Cairo continued...

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  Cairo, Egypt
Wednesday, May 25, 2005

I didn't mention what it was like to return Cairo after having visited it back in January. It was definitey a new experience this time around as I mainly was not in the tourist areas and instead with the every-day Cairens. But it was just as loud and bustling and uh, polluted as I remember. Cairo is a city that never sleeps. At midnight it seems that life is at its busiest...children accompany their parents on the various errands and the streets are alive with music, food, bright lights and massive amounts of people.

The second day in Cairo was pretty much the same as the first except I got to experience Egyptian bureaucracy at its best. Americans are allowed only a 30 day stay in Egypt and I am obviously going to be here longer than that. I knew that the Magama building where immigration issues were dealt with opened at 8am and I wanted to get there early to get it all over with. Well, Dalia insisted there was need to do this and convinced Anwar as well. Because of her, we didn't get there until close to 10am and the consequences were grave. The building was filled to the brim with people and quite honestly, had I not had locals with me, I fear I'd still be there to this minute wandering the place.

There were many tourists there along with unbelivable amounts of refugees from all over Africa. The windows for the refugees were the longest lines anywhere and you could barely get through this area of the building. There was also, interesting enough, two windows dedicated entirely to Palestinian refugees. So I had to go to one window to be told where to go next, then to another window to pick up the form, then to another window to pay for stamps, then to another window for photocopies, then...you get the idea. Once everything was done, we were told it'd be an hour before the visa was ready.

Once I received the visa that was good for 1 year...I had to repeat the entire process to get the re-entry visa that would allow me to come and go as often as I wanted in and out of Egypt. This was frustrating as in my mind, wouldn't it have been easier to just do the forms and stamps for the re-entry visa at the same time as the original visa?! Well, at this time it was close to lunch and instead of waiting one hour more for this visa, it was going to be three hours. Thank you Dalia! This was why I had wanted to get there at 8 so that there would only be one hour in between each visa and we would've been done before lunch. She was getting bitchy as she was toting around her 3 month old son and it was hotter than hell and I had to watch her again chain smoke while trying to give her baby little capfuls of water to keep him cool.

Anyways, when all was said and done--I got my 1 year visa and re-entry visa that is good for 6 months. I think sometimes they try to make things difficult on purpose thinking perhaps people will just get frustrated and give up. The other observation was that lines/queues don't exist in Egypt. I patiently waited in line while Anwar cut up front and always got things done faster. He got yelled at by a woman from the Netherlands and he just looked at her and cut to the front anyways. She gave me a dirty look and I told her this Egypt and not the Netherlands and that lines didn't exist here. Anwar returned with my visa and she gave me a 'hmph.'

Anwar knew I was quite annoyed with Dalia at this point and we returned to his sister's house to, you guessed it, EAT! It was funny because they would serve just me and Anwar in the living room and kick the kids out to leave us alone. Then his mom and sister would sit across from us whispering to one another and glancing my way. I knew they were talking about me as 'heya' means 'she' in Arabic. They would come over once in a while and ask Anwar why I wasn't eating more and plotting their next move to get me to stuff myself to the brim. I couldn't do anything but just laugh at it all and stuff myself as there were no good excuses. They don't understand the term 'full' and if you try to lie and say your stomach hurts--well then they have just the right thing for that (some sort of food or drink).

Tuesday afternoon we made our way to downtown Cairo to look for satellite receivers. Here, if you just buy the receiver and dish then there are enough free channels to pick up that you don't have to buy any sort of service. In Dahab the receiver was 1200 pounds as opposed to only 300 in Cairo. We had a long afternoon of haggling and running from store to store to compare products and prices. In the end, we got the complete satellite package, 14 inch TV, and a radio for 400 pounds under what it would have cost just to get the satellite in Dahab. Score!!

We also met with one of Anwar's friends (another Christian) who was an importer and spoke lovely English and had travelled the world for his business. He drove a fancy Mercedes and loved everything American. We went to a yummy restaurant for italian food and then made our way back to Anwar's sister's home to say goodbyes. His mom did the obligatory crying and pleaded with us to stay...but we did quite well with making our escape within 20 minutes, which I am thinking may be a record here.

We caught the 12:45am bus back to Dahab and made it back safe and sound. It was quite odd for me to feel that I was 'home' back in Dahab and that I definitely prefer it over Cairo. I missed seeing the Red Sea each day and the mellow and relaxed atmosphere.