[image courtesy TIMEA]

###

Cairo (again) Three Days Ago

“Allo?” the pleasantly accented voice of a woman brings me back to the streets of Cairo where I still sit on the sidewalk daydreaming. They were right – my mother, the Mossad agents, all of them – I didn’t have the kind of money to be taking this trip let alone to be getting a room at the Nile Hilton. “Are you lost?” My initial instinct is to try to dismiss this question, but when I look up I’m staring into the face of a beautiful, young French woman. Her small pack and camera tell me she is a tourist as well.

“I can’t seem to find a hotel,” I answer pathetically.

“There is a good hotel down the street where I am staying.” I love the way she pronounces “hotel” without the “h”. “It is just two blocks this way and on the left.” She points in the direction the last guy tried to lead me. She is staying there – I am sold. I would sleep in a camel stable, or whatever it is they call where camels sleep, if she was.

I shoulder my pack for the final time that day trying not to grunt, and thank her profusely for her kindness. Following her rather un-detailed directions I quickly find myself in front of none other than the Tulip Hotel.

The only actual evidence of the hotel is a small brass plaque beside the door that indicates that it’s on the third floor. A few moments after ringing the buzzer, I hear the click and buzz of the electric lock and push open the tall metal door, nearly tripping on the ridiculously high sill. The building is old, and a layer of charm lies just under the layer of dust. Whether it is pre-turn of the century construction is hard for me to say, but it is certainly pre-elevator. I’m ashamed to admit that I actually had to stop and rest half way up. When I reach the top (four flights, since like in Europe the “first” floor is one floor above the ground) I’m sweating noticeably, not that I haven’t been sweating pretty much all day or all week. These, though, are fresh rivulets of perspiration that cut through the airbrushing of dust on my face, dripping off of my nose and onto the tile landing. I stand there a few minutes in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to get myself to stop sweating before knocking on the door. Another buzz and click and I am inside an office/lobby that looks a great deal like my grandmother’s living room – or would if she had left it to a bunch of Egyptian men to smoke and watch TV in for twenty years. Directly across the room from me, an elderly man hunches over a small desk. He has short, silver hair that matches his moustache and those truly cool giant, rectangular shaped glasses with thick, tapering, black, plastic rims that only old guys can really pull off. His skin isn’t exactly tan, but it isn’t fair either, it looks sort of smoked. His shaving has left some gray stubble unconnected to his moustache near the creased corners of his mouth. It brings to mind the image of a straight razor in shaky hands.

Under the desk, I can see a pair of light tan loafers with small gold buckles at the sides. Dark socks lead up to crisp cuffs on his knit slacks of a brown and cream colored hound’s tooth. The belt matches the shoes and the shirt matches them both. It’s a light cotton that looks like it was designed for diplomatic missions to the tropics, or maybe golf. Overall, the guy looks absolutely sweet. I don’t know what he thinks of my look, but he nods and smiles as I close the heavy wood door behind me.

In greeting, I say something intended to sound like, “Salaam Aleyikum.” The old man smiles and says something I can’t understand in return. “Do you have any rooms available?”

“How many?”

“Just one.”

“How many nights staying?”

“Three probably, maybe more.”

“I am sorry, but we are full at the moment.” My disappointment must be obvious, because he seems to consider me for a long, quiet moment. There must be a hundred hotels within the tangled square mile of where I stand, and at that moment I am confident I could find none of them. Finally, he exhales a long, blue plume of cigarette smoke straight out into the space between us. “You can pay for a double room?”

“How much?” I ask, knowing full well it doesn’t matter.

“Twenty-five pounds.” I haven’t quite gotten to figuring out the exchange rate, but it sounds reasonable to me.

“O.K.”

“Please, wait one moment. We may have one.” He motions to the other end of the room where two couches and an armchair, all upholstered in a bristly green fabric with a pattern of recessed flowers, are arranged in front of an old console style television. He yells something in the soft way Egyptians have of yelling, into an adjoining room. A male voice answers, and a long discussion ensues with a woman eventually joining the debate.

