12/24/09 – 12/27/09
FINALLY HERE!
After 2 days of waiting in hotel rooms, airports, and 12 hours of flying … I’m in Cairo!
Most people think of Egypt as some desolate, land with nothing but desert in sight, and camels as the only mode of transportation. Well, anyone within 5 minutes of getting here, can tell that it’s the complete opposite. The airport was busier than JFK when I left! The city reminds me of New York. It has the same life and vibrance as Manhattan does during the holiday season. The streets are full of lights and huge crowds, and the stores are always full and busy. The city literally never sleeps! at 4am you can find almost 3/4 of the shops still open, and the main roads still bustling with people as you would find it during the early evening. There’s so much life to this city. To me, as well as to the millions of people living here, its vibrance overshadows the overwhelming poverty that seems to rule most of the city.However, as much as the city reminds me of New York, there’s a very different dynamic in the way the people interact with each other here. Everyone seems a lot more friendlier with one another here. With all the cab rides we took, my mom had a conversation with all the cab drivers, and other people we would encounter at the pyramids or the bazaars as if they were old friends. They would talk about how the country had changed since my mother was last here, or problems that the country is going through. They were conversations with heart. Something you wouldn’t easily find in New York, or at least for me anyway.
For my first full day here, we saw what any tourist MUST see when they get here, the pyramids. It was a foggy day, so I couldn’t really see the pyramids until we got up really close. Oh. My. God. They’re NOTHING like how they look in the pictures! To me, the biggest one looks almost as tall as the Empire State Building! I didn’t expect them to look so huge! On a clear day you can see them from My brother and I did what any tourist would do at the pyramids … we rode camels! It’s pretty scary when the camel gets up and sits down … it feels like you’re about to fall off because it leans so far forward and backward when it gets up, but it was a lot of fun. I got a really nice view of everything going on around the pyramids up on the camel (yea … its that tall!). Our next stop that day was the Cairo Citadel. Inside it, is the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, (no not the boxer :p) It’s another one of those places where you feel in awe just by standing there and looking at it. I like to think it’s kinda like Egypt’s hidden gem. Not many tourists have heard about this place, but in my opinion, this is the second must-see tourist stop behind the pyramids and sphinx. It looks absolutely beautiful on the outside and inside. Inside the walls and domes are intricately decorated with several patterns in different shades of green. Muhammad Ali’s tomb inside the mosque, is just as beautifully decorated with the typical geometric patterns you would find in a mosque. Outside the mosque, there’s a great view of the entire city (given there’s no fog :p). One of the nicknames of Cairo (as you can see from the title) is the “city of a thousand minarets.” From the Citadel, you can see that there are literally a thousand minarets in the city! I think it’s what makes this city unique from any other place you would visit in Egypt, or throughout the Middle East. After the Citadel, we stopped by the al-Hussein district of Cairo. Here, there is the Khan el Khalili bazaar, and Masjid al Hussein. Masjid al Hussein, or the Mosque of al Hussein contains the tomb of Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad himself. For that reason it always seems to be crowded with pilgrims wanting to pray for, who is considered by many to be a holy man. I had wanted to do the same, but unfortunately, didn’t get the chance. Right next to it is the Khan el Khalili bazaar, the biggest and most famous bazaar in Cairo, and probably in all of Egypt. The place was packed with tourists, and hundreds vendors literally on your back trying to get you to buy their stuff. When you walk through it you feel like you’re in the story of Aladdin, or a story from 1001 Arabian Nights. The atmosphere has the same kind of “storybook magic” you would feel when reading (or watching) any of those old stories.
One thing I found kind of funny when touring the city was that to the average Cairo citizen, I was a complete foriegner. I have the same thick dark hair, same dark eyes, same skin color as the typical Egyptian would, yet everyone would just speak to me in English! I wasn’t sure what it was, I tried to speak Arabic in an almost-flawless Egyptian accent with the other people, and they would still ask me “where are you from?” in English! I asked my mom about this and she said it was my American demeanor. People there could tell that I wasn’t a native Egyptian, even if I spoke Egyptian Arabic with them. I thought it was interesting.
My time in this city was truly wonderful. After leaving it, I feel like it was a city I saw in a dream, and I woke up.