He who has not seen Cairo has not seen the world.The Thousand and One Nights
Every since I was a small boy, and used to spend hours pouring over maps of faraway places and dreaming about the treasures hidden there, one of my dreams has been to take a train down the Nile, into the heart of Africa. Riding first-class to Luxor on the Egyptian national railway isnt quite the same thing, but its close enough, and thats what I was set to do after I left Sharm el-Sheikh and the World Economic Forum behind. Last Tuesday, however, my dream was almost shattered, probably beyond repair, because of a large red spot on the corner of a $10 bill.
It would have been entirely my fault. For once in my life, I forgot the travelers gold rule: cash is king. And because I forgot, I arrived at the Cairo train station Tuesday morning with only twenty Egyptian pounds (or about $3) in my pocket 47 less than the price of a first-class ticket to Luxor. And that almost kept me from going to Luxor at all.
I know what youre thinking: What about that $10 bill with the red spot on the corner. What the hell does that have to do with rail travel in Egypt? Ill get to that, but first let explain why I ended up in a strange city in the Middle East with virtually no ready cash.
In my younger days (or, as my son prefers to say, back in the Late Stone Age) I always traveled with a thick wad of American Express travelers checks tucked away in my money belt. I had a rather bad experience as a teenager alone in New York City with very little money trying to get a paycheck cashed (I know it sounds stupid, but I was just a kid.) Ever since then Ive had a healthy respect for the power of liquidity, enough to want to be sure Im floating in it whenever Im far away from home.
But, like most people, Ive gradually grown used cash dispensed on demand 24/7 at cash machines all around the world. So when I got to JFK on my way to the Land of Goshen, I only bought a $100 worth of Egyptian pounds to take with me. I mean, the stuff is practically funny money, and I didnt want to end up with more than I could use. The guy at the forex booth urged me to buy more, saying it would get me a better rate. I ignored him.
This wasnt straight thinking, since I already knew I was going to Luxor, but I figured my VISA card would serve me in most situations -- after all, its supposed to be every place you want to be. Unfortunately, as I found out, every place doesnt include downtown Cairo.
I didnt exactly blow a wad at Sharm El-Sheikh most of my expenses were covered but between this and that including the absurd price for in-room wireless Internet access at my hotel, which I stupidly paid for in cash I managed to burn through most of my Egyptian pounds before I left. I probably could have gotten a cash advance on my VISA at the airport in Sharm, but I had an early fight, and didnt have time. No worries, Ill do it at the Cairo Airport. But, between getting bused to the terminal from a plane parked somewhere out near the Suez Canal, waiting for my luggage, getting my luggage, and discovering, unexpectedly, that Cairo airport has no place to check left luggage, I was running dangerously short of time to get to the train station in downtown Cairo. No worries, I was sure I could get cash at the train station.
So I resigned myself to hauling two heavy bags and a laptop bag full of assorted electronic gear all the way to Luxor (about as far from Cairo as Chicago is from New York) and back, and paid a guy to haul them out to street. A few more Egyptian pounds gone from my dwindling store. The guy turned me over to a cabbie, who spoke better English than I do, and away we went, careening down the highway (I use the term loosely) towards the train station.
Along the way, though, we had to deal with Cairo traffic, which is to traffic what Iraq is to nation building -- with the added distraction that Egyptian pedestrians are utterly fearless when it comes to wading out into a major arterials, and utterly indifferent to any problems this may cause for the drivers bearing down on them. Egyptians in general dont so much walk as glide (those ancient tomb painters knew their subjects) and watching a bunch of them weave their way among the cars zinging past is enormously entertaining, like watching a enormous chorus line do the cha cha.
But I wasnt in the mood for it, just as I wasnt very receptive to my cabbies efforts to educate me about whats wrong with Egypt, Mubarak, the Israelis, the Palestinians and his mother, who kept him from seeking a better life in America when he was young and had the chance. He was, in short, the kind of cab driver who simply will not shut up, and while his political views where intriguing, (he was convinced the Jews control everything, but that was OK by him because he hated the Palestinians even more) I was more focused on my watch, and on my chances of making my train the last express train until after sunset.
Making the trip south in the dark, of course, would have eliminated the entire point of taking 10 hours to go someplace a jet could take me in less than two. I wanted to see Egypt the Egypt of brick villages and irrigation canals, of narrow strips of green stretching to the dust-yellow edge of the desert, of date palms and donkey carts and slender minarets pointing the way to paradise. I admit, watching such things flash by from the window of a train is a weak cousin to genuine adventure, but at this point in my life thats what I am a weak cousin. And it was my only chance of getting a good look at one of the most fascinating countries in the world.
