The 'Real' Egypt (part 1 of 6)

Take a look at the prior post for an introduction to this piece.

I leaned against the metal railing of the balcony as the muted call to prayer drifted over the yellow-brown buildings of Cairo. Structural steel is not common in Egypt, so few buildings rise more than a dozen stories high. The city spread out not up stretching like a carpet to a horizon hidden by smog. The call to prayer wafted softly through the air, like the voice of the setting sun. Only now, after a plane ride that seemed to take days, did it hit me. I was in Egypt! Tomorrow, we would be walking in the dusty streets twelve stories below, shopping in Khan Khallili, and visiting the Pyramids.

I walked back inside the standard-looking hotel room, which smacked of Peoria more than Egypt, and sipped bottled water. I flipped on the television, but the programming was almost all in Arabic. All the people had black hair and dark skin. I picked up a newspaper. In some languages you can get by since words often look like their English counterparts. Not in Arabic. Its beautiful loops and sloping hooks are almost like the script a wizard might use to catalogue arcane wisdom. I had committed Arabic numbers to memory before we’d left, so I scanned through the paper to pick out something, perhaps a date, but nothing made sense. It wouldn’t be until two weeks later that I learned Arabic is written right to left, not left to right.

I tossed the newspaper and its opaque language aside. I went back on the balcony and watched a river of people pass by in the streets below. Rectilinear buildings rose beside the sensually curved domes of mosques. The mosques had intricate designs carved into them, making them ornate pieces of artwork. Ladies in Western business attire strode past women covered from head to toe in heavy black cloth. Young men on motorcycles roared past other young people driving rickety, horse drawn carts. The call to prayer touched my ear peacefully as I saw heavily armed men in army fatigues pace like panthers. Ethnically, Egypt was homogenous but there seemed to be a diversity of another sort before me.

As the sunset turned into a pink and yellow wash of watercolors, the buildings and smog became a dull, hazy blue. My mind drifted and I was daydreaming. I recalled a trip I took to Arkansas when I was in grade school. My parents had rented a boat and we’d gone fishing on a big lake with hills all around. I’d been baiting my hook when my dad shouted: “Look over there!”

I turned just in time to see the broad back of a greenish-silver fish disappear into the dark water. I’d only caught a glimpse, but the size of the fish made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. For a moment I was stunned and understood why people might believe there were dinosaurs in Loch Ness. Then, while the rest of my family ran on about “the size of that thing,” I looked over the side of the boat and into the dark water.

I couldn’t see more than a foot down. What had just been a familiar lake was suddenly very alien and mysterious. How deep was the water here? It must be deep to hold a fish like the one we’d just seen. If the boat sank, how long would it take me to sink to the bottom? What else was in there? I wasn’t scared; I knew there was no danger. But I was unsettled. The lake had asserted itself.

I realized I knew nothing about this lake though I’d fished here a week. Then it occurred to me that, in fact, I could fish here a lifetime and never know any more than I did now. All I could see was the deadwood branches floating in the shallows, the lapping waves on the surface, and the dark murk even the noon sun could not penetrate. I had no way of learning more without some drastic intervention, such as suddenly being able to scuba dive.

The cool winds of the Egyptian night made me shiver from cold at the same time I shivered in my memory. I went back into my room. I didn’t bother to unpack since we would be leaving for Ismalia, a province along the Suez Canal, in a day or so. I just dropped onto the bed and drifted to sleep. I was twenty-three and expected something incredible to happen tomorrow.

End Part 1...I'll be posting a portion a day for the next week.