Cairo Doesn't Ease You In (And I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way)

Egypt  •  Cairo  •  March 2006  

I still can't believe we actually went. Egypt. The country that, when I mentioned it in conversation for an entire month before we left, got me this look…you know the one. Like I'd just announced we were moving to Mars. "Aren't you scared?" "Is it a good time to go?" "Don’t they hate Americans?" They don't hate Americans, by the way. They love the American dollar, which is a different thing entirely.

The truth is, after China, we'd graduated to a different class of traveler. Bolder travel. Adventure travel. The kind where people back home think we've lost our minds not just wanting to go on a cruise or sit on a beach. And honestly? That feels exactly right.

We landed in Cairo around 12:30 in the morning and the city announced itself immediately. No easing in. No gentle introduction. You're just in it. Our hotel was in the Zamalek district, which is considered Cairo's quieter, wealthier neighborhood. We woke up the next morning, had breakfast (lovely croissants, yogurt, something I can only describe as sad refried beans, and rice pudding) and decided to walk to the Egyptian Museum.

Two kilometers doesn't sound far. In Cairo, crossing two kilometers feels like a video game. Have you ever played Frogger? Multiply it by ten. There are technically four lanes on some of these streets. In practice, it's whatever number of cars can physically fit side by side. No crosswalks. No pauses in traffic. You just step off the curb and go. A few steps, stop, car, swerve, go again. I looked back at one point and couldn't believe we'd made it across. But here's the thing: once you've done it, you're fine. It's like a squat toilet. First time is terrifying. After that, honestly kind of convenient.

The Egyptian Museum is a one-of-a-kind experience, and I mean that in both the best and most heartbreaking sense. Step through the doors and you've basically traveled back to 1920. It's enormous. a kind of organized-chaos warehouse stuffed floor to ceiling with Egyptian treasures. The display cases are streaky and foggy. Labels are handwritten, faded, or just missing entirely. It should be criminal how these things are stored.

But then there's King Tut's death mask in the middle of that room. Every complaint I had dissolved in about three seconds. It genuinely seemed to glow. All that gold and detail, the craftsmanship of something made thousands of years ago. His sarcophagi, the miniature gold ones that held his organs, the jewelry, the gold fingertip and toecaps. I got a little emotional, if I'm being honest. The Royal Mummy Room is a separate ticket and worth every penny: nine pharaohs lying right in front of you. You can see their hair, their fingernails, their battle wounds. I kept trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I was looking at actual human beings from 4,500 years ago. Some things are just too big.

After the museum we were thoroughly zombiefied and grabbed lunch at the Nile Hilton (yes, we played it a little safe on day one) and went back to the hotel. Our first real taxi ride that afternoon taught us something important: watching traffic ahead of you is deeply alarming. Looking out the side window, watching the city go by? Completely relaxing. We just look sideways now. We've decided we fully trust these drivers. They're the most skilled we've ever seen.

The evening started with dinner in Khan-al-Khalili market, an ancient winding maze of vendor stalls. We ate falafel and Koshari, ground meat, pasta, rice, onions, tomatoes…and I won't lie, I was quietly interrogating every bite wondering if this was going to be the one that got me sick. I reminded myself for the first of many times that we're taking Pepto at every meal as a preventative measure, and the food was absolutely delicious.

It was when we were wandering away from the market toward a show we'd planned to see that we met Fahti. And Fahti is the reason Egypt is one of our favorite travel stories.

He was an older man who simply said "Welcome" as we passed, which in Cairo everyone says. Hello. Welcome. Welcome to Cairo. They're remarkably friendly here. But Fahti was different. He asked where we were from and just started showing us around, weaving us through fruit and vegetable markets, pointing out sultan's old homes, Turkish baths, tiny stalls, explaining everything with such obvious pride. You could see how much he loved his city. He'd spent forty years making those famous inlaid decorative boxes, he told us, but his eyesight was giving out and now his son did the work. He took us to the son's workshop to watch the whole process, then to his own little closet-sized shop where every inch of the walls was covered in photographs: him with tourists, business cards, people from every corner of the world. A guest book with entries in dozens of languages. He handed it to us proudly, this newer one, mentioning he'd filled up several others.

Then came tea and sheesha. We sat with Fahti in that tiny spot, drinking the most wonderful tea, and he taught us to smoke the hookah. I tried a cigarette once at fifteen and spent the rest of the day feeling like I was dying. This was nothing like that. Very mild. (Matt says I wasn't inhaling enough though) We bought a few things from him because…of course we did. He felt like a friend by then.

He kept going after that, taking us through completely dark streets and into markets that were nothing like the tourist spots. Neighborhood markets, butchers, spice sellers, coal makers. He called it "real Cairo." We never did make it to that show and we don't regret it for even one second.

The next day we did the Citadel and the Muhammad Ali Mosque (and I have to tell you, the sheer delight of announcing we were then going to "the George Foreman Mosque" never got old). We tried to walk to the Ibn Tulan Mosque to save a couple of dollars in taxi fare and ended up following a local man through alleys we'd never have found on our own, somehow arriving at the Northern Cemetery instead, where families live inside old mausoleums because they have nowhere else to go. Our guide connected us with someone who put us on a microbus - one of those packed mini-Scooby-Doo vans with the sliding door wide open, people hopping on and off while it's still moving. I didn't want to get on. Matt was thrilled. Our new friend paid our fare, communicated for us, and walked us right to the entrance. Never asked for anything beyond a small tip and he left with a genuine smile on his face.

We ended the day back at the market, got some more great food and photos, and Matt captured a girl who stopped to say the handful of English words she knew and then smiled for a photo with these incredible, intense eyes. You don't forget faces like that.

Cairo is dirty, genuinely filthy, and crowded in a way that's almost hard to describe. But walking its streets and watching people live, having them invite you into their food stalls and offer you tea, watching their pride in their home and their community even when what they have is very little... that's the part that stays with you.

Oh, and apparently Matt was offered 45 camels for one year with me. I'm choosing to feel very flattered.