I take a seat on one of the couches between two young Egyptian men. The opposite couch is taken up by an older couple who also appear to be Egyptian, while a young, pale European looking woman sits in the armchair with a sunburned friend sitting on the floor near her feet. No one speaks as I sit down, all of them remaining focused on the television. I can’t tell what is being said, but the images are of people placing flowers against a fence and crying. There is also a shot of a British guard with a tall black, furry hat standing stoically among the bouquets, then another of what looks sort of like a highway underpass, and the Eifel Tower.

The sunburned woman turns to me, her eyes nearly as red as the back of her neck, “absolutely awful isn’t it?” She’s British.

I look at her for a second, utterly confused, and finally answer, “yeah, it is.” We both turn back to the TV. A couple more minutes of watching similar footage, including a scene from Washington, D.C., and all the sobbing people on TV and in the room are starting to worry me. I ask the sunburned woman, “Sorry, what exactly happened?”

“Princess Diana, she was killed in a car accident in Paris.”

“Oh.” I say it as gravely as I can, given my relief.

“Both she and Dodi Fayed.” Apparently anticipating my next question, she continues, “Dodi Fayed was her boyfriend, and the son of a wealthy Egyptian businessman. You know Harrod’s?” I nod, not really sure if I do know Harrod’s. “He owns it.”

“Oh.”

Our conversation, and the mention of Dodi Fayed seem to spark a spate of nodding and quiet conversation among the Egyptians watching. The sunburned British woman tells me, as do several Egyptians I later meet in Cairo, that it is suspected that the British government or the royal family was somehow behind the accident, as they didn’t want the mother of the future king to marry an Egyptian.

Just then, the hotel keeper calls over to me from the desk, “O.K. we have a room for you.” Thank God. “You wait maybe twenty minutes and we will have it ready.” I spend the next half hour participating, through television, in the global outpouring of grief over Diana’s death.

To be honest, I’m not all that broken up. I’m sure Princess Diana was a perfectly wonderful person, and yes, I assure the sun-burned woman, I do feel badly for William and Harry (they are still princes, though), but no, I don’t really wonder what is going through Prince Charles’ mind, and I don’t really hope he feels terrible, nor do I have a very developed opinion on the problem of the paparazzi chasing celebrities until they crash their cars, but yes, I suppose maybe it is a little bit like when Kennedy was shot – I guess I will remember exactly where I was. Maybe not so much because I care, but just because I was in Egypt.

My room ready, I have an excuse to remove myself from the tragic events and climb two more painful flights of stairs with a key attached to a ridiculously large piece of wood that shifts my worry from losing it to stubbing my toe on it in the middle of the night.

The room isn’t bad at all. It ties in nicely with the theme of the office downstairs: a foundation of twenties or thirties class with updates of seventies charm thrown in. My grandmother would be quite comfortable. The floor tiles are large squares of alternating black and green that give a strange but not unappealing look, like an old TV set that’s had its color knob fiddled with. I imagine British officers – not very important ones – encamped here during the war. I don’t actually know if British officers stayed in Cairo during the war, but they must have at some point, right?

Dropping my pack on the double bed, it produces a thud but no bounce, and I make a mental note that the bed is very firm. I follow the tiles into the bathroom where the full charms of the Tulip are quickly revealed. It is a bit dingy with age, but by no means disgusting by the standards I have recently become accustomed to. A large metal showerhead the size of a sunflower drops straight down out of the ceiling, and a plastic shower curtain hangs from a thick metal pipe sectioning off roughly one third of the room. Unfortunately there is no discernable divide between the shower area and the rest of the bathroom floor, and the only drain is in the middle of the room on the supposedly dry side of the curtain. I ran into a similar design a few weeks ago at a hostel in Sweden, and I wasn’t impressed. It turned the entire bathroom floor into a swampy mess.

