cairo, part 1

At a resto-café in the Khan al-Khalili in Cairo in the afternoon
April 19, 2006

I am overwhelmed to the point of having difficulty writing. I’ve talked so little that Saad is concerned. In the last hour, I’ve seen more people than I would in a month in Beirut. Walking around is not something one can do lightly in Cairo; it’s not any kind of aimless pastime like it is in so many other cities.

There isn’t sufficient space in my thoughts for everything around me and my own preoccupations: being harassed, losing Saad, losing my purse, losing my shawl. The latter would make me comparatively nude, a target for all of the men who I already catch leering at me voraciously, like my not being Egyptian makes me edible.

To my left is a long alleyway, presumably filled with shops. To its right is a huge mosque and likewise in front of me and to the right is al-Azhar, another large mosque, and a few other smaller ones. It seems bizarre to me that there are so many of essentially the same establishment in exactly the same place. It’s like when there is a Burger King across the street from a McDonald’s, or the three gas station intersection on Route 1 and 571. Hussein’s mosque is right here, as well. Supposedly, his head is inside of it, but I’ll never be able to verify that personally unless I convert to Islam.

The people sitting around the table in front of me are ambiguous: there are two Egyptian men, a very blonde woman, and her very blonde daughter. All four of them are switching between Arabic, English, and a third language I can’t identify. The woman just said “Romanian,” so maybe that’s it.

There are so many tourists here and they are so conspicuous in their entirely un-Egyptian attire, huddled together in groups of various sizes. Women are wearing tank tops, which I would expect in every other place I’ve traveled to where it’s 30 degrees. In Cairo, though, a woman donning a tank top might as well be carrying a billboard and giving out leaflets with the word FOREIGNER on them in oversized block letters. I can’t help thinking that these women came here without making any attempt to understand the cultural norms. I’m wearing a tank top, too, but I have a shawl around my shoulders that I am careful to keep there, and my black and white skirt is down to the floor. I took off the shawl for a few minutes when I first arrived here, but that was only because it is more acceptable here, a marketplace teeming with tourists. Saad and I were talking earlier today about how much more sensitive to context Egyptian comportment is as compared to in the US. He said that the space between the extremes on the spectrum of behavior and attire in Egypt is expansive.

Just like this city. There are at least five times more people in the city of Cairo than in the country of Lebanon.

A woman just walked by. She strikes me as Western in terms of her presentation and features. But in her white Birkenstocks, plaid skirt below her knees, and shawl made out of purple linen, she is one of the first people I’ve seen here who is unmistakably a tourist, but knows how to present herself in a way that is socially acceptable. In stark contrast to her is the woman standing some distance in front of me. The straps of her sports bra are showing in the back of her tan, loosely fitting tank top, which she has paired with black spandex shorts and sneakers. I wonder if Egyptians find this disrespectful or obscene. Or, I suppose a better question would be whether they just write it off as Western and are simply offended by the complete absence of cultural sensitivity.

I just saw a group of men wearing galabiyas and I asked Saad what they wear underneath them. He said underwear and maybe a beater. I almost want one now. I doubt those men are sweating as much as I am.

There is a man with slicked back hair wearing a black and white-striped shirt with a gray vest and dark blue pants. He is dark, but has green eyes. On his arm is a woman who is veiled. She is beautiful. They are some of the only people I’ve seen who don’t look as though they’re here for a specific purpose. They are wandering the Khan in a way that I can’t right now: relaxed, but invigorated by the unending life swirling around them in every direction, as far as the horizon.