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Description de
l'Égypte
Posted September 8,
2006
The
title of this post comes from the text produced by Napoleon's crew of
anthropologists. Read about it here.
At the time of this writing,
I’ve been in Egypt
for two
and one-half weeks. I’ve spent my time acclimating to the
tempo of life in Cairo, avoiding
the main
tourist sites until the tourist season dies down. This has afforded me
the leisure
of taking things in at whatever pace I please.
Only one
description of Cairo
qualifies as both accurate and brief:
“It’s a hell of a town” (credit to Daniel
Selden). I’ve broken up my own
description of Cairo
into segments, but, of course, they are inseparable for any meaningful
understanding.
First and
foremost, there are the people. Cairo has
somewhere
between 17 and 25 million people, though accurate counts
don’t exist. All of
them live in a twenty square mile rectangle. A few words spring to
mind: dense;
overdeveloped; frenetic. All of them are accurate. During high-traffic
times,
it feels like every Cairene is out and about. If you’re a
foreigner, like me,
you feel 17 million pairs of eyes following you down the street.
Second, there
is the layout. I’ve mentioned that
it’s dense, but it’s difficult to appreciate just
how crowded this city is. If
you stand on any given street, your line of sight will extend only to
the
adjacent buildings and no further, unless you’re on one of
the Nile’s
banks, in which case your line of site will extend
only to the other shore, and again no further. The buildings are tall
and
mutely organic, but not organic in the Santa Cruz
sense of the word. Rather, the buildings seem to
be living in an undead state, growing to fill the spaces around them,
tangling
and strafing each other, vying for another rootspace; yet they are all
covered
with the sand and dust of age, and only the most recently washed
facades are
spared the sepulchral quality that dominates the city. The lifeless
biology of
these structures is highlighted by just how many people live and work
in each
one, in the commercial storefronts, the apartments, the storerooms, the
prayer
rooms, the tourist traps, the diners and restaurants. The roads crawl
through the
looming edifices, packed with vehicular and pedestrian traffic in a
lawless
agitation that rivals any road I’ve seen in the U.S.
or Europe. The
weight of millions couples with
the heat of the desert to oppress the infrastructure, which can at best
be described
as “crumbling.” Parts of it, in fact, remind me of
places in rural Mexico.
Third, there is the culture. Egypt
is
primarily a Muslim country, with Muslim sensibilities. Everyday phrases
wrap
themselves up in the nation’s religious roots: a conversation
where inshallah (“God
willing”) fails to make
an appearance would be unusual. During prayer times, many shops and
establishments close, and the telling call to prayer sounds from all
corners of
the city. Of course, there exist severe differences in social roles and
regulations for men and women, and here is another aspect of Egyptian
life that
is difficult to verbalize, and pretty hard to get used to, even for a
man. In
walking around town with female friends of mine, I have seen them
become the
objects of hisses, prolonged stares, catcalls, gestures, and the like. Americana’s
old-fashioned
rules of etiquette – the man always walks on the car-side of
the street when
with a woman; he enters strange rooms and buildings first to ensure
safety; he
doesn’t let a woman take a cab alone – become
necessary in a place where
threats to a woman’s safety are very real. It can be
frustrating to see my
female friends grow quietly livid when these things happen.
Fourth, there
is the weather. According to some
of the native Egyptians I’ve met, the ten or so days
immediately following my
arrival in August were unseasonable hot, even by Cairene standards.
Colin and I
keep our room air conditioned, but the heat lies in wait for us.
Stepping
outside is usually accompanied by a great shock of temperature, which
slows you
down noticeably. The thing is, it’s not simply heat,
it’s heat laced with
particulate pollution that you can feel adding weight to the air. Heat
stroke
is a real danger, and we stay as hydrated and shaded as we can. The
evenings
can be quite temperate, however, and some of the best walking
I’ve done has
been in the middle of the night.
Until classes
began, most students in the dorms
would go out at night. Cairo
never stops, or never seems to. On the island, there are many places to
get
food, drinks, or smoke sheesha, a
pipe flavored to your favorite fruit. I have become a fan of streetside
shawerma and felafel. For a
couple
pounds each, a cab of four can get to downtown to patronize the larger
establishments, such as Club Latex, a posh and unsurprisingly
overpriced dance
club under the Nile Hilton, or the Odeon rooftop bar, where they serve
a
wonderful cocoanut dessert called Om Ali. Despite my eating habits, I
have yet
to get sick.
Colin, Chris,
and I found a great music hall here
on the island. The El
Sawy
Cultural Center has concerts several times a week.
Earlier in September, I paid L.E.
20 to see about three hours of live music.
Plus, the walk back to the dorm from El Sawy takes us past a great
confectioner’s
shop, which we’ve visited a couple of times. I’m
sure we’ll be back.
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