Getting Around Cairo - Part I - The Cab

One of the more exciting things you can do while in Cairo is to ride in a cab. It is a singular experience in automotive design and capability.

The cab itself is half the fun. Personally, I love cars like these. They've got so much more character than a brand new Mercedes (not that I find myself in those too often!). They're like a living, wheezing organism that speaks to you with every move it makes. This entry is devoted solely to the physical being. For an account of how the ride works, see Part II.

To begin with, the exterior of the car is black and white, with a short yellow rack on top for extra luggage. Normally, the paint job helps people pick a taxi out of traffic, but during the night when it's darker and most drivers don't use headlights, it makes them a little harder to spot. Still, if a driver sees any pedestrian stopped for more than .2 seconds at a time, they'll pull over and ask if you need a cab, even if you were walking in the opposite direction in the first place. I guess this makes the task of finding a cab a little easier.

Moving to the interior of the cab, there is only one way to enter. Without a doubt, the door on the left is locked, which isn't a problem since you're getting in on the right anyway. But sometimes it sticks, so the driver reaches around behind the seat to pry it open. Once inside, if you're with a friend, you're not getting out again unless they do first. Remember that the door on the left side is locked. If you're lucky, the lock is still a part of the door, though probably broken. The handles to open the manual windows on either side are also optional. Sometimes you'll find the handle in the side armrest, sometimes not.

In terms of space, I think I can comment pretty accurately. I'm 5'10" tall, which adds to my joy riding in the backseat. Some of the taxis had front seats that had leaned back and forth so many times, they'd broken, so the seats were held upright by resting on a string tied from one side of the car to another. Even if the seats weren't broken, the car is small enough so that I could never really fit completely in my share of the leg room. That's what short friends are for! Even tall friends let me share their space when there was a few extra inches behind the passenger seat.

The front seat of cabs can be even more exciting. Under normal circumstances, women ride in the back seat like pretty much everywhere else in the world. Men tend to ride up front, hanging out and talking politics but the atmosphere is a little different for a woman. To be honest, I didn't care one way or another - though I tended to feel better in the back - and if there were too many of us to fit in the back, I didn't mind sitting up front.

One of my earliest trips in the front seat was at night, coming home from a movie. In an effort to decorate the area surrounding the driver's seat, there was a crimson, shaggy rug-looking cover over the entire dashboard. In the right-hand corner where I sat was a light-up sign that had a heart with an arrow and the word "Love" (in English) in the center. It was set to slow strobe so periodically, the light would follow the length of the arrow into the heart and very romantically light up the "Love" in the center. Blue lights that were either neon or black lights lined parts of the interior of the car in between the doors where the seat belt was fastened to the door frame and under the rear windshield. The entire ambiance had me expecting some cheesy saxophone music instead of the Qura'an recital that was playing in the tape deck.

Overall, I think the impression that remained most indelible in my memory was the fact that no matter the state of the cab, the car continued to run. I could probably count on one hand the number of times a cabbie accidentally stalled the car in the entire year I was in Egypt. And as car inspection is "optional" (you can usually bribe your way out of being overdue) the car will spit varied amounts of serious-looking exhaust into the air. Suspension is a myth and it wouldn't surprise me if parts of some cars were held together with rubber bands but despite all this, they continued to navigate the congested streets of Cairo taking their passengers to and fro.

I was quite impressed.

Wanted: Place to Live

Part of the excitement of living in Cairo is trying to find an apartment. My grand plan was to live in AUC's dormitory during the summer portion of my program in order to get to know the neighborhoods (and to give myself a chance to learn Egyptian colloquial!) I had a friend that was planning on studying in Cairo during the academic year and we'd made plans to live together after she arrived. My job was to find us a place.

I began my search in early July, thinking that if I had two months until her arrival I would be just fine. What I didn't know was that tenants have a distinctive habit of just moving out any time they like and doormen and landlords have no idea what apartments will be available more than a week in advance. Still, I thought I could get a good lay of the land and a male friend of mine had offered to walk the streets with me which was something I couldn't refuse.

Our wanderings led us down various streets in different neighborhoods. We had a friendly taxi driver doubling as a personal chauffeur that took us from place to place and even stopped to pick up a storekeeper who became an intermediary real estate agent. It was just amazing to me the way everyone helped in their own way and took over parts of the search.

Admittedly, the trip wasn't all roses. The "real estate agent" took us to three different apartments, and at one, I wasn't allowed in because there were some very religious men that felt uncomfortable haivng a woman in the apartment. My friend would be allowed in, but not me. Despite our arguments that my male friend wasn't going to be the one living in the apartment, I was still not allowed inside.