We finally arrived in the automotive mob scene in front of Ramses Station (if Cairo is chaos, then Midan Ramses, the traffic circle beside the station, is chaos cubed. Id made it, with an hour and 15 minutes to spare. I paid the cabbie (another 60 pounds gone) and climbed out into the swirling humanity of downtown Cairo. No worries. I had plenty of time to buy my return ticket on the overnight sleeper train, grab some cash out of an ATM, and then make my way over to the regular ticket counter and reserve a first-class seat on the 11:00 train.
I had no problems booking and buying my return ticket they even took VISA. Of course, like everything in Egypt, it took about three times longer than my worst-case estimate when I stepped in the door. But no worries, I still had 50 minutes. So I picked up my bags and struggled over to one of the white uniformed tourist police (in my experience, the most useful, and underpaid, members of the Egyptian security apparatus) and asked him to direct me to the ticket counter.
And where are you going, sir?
Luxor, on the 11 oclock train.
Ah, next tourist train at 11:30, sir.
Is it running late?
Oh no sir. Eleven tonight sir.
Worries.
I should stop and explain that following the terrorist attacks of the late 1990s (one hill over from the Valley of the Kings, a tour group was systematically hunted down and slaughtered in 1997) the Egyptian government decreed that tourists could only ride first class and only on certain guarded trains. Id thought that my train was one of them.
He must have seen from the look on my face that I was feeling rather deflated.
You have hotel in Cairo? Go wait, come back tonight.
Or, the cop told me, I could catch a tourist train at seven the next morning. But that meant I wouldnt get to Luxor until late Wednesday night cutting my time there from three days (one of which I planned to spend recuperating) to two. Id also have to find a hotel in Cairo and, for the second day in a row, haul my ass our of bed at the crack of dawn to make a run for the train station. In theory it was feasible, but I had an intuitive feeling that if I went down that path, my chances of actually catching a train would start to slip away.
But I have to be on the 11 oclock train. I told the cop. I have to meet friends in Luxor! Very, very important I be there on time. (Ive always been proud of my ability to think and lie on my feet.)
He looked at me gravely, and then decided to take pity on me. Maybe it was because he could see I was a hick from the sticks and didnt know the ropes. (Like New Yorkers, Caireans believe their city is the center of the universe, with somewhat greater cause.) He gestured to a man standing nearby, who glided over. The man, whom Ill call Ahmed, since I never did learn his real name, nodded to me. He was obviously one of the quasi-employed guys who hang out at the station and try to make a few piasters totting luggage or running errands. I didnt know it yet, but this was the guy my dream ride now depended upon.
OK Mister, the tourist policeman said. You give money this man and he buy ticket for you. (The counter agents have firm instructions not to sell tickets on the forbidden trains to foreigners.)
Now, ordinarily, Id be a little cautious about giving money to a total stranger so he can run around the corner and buy something for me. But in my experience (admittedly limited, since Id only been here once before) an Egyptian will tell you the most fantastic lies to get you to buy something, and will charge you the most outrageous price he can get away with, but he will not steal -- even people so desperately poor youd think theyd rip off a rich old kaffir like me without a second thought. Its just not their way. Besides, train tickets are cheap in Egypt. I didnt stand to lose much if I never saw the guy again. I also didnt have much choice. If I was going to make it on that train, Ahmed (or someone like him) would have to get me there.
This is when I remembered that I had barely any cash left either in dollars or pounds. Train tickets in Egypt are subsidized, and thus ridiculously cheap, but the price of a first-class ticket was still about 50 pounds more than the Egyptian money I had left in my wallet. Plus, if I was going to deep into the heart of Egypt, I wanted to do it with something more than the equivalence of $3 in my pocket.
Is bank in train station?
No bank cash machine. There.
I looked over dubiously. The ATM wasnt that far away, but my bags where heavy.
Is OK. (Like most cops, he was good at reading faces) You leave bags here.
So I marched over to the ATM, Ahmed in tow, already reaching for my bank card. I stuck it in the slot, picked my language, punched in my code and told the machine to give me 500 Egyptian pounds. Pronto.
Transaction not available. Please try again later.
Was there a problem with the card? Problem with the bank? Problem with the computer?
