A Little Eire in Egypt

My original plan for getting to Upper Egypt involved taking the Abela Sleeper Train from Cairo to Aswan. It sounded romantic in a neo-colonial sort of way and offered the added advantage of being cheap. Exercising an abundance of caution, I visited the reservation office at Ramses Station a full month before my expected travel date, only to be told by a puzzled clerk (who had probably never planned anything a month ahead in his life) that I couldn’t reserve a seat more than two in advance. I returned two weeks later as instructed, and found that the train was completely booked. My advice for anyone interested in travelling on the sleeper train: skip trying to decipher the conflicting instructions of the confused Abela staff. Instruct a local travel agency to get the tickets for you instead.

In the end, we had to fly, but trading a twelve hour train ride for a one-and-a-half hour flight did at least give us an extra night in Cairo. We used it to have dinner with a couple of my old ILI roommates, one of whom convinced me to try Egypt’s most schizophrenic dish: a bowl of Molokheya. I wanted to write “Egypt’s most revolting dish,” but that’s not quite fair, because it actually tastes fine. What’s revolting is the texture, which botanists describe with the appropriately disgusting word “mucilaginous.” Molokheya is the Egyptian term for Jew’s Mallow, which as near as I can tell, has no more politically correct name. When cooked, the stuff turns to slime – a clear, thick slime with the consistency of saliva...after a night of heavy drinking...when you have a sinus infection.

I washed it down with half a bottle of Omar Khayam, which as noted before, has the useful property of acting as a general anaesthetic in situations like this. This time it also had the unfortunate side-effect of causing me to suggest to Ms. C. that we should go to Harry’s Pub for a couple post-dinner drinks in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. I blame the Omar Khayam, because in sober circumstances I dislike St. Patrick’s day and I hate Harry’s Pub. I can’t imagine a situation where I'd like either of them better when combined.

Harry’s is a faux Irish pub attached to the Marriot Hotel in Zamalek (or maybe it’s the Sheraton – I can never remember, which has irritated more than one cab driver). Harry’s is popular with older (mostly English) ex-pats, local alcoholics, itinerant students, and prostitutes. Unfortunately, this is more or less the exact same demographic that is attracted to St. Patrick’s day, which doubled the potential obnoxiousness of the crowd. Luckily for us, in my enthusiasm I had failed to notice that we’d already missed the holiday, which was the day before.*

St. Patrick’s day may have passed, but there was still one night left for the Irish band that the hotel had flown in from Dublin for a four-night stand. The crowd, many of whom were probably still nursing hangovers cultivated the night before, was more subdued too. Everyone’s enthusiasm had been dampened just to the point where an old crank like me could enjoy himself, and enjoy myself I did. Probably as a consequence of my father’s collection of Dubliners cassettes, I love traditional Irish music. I was delighted anytime they pulled out one of the classics. They have so much energy to them that half the time I don’t realize how ridiculously depressing the lyrics are, which reminds me of a few of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesteron:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad

Very true, G.K., very true. We didn’t hear anything as conspicuously mournful as “Danny Boy,” but even the upbeat, sing-along numbers like “Whisky in the Jar,” and “Irish Rover,” (which are about a double-crossing lover and the annihilation of a ship’s crew, respectively) are actually quite sad. Some of the poignancy of bleak Irish songs is relieved, however, by the recognition that nobody living in whatever Irish backwater is the subject of a song like “Dirty Old Town” has it nearly as bad as the dozens of poor Sudanese and sub-Saharan prostitutes who frequent places like Harry’s. You would have to take Ireland’s gloomiest songwriter off his anti-depressants for months before he could write a song that could even come close to capturing how terrible that job must be.

We settled the bill just as the band started on to a series of Journey covers. It was definitely the right time to leave Harry's and probably also a good time to leave Cairo for a while, too. I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is that by the time a person starts frequenting fake Irish pubs (which exist everywhere on earth), either they’ve run out of ideas to explore or the town has run out of options to offer. In either case, it was a good time to take to the road for a bit, or, as the Irish appear to say: “mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da, wack fall the daddy-o.”

*St. Patrick's Day was a month ago, which shows just how many posts behind I actually am on this thing. They're all there, they just need typing.

Cairo and the Egyptian Museum

The next morning, we drove almost directly back to Cairo from the White Desert – I say almost, because we took a few off-road detours to avoid the police checkpoints scattered along the route. I asked Waleed and Hamid about this, but they just laughed and muttered something about the highway being bad for the jeep. The main road that we exited was without question the best we’d had and the stony, shattered trail we used instead was one of the worst, but I shared our guides’ distrust of the police and didn’t ask any more questions. Besides, driving across the desert to avoid the law made me feel like I was part of the Monkey Wrench Gang.

We returned to the Windsor Hotel, which for the money has the nicest hotel bar in Cairo. The quality of the rooms, on the other hand, is less predictable. Some of them (ours) were simple affairs, while others (not ours) looked amazingly comfortable. I couldn’t see any significant price differences, so I suspect that what’s required for an upgrade is a bit of baksheesh. This meant that Ms. C. had to forego a large room with a bath for one with a tiny shower and a chair that collapsed the first time I sat on it. Four months in North Africa and I still don’t have any idea how this baksheesh thing is done.

The room did at least have a nice balcony overlooking the coffee and tea shops surrounding the Windsor. This meant that we could see (without being seen) the mobs of unemployed men who frequent these places – smoking sheeshas, drinking tea, leering and now and then shouting something moderately filthy at Ms. Chadha. This was the biggest difference between wandering around Cairo alone and travelling with a partner – the unwanted attention of Egyptian men.

A surprising number of Egyptian men have the sexual maturity of teenage boys, with whom they share a great deal in common: both groups are sexually frustrated, neither have any idea what to do when confronted with a woman, and neither have any better use of their time other than demonstrating the first two of these commonalities over and over again. It is very obnoxious and is far worse than in any other North African or Middle Eastern city I have visited.

It’s the kind of thing that, if you can’t find a way to adjust to or avoid, can spoil your trip. Not Ms. Chadha, though. We were soon on the streets again and I was able to demonstrate to Ms. C’s satisfaction that kushari truly is the king of cheap street foods. It seems she and her workmates had read my earlier post on the subject and couldn’t believe that something of that description could possibly taste good. I’m happy to confirm to the employees of the Insolvency Service that she agrees that it’s great.

