Running Around Cairo

Rachel and I have been running around Cairo, which is not as cheap as I have remembered it. Part of this is coming from Syria, part is inflation here, which has made everything more guinee while the dollar has fallen against the guinee, from close to 7 when I was here last to 5.5 today. It's strange being a tourist in a place I used to live, and I keep feeling like I should go home to my apartment rather than our hostel. Not that much has changed, except the road outside the AUC dorms in Zamelek has changed direction, since that is more convenient for the president's son Gamal who lives near by. According to Hisham, the foreigners are also different: in our semester, there were about 110-120 or so. Now there are 450 and the university rents out entire former brothels to house them for the semester.

After eid al-groping, Rachel and I woke up the next noon to eat kushari (a uniquely Egyptian dish of rice, pasta, lentils, chickpeas, and spicy red sauce. I have fantasized about this dish since leaving Egypt. Rachel thought it was "okay") and chill in Downtown, much more sedate on the fourth day of Eid than usual. I called Karim, a classmate from back in the day, who picked us up and we went to Malibu in Mohandaseen to smoke shisha, then met some of his friends and went out to a film.

"kharig ala al-qanoon" (outside of the law) about drug running in Egypt, was hilarious. Every seen was punctuated by loud dramatic swells of music and ended with close-ups on the eyes of the characters. I understood quite a lot of it but my favorite part was that it starred an old actor who looks like Fred Thompson as the head of the drug cartel. Why is Fred Thompson Arab and running has in Egypt? Karim dropped us off not 20 meters from our hotel. Still, in that short walk, some 15 year old touched my ass. Seriously, never coming during Eid again.

Hoping for the best, I tried calling Hisham with the number off my old Egyptian simcard. Yes! He still has the same number!

The next day Rachel and I did some touristy crap: went to khan al-khalili where I had sticker shock. I tried to bargain near to prices I remember paying back in the day, but the vendors just refused to sell at that price, even when I walked away. I kept changing the price to Syrian lira in my head and thinking I could get this for so much cheaper in Damascus.

We visited Hussain's mosque and al-azhar, tipping a guy to let us climb the tallest minaret, which afforded a great view of the city. We left Islamic Cairo, walked through city of the dead, graveyards where people live alongside the dead because of the lack of housing in Cairo, and ended up at al-azhar park to watch the sun set over Cairo. Then Hisham called and I had what had been a typical night out back in my youth in Cairo: we got home at 5am.