Who cares. Try a credit card. So I stuck in my VISA and ran through the drill again language, PIN, amount.
Transaction not available. Please try again later.
I looked at Ahmed, already beginning to feel vaguely and irrationally ashamed. What good is a fat old kaffir who doesnt have any money? The question answers itself. I shook my head and pantomimed: Not working. Ahmed, however, wasnt discouraged. He pointed to another ATM across the hall. So we trotted over and tried again.
Transaction not available. Please try again later.
And so I was reminded that even in the Internet age, cash is not always available on demand, any time you need it. That fat wad of travelers checks I used to travel with was starting to look pretty good. A fat roll of Egyptian pounds would have looked even better. This was my punishment for thinking of it as funny money back at JFK.
Egyptian pound: So how do you like me now, asshole?
I was starting to sweat from worry as well as from the already-scorching heat of a Cairo morning. Not only was my dream ride in trouble, but it was starting to dawn on me at this point as just a nagging thought in the back of my head that I might end up stranded in the Cairo train station without even enough cash to catch a cab to one of the big hotels overlooking the Nile where I could be sure of putting a room on a credit card. Back to the tourist cop.
I need to find a bank one that will do a cash advance on a credit card?
Cash advance? You not get from machine?
Machine go bye bye. I need a bank.
Much conversation, none of it intelligible to me, followed between the cop, Ahmed, another tourist cop, another tourist cop and a guy passing by on his way out of the station who must have looked like the kind of person who knows where banks are.
Finally, the cop pointed vaguely towards the door of the station and told me to go with Ahmed. I had 40 minutes left. Hurry, the cop said.
And so we did out into the hurricane of flesh and metal that is downtown Cairo. If, as I noted in a previous post, resorts like Sharm are specifically designed to shield their guests from the realities of Third World life, to walk the streets of Cairo is to experience a total sensory immersion in them. People live in those streets, many of them literally, and practically every square inch of sidewalk that wasnt covered by a walking foot was occupied by someone trying to sell something from kiosks, push carts, folding tables or just scraps of cloth spread on the ground. The air was a roar of engines punctuated by honking horns, so many so fast it sounded like a transmission of gibberish in Morse code. Gas fumes and diesel smoke mixed with the odor of burning charcoal from the grills of the roast corn vendors and -- wherever there was a sewer grate -- with the rancid smell wafting out of the citys bowels (again, literally.) If Dick Cheney is reincarnated, I hope he comes back as a Cairo sanitation worker.
But must of all, there were masses of human bodies, jostling and dodging each other on the sidewalk, mobbing on the street corners waiting for the lights to change (since I was there last, the city has installed metal fences and gates along the really important streets downtown. When the light changes, a cop on the corner opens the gate so people can cross. This appears to have cut down on the chorus line dancing through the traffic, at least little bit.
Out into this urban ocean we swam, Ahmed and I, steering an unsteady course towards a corner a couple of blocks away that reportedly hand a bank on it. People steered with us fore and aft, starboard and port. Many of the women, far more than I remembered from my first visit 15 years ago were dressed in abayas (the Arabian version of the chador) a long black garment that looks like a cross between a nuns habit and a sack, and is meant to.) Most of the men wore Western dress, although some wore blue or gray galabias the all-purpose, all-in-one traditional Egyptian garment that is a loose shirt above the waist and an ankle length sack below it. Most of the men were also clean shaven, I absent mindedly noted as we pushed and were pushed along with the crowd. A scraggly beard and gabalaya is the uniform of the pious and, in some cases, the radical fundamentalist. After what Ive been reading and hearing about Egypt lately, I half expected to find the streets of Cairo filled with Osama bin Laden lookalikes, and was relieved to find it not so.
More immediate questions, however, were uppermost in my mind questions like: If I stumble, will Ahmed be able to pull me back to my feet before Im trampled to death? The aging streets of downtown Cairo (sometimes called European Cairo to distinguish it from the walled medieval city immediately to its east) are in a perpetual state of disintegration, and I was stumbling over plate-sized potholes in the sidewalks and curbs that were either six inches higher or six inches lower than theyre supposed to be.