In addition, our "agent" demanded a large sum of money for helping us out for less than an hour. However as we stood there arguing, a small crowd of locals gathered around us, trying to mediate the discussion. They listened to both sides of the story and sided with our analysis of the situation, eventually helping us diffuse the matter. In one way or another, Egyptians are very self-policing and try to take care of their own. Perhaps another group another time might not have sided with us, but it was comforting to know that, in a way, I was taken care of.

Overall, the entire experience was a positive one and I learned a lot. Eventually, I gave up my search to wait until the fall when I would have more information about availabilities. This changed the dynamic a little bit and meant that I only had about six days after my future flatmate arrived to find a place to live and move in. By this point, we were looking for a place for three people (the third person was another girl from my program) and feeling the pressure. But we did it. Through the help of a doorman we met at an unrelated apartment. The man was very kind and offered to ask around in the neighborhood and found something while we were off looking in other areas!

This picture is taken on the other side of town in a little place called Hadiqat al-Azhar (Azhar Gardens) and is a beautiful sunset view of the city. It gives an idea of how apartments are set up and how close mosques are to any given block. From my apartment, I could hear all five calls to prayer and every Friday morning around 11:00am I could hear the prayers echoing off the walls of nearby buildings for about an hour. Every now and then any given day, the "rubbiabicchia" (buyer of all your old things) would pass through the neighborhood calling out his presence. At other times, men on a donkey cart selling gas in canisters rode down our street, banging the cans to announce their sales.

And though I spent much of my time on the top floor of our building in our two-story apartment doing enormous amounts of homework, I always felt connected to the city through its sounds.

Welcome in Alaska

One of the first impressions I had of Egypt as I stepped from the airport out into Cairo wasn't the oppressive summer heat that's only just warming up in early June. What I first noticed was that the atmosphere around me was so friendly. Less than two weeks after I landed I had already done a walking tour of my home neighborhood - the island of Zamalek in the middle of the Nile - gone to the Egyptian museum, visited the Citadel and al-Azhar mosque, and gone shopping through Khan al-Khalili, a major tourist market built in 1382 and reconstructed in the 16th century that is a maze of passageways several blocks long that weave in between stores selling various goodies.

Everywhere I went, I was greeted with the same notion: while the political tension ebbs and flows between the East and West on a large scale, on an individual level Egyptians were thrilled to meet me and talk to me. "When you go home, tell your friends that we like Americans. We don't like your government, but the people we love. Make sure you tell everyone."

There are always, of course, the ever-present "shabaab" or "youths" (which in Egypt includes every guy between the ages of twelve and thirty) who shout at the American girls walking down the street "I love you! You are so beautiful! Welcome to Egypt!" And at the Khan where there are more foreigners than Egyptians, all the shopkeepers shout (sometimes annoyingly) for your attention to come and look at their wares. But when I really had an opportunity to talk with someone - even if it was just with a storekeeper - I always felt truly welcome.

In Egypt, bargaining is customary and the process can take a while, so a store owner will typically pull out a chair and offer you a variety of beverages from water to Coke or Sprite to tea. After the transaction has been settled on, you typically stay and chat and it was then that I really felt I was getting an insight into their culture and my temporary place in it. The range of appropriate and polite questions covers a lot more ground from "What's your religion?" to "Are you married?" and, fortunately for me, that works both ways. To really sit and talk with someone about their families and children opens doors you'd never think to find at someplace like MACY'S.

So why "Welcome in Alaska" and not "Welcome in Egypt"? To be honest, I don't know. The "in" part is a direct translation of Arabic where you don't ever welcome anyone TO a place but rather IN a place. The Alaska part continues to baffle me to this day. About five times over the course of my year in Egypt I heard people shout that to me and I regret that I never stopped to ask them why. No other Egyptian seemed to understand either. But I'm not the only one that heard it.

Still, the change in venue name does nothing to make me feel less welcome and less at home in my new adoptive country.

My Name is Florence

Actually, it's Britt. But as most of my friends know, I love to travel and I love languages. In 2005, I received a CASA (Center for Arabic Study Abroad) Fellowship that allowed me to spend 12 months living in Cairo, Egypt going on as many adventures as time (and money) would allow. Once a month, I wrote home to friends and family about everything I was seeing and doing and it wasn't long before my godfather (a big history buff) nicknamed me "Florence of Arabia".

I'm new to blogs, but I want to make my adventures - the good and the bad - available to anyone else who's curious. I'll post as often as I can with old stories and new and talk about not just my travels through Egypt, but my experiences in other countries at other times.

You can call me Florence or Britt, I don't mind. Just as long as you enjoy the ride.