Our time in Cairo was limited, so we decided to spend the bulk of the day at the Egyptian Museum, which matched every expectation of it. The collection is massive and amazing, but it looks like it was collected by an eccentric English gentleman who put everything on display just as his Alzheimer’s started to set in. Most things aren’t labelled, and what labels exist are often only yellowed cards, typed up in the 19th century either in bad English or bad French. The labels usually describe something completely different from what’s in front of you. Thankfully, most of what you’re looking at is impressive even when you have no idea what it is – in particular, the Tutankhamen artefacts are incredible. Still, if you’re a learner-type, buy a book to tote along. I wish I had.

The Pyramids of Saqqara and Giza

Ms. Chadha arrived last night, which promises to improve life in hundreds of different ways, most of which are too sappy to share here. One change is that I can now visit all of the major monuments that I'd put off seeing (on Ms. C's instructions) while I awaited her arrival. The most obvious and convenient of these was a trip to the pyramids, so, the following morning, this is exactly what we did.

We wanted see more than just the Giza pyramids, so we decided to hire a guide and a driver for the day. Private, organized trips really aren't much more expensive than trying to arrange everything for yourself and if you're a particularly poor negotiator like me, may even cost less.

Private tours also provide a number of pleasant perks like a hotel pick-up (a convenience which is worth the difference in price alone), a car with air-conditioning, lunch, and a driver who actually knows how to get to the places you've asked to see. What you won't always get is a guide who is able to offer anything like reliable information about the monuments on the day's itinerary.

Our guide, a pleasant, chatty woman named Hana, had undermined her credibility before we even left downtown Cairo. As part of a bizarre, impromptu lecture on Egyptian military history, Hana explained how The country had never, in either ancient or modern history, initiated a war of agression. The only reason her country lost its [entirely defensive] war with Israel in 1948 was because unreliable allies had supplied it with defective tanks, artillery and rifles. Happily, Egypt was able to restore its national honor by defeating the combined armies of France, Great Britain and Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis. No mention at all of the twin devastation threatened by the United States (economic) and the Soviet Union (nuclear) if the allies didn't withdraw. It was indeed a great victory, but it wasn't a military victory and I'm not sure how much credit Egypt deserves for it.

Luckily, the pyramids are impressive even if your guide believes that Colonel Nasser had them built just to irritate NATO. The Nile pyramids are so old that their true construction dates hardly register. To put their age in context, the first momument we visited, Zoser's step pyramid in Saqqara, was already considered ancient by the Greeks to described it. By the time Herodotus mentioned them some 2,500 years ago, the pyramids were already more than 2,000 years old.

The extraordinary size of the Giza pyramids is as difficult to appreciate as their age. With nothing nearby to compare them against, it's difficult to get a sense of scale - you see only row upon row of limestone blocks. Only when you approach the base of the pyramid do you realize that each block is 4'-5' tall. Of course, once you're near enough to recognize the size of an individual row of blocks, you're too close to see the number of levels or the pyramid's overall height. The Giza pyramids are so massive that it's difficult to find a vantage point from which you can appreciate just how enormous they really are.

We didn't linger too long. The temperature was already over 100 degrees and the touts, while not nearly as bad as I had heard, were still fairly aggressive. So, missing yet another opportunity to sit on an angry, abused camel, we drove on to the Sphinx.

You can't wander around the Sphinx the way I'd imagined. It's surrounded by the bedrock from which it was carved, so you're packed together with hordes of other tourists on a series of viewing platforms to the west of the monument. From the platform, you could see that what remained of the Spinx's face was crawling with pigeons. You can't look imposing with a face full of pigeons.

Quick language note: "sphinx" is pronounced as "sphink-ess" locally, because Arabic abhors both dipthongs and triple consonants. 'Sphinx' is transliterated as 'sphinks' in Arabic, and that 'nks' just won't do, so an extra 'e' is inserted before the final letter. You can hear the same thing with words like "thank-ess" or "rust-ess," the latter of which was printed on an ad for a car wash in Mohandiseen.

On the way back to the hotel, Hana asked if we would like to stop at the Papyrus Museum. We had already turned down a tour of one of the carpet "schools" in Saqqara, so we agreed to quickly stop by whatever "museum" our guide had affiliated herself with. I like this tactic of tarting up your souvenir shop by appending words like "museum" or "school" to the name. I look forward to visiting the "Polytechnical Institute of Spice" and the "National Center for the Advancement of Sheesha Sciences" before this trip is through. We at least knew what we were in for, and the fact that the museum passed out order forms at the door (just like at MOMA!) confirmed our suspicions. The presentation on papyrus manufacturing was interesting enough and besides the look of disappointment shared between our guide and the salesman when we asked to leave, there wasn't much pressure to buy. Not that we were much tempted to buy: the only items on offer were garish King Tuts and Queen Nefertitis which would have looked equally at home airbrushed onto the side of a 1984 Astrovan.

Back at a restaurant near the hotel, as I made my way through a plate of fatah (my new favorite food) I was happy to reflect on the fact that we had now 'done' the pyramids and could check it off our list. This was the first time I had felt anything like this in my two months here. I suppose it's because the pyramids are something you must see, but doing so can really be a bit of a hassle. The perfect metaphor for the whole experience was provided by an eight year old Bedouin girl sitting near the viewing platform exit. Having grown bored of the daily hustle, she was now monitoring the tourist flow and when anyone's ass was big enough to merit it, she would yell "heeeey Shakira!" and give it a good spank. We made it through unmolested, but a fair number of the members of an Alaskan tour group weren't so lucky. I'm sure that they were generally pleased to have made the visit, but something about the process must have struck them as undignified.

Harassment of the Sexual Kind

There is nothing I can say about the harassment women suffer in Egypt beyond what others have already said. I've witnessed first-hand some shocking behavior. Many of the stories can't be told on a family blog (especially now that I know that my very sweet grandmother is a reader) but I will quickly say this: taxi drivers are a filthy bunch.

Men are also sometimes harassed, but I understand that it usually doesn't go beyond being called someone's "mishmish" (apricot). Whether the victim is male or female though, the perp is almost always a man. Egyptian women have a repuation for being more reserved and I think that generally, that's probably pretty accurate. Generally.

My first experience to the contrary took place about a month ago, I was sitting on a park bench reading a book. By "bench" of course I mean "overturned washing machine" and by "park" I mean "the underpass beneath the Tahrir Bridge." I was genuinely reading a book, but more specifically, I was reading the map inside the book because I was hopelessly lost.