But we found the bank. The guards at the door checked my laptop bag (I refused to leave it sitting in the train station, even with a cop to guard it) and scanned us though the metal detector. Ahmed asked for the foreign exchange desk, and we were directed around a corner of the tellers counter to a man who looked like Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca, except without the fez. I asked him if he spoke English, and he nodded, so I pulled out my wallet and asked, in what I hoped was a properly ingratiating tone of voice, whether his esteemed banking establishment could accommodate a temporarily out-of-pocket traveler by giving him a small cash advance on his VISA card.
Now if youve spent any time in the Big Apple, you know there is a certain type of New Yorker who regards it as his or her sacred duty to be rude to out of towners, particularly those who dont appear to have any local pull. This guy was one of them, at least in spirit. He looked at me as I had just asked for a personal loan.
It is not possible, the Sidney Greenstreet lookalike said, as if even a child should understand that banks dont exist to give out money. We have not the machine. He swiped an imaginary card in an imaginary card reader.
By now that nagging thought in the back of my head that I might be stranded in Cairo without any cash was beginning to speak much louder. I was also starting to get angry. I was an American, and I had my rights, including the right to get a cash advance on my VISA card upon demand. I could sense, however, that the ugly American routine wouldnt get me anywhere with Sidney, whod already made it completely clear he was unimpressed by my appearance and country of origin. As far as he was concerned, I was just another rube and not a particularly bright one at that.
Is there any bank around any place at all that will do cash advances?
Sidney looked at me stoically, his English having suddenly deserted him. I was wasting his time. I looked at Ahmed in desperation. He didnt speak more than a few words of English either, but at least he knew what I wanted. He raised his hand to calm me, and, having figured out what Id asked Sidney, stepped in to translate. More conversation in Arabic, followed by much pointing in different directions. At this point I must have looked like I was ready to pop a vein, because Sidney suddenly remembered his English. There is a bank in Sharia (name unintelligible, at least to me) that has the machine. But it is not close.
I could feel my shoulders slump. I wasnt going to make my train nor was it clear I would make any train, not even one I was officially allowed to be on, since I didnt know (and still dont) whether the Egypt rail ticket counter would take a credit card. Somehow I doubted it. I could feel my great African railway adventure slipping away. The only question left was how I was going to get myself and my bags to a hotel. Accepting defeat, I motioned to Ahmed that it was time to go.
We were about halfway down the block when I remembered the $10 bill tucked into my wallet. It was the all the American money I had left. Ten bucks is about 60 Egyptian pounds. I still had a 20 pound note. A first-class ticket cost 67 pounds. If I changed the ten spot into pounds, Id have enough and a little left over to pay Ahmed for his time. I looked at my watch. I had 35 minutes left.
Back! Back! We go back! I pulled Ahmed around and hustled him down the street to the bank. We made our way back to Mr. Greenstreets counter, and I triumphantly slapped Alexander Hamiltons face down on the counter.
I would like to change this for Egyptian pounds . . . min fadlak. The Arabic phrase book hadnt been a complete waste.
Sidney looked at me with a jaundiced eye. What kind of American tourist comes in and asks for a cash advance, leaves, and then immediately comes back and tries to change a small bill? I was acting desperate, and desperation is always grounds for suspicion. Slowly, with thinly disguised contempt written on his face, Sidney picked up my $10 bill and scrutinized it.
And thats when I noticed the red spot. The bill was marked in one corner with a fat red blotch, as if from a magic marker. I hadnt noticed it before someone making change had slipped me the bill back in the States, and I hadnt even looked at it before stuffing it in my wallet. After all, how important can a $10 bill be?
Now I was deep in the process of discovering how important it can be when its the only piece of American legal tender you happen to have in your possession. Sidney saw the red spot, too, and with a gesture of magnificent contempt for me and my counterfeit money, he slapped the bill down on the counter and pushed it under the metal grate that separated us.
Is no good.
What? I brought it here from America myself!
Under the circumstances, this was about as helpful as telling him I had printed it in America myself.
Is no good.
Is good!
Is no good.
Who knows how long this childish dialog would have continued if Ahmed hadnt again intervened. Another long conversation in Arabic ensued, while I stood there watching the seconds turn into minutes on my watch, and muttering to myself in absolute outrage that anyone would think my money was funny money.
Egyptian pound: Whos laughing now, habibi?
Finally, Sidney did what every good bureaucrat can do in every language he made his problem someone elses problem. He pointed to another counter somewhere in the back of the bank, and Ahmed still showing not a trace of concern on his lined, brown face led me there. We found an entire room full of bank clerks, deeply engaged in a conversation about whatever Egyptian bank clerks talk about when theres a customer waiting at the counter. It was a long conversation. I had 30 minutes left.
