"View of Cairo, Egypt." (H. C. White Co., 1909). 14 x 9 cm, 5.6 x 3.5 inches. From TIMEA
I am wondering why I insisted on being dropped off here.
Midan Tahrir is complete hell – it is a cross between an intersection and a parking lot. The center is full of buses, minibuses and taxis parked or moving slowly. Accompanying each bus and minibus, is a boy yelling – singing almost – at the top of his lungs the destinations served by the particular vehicle, and trying to drum up fares. Surrounding, and somehow even moving through this transportation bazaar, is a steady stream of traffic that probably makes it, in addition to a parking lot, probably the biggest intersection in all of Egypt – maybe Africa. The sound is impressive, since in Egypt it seems if your horn isn’t wailing you’re not really going anywhere.
Kent and his friend scuttle off with quick goodbyes, and hardened expressions toward the center of the grimy plaza to find an airport bus, and are soon lost in the sea of traffic, touts and blue-black exhaust. The Dutch women somehow fade into the night without my noticing. I am left to make my way to the Magic Hotel alone. After wading a while through the traffic, fumes and noise I manage to figure out where the Nile is. Wow, the Nile! How cool is that? I don’t actually see it, rather I see the Nile Hilton and deduce (correctly) that the Nile must lie somewhere behind it.
I drop my pack to the pavement and sit on it in order to re-consult my map. According to the map, or what I can make of it, as it takes up only one small page of my small guidebook, if the Nile Hilton and Nile are on my left – which they are – then the Egyptian Museum should be straight ahead of me at the end of the square, and the Magic Hotel is exactly in the direction I have just spent the last ten minutes walking away from.
Unsteadily, I re-encumber myself with my pack and hold my guidebook in my left hand, keeping a grimy finger on the map page. By this time the interruption in my forward progress has attracted the attention of several friendly Egyptians. “Hello my friend, from where are you coming? You looking for a taxi, bus, hotel?” I gratefully assure them that I am fine, and that I am looking for none of these things. “Where are you going?”
“To the Magic Hotel.” Confidently, I point in the direction I am now walking.
“I never heard of the Magic Hotel, my friend, but I know a good hotel – very close.”
“No, thank you. I’m going to the Magic Hotel.” I try to keep things polite
Several similar encounters and what seems like a great deal of walking finally gets me, sweaty and amazingly grimy, to the end of the square where the Magic Hotel should be just as the desert twilight completely gives out. Scanning the hanging signs and darkened doorways, I don’t see any indication of the Magic Hotel. In fact, if the Magic Hotel ever existed, it is not only gone, but its memory has completely faded from the collective mind of its neighbors, as no one on the street, in the pharmacy, bookstore or even the Pizza Hut have ever heard of it.
Ashamed as I am to admit it, I seek refuge from the darkening chaos outside inside the brightly-lit calm of a Pizza Hut. At one of its cold, smooth laminate tables, I quietly give up my search for the Magic Hotel, cursing Kent and his friend, and go back to the book. It’s funny how comforting something familiar – even if it’s repulsive – can be when you are in a foreign setting. I may not have been inside a Pizza Hut in the past fifteen years, but now that I am, I don’t ever want to leave. It’s light, comfortable and relatively calm; has an impeccably clean bathroom and even serves pizza. There is no reason to leave. It seems much nicer than the Pizza Huts at home – hardly a “hut” at all really. The patrons are well dressed, stylish and mostly women. About three quarters of them wear headscarves. They chat and laugh, lingering over personal pan pizzas and sodas. I feel guilty sitting there consulting my book and using their spic-and-span marble bathroom without purchasing anything, so I order a pizza of my own. I’ve been in Cairo less than twenty minutes, and already I am retreating to the cheesy comfort of American franchise fast food.
It’s just that everyone seems to be enjoying them so much. The pizza and sitting there among this well-heeled set gives me a warm, doughy sense of security. Once the last cheesy scabs have been peeled off the bottom of the box, however, I again have to face the fact that I still have no place to sleep. Fair or not, my initial impression of Cairo is that it is not a place where I’ll be able to pass a night wandering bars and dozing on a bench.
Outside, Midan Tahrir is still in full swing, only now it’s darker. In fact it’s darker than I would expect a city to be. A circus of slowly weaving headlights adds a dizzying visual aspect to the confusion. The dust seems to absorb the low-slung glare of the lights before they do any real illuminating and somehow the buildings absorb more light than they give off.
I make my way around the perimeter, away from the Nile Hilton trying not to be run over. My unnerving is accelerated by the fact that in Egypt the horn is as important (actually more) than lights as an indicator to others of your existence, position and intentions. Crossing the street is an exercise in white-knuckled determination involving staring down the traffic and taking a few, measured steps at a time. It’s like wading through a river. After a while I feel like I can sort of gauge the distance and speed of an oncoming car by the sound of its horn, like a bat. This is probably not the case, but it is comforting to believe.
At last I turn down one of the many streets leading away from Midan Tahrir. The darkness doesn’t help my already shaky sense of direction – there no longer being a setting sun to orient me – nor does the fact that the street signs, when I can find them, are in Arabic, a language I have not exactly mastered. It probably doesn’t help either that three years of law school has reduced me to a squinting nearsightedness that I have not yet fully admitted to. Glasses, if I had remembered to bring them, might help.
The sidewalks are almost as busy as the streets, and I stumble along bent under the absurd weight of my pack, guidebook open in my hands, desperately looking for a landmark that I can reference on the tiny map. I should have bought a real map of Cairo. For some reason none of the hotels listed in my book seem to be where I think they should be. It’s like I’m following the plan for the wrong city. Entering a building whose location on the street matches exactly the location of a hotel on the map, I encounter an Egyptian man dressed in a dishdasha and skull cap who appears to live in the stairwell.
