Days 1 and 2 were readjust-to-life-in-a-modern-city days ... spending an afternoon at City Stars (an enormous, 5-story mall that was definitely nicer than any I’ve seen in America),
wandering around the supermarket like a kid in a candy store and shopping for things I can’t find in Kibondo (maple syrup! and refined salt! eek!), making Lisa promise she’d stop me from spending all my money on books (there are so many bookstores!), and generally enjoying the novelty of little things like drinking tap water and 24/7 electricity. Lisa’s only lived in this part of Cairo (Zemalek) for 2 weeks (the stonings were only 2 of many unpleasant run-ins with the boys who went to school next to her last apartment ... which eventually led to the police station visit ... which led to an almost comically inept police sting operation ... the failure of which led to Lisa’s program deciding to move her and her roommates to an apartment in a better part of town), so the area was new to both of us – which made for fun explorations. In addition to being one of the nicest parts of Cairo, Zemalek also happens to be on an island in the Nile, so my first taste of Cairo night life was going out for a late dinner at one of the many boat-cafés that dock along the river. It was pretty neat – good food, a nice view, and we were hanging out on the Nile! The entry visa for Egypt took up the last empty spot in my passport, so day 3 started with a trip to the American Embassy. Lisa tagged along because the embassy apparently has a reputation for closing early and not having English-speaking staff, but my luck held – there was no line at the entrance, the staff manning the door spoke English, and the friendly man at Consular Services promised to have my passport (with the new pages inserted) ready the next day. We celebrated that refreshing burst of efficiency with koshari for lunch – a tasty and super-filling Egyptian dish that combines macaroni noodles and lentils with tomato, lemon, and chili sauces.
As promised, my passport (with 22 nice, new blank pages) was ready the next morning, which was quite a relief since I wasn’t going to be able to get back through Kenya without at least one empty page. After leaving the embassy, we hopped on the subway and made our way to Khan al-Khalili (or, as Lisa calls it, the Aladdin market), which is a big market crowded with little shops full of brightly colored scarves and jewelry and other tourist-oriented knick-knacks.
For all that we started out in the part of the market that was clearly catering to tourists, after a few twists and turns we somehow ended up in the less-tourists-more-locals part, where we quickly gained a reputation as the girls who spoke Arabic (Lisa’s Arabic apparently being good enough for both of us). In addition to a flood of marriage proposals, this also resulted in some really good scarf discounts ... oh, and in being called Shakira by an old Egyptian man (we still haven’t agreed on which of us he was referring to – I maintain that since Lisa actually has hips, he was talking about her; Lisa insists that my hair (which is blonde by Egyptian standards) beats out hips). After a quick stop back at the apartment to whip up some cupcakes, we headed out for the next adventure on the schedule for Thursday: Abir’s birthday lunch (Abir is one of Lisa’s professors). This being Egypt, lunch didn’t start until around 4:30 or 5 ... but when it did start it was delicious. By the time we left (around 9), not only had I finally realized why Abir featured so often in Lisa’s stories (she’s awesome!), but I’d also added several new fun phrases to my Arabic vocabulary (thanks to Lisa, I already knew how to say “go away you crazy person,” “hush,” “she’s a problem,” “he’s got a dagger,” and “happy birthday” ... thanks to Abir, I added “I will send you to the morgue” and “I will hit you with my elbow” to the list). Not only was Thursday the day I got to discover Egyptian meal times (lunch around 3 or 4; dinner around 10 or 11), it was also the night I got to discover that the skewed times applied to going out as well. There’d been some talk earlier in the week to going to a party with some of Lisa’s Egyptian friends, but then we found out that the party had been canceled, so I went to bed around 12:30. Luckily, Lisa had decided to stay up a bit longer (and for once I didn’t immediately fall asleep) because a few minutes after I crawled into bed, the doorbell rang. The party might have been cancelled, but that wasn’t going to stop Lisa’s friends from entertaining us, so out we went ... for a night that was (according to Lisa) truly Egyptian. And by that, I mean we spent the first 1 ½ hours driving around looking for the one guy’s car, and then spent another 2 ½ hours attempting to drive to our destinations (note the plural: we’d almost reached the first destination (a café on the edge of the desert), when someone decided it’d be more fun to take a boat out on the Nile, so we switched to trying to find a boat guy who wasn’t asleep) before finally parking at a 24 hour pool hall. Not having really ever played pool, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s either pretty easy to play or I’m not half bad at it (it probably helped that we were playing in teams and my teammate was really good). That didn’t even begin to compare to how surprised Lisa and I were when we left the pool hall ... and walked out into broad daylight. It was 6:30am. And we’d made plans to visit the pyramids at 11am, so we opted for a pancake breakfast instead of sleep :-/
Despite being a little loopy for lack of sleep, we still had a great time visiting the pyramids.
Lisa had managed to conscript Abir’s son, Abdu, into accompanying us – and in addition to being fun to hang out with and a really effective deterrent for all the pushy touts and vendors who accost tourists around the pyramids, Abdu also has an uncle who works as a guard at the pyramids, so we got the VIP treatment and didn’t have to pay the entrance fee. The pyramids themselves were stunning (as was the sphinx) – mind-bogglingly enormous and just amazing. Thankfully we got to nap after getting back from Giza (or rather, Lisa napped and I slept (since she informed me that sleeping for 7 hours doesn’t qualify as a nap)), because Lisa’s friends had another all-night adventure planned for us. This one at least involved much less driving and much more dancing, since we ended up at the “Happy New Year 2009” club (which, like the café from earlier in the week, was also on a boat), where I received a long lesson in hip wiggling (and my teachers received an equally long lesson in the futility of trying to teach me how to move my hips...). Once again, we didn’t leave the club until well past dawn, although thankfully we didn’t have any plans for the next day, so we got to catch up on our sleep.
The week ended like it started – on a more relaxed, uneventful note
(i.e., lots of walking around Cairo and a delicious late lunch at a Yemeni restaurant on Sunday followed by meeting up with another Princeton friend (who’s doing a semester abroad at the American University of Cairo), celebrating Sham el Nessim with Abir’s family, and dinner with Lisa’s roommates (who had been traveling) on Monday).
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