Gesturing didnt get anyones attention. Saying Min fadlak (please) and an iznak (excuse me) in what I thought was a very clear and slightly commanding tone of voice only got me a dirty look. All Id done was identify myself as an American tourist. We waited.
At last, one of the clerks must have grown tired of my anxious face hovering in his tellers window, because he broke off his gossiping long enough to turn and face us.
Yes? (translation: Why are you bothering me?)
Again, Ahmed stepped in probably sensing (correctly) that I was on the verge of turning into an exceptionally ugly American, which would have done nobody any good, least of all me. He took the tainted $10 bill from my hand and laid it gently on the counter, and then said something to the clerk in Arabic that had such a humble and beseeching tone to it I probably would have given him the shirt of my back if he had asked me for it that way. He sounded like Peter OToole in Lawrence of Arabia, posing as a poor Circassian peasant, meekly answering questions from a Turkish pasha Yes, effendi. No, effendi.
It had the desired effect. The clerk shrugged his shoulders and picked up the bill. However, his eyes were every bit as sharp as Sidneys and he immediately pointed to the shameful red spot on one corner. He said something in Arabic. It didnt require translation.
Is no good.
Ahmed looked at me with sad eyes. It is the color, he said, meaning the red spot. Color is no good. He pointed to the red spot.
Im not used to people telling me they dont like the color of my money, and at this point the ugly American inside me finally fought his way to the surface. God dammit, you tell the son of a bitch this bill is perfectly good, and I want it changed into Egyptian pounds RIGHT NOW. No Roman governor or British raj was ever more imperious.
Again, Ahmed raised his hand, as if to sooth an upset child, and again he said something humble and self-effacing to the clerk. The clerk shrugged his shoulders a second time, and turned to a skinny, balding man sitting at a desk in the middle of the room. The clerk said something to this bank pasha in almost as obsequious a tone of voice as Ahmed had used with him, and handed him my $10 bill. The bank pasha looked at the red spot, and then at the clerk with an expression that clearly asked: You are you wasting my time with this? Pasha shook his head, curtly. The clerk shoved the bill back under the metal grate. I had 25 minutes until my train.
For a second time, I was ready to concede defeat. Ahmed, however, was made of sterner stuff. He asked the clerk something in Arabic and was rewarded with a vague, half-hearted wave of the hand that pointed to somewhere else in Greater Cairo.
Come, Ahmed said. We go other bank.
So back out into the human tidal wave of traffic we went, squeezing our way through the gate with the rest of the crowd like toothpaste out of a tube -- when the cop opened it, crossing a wide boulevard, turning a corner, and then another, until I had completely lost my sense of direction. The streets grew smaller, until we found ourselves walking down a block of low-rise tenements most of them with a workshop, a tiny store or a garage in the first floor, with big metal shutters opened to the street. Children in faded but surprisingly clean Western clothes ran back and forth across the filthy streets, or sat in doorways and played little games I couldnt see what, just as I couldnt see how their mothers kept them so clean under such conditions.
Ahmed and I walked past an old man working some kind of lathe, for wood or maybe leather goods, then a mechanic stretched out on the ground under an old Toyota minibus, then three women in black abayas balancing plastic bags filled with something (groceries?) on their heads. A couple of young guys bounced down the rutted street on motorbikes; a few more stood talking by theirs. It was a self-contained urban village, just two blocks from one of the busiest boulevards in downtown Cairo.
I wasnt in the right mood to appreciate the slice of life I was seeing (22 minutes left) but I realize now I was getting a quick peek at life as it is lived in hundreds of megapolises across the global South. It was the same combination of poverty and resourcefulness and squalor and dignity and above all, the human capacity to endure -- that Dominique Lapierre portrayed in his book about the Calcutta slums, The City of Joy. It was also a scene one might have found on the Lower East Side of New York a hundred years ago, a reminder that most of the world still lives in the grit and the crowds our grandparents and great grandparents struggled to escape.
Every block or so, Ahmed would stop and ask someone in the street for directions, and then we would veer off the way pointed. In a place without street numbers, where an address may be written as Sharia al This at Midan al That, the best way to find anything is to ask and keep asking. But each time we asked was an opportunity to be misled, and while that might not matter much in Egyptian time (where things happen when God wills it, and not before) it mattered to me. One wrong turn and my chances of catching my train would be finished. Twenty minutes to go.