So I was sorting my directions out when a pair of girls in hijab walk by and one of them catches my attention by making that hissing noise peculiar to this part of the world. When I look up, she makes what I can only describe as a graphically violent kiss in my direction.

I know that from my description, it sounds like I was probably in a seedy part of town and that these might have been prostitutes or something, but I really don't think this was the case. At home, the simple and reliable formula is that the more home appliances you see rusting in the street, the less desirable the neighborhood. That just doesn't hold true here.

Even at Mugamma, that great symbol of Orwellian order, most office balconies are overflowing with junk. I can't imagine the same thing being allowed to happen at any of the buildings leased by my former employers in New York or London. One of the partners would have come to me and said: "Chadha, we think you are doing fine work, but the committee has been talking. We've noticed that you're storing the engine block of a 1974 Lada in your office window. Now, we don't mind the odd rust-eaten sewing machine or a half-dozen bicycle frames here and there, but the car parts just don't fit the image this firm is trying to project."

Actually, now that I've written that, I realize that the most unbelievable part of the story is that I ever would have had an office with a balcony in New York or London. I also can't imagine ever receiving constructive feedback from a partner.

Anyway, as I was saying, industrial junk in the streets doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the neighborhood. This particular street was perfectly safe and sanitary. I have no idea about the girls, but they looked like respectable, middle-class teens and they didn't slow down to solicit anything or indicate that I should follow them - just kept right on walking without another look.

That my experience wasn't just a consequence of my stunning good looks is supported by my friend's experience. He was in Garden City, a pleasant, embassy-spangled neighborhood near downtown, where he was walking with a female Egyptian friend. Suddenly, a middle-aged woman swooped over, made the same kind of fighting kiss, grabbed his ass and darted away. My friend's Egyptian companion didn't say a word (she was probably thinking to herself 'uh huh, let's see how you like it').

Before this, I was not aware of a lone, sober, middle-aged woman having ever done anything like this anywhere in the history of the world. It's not like this sort of thing is an everyday occurrence here either, but unwelcome groping by both genders still happens more in Egypt than anywhere else I have ever lived. The more minor stuff - catcalls, hissing and blown kisses - those happen all the time. I'm not sure whether to put this in my 'like' or 'dislike' column. I think I'll file it under 'like,' at least until this kind of mentality lowers my relative income or makes it practically impossible for me to become President of the United States.

Hotel Bars and Hotel Booze

I expected that the Hotel Lotus would be a bit past its prime, but I couldn't understand why the stylish art deco building shown on the website looked so different from the place where I had just agreed to spend the next week. When I went back to the website for a closer look, I saw that the hotel in the picture was surrounded by huge American cars with chrome fins. It was the same place, but the photo had been taken more than fifty years ago. Very clever, Hotel Lotus.

From what I've seen in Cairo, the only real difference between a budget hotel and a hostel is the latter has an extra "s." So I was pleased that the Lotus, while no longer anything like the place advertised on its homepage, actually feels like a hotel.

In practical terms this means two things: that my toilet is en suite and that the hotel has a bar. Other than the bartender, who napped quietly at his post, the grandly named 'Polo Bar' was empty for my first visit. I dropped by again the following day and was rewarded with a much livelier scene. I was barely through the door before a friendly Canadian couple bought me a beer and gave me a Winter Olympics update, which unsurprisingly didn't get a lot of coverage here. That they wanted to talk to an American at all told me all I needed to know about the hockey results.

A visit to the Polo Bar has since become my late afternoon habit. I normally have a shot of the local rum mixed generously with Pepsi. In this case, two wrongs do make a right, and I like the drink much more than I'd have thought given how little I like either of its components. I've since realized that they carry Coke too, but I've got it in my head that substituting one of the ingredients will throw off the calculus of the mix and then I'll have to go back to beer. In Egypt, this means the ubiquitous Stella, which shouldn't be confused with the Stella that's sold everywhere else in the world. Egyptian Stella is conceived, brewed, bottled and sold only here and so long as it's freezing cold, is not half bad. At room temperature it's a different animal and is completely intolerable. Nights out will end because the place serving drinks has run out of icy Stella and has started serving only cool Stella.

Speaking of intolerable, let me tell you about Omar Khayam, the most popular (and usually the only) wine option. This stuff is awful and I say this as someone who will never be accused of being a wine snob. I firmly believe that the only reason anyone has ever been able to finish an entire bottle is because the senses, in an act of self preservation, shut down at the first mouthful. All you feel when you drink Omar Khayam is a slight sensation of warmth in your lower back, which you'd think would be more terrifying than it is. It's unbelievably bad, but it's also unnecessarily bad. The Coptic population drinks wine and so do millions upon millions of annual tourists. Why doesn't someone fill this niche? Tunisia manages to produce a few bottles of decent wine and for a much smaller drinking population. Ugh, this stuff is so bad that I want to bring a case home to silence the doubters.

Really, what I'd prefer is a nice whisky, but the few bottles on the Polo Bar's shelf have cracked and peeled labels that have yellowed with age. Somehow, despite being obviously ancient, their contents don't lessen no matter how much people drink. I don't want to slander my hotel, but my math tells me that a bottle of scotch can't still be full after thirty years of pouring two glasses a day from it. My guess is that it isn't Dewar's that's going into the Dewar's bottle every night. Sometimes it's wisest to stick with the simple beer you know, rather than the clever scotch who won't say who he really is.

I'm not sure how this became a discussion on alcohol, but here we are. I've just changed the title of the post to make it look intentional.

Anyway, what I meant to say is that I'm generally pretty pleased with the place. In anticipation of Ms. Chadha's arrival at the end of the week, I'm moving to the Lotus's sister-hotel, the more upscale Windsor. If it's nicer than this place, it ought to be pretty adequate indeed. It will be interesting to judge just how far my standards have fallen by comparing the looks on our faces when they take us to our room.

Coptic Cairo

"Jesus loves you, he loves all of us!" the almost evangelical Coptic cab driver told us. He was speaking to two atheists, a Swiss convert to Islam, and a very high-church Anglican. Seeing westerners though, his natural assumption was that we were all practicing Christians with no significant differences in belief. In Egypt, you are either Christian, Muslim or, rare as it is here, Jewish. There isn't room for anything else: athesism is unimaginable; other religions, unspeakable. The religion we were expected to asume didn't even reduce the cab fare, but in this case, it did at least curb the taxi driver's natural instict to gouge.

