Due to some work engagements of Mr S, I found myself heading to Alexandria again this weekend. I didn’t mind that he had to work, I was planning to take it easy at the hotel, reading my book on the balcony and looking over the sea.

I expected there to be a problem when we got to the hotel, there have been the two previous times I’ve stayed there. Apparently 5-star grading doesn’t take into account check-in (or check-out!) procedures. Anyway, I am not going to whine about staying in a 5 star hotel. Primarily because I think the stars are there purely as decoration, not as part of any rating. I will say, still not whining (only because I’m saving it for another post), that it is the only time in my life where I have told the manager of a place of accommodation directly to their face that I do not want to stay in their establishment. It was not a good weekend.

We took the train to Alex. It’s a decent train and usually runs pretty much on time. I’ve done this journey plenty of times over the years and until today, had not realised that every time I have gone, I have arrived in the morning and left the same day, or another, in the late afternoon/early evening. What brought this to my attention today was watching the commuter trains arriving.

You can forget right now any polished notions you have of commuter trains. These trains had not seen a lick or a spit probably since they were purchased in the seventies. A lot of the commuters themselves were not on the way to the office in freshly pressed suits, but were traveling in from outlying farming communities to sell their wares at the market.

I did not take any pictures of what I am about to describe, because I was so shocked and so sad at the suffering that I did not want to capture a moment of it on digital celluloid. A picture may say a thousand words, but in this instance, your imagination and compassion are required and words are infinitely better at conjuring them up (I hope I can do justice - and I am not going to weave a tale of whispering hubbly bubbly smoke and minarets in some far gone exotic land, that can be saved for the movies and writers wanting to make a quick buck off a Western myth).

Also, before I continue, I would like to clarify that although I now live in one of Cairo’s most exclusive neighbourhoods (so exclusive that I barely consider it part of Cairo), I have not always and I have worked for organisations actively working to improve life for some of the the most unfortunate in this country, so I have a fairly good idea of how life here is for many.

So, back to the platform. It was 7.45am and our train was due at 8am. The platform for the Cairo train is an island between four sets of tracks. We were standing on the platform as it filled up with other Cairo-bound travelers. Hawkers were working their patch selling newspapers and magazines, there were a couple of elderly female beggars moving from passenger to passenger looking for a small act of kindness that would secure their food that day. There was nothing unusual.

A train appeared down the tracks and Mr S commented that he had never seen third class carriages in Egypt. I assured him there were many, particularly on the type of train that was approaching. The engine passed and the first carriage was passing. Inside it was jam packed to the extent that people were hanging out the doors that were by now open. Movement inside the carriage of people wanting to alight made those at the doorways literally ‘pop’ off the train and onto the tracks below. They would then make their way over, in no particular hurry, to our platform.

Once the train jerked to a halt, the work really began. A boy about eight years old jumped off, on to the Cairo bound tracks and took a 1 metre diametre aluminium pot piled full with vegetables across the tracks to our platform. Then he went back and got another. His portly mother, in her long galabeya, sat down on the floor of the carriage and jumped out onto the Cairo tracks and took a sack of potatoes, easily 10kg and heaved it across to our platform. The little boy clambered back on the now moving train while she stood on the Cairo bound tracks waving him off. She then made her way up onto our platform and proceeded to drag her goods pot by pot across the platform to the other side. Once gathered there, she made her way down onto the tracks coming from Cairo, and heaved one of her pots over to the next platform, then made her way over to the tracks coming from Cairo. Just in time, because another train arrived. Doors open on both sides again, this woman then lifted her two pots and sack of potatoes onto the train, clambered aboard and slid in the single pot from the adjacent platform, just before the train left.

This story was repeated many times over, with her train and subsequent ones.

The train following hers, however, was (somewhat impossibly) even fuller. As the engine rolled past along with it came two young men, straddling the train buffers, holding on to the train with flat palms against steel of the engine and the front carriage.

Sure enough, at 7.55am they, as with many others, jumped off the train, onto the Cairo tracks and made their way, without much haste onto our platform. More women with lead heavy sacks and pots made their way across the tracks, either unaware that a train was due at 8am, or not caring much that it was.

The whole scene, in contrast to us holding our first class tickets and waiting for our plush seats in our air conditioned carriage was, and still is, extremely difficult to stomach. Of course I knew that the trains were crowded, extremely crowded and I’ve been squashed up against voluptuous female bodies on the Cairo metro at rush hour, and I’ve heard of people traveling on the roof on Delta trains. Mostly, however, I have not seen it and I was led to believe by the people describing it to me, that it was teenage boys who wanted to be dare devils. Perhaps so in some cases, but this was something quite different.

In all honesty, worse that watching it, was knowing that there is nothing I could do to help. I mean, yes, I could have tried to help the women carry the potatoes etc, but in reality, I would have been a hindrance more than a help.

So this is life in Egypt. You can live in a cocoon and never see anything like this and complain about how tough life is, or you can get out and about and see things what life can be like. The thing is, a poor reflection on me perhaps, it doesn’t stop the grumbling for as long as perhaps it should.

‘Can you take me to Square Y on X Street?’
‘OK’
I hop in the taxi and set off to my destination.

Only half, the long, very roundabout way, there I am told, ‘Ok, you can get out here.’
‘But,’ I say looking around, ‘We’re not near X Street.’
‘No, but you can take another taxi from here.’
‘But I’m in this taxi and you said you would take me and that was five minutes ago.’
‘Yes, but I’m going to collect my children from school.’
‘You knew that when I got in the taxi and you told me you would take me to X Street.’
‘Yes, but I have to get my children from school. I’m not going in your direction.’ He shrugs his shoulders as if to say, ‘What can I do?’

I did at this point say something not very nice, that I’m not proud of and I won’t repeat here.

