Writing this travelogue long after the apocryphal anti-Mubarak uprising feels very strange indeed. I was just chatting online to one of my contacts at the Canadian Embassy in Cairo and he was talking about how still now there are tanks on the streets, a curfew from midnight to six a.m. and a strong military presence to protect vulnerable places such as Embassies and TV stations. They are just now beginning to re-instate vacated Embassy families back in Cairo. When people ask me if there were whispers of dissension in the weeks prior, what springs to mind is the portentous crazy woman giving me directions to a hotel I was searching for, clutching my arm and steering me through traffic with one hand and buying me roasted corn and fresh strawberries in the other, while simultaneously ushering me through a church, lighting candles, muttering on about Corinthians 11 and stopping various people on the street to proclaim urgent missives about Osama Bin Laden in Arabic.
I remember the guy I asked for directions to the nearest Egypt Air office who ended up helping me balloon shop for our Tour Leader Mohamed's birthday, in a gun shop. After convincing the agents in the Egypt Air office to open up for me after hours, Husseain lead me through the shopping district to look for balloons. The first shop he took me to had a display of guns and machetes. I whispered, sotto voce, ""Are those real guns?" To which he replied, "Yes." I whispered, "Why would there be balloons here?" At which point he gestured to the back wall where there was a display of toy guns. How's that for father/son one stop shopping? I imagine this store being looted during the uprising.
So, what was Egypt like before all the chaos? Chaos. Ttrains and planes ran, and you could get cash from the ATMs (albeit while getting stalked), but Egypt is still Egypt. Here is a quick glimpse.
Egypt is one of those enigmatic cities full of oxymorons. There are women in full burquas with only their eyes showing through the slits, and calls to prayer six times a day, yet you're avoiding the 'grab and grope' by men on the street, and are treated to belly dancing on special occasions. There's the Nile snaking through Upper and Lower Egypt, where you can drift idyllically on a felucca, but then to the West is the great desert, vast and empty. Alcohol is forbidden, yet on every street corner you can see people happily blowing smoke clouds from their sheesha pipes. Scaffolding signs announce "Safetety Fitst" while whitewashers dangle precariously from tire swings, leaning back against the buildings with their dripping brushes.
Egypt is passionate and daring, but also shy and demure. It is also a place where the price differs not only from city to city, suburb to suburb, but also street corner to street corner. Haggling is a full-time job, and you can get into a fiery debate with a shop vendor before nine in the morning. They also have this system of baksheesh, which is tantamount to tipping, but unlike tipping which we tend to think of as extra money paid for a service well-rendered, baksheesh goes something like this.
Baksheesh
Baksheesh is money demanded by anyone in Egypt providing you with any kind of service (be it a demanded service, implied service or invented service.) If someone helps you cross a traffic nest of vehicles, they might demand baksheesh. If someone gives you directions, they might demand baksheesh. If someone carries your bag or hands you a bottle of water, they might demand baksheesh. Sometimes, they do nothing at all and still demand it. One day, Beishan and I were bicycling through Luxor, visiting the tombs and temples in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens. Once in a while a security guard would follow you into the tomb and shine his flashlight on some of the motifs: Horus. Anubis. Osiris. Nothing we didn't already know after 2 weeks of tomb raiding, but at least they were trying. However, after visiting one of the tombs, the security guards asked us as we exited: "You like the temple? Beautiful, no?" They then held out their hands, with a meaningful eyebrow raise. "Baksheesh." When I get back to Toronto, I'm going to stand outside the CN Tower, and ask people if they liked it when they come out. Then I'm going to hold out my hand and demand a loonie.