I should have had more confidence in Ahmed by now. We walked a few blocks, ducked down an alley to a larger, more commercial street, walked another block, and we found the other bank. By this time my brain was at last beginning to fry (it was actually a chilly day in Cairo, which means the sun was only set to bake instead of broil.) and I would have walked right by the place if Ahmed hadnt called out. In we went.
It was smaller carbon copy of the first bank, with the same apathetic guard at the door and the same bored clerks chatting behind the counter but with glass windows in front of them instead of metal grates. I walked up to the clerk who looked youngest and thus, I thought, most likely to speak English and asked him if they did cash advances on VISA (no harm in trying.) The answer, of course, was no, as they did not have the machine. He dispensed with the imaginary swiping.
This was the moment of truth. If I couldnt change my $10 bill with a red spot on it here, there wasnt enough time left (18 minutes) to go look for another bank. I produced the tainted object, and passed it under the glass.
The clerk held it up and frowned. My heart sank. Clearly, he didnt like the color either. But, just as my last hopes were fading, he decided to get a second opinion. He passed the note to the clerk on his right, who gave the bill a cursory glance, and then nodded. Maybe he was color blind.
I realize I shouldnt have been so emotional about, but I really did almost feel like crying. The painful memory of being 16 years old and alone in Port Authority, with only a few dollars to my name, plus a paycheck that nobody would cash, receded. I was going to Luxor -- if I could make it back to the station, have Ahmed buy my ticket, and haul my luggage to the platform all within the next 14 minutes.
I waited impatiently through the formalities checking the passport, writing the passport number down on a form, printing out the receipt, handing me back the passport and the receipt, counting out the money, handing me the money all of which seemed to be happening in slow motion. Finally, I had my Egyptian pounds in the sweaty palm of my sunburned hand.
We flew out of that bank, Ahmed and I, and set off down the street towards Midan Ramses, dodging men, women, children and potholes (I had a brief, nightmarish vision of stumbling, sending a little old lady smashing into the pavement, and spending the rest of my life paralyzed by guilt.) But we kept going, walk-racing our way first on the sidewalk and then on the street, when we came to a kiosk or a pile of garbage too big to circumnavigate. We arrived at a corner to find the light against us and the gate closed, but Ahmed steered me away from it, out in the middle of the street. I dodged a truck, a bus and then another truck, scrambling kike a halfback with blown lateral ligaments, instead of the serene grace of the Egyptian chorus line.
We made it back to the train station Im still not sure how -- with 10 minutes left on the clock. The tourist cop was still standing by my bags, with a look on his face that said: What part of hurry didnt you understand? I stuffed 70 pounds in Ahmeds fist, and he glided off to buy my ticket, while I waited with the cop, nervously shifting from one foot to another like a little kid that has to pee. Eight minutes to go.
The cop tried to make small talk in small English where you from, how long in Egypt, Luxor very hot now, more hot than Cairo but I was too agitated to do much more than grunt. I kept craning my head to try to see what was going on over at the first-class ticket counter, but it was lost in the shadows on the other side of the station. For all I knew, the waiting line might stretch to the pyramids.
Minutes precious, irreplaceable minutes went by. Still no Ahmed. By now I was practically dancing in place, and checking my watch every ten seconds. The cop must have thought I was fucking nuts. Or maybe he was used to Americans acting like deranged squirrels in the middle of Ramses station. Five minutes to go.
It was at that point when the results of all my worrying and frantic scampering around downtown Cairo were on the line that I finally realized how silly I was being, acting like some cartoon stereotype of the Type A personality. If I was meant to ride the train to Luxor, I would: inshallah, if God willed it. If it wasnt meant to happen, it wouldnt, and I would have to turn to the more serious question of where to go in Cairo and how to get there with the little money I had left. For the moment, though, I was in something approaching a state of grace or as close to it as an middle-aged American tourist in a big city in the Middle East without cash is likely to get.
Which of course is when Ahmed walked out of the shadows, holding one first-class ticket to Luxor in his hand. Forget grace, forget inshallah. I had a train to catch.
I draped myself with luggage and hobbled over to meet Ahmed, the cop walking beside me. The ticket, I could see, was written entirely in Arabic, giving me no clue as to platform, coach or seat. The cop scanned it quickly.
Platform eight, compartment 2, seat 29. There. Go. He pointed towards a door to the right of the ticket counter. I grabbed my bags and we took off. Three minutes left.