Prior to coming to Egypt, my exposure to the Copts had been limited. I knew that they were the original Christians in Egypt and were some of the earliest Christians anywhere in the world, but that was really about it. I recall seeing a letter on display at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, written by no less a personality than the Prophet Muhammad, which strongly suggested that Egypt's Copts should consider converting to Islam. The Copts crossed my radar again when I read that the Egyptian government, in a bizarre reaction to the swine flu pandemic, ordered the massacre of all of the country's pigs. Not unlike Brookyln, pork is "haraam" for much of the population, meaning that only the Christian Copts were affected by the order. As a consequence of the slaughter, garbage that had formerly been collected by the Copts (to feed their pigs) began to pile up in the streets. The people began to complain, and the government recognized its mistake. I've been reading a memoir written by a turn of the century Anglo-Egyptian official who describes the Copts as "consistently paranoid," but you're not paranoid if they actually are out to get you.

The Egyptian government, when not busy literally butchering the Copt's livelihoods, is nervous for them too. The police presence along Sharia Mari Girgis (the main street of Coptic Cairo) is not subtle. Teams of heavily armored police guard both approaches to the neighborhood. On either end, a soldier stands behind a blast shield, ready to pull the cable on an accordian style caltrop. The caltrop is designed to stretch across the width of the road and shred the tires of any wheeled vehicle with its spikes. I've seen these used on C.O.P.S. And can confirm that they are awesome.

Coptic Museum

After I made it past the police (who always make me nervous even though I've never been seriously bothered by a cop in my life) I stopped at the Coptic Museum. The museum is surrounded by peaceful courtyards and is housed in a beautiful building that alone is worth the price of admission. The collection is intelligently and effectively displayed which makes up for the fact that some of the exhibits are not very compelling. I've heard that the Egyptian Antiquities Museum has the opposite problem: an amazing collection which is crudely displayed. I hope not, but we'll find out next week.

The highlight of the collection was definitely the cell frescoes recovered from the Monastery of Apa Apollo. Desert air is great for preserving color - or at least for color not exposed to 360 days-a-year desert sun. The vibrancy of the color could lead you to think that the frescoes were relatively modern. I couldn't believe that they were early 5th century. I'd go to the museum again just to see these. A bit of trivia: the Copts gave Europe the idea of monastic communities. The Franciscans, Dominicans and Benedictines all owe their existence to these early monasteries.

Church of St. George

Even more trivia: The Church of St. George is the only round church in all of Egypt. Beyond that, there's not a great deal to say about it, but beneath the church are warrens of rooms built into the circular Roman tower from which the church takes its shape. In one of the claustrophobic rooms are relics of St. George, including a length of chain you can wrap around yourself if you like - doing so is meant to remind us of the persecutions the saint suffered at the hands of the Romans.

The Hanging Church

The "Hanging Church" is the final major site in Coptic Cairo. It takes its name from the fact that it was built near an enormous chasm over which it literally hangs. This isn't obvious from the approach to the church, so they've cut a hole in the middle of one of the chapel floors to prove just how high you really are. While it's true that you're very high, the cutaway also reveals that the only thing keeping you alive are ancient wooden beams that barely look like they would have been up to the job when they were new, which was more than 1,000 years ago. This must be what faith is.

One of my favorite non-architectural details of the Hanging Church are the beeswax votive candles, which crackle and sputter like they're doing their very best to make all of your prayers come true. I also liked the giftshop where you can buy postcards featuring various Coptic popes, who all look like Rasputin might have if he put less energy into grooming and more into wearing outrageous costumes. The only picture I could find online doesn't really show what I'm talking about, but it gives a sense. Hipsters: behold a true beard.

The Coptic display of faith appears to be much more tactile than that with which I'm familiar. They wrap themselves in chains and crawl into dark, cramped crypts. The paintings of the saints are meant to be touched. In the crypt of the Church of St. Sergius, built where the Holy Family are believed to have stayed, people actually bathe in the crypt's font. I like it! I've always said that if I ever came down with an incurable case of religion, I hope I'm lucky enough to fall into something with a little drama. There are limits, however. Not too far from the center of Coptic Cairo is a column with a groove that has literally been licked into it. The idea is that in the hope of curing whatever disease, pilgrims (I didn't see any myself) come to lick that particular spot on the column, and they continue to lick until their tongues bleed because that's how you know it's working. This may actually be a Sufi ritual rather than a Christian one, but to be honest, from an outsider's perspective, all religions blend together at their mystical fringes.

Suffer Any Wrong That Can Be Done You, Rather Than Come Here

Mugamma is a monumental 1940's era building designed to serve as a clearing house for all interaction between the Egyptian government and her people. Some decentralization notwithstanding, it still is. This is the place you go to record a deed, register a car, or replace a birth certificate. It is monstrous. It is also where you go to extend a tourist visa.

Six days a week, the building buzzes with bewildered tourists, frustrated locals, indifferent civil servants and bemused security. Mugamma's insanity has long epitomized the impenetrability of the Egyptian bureaucracy. There is nothing about the building or its services that is at all intuitive. So, as a public service to anyone who needs to know how to renew an Egyptian tourist visa - this is how it's done.

Proceed through security, where you'll have to surrender your camera. I doubt that this building could be much harmed by a bomb, either structurally or aesthetically, but the government is keen to prevent anyone from trying all the same.

You'll need a passport photo and a photocopy of the cover page of your passport and of your entry visa. People will compete ferociously for the right to direct you to these services even though there is only one place in the building that provides them. In this way, three men struggle with each other to do the job of a sign.

Everyone says that photos and copies can be had for less money outside of Mugamma, which is probably true, but a set of eight photos costs $3.00 and the two copies another $0.20. I'd say that's worth the convenience, but if you already have these things, so much the better.

Copies and photos in hand, walk up the stairs to the next floor. Foreign national visa services are to your left, down a long hall lined with open doors. Through the doors, terrified civil servants peer at you much like rabbits in a hutch would peer at a fox. Happily for all, you don't have to disturb them with work. You're looking for windows 12-14, where you'll ask for and receive a visa extension application. It should be free so don't pay a charge. You're asked your religious affiliation. I usually put Christian, but I don't mean it.

