Arrival in Cairo
By Conal Darcy
It was not until I looked out of the plane window over the vast expanse of the yellow desert that I really felt I was traveling to Egypt. I had never stepped foot outside of a Western nation before, let alone a famous Muslim country. Thousands of years of human history had transpired on the sands below me: the ancients had built an empire; the Romans conquered it, followed by countless armies led by the likes of Alexander the Great and Napoleon. What the hell was I, a skinny American with a round Irish face, doing here?
For the first time since Samoa I disembarked the plane using those old roll-up stairs ubiquitous in every airplane scene prior to 1983 – except these were not motorized; they relied on the heavy hands of hired help to reach the door in the front of the fuselage. The air was dry and the sun burned over the molten tarmac. I walked into the arrival hall and claimed my bag.
After a circuitous run through a maze of stanchions I arrived at the entrance to the small customs hall. Not six hours before I had been sipping cappuccino in the cool, ordered, brushed-steel Munich airport. What lay before me now was incomprehensible. A writhing mass of hijabs, burqas, thobes, cotton shirts and tan pants was attempting to make it past the severe customs officials who guarded the gates to Cairo with machine guns. There was little time to reflect on the chaos before the crowd swept me up.
For fifteen minutes I bounced through the line, my steely demeanor not betraying the rising panic in my mind. I was surrounded by Arabs with mustaches and sheiks with keffiyas – the very people I have been so long taught to suspect – especially in an airport. What if I bump one of the women in a hijab? Will her husband attack me? Will I be arrested? Terrors flashed within that only ignorance could produce.
“Passport,” said the Immigrations Officer. I thrust my American passport at him, happy to have made it to the front of the line without instigating a riot. “Where is your visa.” It was not a question. “I was told I could buy one upon arrival?” I said, trying not to betray the beginning tremors of panic.
The man’s left arm shot out over my right shoulder, the forefinger extended. I turned my head and saw on the other side of the hall another larger crowd I had somehow missed. “Buy there,” the guard said. It was the Visa purchase line. Sensing my mistake, the crowd ejected me backwards. During the next fifteen minutes of trying not to offend anyone, I studied the visa prices on the digital board above the teller counters. On this day it seemed visas paid in Euros were cheaper than those paid in American dollars. Good news, since I only had the former on me.
At the front of the line, I handed my passport over to the bald man who obviously wanted to be somewhere else. “Fifteen American dollars,” he said, glancing at the clock. I handed over the amount required for Euros. “No Euros. American passport, American dollars,” he said, this time looking me straight in the eyes.
“I… just came from Europe,” I said as images of deportation ran through my head. “Visa, Mastercard, American Express,” he countered.
The disappointment of being hassled out of a few bucks lasted only until I saw the man apply the visa to my passport. They were stamps – real stamps with serrated edges, art-deco renditions of mosques and sphinxes, and backs that needed to be licked before they adhered to anything. For a second I felt like I had stepped into 1936. I was snapped out of my reverie by a cell phone ring. Visa affixed, I ran back to the first line.
I was finally through. The main arrivals hall seemed quiet and empty compared to the din of the customs den. Everything was the color of sandstone and the harsh morning sun gleamed through the large glass doors ahead of me. I needed a taxi.
I was heading towards the exit when a large middle-aged Egyptian with a moustache stepped in front of me. “Hello, my friend. You need taxi?” I told him I did. Then the memory of tourist kidnappings and shootings from the past decade flashed. “But I’ll get one outside,” I added quickly.
“But friend, I am from the tourist ministry! See?” He lifted up a laminated badge with an official looking seal surrounded by Arabic script. “Follow me,” he said. “Fine,” I thought, “let’s see where this goes.”
He led me up a narrow escalator to an empty mezzanine lined with car rental counters and glass-fronted offices. Surely kidnappers would not go so far as to rent a storefront. My guide introduced himself as Muhammad and sat me down in one of the smaller offices at the end of the empty concourse. He then left me with two older Egyptians who spoke little English.
“Where you go?” asked the one behind the desk. I pulled out the slip of paper with the address of my hostel on it. “Here?” I said, unsure of what was going on.
Naturally the man did not read Roman characters and my Lonely Planet guide book happily omitted the Arabic spelling of the hostel. After a few futile attempts to sound out the name in what I thought was an Arabic accent, the man waved his hand and said “No problem. No problem. We find.”