The feature that really catches my eye, though, is the toilet. It isn’t the toilet itself, but the thin copper tube snaking up the outside of the back of the bowl, over the rim and down into the bowl where it bends back up, ending sticking up several inches above the water line. A small twist valve on the outside of the toilet controls water flow through the tube. The system is definitely not factory, and looks kind of dangerous. Naturally, I turn the valve. A stream of water shoots up out of the toilet and thankfully past my head splattering on the opposite wall. At first I’m stunned and can’t do anything but watch the water flow down the wall. Then I can’t get the valve closed. By the time I finally get it shut it off, the floor is a swampy mess. The need for toilet paper being apparently nullified by this homemade bidet contraption, there isn’t any to mop the floor with. I swear to never touch the valve again.

Tiptoeing back into the bedroom so as not to spread the water that shot out of the toilet onto the floor, I momentarily forget my mental note about the hardness of the bed and allow myself to fall backwards onto it. I hit with a clunk that nearly knocks the wind out of me, and close my eyes for the first time in what seems like a very long time.

Several restful seconds later, they are open again, scanning the peeling paint on ceiling. I can hear the din of the street seeping in through the just open window. The sound seems to push on the gauzy drapes making them swing slightly on the brass curtain rod. It’s 9:30 pm, and I’m exhausted, but I have never been in Cairo on a Tuesday night before – I’ve never been in Cairo on any night. There is simply no question of my going out to have a look.

I reach my arm deep into my pack for a clean shirt (I can differentiate them by feel now), and head back down to the office to drop off my key and ridiculously large key chain.

from fotopedia and Drewski 2112

It is tempting, but the very thought of it brings back memories of my interrogation by the Israeli security guys at the airport in Madrid:
“You have no money, how can you make such a trip without any money?”

#

Madrid One Week Ago – El Al Security

Understandably, I suppose, they weren’t crazy about the fact that I had a one way ticket to Israel and a Syrian visa in my passport. What really made them nuts though, was when, after telling them repeatedly that, no, I had never been to Israel, a young agent discovered a security sticker on my pack that I guess is only stuck to things by Israeli security agents. “Tiene la marca, la marca!” he screamed like a teenage girl. It looked like I was going to be his first big break.

Despite being a master of three word Spanish sentences, I had no idea what he was talking about. Both the older guy who was questioning me, and I looked over at him to see what the hell was the matter. He was practically hopping up and down as he pointed at the side of my pack. Sure enough, there it was, not a whole sticker, just the remnants of one, the rest having been torn off somewhere along the way. The part that remained was less than the size of a dime, but square and orange. There was no denying it, it was an Israeli sticker. I could see the tiny black Hebrew letters that looked almost like musical notes to my ignorant eye. Immediately I knew what the problem was.

The agents both looked at me expectantly. “I thought you have never been to Israel before,” said the older one.

“I haven’t, it was my brother. I loaned him my pack.” Never before had the truth sounded so lame. As soon as I spoke the words, I was disappointed by my lack of creativity. I am suddenly a genuine security concern, and all I can manage is the bomb-smuggler’s equivalent of, “my dog ate my homework.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes, my brother went to Israel last year, and borrowed this pack. He really enjoyed it,” I added hopefully.

My brother’s entrance as a character in my story spawned the expected questions of who he was, why he went to Israel, what he did there, etc.? I wound my way through, trying to keep it as simple as possible so as to not trip myself up on meaningless details that I would inevitably forget on the sixth retelling of this story.

I was escorted out of the ticketing line and down the concourse, through a plain metal door and down a long narrow hallway. We emerged in a small, square concrete room. The walls were painted an uninspired beige that matched the metal door, but there was still something bright and almost airy about the room. Looking up I realized it was the clear Spanish sunlight pouring in through the glass ceiling. Aside from making it strangely pleasant, I strongly suspected the real reason for this feature was that in case I or any of my belongings were to blow up – we would shoot straight up through the glass, and the damage to the rest of the airport would be minimal. It sort of reminded me of Willy Wonka’s glass elevator. I decided not to ask about it.