Of course, the thing with the baksheesh is you never quite know how much to give or what's an insulting price. Case in point, Beishan and I had to leave our bicycles outside the temples while we went inside. We'd heard that the guards sometimes damage your bikes if you don't leave enough baksheesh bribe for them. At the same time, it was early in the morning and we had a lot of temples to visit, so we gave 50 piaster as "now money", and promised 50 piaster later. However, when we came out and started cycling to the Valley of the Queens, the chain came off my bike. Twice. We ended up going to the police station, where some random guy took off with my bicycle, ostensibly in search of a wrench, to go fix it. Which cost me 5 pounds, ten times the price of the original bribe. As a result, the next place we went to, we upped the baksheesh, but then the guard became flustered, brushed us off in Arabic and wouldn't take it. Nobody wanted the responsibility of watching the bikes. At the Tombs the guy refused any money but joked that he wanted a marriage proposal and then wasn"t even there when we came to collect our bikes. So who the hell knows how it all works, but one thing is consistent: everyone wants something for nothing. Or at least for very little. That said, one of our Tour Guides told us that the average government employee makes about 300 pounds a month while rent is 600. So you can see how people would count on it to survive.
Haggling
The other thing is the haggling. Right off the bat, I lose at that game, because I pay the White Price. The best I can do is use some Arabic, and try to pass myself off as an ex-pat, but even then it doesn't always work. Grahamses, my Canadian travelmate, looks Egyptian (we nicknamed him 'Ali', and with his Lawrence of Arabia headscarf, and an Arabic newspaper tucked under his arm, he could get any price. As long as he didn't open his mouth.) Sometimes we would get him to just stand near us as we haggled in the markets. All he had to do was raise an eyebrow and the price would go down, though one day a vendor commented to Latifah, "Your tour guide's an asshole!" You really have to hound to the ground to get a decent price and some days it is just not worth the emotional trauma.
One day I desperately needed breakfast before a 13 hour train ride and the guy was trying to sell me an Chocolate Hershey drink and some yogurt for 30 pounds, which amounts to about 6 dollars. I gave him a pointed look and said "Katir owi!" (too expensive; most useful Arabic phrase, though my favorite is still "A la tool" [straight ahead]). I put the Chocolate Hershey drink to the side, and showed him two local drinks with Arabic writing, indicating that I wanted a lesser price for local goods. After ten minutes of arguing and telling me he didn't have change (while displaying a full cash register of change when ringing up a local woman's goods), he finally gave me the drinks for 13 pounds, but he told me off in Arabic, thrust his fingers under his chin at me, in that rude Italian-esque way, and started yabbering at the Muslim woman next to me, wildly gesticulating at me as though to say, "This one! Ai!" And he still probably got double the price he would have gotten from an Egyptian. Beishan's response to my lament, "Sometimes I just want to buy something. But without the drama!" was "And you can. You just have to pay six times the price."
Near as I can figure it, the price hierarchy goes something like this: There's:
the Foreigner Price (about six times the Egyptian Price)
the Expat Price (about double)
the Egyptian Price (normal)
and the price Beishan pays.
Beishan can haggle even the Egyptians down to piasters, something I didn't even know existed until I met Beishan, my Chinese-UK travelmate. Here I was thinking a pound was the lowest currency (one sixth of a dollar) but Beishan was buying fruit for 50 piaster! My roommate Sandia took the Egyptians to task too. One day a street vendor charged her a couple of pounds more than Latifah for oranges, and she gave him a piece of her mind. I don't know if it's the Asian influence or the accounting background, but these ladies are my haggling heroes.
Meanwhile, I was buying fruit with Sandia one day on the streets of Cairo and was in the middle of a fiesty fruit argument with the vendor, when some random guy came up behind me in true grab-and-grope style, and squeezed my butt really hard, before running away smirking. I yelled after him, but the Fruit Vendor was so incensed over my price that he showed no sympathy at all, so I got no fruit and a sore ass for my troubles.
The price can even change from minute to minute. At the washrooms outside the Pyramids of Giza, it was a one pound charge. I left my bag with Fiona and marched to the washrooms with my one pound coin, but then the guy was demanding two, in a sudden price-heist. I joked around with him and managed to slip by him because he saw I didn't have a bag, but anyone with a purse got shadowboxed and detained until they procured more money. Even to check the balance on my SIM card it would fluctuate from 1 piaster to 10 piasters, back and forth, back and forth .