We sailed right past the guards and through the metal detector at the entrance to the platform. Alarms went off, but the guards looked on indifferently. This was obviously a race theyd seen before. Potential bomb-toting Americans as opposed to bomb-dropping Americans didnt even rate a condition yellow on their threat meter.
I staggered down the long platform, cursing the fact that first class was at the front of the train. Ahmed sailed along beside me, imperturbable as ever. He didnt offer to tote a bag. He must have felt like hed done enough for me already, considering the uncertain payoff.
My train would also be pulling second class and third class carriages, all the way to Aswan, and as we moved down the platform we passed Egyptian families saying their goodbyes, porters pushing trolley carts loaded with packages being shipped south, and weary-looking old women selling something that looked like baked mud from long narrow trays.
Just when I decided I couldnt racewalk any further with a heavy bag on each arm and a laptop case dangling from my neck, we reached my coach. Ahmed led me on to the little platform on the end of the car, and then into the compartment itself, which had seats in rows facing forward, American-style. The aisle was filled with people stowing their bags or just standing around, stretching their legs before a long trip. A very large woman in the traditional black sack was trying to stuff an even larger sack of clothes into the overhead rack.
Even at the best of times, there would barely have been room in that aisle for me, much less me and my luggage. Still, I waded in, thrusting one bag in front and dragging the other behind alternately pushing and apologizing. But I was starting to run out of steam, and my rubbery arms could no longer lifts the bags over the seat rests on either side.
Ahmed was now half way down the car (Egyptians never seem to have much trouble maneuvering around each other.) He looked back and saw I was struggling. I was embarrassed to ask for help after all he had already done but I needed it and he could see it written on my face. So he maneuvered his way back, took my front bag from me, and cleared the way so I could drag the other to my seat.
We reached my row. You sit here, he pointed. It was a window seat just like I had wanted, but had forgotten to ask him to get.
Slowly, with more effort than it should have taken, I lifted my bags into the overhead rack. I looked at my watch: Id made it, with two minutes to spare. I looked at Ahmed, wanting to tell him how grateful I was for all he had done to help rescue my dream trip. Shukran gazilan didnt come close to covering it, but it had to do. I pressed my remaining Egyptian pounds into his hand. Even with the change from the ticket, it didnt come close to covering what I felt I owed him. But it, too, would have to do. He took the money, impassive as ever, bid me maas salaama. and departed. I hope he doesnt judge me too harshly for not paying him more generously. I would have if I could.
A few minutes later 11 oclock on the dime, more or less my train pulled out of Cairo station. The trip south, which was supposed to take 10 hours, ended up taking 12, and was every bit as fascinating and vivid as Id hoped. However, that story and what happened when I arrived in Luxor in the middle of the night with no cash -- will have wait to for my next dispatch.
For now, all I can say is that my initial fear that the Egyptians may have changed, at least in their attitude towards Americans, since my last visit here 15 years ago proved completely unfounded in Cairo last Tuesday. Theyre still the same endearing, exasperating, hospitable and long-suffering people they always were, and probably always will be. And I learned that Im still very fond of them bank pashas excepted, of course.
politics (100 unread)
It never ends with the neocons—illusory weapons of mass destruction, aluminum tubes, yellow cake, Mohammed Atta in Prague, argumentum ad nauseam, ab ovo usque ad mala—they are seasoned and pathological liars. “Iran’s announced intention to force non-Muslims to wear an identifying badge is causing many to make the comparison to Hitler and the Nazis, who forced Jews to wear badges in the shape of the Star of David,” declares the 
As noted by the blogger 
“An American counternarcotics official was killed and two other Americans wounded in a suicide bombing in western Afghanistan today, while heavy fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan police continued in two southern provinces, officials said,” reports the 
Let’s hand it to 
The neocons over at the 
According to 
Naturally, it is the job of the corporate media to paper over the real reasons for the NSA snoop database, described as “the largest database ever assembled in the world,” according to a source quoted by 
Iran’s president Ahmadinejad never said Israel should be “wiped off the map,” although 
As speculated here over the weekend, the impending appointment of General Michael Hayden to the CIA will translate into the wholesale dismemberment of the agency in favor of the Pentagon conducting “paramilitary operations” (i.e., subverting governments around the world). “A senior intelligence community official yesterday said the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has indicated ‘he is willing to give up covert operations to the Pentagon,’” reports the 