He addresses me in Arabic to which I responded hopefully, “Salaam,” and “Hotel?” He doesn’t seem to understand what I am asking, so I point to the name printed in my book, and say it again slower and louder like an idiot. While the name of the hotel means nothing to him – entirely understandable since not only is it in the wrong language, but also the wrong alphabet – the sight of the book seems to get response. He gently takes my arm in his and begins leading me out the door. I hesitate, looking back up the stairs where I hope and believe the hotel should rightfully be.
“No, no,” insists the man, “hotel, hotel,” as he pulls me along toward the sidewalk. Outside he leads me through the throng by the elbow like a blind man continuing to mutter “hotel, hotel.” Soon we’ve left the area illuminated by my half page map and I am in real fear of never being able to get back on the grid. I remove my elbow from his grip. He looks baffled, “hotel,” he urges and points further down the darkened street. I’m not at all sure where I am anymore, but I’m pretty certain I don’t want to follow this kind fellow any further.
“No hotel, thank you.” I reply, inexplicably I’m sure to him.
“No hotel?”
“No, thank you.” I begin to walk back in the direction we came from.
The man walks up beside me. “Hotel?”
“No, thanks very much.”
“Backsheesh?” he says now. I keep walking, ignoring him. “Baksheesh,” he says again thrusting out his hand. It’s not really a question this time. It doesn’t take a linguist to see he wants a tip. I hesitate – I don’t really want to give him money for leading me wherever we are now, but I understand that he did taken time out from his sitting under the stairs to do it. I feel like we are beginning to attract attention and it makes me uncomfortable, so I fish in my pocket for some of the change I got at the Pizza Hut in order to end the standoff. I have no idea how much I give him, but the coin feels fairly heavy. He knows what it is, as he doesn’t bother to withdraw his hand to count it, and apparently it’s not enough. Increasingly uncomfortable with this scene, I fish a bill out of my pocket. This does the trick, and he withdraws his hand smiling and says, “sukran” (pronounced shookran).
Yes, that was it, “sukran”. I remembered now how an extremely kind Dutch guy in Jerusalem told me this was the “magic word” in Egypt. It means something like “thank you” in Arabic, and if you insisted, “no, sukran,” you would be relieved from unwanted offers far more quickly than by saying “no, thank you.” Of course it could still take eight or nine “no, sukrans” to get someone to desist from selling you an alabaster pot pipe, but the “no, thank yous” could conceivably go on forever.
Now completely lost, but at least free of my guide, I head back in the opposite direction. Within a block I am approached by a young man. Unlike the previous guy, he wears pressed blue jeans and a striped polo shirt, and he speaks to me in English.
“Hello my friend, what are you looking for?”
“Oh, nothing,” I assure him not really wanting to get into another baksheesh relationship so soon.
“You need a hotel?”
“Yes,” I admit.
“I know a hotel, my friend.” He smiles.
“Really, which hotel?”
“It’s a nice place. I can take you there, come on.”
“Oh, no, no thank you. I actually have a hotel.”
“You have a hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Which hotel?”
“The Tulip Hotel.” It is a name I remember from the book, but I have no idea where it is.
“The Tulip Hotel? I have never heard of it. I will take you to a good place.”
“No, thank you really. Sukran. I’m going to stay at the Tulip Hotel.”
“OK, OK my friend. No problem.” He holds up his hands like I am pointing a gun at him, continuing to smile. “Where you from, England?”
“Canada.” I half lie, not having actually lived there (except for a couple of summers) since I was ten, but I don’t feel like talking politics with this guy.
“Canada?” he replies in the first part of what would come to be a familiar exchange.
I nod.
“Canada Dry!” He laughs. I don’t get it, but I laugh too.
I locate the tiny dot on my map meant to represent the Tulip Hotel and hold it up to him. “Do you know where this is?” The map doesn’t seem to mean much to him and he shakes his head and shrugs apologetically. “OK, sukran anyway.”
He smiles and replies, “afwan.” I feel really good about the whole exchange, and continue down the street completely lost but upbeat.
Having located landmarks that surround it on three sides – at least on the map – I know the Tulip has to be close. The Tuesday night strollers weave around me, as I stand in the middle of the sidewalk looking up, like a plane-spotter, for any sign of the place. I feel conspicuous and sweaty and my desperation must show, because a guy in his late teens or early twenties breaks off from his group of friends and approaches me.
“My friend,” he smiles looking genuinely concerned, “what are you looking for?”
I cringe, and more firmly than I probably need to be, tell him that I’m really not looking for anything, just looking around.
“You need a hotel, man?” he asks not seeming to know quite what to make of me. “There’s a good place really close. I can show you.”
“No thanks, sukran.” I shrink back into the wall of the building fronting the sidewalk.
“You sure?”
“Yes, thanks, I don’t need any help.” I smile and begin to walk away.
“Hey, it’s the other way,” he calls.
“Thanks.” I wave back to him.
Two blocks later there’s still no sign of it or any other hotel. While there isn’t really any place to sit down, my legs need a rest from confused wandering. I drop my pack to the sidewalk out of the flow of foot traffic and sit on it leaning back against the brick wall of the building behind me. I open my guidebook and pretend to read, knowing it is useless but simply wanting to avoid talking to anyone. It’s so nice not to be walking or carrying my pack that I wonder if I maybe I could just sit here all night. My mind quickly shifts from sleeping on the street to the luxurious swipe of my credit card at the front desk of the Nile Hilton. It is tempting, but the very thought of it brings back memories of my interrogation by the Israeli security guys at the airport in Madrid:
“You have no money, how can you make such a trip without any money?”