Cairo

Rohan and Anne had warned us about the driving in Egypt but it had to be experienced to be believed. All the regulations and signs, lights and lanes are ignored and in a bustling city of more than 20 million, the traffic is always dense except on Fridays. Crossing the road means stepping out in front of moving vehicles and crossing one lane at a time while the traffic streams on around you, to the accompaniment of continuous beeping of horns. This was all experienced on our trip from the airport to Cairo to our great alarm but after a few days we realised that such a system has a way of operating based on seizing opportunities, accepting pauses with patience, expert use of the horn for communication and lack of concern about small dints.

We made our way up the stairs to the seventh floor when we arrived at our hostel and were made very welcome by our wonderful host, Emir. As our first experience of staying in a hostel it was brilliant. The reception area had a couch and chairs facing each other and was the place to sit and chat, so we quickly got to know the other travellers staying there. Advice and experiences were exchanged and comparisons made between different ways of doing things.

On our first evening we went out in the Down Town area and worked our way through the maze of streets in the bazaar. The shops stay open until about 2.30 a.m. and amazingly people were still working, in tiny factories and one room and street mechanics shops, late at night. Cars are parked everywhere and bumper to bumper, so perhaps there is a system where someone has the job of moving them if one is to leave.

Many of the buildings in Cairo are very old and have been damaged so that people are living in the OK parts of very dilapidated low rise buildings, which house many families and have businesses on the ground floor. The footpaths are in very bad repair so everyone is careful and most people walk on the side of the road, since cars are parked on the footpaths anyway.

On our second day we visited the Coptic

Museum and St Georges Church and a little Coptic church which is on the site of some caves where the Holy family hid Jesus to save him from infanticide. This is in the old Coptic section of Cairo and we passed many very poor houses and people. Donkey carts and cars mingled on the roads but only donkey carts could move with ease in the old sector. On our visit to the oldest mosque in Cairo, Emma and I wore green hooded robes and were permitted to go into the women’s partitioned off section while Payam and Keith could only go in the general section. Emma and Payam were Welsh Iranians also staying at our hostel. We visited a Muslim bazaar in another part of Cairo but were fairly overwhelmed by the way the tiny shops, each barely more than the width of a doorway, had someone sitting on front of them. Immediately we would be offered very good prices if we even looked their way. One very enthusiastic shopkeeper even offered us 100% discount!

We walked to the Citadel the next day, ignoring all advice that it would be difficult, and made it using the map and the sun for directions. At first it was a little problem that we kept forgetting that the sun was in the south instead of in the north. On the way we were lured off track and visited a very old mosque and climbed the minarets, paying for the man who took us there, the sheik who guards it and donating handsomely to Cairo’s orphans as well. We enjoyed the visit and became wiser as we analysed the subtle art of seduction. The Citadel, high on a hillside, was a fort which enclosed the Mohammed Ali Mosque which is spectacularly beautiful, with every surface decorated ornately. By listening in to a French guided tour we learnt that there was a gallery for the women surrounding the immense open space of the mosque. A visit to the military museum left us amazed at the struggles that Egypt has endured in modern times, but the highlight was the police museum. They had a room for legal cases from the time of the Pharoahs, an assassination room with pictures and mugshots, a confiscations room full of objects

and a display devoted to finger printing which was used in ancient times by Egyptians. To

complement that there were pictures of unusually deformed hands. We left later than intended and the sun was down well before we were anywhere recognisable or with English street names. The 16 – 20 km that we walked in total allowed us to see every sector of Cairo's commercial life as well as to meet many helpful people who guided us turn by turn back to our hotel.