Traffic
Crossing the road in Egypt, especially Cairo, is an adrenaline sport. Everyone jaywalks here as there are no traffic lights. Actually, that's not true. Occasionally you see one, but it's more of an adornment, with the countdown signifying nothing. Cairenes seem to cross effortlessly, weaving between crowded buses, cars, taxis and motorbikes, on their cell phones the whole time. I even saw a man in a wheelchair happily jaywalking across five lanes of traffic and exit ramps. That said, I did meet an Alexandrian guy who managed to cross in front of two lanes of traffic only to get pummelled by the third. They brought him to hospital unconscious, though he is recovered now.
Security
One thing that made me chuckle were the extra security efforts afforded to our Tour Group, compliments of the US government. It went something like this. Sadly, a few days after our Tour Group travelled to Abu Simbel (a four hour ride from Aswan, which necessitates an early start of 3 am to reach the temples), another tour group met with an accident en route. Because everyone is anxious to get to the temples before sunrise and because visibility is poor in the dark, accidents are inevitable. This accident was particularly gruesome as the driver was speeding, collided with a sand truck parked on the shoulder, and sheared off the entire side of the bus, killing eight Americans and wounding 21 tourists. Because the accident in part was due to speeding, it was decreed by the American government/embassy that all American tourists should be accompanied by 'bodyguards' who would help the drivers moderate their speed. Since we had three Americans in our Tour Group, we got a bodyguard! They would joke about how now everyone wants the Americans on board. In addition to this added security measure, on our way into the desert, we had to pass through a million check points, armed by teenagers in camouflage and vagrant dogs. At one point as we waited mindlessly by the side of the road, sipping water bottles and scuffing sand, we had Egyptian truck drivers pausing to take pictures of us! Later, when we were four wheel driving through the desert at mock speed (I was with my fellow Canadian Graham, and my three Asian friends. Graham joked that we were his harem and that after his divorce to me he developed an Asian fetish), we were slightly wishing we had an American in our jeep as the jeep was spinning off the sand drifts and grasshoppering through the dunes at 200 km an hour! Egyptian driving. Nothing compares. I am in Argentina now and was commenting to my brother how the first time I came to Buenos Aires I thought the traffic situation here was insane. But now, it seems extremely well-organized and consistent. It's all context. Pure and simple.
Anyway, that is only a small window into some of the idiosyncracies of the interesting conundrum that is Egypt. More to come on Egyptian Adventures.
I remember the guy I asked for directions to the nearest Egypt Air office who ended up helping me balloon shop for our Tour Leader Mohamed's birthday, in a gun shop. After convincing the agents in the Egypt Air office to open up for me after hours, Husseain lead me through the shopping district to look for balloons. The first shop he took me to had a display of guns and machetes. I whispered, sotto voce, ""Are those real guns?" To which he replied, "Yes." I whispered, "Why would there be balloons here?" At which point he gestured to the back wall where there was a display of toy guns. How's that for father/son one stop shopping? I imagine this store being looted during the uprising.
So, what was Egypt like before all the chaos? Chaos. Ttrains and planes ran, and you could get cash from the ATMs (albeit while getting stalked), but Egypt is still Egypt. Here is a quick glimpse.
Egypt is one of those enigmatic cities full of oxymorons. There are women in full burquas with only their eyes showing through the slits, and calls to prayer six times a day, yet you're avoiding the 'grab and grope' by men on the street, and are treated to belly dancing on special occasions. There's the Nile snaking through Upper and Lower Egypt, where you can drift idyllically on a felucca, but then to the West is the great desert, vast and empty. Alcohol is forbidden, yet on every street corner you can see people happily blowing smoke clouds from their sheesha pipes. Scaffolding signs announce "Safetety Fitst" while whitewashers dangle precariously from tire swings, leaning back against the buildings with their dripping brushes.
Egypt is passionate and daring, but also shy and demure. It is also a place where the price differs not only from city to city, suburb to suburb, but also street corner to street corner. Haggling is a full-time job, and you can get into a fiery debate with a shop vendor before nine in the morning. They also have this system of baksheesh, which is tantamount to tipping, but unlike tipping which we tend to think of as extra money paid for a service well-rendered, baksheesh goes something like this.
