Cairo, Part 2

Apologies, everyone. I wrote this over two weeks ago and just now got around to adding the photos and publishing. Better late than never?

Whew! This post should probably have been more of a mini-series, but hang in there, there's belly dancing and whirling dervishes ahead!

For those of you who somehow didn't read the last post, here's the short version: DO NOT rent a car in Cairo, DO get a tour guide, see old stuff. Okay then, on to day two of the tour.

Like the previous day,  day two of our tour began when our guide Ash and strong-silent-type busdriver Zayn picked us up amid the flurry of doormen, security guards, and miscellaneous hotel staff that seemed to be ever present at the front door. We all loaded up and drove approximately 500 yards to the other side of the building where the Egyptian Museum is located. We had tried to talk Ash into just meeting us at the museum, which was not even across a street from our hotel, but he insisted on picking us up. Formalities.

The Egyptian Museum is a beautiful relic of a time before museums were about selling science and history. The building itself is old by American standards (the collection was moved there in 1902), with a dim and dusty interior packed to the gills with antiquities. Walking around, you get the sense that they kept digging up things and then squeezing them into the spaces in between the collections already on display.

Squeeze together...closer...closer. Ok, good. Now hold still.

(Silently judging everyone)

We saw wooden boats intended to carry kings across water in the afterlife, the somewhat preserved entrails of a 4000 year old queen (divided into four boxes), mummified kings, dogs, monkeys, crocodiles, and snakes, and the gilded mask of Tut. We saw the sculptural representation of monarchs progress from the perfect, athletic ideal to the absurd, grotesque reality that comes from an ultra-refined genetic pool. We saw the evolution of headdress fashion. We saw very dry dead people.

 

And lots of animal people.

Flip flops: footwear for the afterlife

Then we went sailing. Five minutes of our felucca ride brought on fond memories of putting around the west-end beaches of STX in a tiny trimaran, and although the Nile is not exactly like the Caribbean, the sound of water under the hull and the creak of the rigging is the same. This was, without a doubt, the most tranquil half-hour we spent in Cairo, despite Q's disappointment with the lack of crocodiles.

"If I had wanted to not see crocodiles, I would have just stayed home."

We spent the rest of the afternoon touring the city. For every place we went and everything we saw, Ash supplied us with a textbook's worth of historical information. My cache memory filled up pretty quickly, so most of what Ash told us overflowed directly into the recycle bin. Luckily, Wikipedia exists. We did a short walk through Old Cairo, stopping to visit the "Hanging Church" (actually named Saint Virgin Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church), dating back to the 3rd century, A.D. The narthex of this church was lined with photos/portraits of every Coptic pope, ever. This is important  mostly because it let me use the word narthex in a sentence. Based on a few hundred years of portraits, having a huge beard is a prerequisite for the job of Coptic pope.

Next, we drove to the top of Mokattam hill in the center of the city, where we saw the Cairo Citadel and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali. No, not that Muhammad Ali, this Muhammad Ali. The mosque is a beautiful structure and an impressive example of Ottoman architecture, but after seeing the pyramids and their associated temples, the bar was pretty high.

 

What's at the end of those cables, you ask?

I wish I could remember.

We ended our afternoon with a short stop at one of Cairo's street markets, where we successfully avoided buying anything except for overpriced coffee and tea. Best sales pitch: "Don't worry! All I want is your money!" To keep Q out of trouble, and to help keep us out of the clutches of aggressive salesmen, I put him up on my shoulders, where he sang to himself in Arabic for most of our time in the market. We were all ready for a little down-time after that and, fortunately, our tour schedule included a short break at the hotel (long enough for a swim and a couple of beers) before the final event of the day: the Nile Dinner Cruise.

We arrived at dockside just after sunset and just before boarding time. While orange and red clouds washed over the river and the city, we chose our table in the dim blue neon interior of the boat's dining area. The atmosphere was something like a strip club, but with a buffet and some mild, motion-induced nausea, so we ordered drinks and made small talk with the nice ladies from Ohio at the next table. The windows were so heavily tinted that it was impossible to tell when the boat actually left the dock, but we didn't have to wait long for the entertainment to begin.

Belly dancing, with live musical accompaniment, was act one. The dancer, zaftig and sequined, smiled with her mouth, but her eyes seemed to be reconsidering her career choices. Q could not take his eyes off her, or close his mouth. I think most of the adults were conflicted about where they should have been looking, and for how long. Just when we were all getting accustomed to the awkwardness, the dancer began a tour of the room with a photographer, stopping at each table to pose behind whomever she thought would be most likely to shell out $5 for a copy of the photo. At the end of her set, prints of the non-consensual photos were delivered to the appropriate tables and offered for sale. We bought it because it was ridiculous.

Act two consisted of two whirling dervishes, or more likely, two guys who were good at spinning. One was a little person who served as comic relief, the other guy was a natural entertainer, engaging with the crowd and apparently having a good time. After we had all seen about enough spinning, he demonstrated his ability to count to ten in any language spoken by any guest on the boat. Then he did the picture-at-your-table thing too, which we bought solely because of how terrible the shot was. After dinner, we all went up top to see whether the boat was actually moving. It was, and for the second time in five months, we were actually chilly.

Our ride to the airport the next day could not have been more different from our first taxi experience in Cairo. The car had air conditioning, the driver did not honk even once, and I felt, for most of the trip, like we would probably survive. We did.