3 months in Cairo

Zamalek is leafy and pretty. It has cafes, salad bars, fancy restaurants, and a lot of free wi-fi. It seems to me, more than anything else, free wi-fi is a marker of affluence.

Egypt is often called Umm ad-Duniya, the ‘mother of the world’. Michael, who drove me from the airport asked me where I was from. I said that I was from India. He said ‘Amitabh Bachhan, Shahrukh Khan’. I nodded. The barista at a cafe in Zamalek also mentioned Amitabh Bachhan to me. Apparently he was in these parts recently promoting tourism. Michael said that the people of Egypt owe Amitabh a debt for trying to show the world that everything was normal in Egypt and that everyone should come and visit. I said that we owe the Arabic language a debt for giving us so many of their words. On this note of mutual admiration, we parted, and I promised to call him if I wanted to go to the pyramids.

I’m living wih N and J. N is a teacher who has been in Cairo for 10 years. She hates the pyramids. To get to work, she has to leave the house by 5.30 every morning. J is an editor, and is going to leave Egypt soon. He has been here for 6 years, learning Arabic, teaching English, and working as an editor. My rooom is cool and dark. The house itself is full of nooks and crannies and windows look into inner courtyards and other houses, air conditioning vents and washing lines. It is oddly familiar.

I notice two things about the man sitting next to me on the early morning flight to Abu Dhabi. His forearms are approximately 6 times the size of my forearms, and that he carries a small zip up pouch looped over his left wrist and he never lets go off it. He seems to be reasonably cheerful otherwise - he checks his phone twice, drinks two large whiskies - one with water and one with coke and sleeps on my shoulder.

My flight is full of make-believe hipsters and construction workers heading to, or heading back to Abu Dhabi. One man is wearing his reflective safety jacket on the flight. The airline staff know who the workers are - when the air hostess speaks to a man who is not quite as well dressed, she is brusque, but not rude. To me, she says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

Landing in Abu Dhabi is odd. You’re flying over miles of dust and sand and suddenly you begin to see perfect geometric shapes in the desert, pipelines snaking past the perfect circles of oil wells like thin veins of mercury. As we get off the plane the Indian man in airlines livery barks at the Indian man who was sitting next to me, asking him to stay off the tarmac. He speaks to me, another Indian, politely, apologizing for the delay.

Abu Dhabi is an airport on acid. To an uncaffeinated me, the pillar in the middle looks like a sensuous blue and green mushroom. A man glares at me as I try to jostle for position near the power points. Charge your smartphone or die trying.

Abu Dhabi to Cairo is a more pleasant flight. The landscape is of Arrakis from Dune. Stretches of oil wells interrupt as we fly over Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We cross the startlingly blue Red Sea, and the landscape changes to crushed rock - brown paper crumpled up and left to fall where it will.

Cairo airport is a teeming mass of people. A boy in front of me tries to kick his bag and kicks me instead. I sigh. The boy’s mother looks on adoringly. The passport officer stamps my passport, the customs man waves me through.

Zamalek, where i am staying is pleasant. Leafy streets, nice cafes, the works. It is, perhaps, the most affluent part of Cairo. Cairo is strangely familiar. The shoe-shine man, the houses jammed in cheek-by-jowl, the constant movement on the streets, the clothes drying on lines in the sun. Yet, I don’t speak the language, and I feel a little out of my depth.