The room was silent and I grew nervous. “May I smoke?” I said, pulling out one of my duty-free packs from the transfer in Paris. “Yes!” barked the heretofore silent man across from me. Then he smiled, which did little to ease my concerns.
I tried to calm my tremulous hand as I lit my cigarette. The two men were watching me intently. The one behind the desk turned to the other and said something in Arabic. “He is scared,” I was pretty sure that is what he said. What have I got myself into?
I tried to make conversation but the language barrier was too great. The cigarette dragged on for hours it seemed while we sat in silence. Finally I asked where the taxi was. “Muhammad finds,” said the one across from me. I choked down the last of the cigarette and contemplated life as a prisoner.
Muhammad finally came and said there was a car available. He led me outside where I was astounded by what I saw. About 500 black Peugeot 504s were fighting for fares in front of the main door of the airport. “One of these?” I shouted to Muhammad above the rattling of French engines. He had already crossed three lanes of traffic without looking up. “No! No! These are no good! We have a special car for you!” he shouted back at me, beckoning me to follow.
I dodged a few taxis and caught up to my guide. We stopped at the edge of a guard rail in the sea of idling, black bugs. We stood for a few minutes in the sun while he stared intently at the oncoming cars. A few taxi drivers desperate for a fare drew up alongside us but Muhammad waved them away dismissively.
A silver car, Japanese I think, came skidding to a stop next to us, blocking three lanes. “Here is your car. Nice, eh?” Muhammad said, smiling. I assured him I agreed. I hopped into the back seat with my backpack while Muhammad and the driver conversed in a seemingly agitated tone in Arabic. After the terse words Muhammad stuck his head in the window and waved saying “Goodbye, my friend!”
The driver, who spoke no English, leaned on the horn and weaved the little car through the crowd. I kept an eye on the signs. But instead of taking the exit towards Cairo he made a detour towards large concrete building – an underground parking garage. We drove a level down and I found the car surrounded by mean looking men. I was sweating and my heart was hammering my ribcage. So this is how it ends?
The driver hopped out and I began making escape plans. “If I swing the door open quickly I can knock over the first guy. Then I’ll rush the second guy and head for the stairs. Once I’m there…” Before I finished that thought another driver jumped in the car and threw it into drive. We were outside again in the harsh sun.
He was annoyed; I was confused. “Where you go?” he said. It dawned on me; they were only finding a driver who spoke English. He was probably on his lunch break. I kicked myself for being so stupid. I told him where I needed to go.
We were soon on the highway going fifty, sixty, seventy… Limitless vistas of sand gave way to brown one-storey tenements. These slowly grew to two stories, then three as we neared the city. I was fascinated by the sprawl that I thought an ancient city like Cairo should be immune to.
My thoughts on city development were arrested when I noticed we were about to hit a meandering, rusty minivan. My driver slammed on the brakes, leaned on his horn, and swerved around the rambling hulk. The van was unperturbed by my driver’s cursing; I wondered if this were normal.
Within seconds we were back up to seventy. My driver noticed the next slower car and changed lanes with room to spare. This did not go over well with the grey Mercedes doing ninety behind us. Surely my driver was mad.
I looked around the back seat for a seatbelt; there was none. I clutched my small backpack to my chest as if it would stop my internal organs from exploding when the inevitable crash occurred.
The next twenty minutes I spent with my eyes closed as we skidded back and forth across the four lanes heading to Cairo. By the time we reached my hostel I was praying to all the major deities.
“Sixty pounds” said the driver, turning around. I handed it to him, thankful to be alive.
I exited the car and stood before an old stone building left over from the British. My hostel was on the roof. The cool, dark staircase was a welcome respite from my whirl-wind first hour in the country. I arrived at the open-air reception and asked for a room. “How did you get here?” the clerk asked in very good English. “By taxi,” I replied, sighing.
“How much did you pay?” he said, squinting his eyes at me. I told him.
“That is too much.” I was silent. He added, “You were taken for a ride.”
“Yes, I was,” I said.
——
Conal Darcy made it out of Egypt eventually and now writes in Brooklyn.
Photograph appears courtesy and copyright of the author.
This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 2:00 am and is filed under Non-Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
