Cairo

It happened again; I got on a plane, they shut the door, and when they opened it again and I walked down the stairs, I was in an entirely different place! Magic. I dodged the nor'easter/hurricane by hopping the Acela down to Penn Station, then took a cab to JFK, where I boarded my flight to Cairo. I think I had secretly been hoping I would be upgraded... Alas I was packed into coach. Egypt Air is pretty much as I remember it; a perfectly fine airline in the physical sense, with awkward, bizarre, and sometimes rude service. The cabin crew came though midway through the night with the drink cart and turned the full cabin lights on, giving everyone who had been sleeping a rude awakening. Then there was the incident of the flight attendant with the drink cart almost running over two women who were in line for the loo...

I arrived, got my snazzy new Egyptian visa, waited for what seemed like forever for my bag (it was one of the last five loaded off the plane), and headed to the hotel for a quick nap and a shower. Then on to the office for whirlwind introductions with more people than I can count before meeting with Mourad, Khaled, and the two guides for the Stanford trip. All in all a good meeting.

Khaled and a somewhat ill Margo were nice enough to take me out to diner, so we loaded up in Khaled's car and flew through Cairo traffic (something that had to be experienced to be understood). Dinner was at a lovely outside cafe, with twinkling lights strung up around the tables and up and down the palms, we had freshly baked bread (something between pita bread and naan; fluffy and warm in the middle) with an array of dips, hummus, oils, meats, and vegetables, then a few varieties of meats on a stick, with the same toppings. I thought the twinkling lights were charming until I looked closely and realized there were literally hundreds of stings of lights all strung together, with entire strings tied together into one bunch and dangling next to another. Fire trap? The whole time Khaled was puffing on his hooka, the sweet and sticky smell of his tobacco mixing with the apple shisha being smoked behind me - somehow it's not irritating like being around people smoking butts in the States - and mingling in my hair. We finished with mint tea in perfect little glasses with gold etching around the rims.

Then back into Khaled's car for the trip back across Cairo to my hotel. I said before that the traffic in Cairo has to be experienced to be understood, but I will try. Imaging feeling entirely out of control, praying that your seat belt holds. No, it's not that bad. It's more like a roller coaster, where you know that, in theory, you are perfectly safe and everyone around you knows what's going on and how to play the game, but there is also the slightest, ever-so-small chance, that you could fall off the rails and die. There were only two lanes of traffic painted, but there were three or four rows of cars. The horn is used to communicate (not to vent aggravation, as my friends in Watertown Square might think). A polite "meepmeep" says, "Excuse me, I'd like to get through," or "Pardon, but I'm right here on your left." A flick of the headlights says anything from "Hurry up," to "Move over," to "Coming up fast behind you." So there we were, headed back to the hotel after dinner, alternately flying over the road, merging left to get ahead of the car on the right so we could pass back over to the far right, breaking fast to avoid rear ending someone and then flying back over to the left to get around, seat belt occasionally locking, warm bread and garlic hummus with oil resting peacefully in my stomach, Khaled blasting the soundtrack to Aida, the sugary taste of mint tea still warm on the tip of my tongue.