My inquisitors ushered me to a chair on one side of a long, metal table and then took seats opposite me. The whole set up had a cop show feel to it that I didn’t like. The older one looked to be in his mid fifties, while the younger couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five. Both were very well groomed in a way that was somehow menacing. They were also extremely polite, which was also not all that comforting. The younger one busied himself pawing through the contents of my pack which had been dumped out onto the table, while the older one sorted through a pile of my documents – passport, tickets, random receipts, even my journal – and money. “Let me first tell you,” Mr. Okell, “that I sincerely apologize for what I have to do.” I was suddenly aware of my heartbeat.

“What do you have to do?”

“I’m sorry, but I have to touch your money.”

“Oh, That’s O.K.,” I assured him meekly and with relief – I was expecting something worse – as he began to count my cash and travelers’ cheques. When he had finished, which, given my paltry funds, was regrettably quickly, he placed the bills and cheques back on the table in two neat piles and withdrew his hands, palms open like a Las Vegas card dealer ending his shift.

“So, tell me again, Mr. Okell, how is it you plan to travel – how do you intend to return to your home?”

“Well,” I began unsteadily, “I’m flying to Berlin from Istanbul, and then from Berlin back home.”

“Yes, I see, but how will you get to Istanbul from Tel Aviv? You have no ticket.”

“No, you’re right. I’m going to go overland.”

“How?”

To be honest, I hadn’t really figured this out yet. “I’m going to go to Egypt, then Jordan, through Syria and then into Turkey and to Istanbul.” I didn’t have a map in front of me and I hoped that it at least worked on paper.

“But how exactly are you going to travel?”

My lack of planning this whole trip was now beginning to glare, even to me. “Trains, bus maybe.”

“And you can do this? Are there trains all the way to Turkey?”

“I think so.” I didn’t know, but what I had managed to read suggested there were trains at least part of the way.

“And will you have a guide?”

“No. But I have a book!”

“I see, and you have been in this part of the world before?”

“No,” I mumbled.

“You will do this by yourself?”

I nodded. Hearing it now, in this bomb-proof room, the plan sounded idiotic. What the hell was I thinking? For all I knew about Syria, I might have to ride a camel across it.

“You are a very brave man, Mr. Okell.”

It didn’t feel like a compliment. I didn’t feel brave. I felt stupid.

“How much will all this cost?”

I looked down at the table, shaking my head. “I don’t really know.” The guy had broken me, and I wasn’t even hiding anything.

“You don’t seem to have very much money here. How will you pay for it all?

I pointed to my credit card, lying lonely and exposed on the cold metal beside my lackluster stack of cash.

“Oh, I see. How will you pay back the money to the bank?”

Did my mother call this guy? I’d had this exact conversation with her at the kitchen table a little less than two weeks before. I felt like crying.

“How do you get to take such a long holiday, Mr. Okell, you must have a very good job?”

“Well – no, I …”

“No job? How can you take such an expensive holiday?”

“I, I have a job, I just haven’t started it yet.”

“You haven’t started it yet?” He interrupted, “and you are already taking a holiday?”

“Yes, well I’ll start when I get back, and then I won’t take another vacation for a very long time.” I felt like I was promising him. This was pretty much the same thing I had told my mother.

“O.K.,” he smiled for the first time in what seemed three hours, but was probably closer to forty-five minutes, “I hope it is a good job.” I assured him that it was good enough. “So tonight you will fly to Tel Aviv. Have you been there before?” We’d been over this many times, and I made sure my answer didn’t change. This wasn’t especially hard, since I really had never been to Tel Aviv. “And where will you sleep tonight?”

“I’m not really sure.” This was also the truth. I was planning to figure it out when I got there.

“You don’t know where you will sleep tonight in Tel Aviv?” He seemed incredulous at this, and I realized we probably wouldn’t be good traveling companions. But to be honest, not knowing where I was sleeping that night was starting to feel a little ridiculous to me too.

“I’m going to try to get a bed at the Swanson Hostel.” I remembered the place from a postcard from my brother. It felt good to have an answer for a change.

“Where is that?”

“I don’t know, somewhere in Tel Aviv.”

“Do you have a reservation?”