Then out I got and walked to another place to get a taxi from, cursing the fact that after all this time I still think I can dodge the situation of extreme self-consciousness that is getting caught out wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes in non-foreign parts of town.

I can
and do
bitch and moan and whine with the best of them about you,
but
I don’t hate you by any means.

Driving along the busy Autostrad facing your gleaming
Mohamed Ali mosque
towering over shacks and tombs in the teaming
City of the Dead,
your streets litter strewn,
cars passing on the way to the slaughterhouse
live animals tied to the roof
I am disgusted,
yet somewhere,
at the core of my being
I cannot imagine
that I will leave you in just 18 months.

But
whatever it is
I love so much about you,
old city,
too precious is it to write:
those who came before me wore out the words.

So I love you.
Passionately.
And, at times
dislike you.
Intensely.

And perhaps that is all I can say.

The desert was amazing this weekend. The rain clouds that opened on Cairo, passed with a few drops overnight - enough to provide fantastically clear air, but not hamper our breakfast.

It was so beautiful, I won’t ruin it with words. Here are some pics for a taste:

In contrast, this is what we came back to:

At the end of last Ramadan, during the Eid festivities, Mr S and I headed off to Dahab for a spot of diving and windsurfing. Our first hotel double booked us and we were stuck for a place to stay. We eventually found a room at a place called Divers’ Urge. Very nice on the surface. After I refused to pay a price for diving that included kit rental because I have my own full kit, we were essentially thrown out and ended up in a bit of a dive for a night (but it did have brilliant views). Health and safety was an obvious priority as they had protected all the fire extinguisher with black binliners.

Guests were informed of the ‘house rules’ on the back of the room doors:

The next night we stayed at a much nicer place, with even better views.

Only trouble was, we were mildly electrocuted in the shower….

It is with great embarrassment that I currently totter around the house. So much so, in fact, that I think I’ve hidden it pretty well. I blame the pyramid personally, had I not descended into it’s belly I would be walking around without the threat of my quads giving way.

Perhaps the fact that everybody else was moving more slowly behind me could have been a sign to slow down, but I didn’t really like the length of the tunnel ahead of me, so made bit of a sprint up the makeshift stairway. Well, I say a sprint, my head was somewhat lower than my shoulders and my shoulders were nearing hip level. Obviously man has grown a little in 4000 years or so years.

The pyramids form part of a tour of duty when guests come, and I usually opt out, or at least comfort myself with lunch at a nice hotel next door before or after running the gauntlet of the Giza plateau. Our current guests wanted to go to Dashur pyramids, so off we went on Friday morning. Well, that was the plan. By the time we got in the car, it was already pretty hot and the sun was nearing noon.

The road to Dashur is clearly marked on the map. On the road there are clear signs for Dashur, in English and Arabic, just to make sure everybody knows where they are going. Following both the map and the road signs, we drove along the pretty palm lined road, confident that we were nearly there.

Then we reached Dashur village. At this point the road ended. On the map. In reality it carried on. Were we on the right road? So it seemed because Dashur village is more of a hamlet and there were no other roads.

Asking a group of women with large pans on their heads which way the pyramids were, they pointed along a road they called the Desert Road and said, “That way.” It certainly coincided with what the map was saying, but then we’d already figured out that the map was crap.

So, we asked a neatly attired (not, of course, that neatly attired people know more about roads than ragamuffins) young man at the side of the road. He pointed back down the road we’d just come from and said, “20km down there.”

Off we trotted, looking doubly hard for roadsigns again telling us to turn off for the pyramids, but there were none.

The trouble was, despite the crap map, it was rather unlikely that the Dashur pyramids were 20km away from the village, as that would mean they were near other villages, and surely would have been named after the other villages rather than Dashur.

As luck would have it, we passed a little tourist minivan going in the opposite direction so did the ubiquitous (on every road journey in Egypt) U-turn and followed it.

And yep, the Dashur pyramids are not accessed from Dashur village, but another village entirely, and just before you reach the turn off, there is a sign with an arrow pointing straight ahead, over which is written “Dashur”.

Anyway, as befits a blog from Egypt, here are some pyramid pictures.
This is the Bent Pyramid, so called because half way through building it someone realised the angle was too steep and it would be ridiculously high (this was the first smooth edged pyramid built) so they changed the angle.

This is less than half way down the tunnel into the Red Pyramid (the first correct smooth edged pyramid) that I thought I’d sprint up as we left.

I’m on my own. We’re leaving. It’s dark and late. Streets are falling asleep. The remnants of the day scattered. It hasn’t ended.

I’m getting away. My escape. What is it about travelling that allows us to be ourselves? Nomads.

Movement unites us, equalises us for a brief period that erases our past.

I’m on my own. We’re leaving. It’s dark and late. Streets are falling asleep. The remnants of the day scattered. It hasn’t ended.

I’m getting away. My escape. What is it about travelling that allows us to be ourselves? Nomads.

Movement unites us, equalises us for a brief period that erases our past.

Sun beating in my eye. Prisms in the shadows. Smiles, gentle laughter, fuchsia flowers on mocha walls. Individuals remotely plugged. Groups joking. Free couples. Beige trousers. Packaged food served on white plates. Saudis, Egyptians, Gulfis, Lebanese, Europeans, Americans. Melting pot that doesn’t melt. I melted. Not in the beating sun. Then solidified.

Sun beating in my eye. Prisms in the shadows. Smiles, gentle laughter, fuchsia flowers on mocha walls. Individuals remotely plugged. Groups joking. Free couples. Beige trousers. Packaged food served on white plates. Saudis, Egyptians, Gulfis, Lebanese, Europeans, Americans. Melting pot that doesn’t melt. I melted. Not in the beating sun. Then solidified.