After completing the application, return it along with your passport, a passport photo and the relevant photocopied pages to the same windows. You'll be given a chit with some numbers scribbled on it.

Take your chit to window 42, where after paying LE 11.50, you will receive four small adhesive stamps.

Take the stamps back to windows 12-14 where they will be applied to your application.

Find something to do for two hours.

Don't go to the Hardees across the street like I did. In fact, don't go to Hardees anywhere in the world.

After lunch, I watched a woman set up a tea stand in Mugamma's courtyard. She walked over to a bush and miraculously returned with two-dozen glasses and a strainer. Then, from under a bench on the other side of the park, she pulled out a butane tank. Rather than lug things around, she had apparently hidden all the necessary components of her businesss all over the courtyard! Either that or she was just very lucky and managed to randomly stumble on everything she needed to run a viable tea outfit. This wouldn't be impossibe in Cairo.

Having filled your two hours enjoying the great bazaar that is Cairo, proceed to window 38. Gathered around the window will be dozens of people just like you. There is a large pile of processed passports and they are distributed to the crowd like this: the woman behind the counter shows everyone an application with a tiny photo of the applicant stapled to the front. The crowd squints at it, but if nobody makes a claim, she moves on to the next application. Every now and then someone's eyes light up and they lunge at the window. When this happens, she sends the lucky applicant away with their prize and starts the whole process over from the beginning of the pile which is constantly being refreshed with new applications. This means that if yours happens to be on the bottom, you will need every single application to go unclaimed before it is reached. That will never happen. Mine was right near the top, so my fist pump was accompanied by an envious "quelle bonne chance!" from the French couple next to me.

Insh'allah, at the end if this, you'll have a new visa which allows you to stay in the country for another four months. I understand that you can request a period of up to a year. The application is open ended and asks only how long you'd like to stay.

I can think of a few ways to make this process more efficient, but in a country where you have to deal with three people to buy a sandwich, I don't think anyone will listen.

Bussing it from Cairo to Siwa

The next northbound train with available seats didn't leave until 8:00 p.m. This meant that I would miss the last bus to Siwa and would have to spend the night in Alexandria. I hadn't arranged a place to stay, so I'd wind up knocking on pension doors that had already been bolted shut for the night. I also knew that I'd feel guilty enough about waking someone that I'd probably take the first place with a bed, no matter how nasty. I knew of one place I could stay, but I wasn't sure I was ready to go back to Hossein after our history together. My plan was already coming apart.

Since I had five hours before my train and nothing to lose, I decided to put the motto that "Cairo always offers alternatives" to the test.* I would find a bus instead. I searched for, found, and waited in line at what I believe might have been the West Delta Bus Lines ticket office, but it could have just as easily been anything else. Whatever it was, the line hadn't budged after forty minutes of waiting, so I moved on. I walked a mile or so to a bus depot near the Nile hoping that I could maybe bribe a driver to let me slip on one of the group-package charter buses, but again, nothing. Things looked grim. I started my walk back when a random old man pointed at a dilapidated bus and said "al Iksanderia." I couldn't believe my luck. I tipped the guy (who may not have even been talking to me) the equivalent of the full fare and boarded. This was definitely no first-class train compartment: it was cramped, smelly and blared unnecessarily loud Egyptian music, but I was on my way! Even if I didn't make the connection to Siwa, I could at least find a bed in Alexandria before everything locked up and then try to catch the first bus the next morning.

I was feeling very good. My travel plans had almost collapsed even before I escaped Cairo, yet here I was speeding down the desert road past silhouettes of palm trees under purple skies and a crescent moon. I was going to make my connection! Not even the mildly anti-American variety show televised on the bus could bring me down (sample lyrics: Amreekee, Amreeka! Amreekookoo, koo koo!).

The bus terminated at El-Mogaf Gedida (the "New Terminal"), which despite its optimistic name, is nothing more than an unpaved parking lot on the outskirts of the Moharrem Bey district of Alexandria. With a half-hour to spare, I took my seat on the overnight bus to Siwa.** I'd normally be concerned about the noxious fumes that had begun to fill the idling bus, but they were keeping the mosquitoes away, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all of that, so I let myself drift off into a carbon-monoxide induced sleep

I woke up to find that the kid who had been sitting next to me at the start of the trip was now sleeping on top of me. We started a routine where I would wake him and get him back to his seat, and he would then instantly fall asleep and slump back into mine. This repeated on a fifteen second cycle for about an hour. His mother tried to intervene once on my behalf, but got such a scolding from her ten-year old son that she was effectively out of the fight. This exhausted what little sympathy I had for the disrespectful brat and I was about to elbow him onto the floor when we arrived at the half-way point of Marsah Martouh and they left. I'm very glad that I didn't try to overnight it here. It's lonely and it's cold and the only place to get food is a 24-hour LibyaOil. U.S. regulations used to prohibit me from shopping with the Libyans, but I think we're friends with Qaddafi again, so that may no longer be the case.

With the seat to myself, I fell back asleep quickly. When I woke up two hours later, I was freezing! I'd forgotten how cold nights in the desert can get, and this was truly desert. It was as flat as an asphalt parking lot and had even less vegetation. It stretched as far as the eye could see. It was relentless. I went back to sleep.

We arrived in Siwa an hour before sunrise. It was the first time I'd stepped off a bus in North Africa without instantly being swarmed by taxi drivers offering rides. The place was empty. The famous ruins of Shali, still illuminated by floodlights, loomed over the town. The only noise came from a few ambitious donkeys and roosters getting an early start on what, before the morning was over, would turn into a ridiculous cacophony of braying and crowing. For now, at least, everything was relatively quiet. I found my way through the maze of melted mud walls and towers of Shali to the top of the acropolis, where I watched the sun rise over the dunes of the Great Sand Sea and the palm fields of the oasis. I reminded myself that almost exactly one year ago, I was working in London as a corporate lawyer - a job I despised. I would say that the quality of my life has improved greatly since then.

* A more accurate motto would be "Nothing in Cairo works twice."
** For anyone trying this on their own, the Lonely Planet guidebook is out of date: the Alex to Siwa bus service is operated by West and Middle Delta Bus Company, with the last bus leaving from the New Terminal in Moharrem Bey (not from Sidi Gaber) at 10:00 p.m. Tickets cost LE 35 and the trip takes approximately nine hours.

