Egypt Nov 12, 2022

This is day three of my journey, I think. I have already lost count. I was dropped off at the airport having been notified I had to see the Delta ticket desk to check in. I was informed that the middle leg of my trip, New York to Rome, had been changed to a later flight. That was no problem as I had the same flight to Cairo and was being met at the airport by someone. My layover in Rome was eight hours. Now it would be split between Rome and New York. Fine.

The original flight to Rome was booked by Delta on Italian Air. The new flight was Delta. I thought at first the ATA flight had been oversold, but now, I am more of the mind that Delta wanted to keep the money. The Delta flight was full. I was seated next to a young rather pretty lady. She was maybe seventeen. Before we took off she had switched seats to be closer to her mother. I got the pushy Italian man, who needed to us one of the ports on my seat because his didn’t work. He spent all of the time before take off staring into his phone screen at a woman about his age whom I later learned was his girlfriend in Palermo. He made pizzas in Syracuse, New York.

The plane was late taking off. First they needed to add fuel – one hour. Then they needed to enter the amount of fuel into their computers and it would not go in. They did it by hand or something like that – one more hour.

I knew I had plenty of time in Rome, so no problem. Wrong. Problem.

I was in the 39th row. I had forty minutes to get off the plane, find my new gate for the flight to Cairo, and get on the plane. I landed at gate E41. I found a representative who informed me Cairo was gate E2. “A five minute walk.” Yeah? Well, maybe if you aren’t lugging a backpack full of lithium batteries. I soldiered on, hefting my backpack. A woman approached holding up an 8×10 sheet with “Cairo” written on it. I pointed at it and said, “That’s me.” I thought she’d point me in the direction I had been going, but no, she turned around and said, ”Follow me. I tell them to not give away your seat.”

I got to the gate with her in the lead. Only two attendants were there, no one else. They casually pointed to the doors behind them and said, “Wait for the bus.”

In a few minutes a bus pulled up. No markings. The attendants were yakking in Italian, having a great conversation.

“Excuse me,” I said, “Is this the bus?”

They casually indicted it was. By casual I mean they kind of gestured like, “Yeah. I guess so.”

I got on. The bus didn’t leave. The driver went in to chat with the attendants. One more guy got on. We left, wandering the tarmac to our plane. The other fellow was in the U.S. military assigned to Afghanistan, but deployed to Egypt. He was an IED expert and said his skills really weren’t needed there so he sat around. “It’s boring. All this training…”” 

“Yeah,” I said, but you have all your arms and legs.”

It didn’t persuade him. He was bored.

I was the last one on the plane. I made it with six minutes to go until take-off.

When we landed in Cairo. Our bags did not make it. Surprise.

No one was there to meet me. 

I filled out the form and gave the fellow Ahmed’s number. I had him call Ahmed because my phone didn’t seem to work. Ahmed said catch an Uber. Okay.

Fortunately, I had taken a picture of my luggage tags so I didn’t have to dig through every pocket to find the originals. I asked the luggage fellow to ask Ahmed for the address of the hotel, which he did and he wrote it in Arabic for the driver. He mentioned that the hotel was not well known.

I pushed the few belongings I had out toward the street where a line of people were yelling, ‘Taxi! Taxi!” and waving notepads.

I went over and they directed me to the head of the line. A fellow in a gray suit said the taxi would be $30.00. Okay. He had a little book and filled in a line and grabbed my cart and pushed it out to the street. The place was a mass of cars blocking one another. Horns beeping. Lots of yelling. In short – chaos. He found me a taxi driver (“Wait? What? Didn’t he have one? No? What the heck?”) Then he said, “How about something for the driver?” (“Wait? What was the $30 for? For you to push my cart out to the street?” It seemed so.) The $30 was 500 Egyptian pounds and the driver was another 200. Okay. What’s done is done.

I thought the airport was only a few minutes away. I was wrong.

We left the airport and immediately the road made a hairpin bend and we went by the place we had just been, but on the other side of a giant cement barrier. A few more twists and turns and we were on a wide new roadway – six lanes in each direction. Maybe five, depends on how you count. Do you count the fifty feet on the side of the road where people are standing or cars are pulled off? Lanes seem a suggestion here. You stick with one until some one beeps, or a car begins to drift into your lane, then you beep.

There were huge electronic billboards, most of the had pictures of reddish orange horses in electronic slow mo stop action. This was the logo of the company selling the space I think. I learned later the highway was completed a few months ago.

Near the airport were new massive high rise apartment buildings. Each building was a series of curved vertical blocks of apartments. They were all empty. This gave way to the more traditional Egyptian high rise. Brick buildings with reinforced cement beams. Many unfinished on the top with rebar sticking out. I have heard this is a way to claim a building is unfinished and pay lower taxes. I have also heard that maybe it’s just a stop in the upward building. Maybe they ran out of money? I don’t know. A few places had lights on. Many had openings instead of windows. Balconies, but built into the structure, not sticking out. Those places usually had a heavy curtain across, covered in dust.

As we moved further into the city I saw shorter buildings, maybe ten stories. Many of them facing the raised highway had a side where you could see painted squares at each level, which was all that was left of a former room. To build the highway they must have cut through the old city with a giant buzzsaw.

We descended the highway and were then in a typical Cairo street, dusty with dirt covered stores and stalls, bare light bulb on strings of wire, covered in thick grim, People on the side of the road: waiting, talking, moving about. Many places were hooka tea bars. Men were sitting, drinking tea and playing a game. The game was in a two piece box, like backgammon. Maybe it was backgammon, I don’t know.

At one point my driver pulled over and consulted his phone. I guessed he didn’t know where he was going exactly. I called Ahmed. Amazingly, the call went through. I gave the phone to the driver. They exchanged Arabic. He handed the phone back to me. Ahmed said we were five minutes away.

We made a u-turn. We wandered back the way we had come. He stopped a few more times. There were police and military around. We went through gated zig-zag barriers. I guess to slow traffic. Better than speed bumps. More military (we’re talking guys with hard hat like helmets and rifles.) Eventually, we went down an alley and he stopped and pointed. A sign, half hidden by an overhanging balcony said, “Pyramids Valley Boutique Hotel.” I indicated I wanted him to stay while I made sure this was the right place. Seemed sketchy.

“Mr. Richard? Yes, we have you here.”

I ran out and gave the driver the ‘thumbs up.’ He waved and backed out of the alley.

“Where was I?”