Man, this guy was tough! “No.”

“How do you know they will have room?”

Things continued like this – him asking me specific questions about my plans, and me supplying him with disappointing, inadequate answers – until he had apparently satisfied himself that I truly was an idiot, and had no idea what I was doing. “Will you excuse me a moment?” he asked, finally, before leaving the room through the sliding steel door.

I was left watching the young agent squeeze my toothpaste and sunscreen out of their tubes and into plastic jars. What the hell was I thinking? I had no idea how to get to Istanbul. I didn’t speak a word of Arabic, and I didn’t even know anyone who’d been to most of these countries. Was it safe? The guy was right – so was my mother – I really couldn’t afford it. How irresponsible could I be, piling credit card debt on top of my law school debt for a half-planned trip through the Middle East? Not that it mattered. It didn’t look like I was getting into Israel, so maybe I’d just hang around Madrid a few more days and then go home.

“Cool hat, man.” My despair was interrupted by the young security agent going through my belongings.

“What?”

“I like this hat.” He had found the terry cloth beach hat I bought in Miami, and was now grinning, adjusting it on his nearly shaved head. “This will be good for the beach in Tel Aviv.”

“I don’t think he’s going to let me go to Tel Aviv.”

“Sure he will,” he assured me, “you are doing fine.” Something in my answers had somehow endeared me to this guy.

“Really?” I was surprised to hear I was doing fine, because I felt like I was about to fall apart.

“Oh, yeah. He’s just being tough to see if you crack, you know?”

“I think I cracked.”

“No way. It sounds like a great trip!”

“My trip?”

“Yeah, I know a guy who made the same trip.”

“You can do it?”

“Oh, yeah. He said it was amazing.” He was still wearing my beach hat, and I was beginning to feel better about things. God bless him, maybe I could do this. We continued to chat while he tore through everything I owned, and asked if I wouldn’t mind spreading out my bag of dirty socks and underwear, as he didn’t want to touch them. I obliged.

The door slid open, and the older guy stepped back into the room. He sat down at the table and gave a stern look to his young colleague who quickly removed my hat and put it on the table. “So,” he continued, “you know no one in Israel?”

“No, not really.” As soon as I said it I knew I should have been more definite.

“Not really?”

“Well, a friend gave me the name of her cousin.” I was annoyed at myself for divulging this, as it was only going to prolong my suffering, but there was something about this guy that just made you feel you needed to tell him everything.

“Who is your friend’s cousin?”

I proudly produced a scrap of paper with the name “Gil Revital” and a phone number scrawled on it given to me by my friend, Rebecca in New York, and laid it down on the table like an ace.

“And which one is your friend’s cousin, Gil or Revital?”

I hadn’t realized it was two people. “I’m not sure.” I felt like an idiot again.

“Who is your friend?”

Oh no.

“Rebecca Weinstein.”

“She lives in Israel?”

“No, she lives in the U.S., but her cousin – Gil or Revital – lives in Israel.”

“How do you know Rebecca?”

“From law school.”

“Ah, and it was her wedding in Sweden, that caused you to come to Europe?”

“No, that was a different friend, also from school though.”

“And why was the wedding in Sweden?”

“His wife is from Sweden, but,” I added quickly, “she lives in New York now.”

“But your friend goes to school with you in Seattle?”

“No, I live in Seattle now, but I was going to school in New York.” It was like a tennis match, and I could feel the tide turning. I was keeping up with him. The boring, stupid truth would prevail!

“With Rebecca?”

“Yes.”

“Was Rebecca at the wedding in Sweden?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It was a very small wedding.”

The man sat back in his chair and ran his fingers through his thinning but well kept hair. From the look on his face, it looked like we had completed some sort of circle. Apparently the truth of my near complete lack of plan or knowledge, and consistently ignorant answers had finally satisfied him that I was utterly clueless, but probably a danger only to myself.

“I thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Okell, and I wish you luck.”

“Thank you.” I replied. His good wishes were not at all reassuring. It sounded like a parent who has given up on their child.