A Walk Through Dokki

"To walk through Dokki" is a statistically improbable phrase. In fact, google is unaware of it having ever been used on the known internet. This may be because generally speaking, Egyptians don't appear to be the most ardent walkers. This is perfectly understandable given the lack of sidewalks, the insane traffic, and the high levels of pollution which give walking the same health profile as cigarette smoking.

When people do walk, they don't come here. Dokki was once an affluent suburb of Cairo, but as rural migrants moved into the district, and the government built hideous concrete towers to house them, the character of the neighborhood changed radically. There are still a number of the old villas, and not all the apartment blocks are monstrous, soviet-era constructions, but the end result of poor planning is that Dokki is not particularly convenient, visually appealing, or pedestrian friendly. Still, as suggested by this blog's title, I like to knock about, so I decided to walk from the Dokki metro stop to the ILI campus in northern Mohandiseen, a distance that is better measured by the number of deadly multi-lane roads to be crossed (three) than kilometers (four).

Despite demographic changes, Dokki and Mohandiseen (Dokki's neighbor to the north and the district in which I live) are still destinations for upscale shopping. This results in the curious juxtaposition of high-end retail with shops of a more humble nature. You might find a Mercedes dealership sandwiched between a blacksmith and a goat butchery. I passed a Bang & Olufsen store exactly like the one in our old neighborhood in Hampstead. In Mohandiseen though, before you can get in the front door to buy absurdly expensive Danish A/V equipment, you have to leap over a ditch filled with sewage, fermenting trash and packs of feral cats.

The odd mountain of garbage aside, individual shop owners (no matter who their target clientele) are fastidious in sweeping and mopping the areas directly in front of their shops; less so the further you move from the front door. To protect their work, they spray the perimeter with water to keep down the dust. Unfortunately, the water runs out into the street, where it collects in the fetid moats described above. It's a vivid demonstration of the tragedy of the commons; one that covers your shoes and gets tracked all over the apartment.

My walk took me past something my map described as a "Shooting Club." I didn't hear any gunfire, but I saw lots of well-dressed Egyptians getting in and out of expensive cars, which leads me to believe that the the Shooting Club is actually an upper-class social club. There are quite a few of these: I'm familiar with the Gezira Sporting Club on Zamalek, which was originally founded to serve the British officer class. I've also heard of a fair number of social clubs; the type in which Bertie Wooster would be comfortable. It's a sad holdover from the hyper-exclusive, hyper-wanky clubs of which a certain type of Englishman is so fond. I honestly have no idea how there's not more class warfare in Egypt.

I can't say that it was a nice walk, though there's an hour or two in the late evening where the sun lights the city's noxious pollution in a pretty way. Most of the time, you walk through urban blight until you reach a terrifyingly busy road. I've mentioned before that my strategy is to cross the street down-traffic from someone who knows what they're doing. I've since realized that this is everyone's strategy, and that in fact none of us knows what we're doing. When you're forced to rely solely on hope and luck, it's impossible to actually develop skills through experience. Actually, there's one thing I've learned that may just save the reader's life: when an oncoming car flashes his lights at you, he's not indicating that you can cross, he's saying: "I have seen you, but don't intend to slow down." He's very serious: if you cross in front of him, he will kill you.

The sunsets here really are very beautiful. I've also read that on a clear day, you can see the Pyramids of Giza by looking west on the Gamaat al-Dawal al-Arabiyya, or the "Arab League Street," which is the main commercial artery in Mohandiseen and is very close to my apartment. I'm not going to put this to the test, however, because I've promised Ms. Chadha that I'd wait until she arrived before I check out the pyramids. Only a few more weeks to go!

I realize that this entry may sounds slightly pessimistic, but I think that only means that it's time for a Cairo break. Happily for me, I've planned just that. Well, not planned so much as intend. I'm intending to go to Siwa Oasis this weekend, which is some 700 km away and is close to the Libyan border. If I leave for Alexandria directly after my 2:30 p.m. class, I could be in the oasis by Friday morning. If I don't post by Tuesday, I have died.

Islamic Cairo

By the time I arrived at Midan Ahmed Maher to visit the Islamic Art Museum, I was already in a bad mood. I had gotten in yet another taxi-fight. This time, by proving once and for all that non-Egyptians really should pre-negotiate the fare for any journey of significant length. I followed all the ex-pat's advice, and will say only that it did not go smoothly. I miss the efficient, inexpensive, metered cabs of Morocco (or New York for that matter - not London though, who can afford a cab in London?). My mood didn't improve when I learned that the museum had been closed for renovations since 2002.

My guidebook mentioned this possibility and suggested that I call to confirm the museum's status before going. That wasn't going to happen because I don't make phone calls, especially when I have no confidence in my language skills. Luckily for shut-ins like me, there is the internet. The museum's website seemed a little unsophisticated, but official websites in Egypt are rarely user-friendly, so I didn't think much of it. I saw later that it hadn't been updated since 2003, which still doesn't explain why it failed to mention that the museum was closed. It's strange that Egypt's tourist interface is sometimes so bad, since tourism is the country's largest source of revenue. The programming skills are certainly there: three or four times a week I rely on an awesome site where I can order delivery from one of about forty restaurants in the neighborhood. It's a little concerning (but also wonderful beyond measure) that so much of Egypt's modernization efforts appear to have centered on making it easier for me to effortlessly order fast food.

When plans go off the track, Cairo usually offers alternatives. I decided to take advantage of the great weather and walk through "Islamic Cairo," so called because of the large number of religious buildings in the district. The Bab Zwayla, which is as impressive a city gate as you're likely to see in your life, is a great starting point for any of a half-dozen walking itineraries in the area. Between the Bab Zwayla and the Northern Gates, you can enjoy an embarrassment of architectural riches. Palaces, mosques, wikalas and madrassas hem in the narrow market streets of the Khan el-Khalili; the old bazaar of Cairo. In terms of sheer density of religious architecture, I don't know if there's an equivalent anywhere else in the world. Even Rome gives it churches room to breathe.

I wasn't sure what to see. I had my guidebook, but didn't feel like flipping through the pages for recommendations. I found it much better to just visit whatever building happened to catch my eye as I wandered past. While it's sometimes a great way to get kicked out of a building, I've found that it's also a great way to discover hidden treasures and that you're much less likely to have to share them. At the newly restored Mausoleum of Al-Ghuri, for example, I was the only visitor. The lonely custodian was happy to let me climb up to the dome for some great views of the markets below. He was also happy to let me visit the cistern, where I almost got stuck because the stairs were so worn I couldn't climb back up them. The contrast between the silence of a mosque and the insanity of the street makes each more enjoyable to visit.

