from all different types of men: young, old, business suits, police in uniform, you name it. Initially you want to say something or lash out but think better of it. I ended up making hissing noises back at them, which I think only confused them and didn’t really bother them. We were told before coming that it happened to foreign women who walked alone in Egypt, but we got it when we walked together and we even saw it happening to men and women who were walking arm in arm and the woman was dressed in a full head scarf. The men just don’t care. It made us realize just how safe and unthreatening the streets of Beirut really are, if you can believe it. There’s none of that that goes on in Lebanon. We came up with a theory about the relationship between how safe a city is compared to the health of its feral cats. Beirut’s feral cats are all shiny, happy and at times plump. Egypt’s cats were all wet, mangy and nasty.
Traveling back to Beirut, we had to show our passports at both the Cairo and Beirut airport 12 different times, literally. When departing, you have to show your passport just to get into the airport along with going through an X-ray machine. You then show it at the ticket counter, followed by a guy who allows you to leave the ticket area and go to immigration. You then show it at immigration and then again at the actual security check, which entails another X-ray machine. You then show it again before going through the door to board the plane, but the doorway actually leads you down to a bus that you get on and it drives you out to the plane. Once there, you have to show your passport again to go up the stairs to get onto the plane. Upon arriving in Beirut, you show it to get into the airport itself and then you show it to the Lebanese customs officer, followed by the guy who x-rays your luggage upon arrival. After this is the customs check. After customs, literally 10 feet past the customs guy you just showed your passport to and got it stamped, you have to show it to this one last guy with a bad attitude. This guy flips through your passport until he finds your visa and then after seeing that it’s valid hands you back your passport with this look of disgust on his face that says, “The only reason I’m letting the likes of you in is because I have to.” Ah, yes, it’s good to be home.
2 comments:
I'm waiting on news from the refugee camps? I hope all is well.
I'm so depressed about the KFC by the pyramids, I can barely speak! Perhaps some lands are best left imagined.
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