Baksheesh
Baksheesh is money demanded by anyone in Egypt providing you with any kind of service (be it a demanded service, implied service or invented service.) If someone helps you cross a traffic nest of vehicles, they might demand baksheesh. If someone gives you directions, they might demand baksheesh. If someone carries your bag or hands you a bottle of water, they might demand baksheesh. Sometimes, they do nothing at all and still demand it. One day, Beishan and I were bicycling through Luxor, visiting the tombs and temples in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens. Once in a while a security guard would follow you into the tomb and shine his flashlight on some of the motifs: Horus. Anubis. Osiris. Nothing we didn't already know after 2 weeks of tomb raiding, but at least they were trying. However, after visiting one of the tombs, the security guards asked us as we exited: "You like the temple? Beautiful, no?" They then held out their hands, with a meaningful eyebrow raise. "Baksheesh." When I get back to Toronto, I'm going to stand outside the CN Tower, and ask people if they liked it when they come out. Then I'm going to hold out my hand and demand a loonie.
Of course, the thing with the baksheesh is you never quite know how much to give or what's an insulting price. Case in point, Beishan and I had to leave our bicycles outside the temples while we went inside. We'd heard that the guards sometimes damage your bikes if you don't leave enough baksheesh bribe for them. At the same time, it was early in the morning and we had a lot of temples to visit, so we gave 50 piaster as "now money", and promised 50 piaster later. However, when we came out and started cycling to the Valley of the Queens, the chain came off my bike. Twice. We ended up going to the police station, where some random guy took off with my bicycle, ostensibly in search of a wrench, to go fix it. Which cost me 5 pounds, ten times the price of the original bribe. As a result, the next place we went to, we upped the baksheesh, but then the guard became flustered, brushed us off in Arabic and wouldn't take it. Nobody wanted the responsibility of watching the bikes. At the Tombs the guy refused any money but joked that he wanted a marriage proposal and then wasn"t even there when we came to collect our bikes. So who the hell knows how it all works, but one thing is consistent: everyone wants something for nothing. Or at least for very little. That said, one of our Tour Guides told us that the average government employee makes about 300 pounds a month while rent is 600. So you can see how people would count on it to survive.
Haggling
The other thing is the haggling. Right off the bat, I lose at that game, because I pay the White Price. The best I can do is use some Arabic, and try to pass myself off as an ex-pat, but even then it doesn't always work. Grahamses, my Canadian travelmate, looks Egyptian (we nicknamed him 'Ali', and with his Lawrence of Arabia headscarf, and an Arabic newspaper tucked under his arm, he could get any price. As long as he didn't open his mouth.) Sometimes we would get him to just stand near us as we haggled in the markets. All he had to do was raise an eyebrow and the price would go down, though one day a vendor commented to Latifah, "Your tour guide's an asshole!" You really have to hound to the ground to get a decent price and some days it is just not worth the emotional trauma.
One day I desperately needed breakfast before a 13 hour train ride and the guy was trying to sell me an Chocolate Hershey drink and some yogurt for 30 pounds, which amounts to about 6 dollars. I gave him a pointed look and said "Katir owi!" (too expensive; most useful Arabic phrase, though my favorite is still "A la tool" [straight ahead]). I put the Chocolate Hershey drink to the side, and showed him two local drinks with Arabic writing, indicating that I wanted a lesser price for local goods. After ten minutes of arguing and telling me he didn't have change (while displaying a full cash register of change when ringing up a local woman's goods), he finally gave me the drinks for 13 pounds, but he told me off in Arabic, thrust his fingers under his chin at me, in that rude Italian-esque way, and started yabbering at the Muslim woman next to me, wildly gesticulating at me as though to say, "This one! Ai!" And he still probably got double the price he would have gotten from an Egyptian. Beishan's response to my lament, "Sometimes I just want to buy something. But without the drama!" was "And you can. You just have to pay six times the price."
