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.

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.