I found that in Rabat, visiting the souq isn't that different from visiting a shopping mall at home. I mean, there are some differences: in Rabat, you still might see a donkey packing out a new 40-inch flat screen on its back, but the thing is, in the Rabat souq, you could buy a 40-inch flat screen. Khan el-Khalili isn't anything like that. Other than Coca Cola, there is very little for sale that you couldn't have bought two hundred years ago. And while it's true that plenty of the shops trade in kitsch --ankhs, pyramids, busts of Nefertiti, charms to ward off the evil eye, sheesha pipes, genie lamps, etc.-- many others run serious businesses. In the Goldsmiths Bazaar running along the Sharia al-Muizz, little of the gold and silver jewelry (which is mostly sold by weight), is intended for tourists, who probably aren't carrying around that kind of cash.

Not having much interest in jewelry, I walked the opposite direction down the Sharia al-Muizz, through the covered Tentmakers Bazaar (who sell exactly what you'd expect), and on towards the Citadel. The streets in this part of town are most definitely not tourist oriented. You can buy crates of live rabbits, chickens, ducks or pigeons (I tried to take a picture of the rabbits but the shop-keeper's eight-year-old son wasn't having it). I saw shops that traded exclusively in offal, with racks of lungs, brains, hearts and livers for sale. I was sorry to reflect that in the last three months, I've eaten all of these things. The raw organs looked better than the fish, however, which after suffering the indignity of spending their lives in the filthy Nile, now had to gasp their last breaths from under a layer of flies so thick I can't promise you that they actually were fish. It was a world apart from the seafood stands in Essaouira.

The only time to be thankful for Cairo's horrible pollution is during sunsets and when taking photos. The haze lends added drama to the ranks of minarets and domes receding in the distance. Every photo comes out in warm sepia tones that make it look like someone's been tinkering around in photoshop. I actually came back from my walk with a warm sepia tone myself, so much so that one of my roommates who had previously noted my pastiness, commented on how much sun I got. Sadly, my nice color came from a combination of dust, car exhaust and charcoal smoke. I came out of the shower looking as sickly as ever, which makes it that much less likely that I'll ever get a reasonable deal on a taxi.

Serenity Now!

Cairo's incredible noise problem is well documented. The most frequently cited study recorded noise levels across the city over a five-year period and reported that the average noise from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is 85 decibels, which is the equivalent of a freight train passing only 15 feet away. That's the average noise level. When it's bad, the sound is equivalent to actually being hit by a passing freight train.

I'm afraid my neighborhood is no different. As another Sunday morning begins much earlier than I'd like, I thought I'd make a list of the things that most often wake me up. This is the noise that somehow manages to rise above the constant hum; that makes its way through my window, into my apartment and into my head. This is not a list of things I like.

The Baker. Every morning, you can hear the baker call out "aish! aish!" to announce the morning's batch of bread. There's something about his voice - it just can't be imitated. That doesn't stop everyone in the apartment, including me, from trying just that every time we make a sandwich. Maybe I actually do like this one, but I'd like it a lot more if it happened around noon.

The Propane Salesman. His sales pitch doesn't really rely on the quality of his voice. He just pushes around an empty propane tank and hits it with a wrench every fifteen seconds. "Bang, bang, bang, bang. I have an empty propane tank."

The Hi-Fi Donkey Cart. Not wanting to strain his voice either, this guy uses a microphone and speakers, which a very stressed donkey pulls around in a cart. They make their way though the neighborhood and every twenty seconds or so, the man stops to make a short announcement. At first I assumed his message was political, because who else goes around with a megaphone forcing himself into everyone's heads? I learned that he's actually saying "bring me your broken electronics! I will take them away. Me and the donkey you see here? We will take your old things!" This is a useful service and is as close to recycling as Cairo gets, but the loud speaker? No! I'm very worried that someone will inadvertently give him the kind of electronics that allow him to upgrade his speaker system.

The cars. Traffic is loud in Cairo no matter where you are. It is without a doubt the city's greatest aesthetic fault. I get angry just thinking about it. Cairenes suffer from a pathological need to constantly use the horn. Cars sometimes pass me as I walk down an empty (of pedestrians) street, but they'll still honk once they've already driven past me, almost as an apology for having forgotten to senselessly honk at me earlier. I think the reason there are no stoplights in this city is because if there were, the maddened residents stuck living next to one would tear it down its first day. The Cairene response to anything that slows them down is to lay on the horn. A red light could expect the exact same treatment. They would just honk at it until it changed color. There is no "insh'allah" when it comes to driving; faith is replaced by the real world actions of a man and his horn. God, I hate the cars here.

Noises I do like

Every now and then, you'll come upon a celebration of some sort. There are moulids for the different Muslim and Christian saints, weddings, funerals (which are surprisingly upbeat affairs) and birthdays. I appreciate joyful noise. Only cranks don't appreciate joyful noise.

Sometime the call to prayer can still get me, particularly when the acoustics are such that I can distinguish one muezzin from the blended voices of a thousand other calls to prayer across the city. It really is extraordinary.

From Cairo to Alexandria

Ramses train station is chaotic, and the ticketing system seems unnecessarily complicated. There are separate ticket lines regimented by type of train, final destination, passenger nationality, and ticket class desired. The signs telling you which line is correct are exclusively in Arabic, including the numbers. It took all of my months of language training to find the correct line. It took that same training to understand that I had not actually found the correct line. Finally, it took away all of my pride to have to be led to the correct line by a patient station attendant.

Once there, I was reminded that Cairenes don't queue, they just rush. Even worse, you haven't necessarily won even after muscling your way to the ticket agent. You can be right in the middle of a transaction - actually in the process of handing over your money - and still your position isn't secure. People will still try to get ahead of you, either by insinuation or by brute force. Once you've managed to buy your ticket and make it to your seat, though, the trip to Alexandria is actually pleasant enough. Trains run regularly and usually take only between two-and-a-half and three hours. First class tickets are cheap - depending on whether you get the Turbini (LE 50) which makes one stop, or the Francese (LE 35), which makes quite a few more. I took the Turbini out and the Francese return, not by design, but because in each case that was the next thing leaving that had available seats. I also wanted one of the first class cabins which are comfortable and not much more expensive than the fairly miserable third class seats. Only a few liberal arts majors would suffer through sitting in the third class carriages and for reasons that they will articulate to you poorly.