Near as I can figure it, the price hierarchy goes something like this: There's:
the Foreigner Price (about six times the Egyptian Price)
the Expat Price (about double)
the Egyptian Price (normal)
and the price Beishan pays.
Beishan can haggle even the Egyptians down to piasters, something I didn't even know existed until I met Beishan, my Chinese-UK travelmate. Here I was thinking a pound was the lowest currency (one sixth of a dollar) but Beishan was buying fruit for 50 piaster! My roommate Sandia took the Egyptians to task too. One day a street vendor charged her a couple of pounds more than Latifah for oranges, and she gave him a piece of her mind. I don't know if it's the Asian influence or the accounting background, but these ladies are my haggling heroes.
Meanwhile, I was buying fruit with Sandia one day on the streets of Cairo and was in the middle of a fiesty fruit argument with the vendor, when some random guy came up behind me in true grab-and-grope style, and squeezed my butt really hard, before running away smirking. I yelled after him, but the Fruit Vendor was so incensed over my price that he showed no sympathy at all, so I got no fruit and a sore ass for my troubles.
The price can even change from minute to minute. At the washrooms outside the Pyramids of Giza, it was a one pound charge. I left my bag with Fiona and marched to the washrooms with my one pound coin, but then the guy was demanding two, in a sudden price-heist. I joked around with him and managed to slip by him because he saw I didn't have a bag, but anyone with a purse got shadowboxed and detained until they procured more money. Even to check the balance on my SIM card it would fluctuate from 1 piaster to 10 piasters, back and forth, back and forth .
Traffic
Crossing the road in Egypt, especially Cairo, is an adrenaline sport. Everyone jaywalks here as there are no traffic lights. Actually, that's not true. Occasionally you see one, but it's more of an adornment, with the countdown signifying nothing. Cairenes seem to cross effortlessly, weaving between crowded buses, cars, taxis and motorbikes, on their cell phones the whole time. I even saw a man in a wheelchair happily jaywalking across five lanes of traffic and exit ramps. That said, I did meet an Alexandrian guy who managed to cross in front of two lanes of traffic only to get pummelled by the third. They brought him to hospital unconscious, though he is recovered now.
Security
One thing that made me chuckle were the extra security efforts afforded to our Tour Group, compliments of the US government. It went something like this. Sadly, a few days after our Tour Group travelled to Abu Simbel (a four hour ride from Aswan, which necessitates an early start of 3 am to reach the temples), another tour group met with an accident en route. Because everyone is anxious to get to the temples before sunrise and because visibility is poor in the dark, accidents are inevitable. This accident was particularly gruesome as the driver was speeding, collided with a sand truck parked on the shoulder, and sheared off the entire side of the bus, killing eight Americans and wounding 21 tourists. Because the accident in part was due to speeding, it was decreed by the American government/embassy that all American tourists should be accompanied by 'bodyguards' who would help the drivers moderate their speed. Since we had three Americans in our Tour Group, we got a bodyguard! They would joke about how now everyone wants the Americans on board. In addition to this added security measure, on our way into the desert, we had to pass through a million check points, armed by teenagers in camouflage and vagrant dogs. At one point as we waited mindlessly by the side of the road, sipping water bottles and scuffing sand, we had Egyptian truck drivers pausing to take pictures of us! Later, when we were four wheel driving through the desert at mock speed (I was with my fellow Canadian Graham, and my three Asian friends. Graham joked that we were his harem and that after his divorce to me he developed an Asian fetish), we were slightly wishing we had an American in our jeep as the jeep was spinning off the sand drifts and grasshoppering through the dunes at 200 km an hour! Egyptian driving. Nothing compares. I am in Argentina now and was commenting to my brother how the first time I came to Buenos Aires I thought the traffic situation here was insane. But now, it seems extremely well-organized and consistent. It's all context. Pure and simple.
Anyway, that is only a small window into some of the idiosyncracies of the interesting conundrum that is Egypt. More to come on Egyptian Adventures.
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