Back in Cairo

For all of you I have emailed and all of you I haven’t I must say that I haven’t been blogging much either. So I’d like to tell all of you about my last few weekends. I’m chilling in Cairo. It’s Thanksgiving. I’m picking up a live bird tonight and having a dinner party tomorrow.

Last weekend started as a normal trip to a beach town called Port Said (Sah-eed). We took the train to the end of line in Cairo for 50 piasters (8 cents) and apacked into a large old white extra long station wagon for 12 pounds ($5). Everyone slept on the ride. We left late because I had to drop my awesome professor Steve off at the airport. He was going to visit my favorite person in Kenya, Africa–Calabrese.

In Port Said every telephone pole, tree and post had white cloth banners stretched across every street. I decided I was going to write an election story when I saw an old man putting up an ad for his campaign on what was probably the last place to put his name in the whole city.
We checked into a very modest hostel with no hot water for $5 a night. My roommate Dan went to sleep and we went to a shisha cafe and met a really cool guy named Fat-hee. He runs the place. It’s named after his father Abu Shelebi.

In the picture he is smoking flavored tobacco out of a homemade water pipe, or hubbly-bubbly, as he and his fellow smokers call it. Egyptians normally smoke tobacco from a shisha, or nargila, as it’s known elsewhere. It’s made of glass at the base and the long stem is made from sugar cane, which basically is like hollowed out hard bamboo that gets skinnier toward the end of it.

Anyway….So I did some reporting from Port Said. Interviewing Muslim Brothers, men on the street, and some politician who’s doing his best imitation of a low-class New Jersey mafioso.
The next night I’m back at the same cafe. While smoking some shisha I notice a very large man hurrying down the street wearing nothing but tighty whities while brandishing a huge knife and yelling someone’s name. I later saw this man at the cafe fully clothed with a long scare down the entire side of his g-eye-normous head.

Port Said is a free zone, that is, consumer goods are not taxed. This status will remain for the next year and a half, but in the mean time there’s much to buy. A large part of the town is an open clothing market, with name brands for really cheap.I got a pair of new balance slide-sneakers for like six bucks. They’re probably fake, but they’re not bad for knock offs. You have to be careful cause there’s lots of fake shit. Some of it is more obvious than others.

For example, they have both kinds of Adidas: Abibos and Adodis. There’s also Nika, Reaback, Desel. No kidding. They actually try to sell shit with the wrong name in big ass letters. My friend Mohanned has a pair of fake Nike sandals with the word “KIKE” in big letters. They messed that one up pretty bad….I took the station wagon back to Cairo late at night. We took a cab from the station back to our apartment. I realized I’m getting used the crazy driving when I barely flinched as our driver came within inches of striking a cement truck.

So I wrote the story and it was published. I reported from Cairo on the elections. Normal stuff for a country with a 24-year dictator attempting to have its first open elections:

Vote buying, intimidation, rigging, busing people in from other districts to vote, preventing opposition voters, fights, riots, rumors, fires. No biggie. I didn’t see most of it, as I seem to always be a step behind the violence. Probably a good thing.

Last weekend I went to Alexandria. It’s so beautiful and peaceful. I met a guy who grew up in Philly. We went to a bar, the closest place to a western (more european, actually) bar you’ll find in Egypt. We played cards. I ate tons of fresh whole fish, calamari, shrimp, soup, fried, grilled, ahhh, it was so good.The picture next to this is me at Muslim graveyard by the sea.

Now I’m in Cairo. I can’t wait to get back to Alex and Port Said. But there’s so much else to see in Egypt. Although there’s so much desert, there’s coastal towns on both the Mediteranean and the Red Sea. I hope to make it to the Red Sea before I come home for Christmas. BTW, I’ll be in Philly from Dec. 20- Jan 4, with a brief visit to NY of course.

I don’t know what else to say. I’m staying here indefinitely. I’m ready to start a life here. It’s amazing. I’m learning some Arabic. Made some great friends. Overall “masr gameel wa momtez!” (Egypt is beautiful and excellent).