The train stopped in Tanta, about half-way between Cairo and Alexandria, where a handful of vendors selling snacks and newspapers boarded. I had no apropriate snack money, having used the last of my reasonabe-sized currency to pay for a taxi to the train station. The vendors were nonetheless doing well with my fellow passengers. Too well, in fact, because they had only made their way half-way down the carriage when the train begin to slowly pull out of the station. Still, they continued to trade. Every additional purchase raised my blood pressure. "Get off the train!" I thought at them, "You're going to get stuck on the train!" As we gathered speed, all of them hopped off - except one, who was stuck selling sweets to a little old thing. My jaw tensed in sympathy as memories of my nine years of hard labor at Albertson's Supermarket begin to surface. I watched this little old crone insist on clawing exact change out of her bag. Our man did not have time for this. "This can't end well," I realized, "he's going to be stuck on board all the way to Alexandria." The carriage conductor wasn't going to let that happen, however, and scowled at him from next to an open carriage door, through which the landscape could be seen zipping by at an alarming speed. The nasty old lady finally passes over her money and our man makes a bolt for it. I can hardly watch. I already realize before it happens that he's going to die. He jumps from the train... he hits the ground... and nothing! He jogs it off. He doesn't even lose anything from his basket. I am ecstatic! I am breathless with excitement! I have just witnessed unbelievable acrobatics! Laws of physics have been broken! Nobody else seems to care. I realize that this same scene probably repeats itself on every hourly train that passes through Tanta.

Alexandria is freezing when I arrive. I haven't prepared for this at all and am shivering as I walk down the platform. A railway worker sees this and does what I hope was a really exaggerated version of my shivering.

"Bard!" I say. Which might mean "cold!"

"Your Arabic is very good!" he replies.

Yes, I start to think to myself, yes it is.

Alexandria may have been freezing, but the northerly winds had cleared the sky of pollution. There was a contrast between the clouds and the sky that simply doesn't exist in Cairo. I took a picture as proof, but with my cell phone instead of my adult camera. Members of my family have commented on the fact that I like to take travel photos. It's true, I do. Unfortunately, I had left my lovely Canon G10 in Cairo. My first trip out of Cairo and I'm snapping photos with a primitive cell phone camera. Gutted.

I was also struggling to find the hotel at which I had hoped to stay. Street names change as quickly as the political climate in Egypt, so it's very easy to find yourself with an outdated map. Interestingly, the streets whose names have so often changed are themselves often ancient. For example, the hotel I was looking for was just off the Sharia Nabi Daniel, which is believed to be only the most recent iteration of one of the two primary streets plotted by the architects of Alexander the Great's eponymous city. Whether the fault of my map or my navigation, I wasn't finding what I was looking for and I hate not knowing where I'm going. Or rather, I hate looking like I don't know where I'm going, mostly because the touts are a lot harder to dodge if you're genuinely confused and you show it. I did manage to shake off one guy who was trying to lure me into a pension by confidently walking off in the opposite direction. After another fruitless half-hour of combing the streets where my hotel should be, I finally decided that I'd just stay anywhere with a bed. Moments later, I ran into the same tout - actually the owner of a pension - as he dragged a young Austrian couple who were staying with him to the duty free shop. I recognized the two from the train (two of maybe six Europeans on a train of hundreds) and they let me know that the place would do, so I took a room. Now I would have to live with the embarrassment of accepting the help of someone I had taken pains to avoid only an hour before - circumstances this guy was going to go out of his way to remind me of several more times before the night is over.

Small Things

Death by Lada

I've heard (and told) a story about the Japanese traffic engineers who were commissioned to study the Cairo traffic system and, based on their findings, to prepare a report detailing what could be done to modernize it. After more than a year of dutiful observation, they issue their report - a single sentence - which reads: "There is no traffic system and it cannot be improved."

This rings true - in two hours of walking today, I saw one stop-light, which you couldn't see from the road because it had been wrapped in an Egyptian flag to celebrate the Pharaohs win over the Algerian side in the African Cup of Nations semifinal. Crossing the street is an act of faith - I always try to improve my chances by crossing down-traffic from someone braver than me.

The Pharaohs

Worst name for a soccer team ever. Terrible

Oh! The horns!

Imagine you are in Rome and the Italian soccer team has just beaten France in the World Cup. Between the horns, flags, firecrackers and shouting, the chaos could be a little overwhelming. This is apparently what Mohandiseen is like on any given day of the week - even at midnight.

It reminds me of something a Moroccan friend said about the horn being the most (and only) critical part of a car. A North African driver might think nothing of hurtling down the road in an ancient Mercedes; a wheel missing; its doors lashed shut with a length of bicycle tubing. Break the horn, though, and the car is rendered impossibly unsafe. Without a horn to serve simultaneously as a threat, a promise, a warning and a prayer, you couldn't negotiate the "inventive disorder" that characterizes city traffic.

My street is relatively quiet. At a mere ten meters wide, it can only accommodate eight lanes of traffic.

The School

Seems to run pretty efficiently and the testing was painless enough. It looks like I'm a 2/10 in Egyptian and a 3/10 in MSA (which we're going to call "FusHa" from now on). That sounds about right to me, but we'll see when classes start tomorrow. I'm most excited about colloquial - it'll finally give me the opportunity to use the language on the street. In Morocco, the gulf between the colloquial (Moroccan is called "Dareeja") and FusHa was so large that even very good FusHa wouldn't get you very far.

During registration I ran into a guy who was studying in Rabat at the same time as me. He's sort of an Arabic rock star - speaking FusHa as well as a number of local dialects. We're unlikely to be in the same class. I wish more than ever that I had taken a full year to study. Four months in each of Syria, Egypt and Morocco would have done perfectly. It also would have been much cheaper than maintaining an apartment in Brooklyn.

200 Pound Notes

These are what the airport ATM dispenses. They might as well give you a bar of gold. In a neighborhood where a bottle of water costs maybe 2 EGP, it's impossible for anyone to make change out of a 200 EGP note. I spent my day walking around and buying thing in places that I hoped might be able to pull it off. That means my first meal was at a Hardees, instead of the much more interesting shawarma stand. I did learn that in Cairo, all the big fast food places deliver. Egypt is living in the future!