“I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid I have to subject you to one final humiliation.”

I did not like the sound of this at all. He got up from his chair and opened the steel door letting in a uniformed Spanish police officer. The officer stepped forward, and the two Israeli security agents backed out of the room looking genuinely apologetic. I was again aware of my heartbeat. This time it was in my head, and it was going fast. Suitably terrified, I greeted the officer in Spanish.

“Hablas Espanol?” he asked looking thoroughly uncomfortable. I told him that I did, at least sort of. He seemed a little relieved, and said, “Bien, I am very sorry to have to do this to you. I know it is embarrassing, and I apologize.” Christ, what was he going to do to me? He then frisked me and asked me to remove my clothes.

“All of them?”

“You can keep your underwear on.” This was more of a relief than it probably sounds like. I gratefully stripped to my underwear and stood before him awkwardly like a twelve year old in front of the school nurse. He quickly patted down my underwear and then thanked me very much and told me I could get dressed again. To be honest, I doubt if it even made it into my lifetime top twenty-five humiliating moments.

After I was dressed, the Israeli guys came back in. Apparently satisfied, they thanked the Spanish officer, and then led me out of the bomb proof room further down the corridor, down a set of stairs, and finally through a door that opened up directly onto the tarmac.

I could see an El Al jet off in the distance and assumed it was the one I was supposed to be on. Two more agents pulled up in a black sedan and spoke to my guys. The older one spoke to me again shouting a little bit over the jet noise, “Mr. Okell, we thank you for you cooperation. Goodbye and good luck.”

The younger one stepped forward and handed me my carry-on day pack. “Your luggage will be put on the plane.” Honestly, I had completely forgotten about my luggage. “I’m afraid we cannot allow you to take your camera or walkman with you on the plane. You will have to pick them up at the lost and found in the Tel Aviv airport.” This made absolutely no sense to me – was I supposed to tell them that I had lost my camera and walkman? Would they know who I was and that they belonged to me? I just nodded and thanked him.

At this point they transferred custody of me to the other agents, and I was ushered into the back of the car. I should have mentioned this earlier, but these guys weren’t the kind of airport security we are used to in the states – guys in blue blazers and grey dockers half dozing behind the x-ray video monitor. These guys were lean, clean cut, and looked like they might have killed people. Someone later explained to me that they were mostly ex-“Mossad” or Israeli secret service.

The new agents didn’t bother speaking to me, just got in the car and drove out to the idling jet. The last of the other passengers were making their way up the stairs to the plane from the bus that had ferried them from the terminal. Once everyone else was on board, my dark-suited agents led me up into the plane, and all the way to my assigned seat. This was a nice touch, as it fostered concerned looks from my fellow passengers for the duration of the flight to Tel Aviv.

"View of Cairo, Egypt." (H. C. White Co., 1909). 14 x 9 cm, 5.6 x 3.5 inches. From TIMEA

I am wondering why I insisted on being dropped off here.

Midan Tahrir is complete hell – it is a cross between an intersection and a parking lot. The center is full of buses, minibuses and taxis parked or moving slowly. Accompanying each bus and minibus, is a boy yelling – singing almost – at the top of his lungs the destinations served by the particular vehicle, and trying to drum up fares. Surrounding, and somehow even moving through this transportation bazaar, is a steady stream of traffic that probably makes it, in addition to a parking lot, probably the biggest intersection in all of Egypt – maybe Africa. The sound is impressive, since in Egypt it seems if your horn isn’t wailing you’re not really going anywhere.

Kent and his friend scuttle off with quick goodbyes, and hardened expressions toward the center of the grimy plaza to find an airport bus, and are soon lost in the sea of traffic, touts and blue-black exhaust. The Dutch women somehow fade into the night without my noticing. I am left to make my way to the Magic Hotel alone. After wading a while through the traffic, fumes and noise I manage to figure out where the Nile is. Wow, the Nile! How cool is that? I don’t actually see it, rather I see the Nile Hilton and deduce (correctly) that the Nile must lie somewhere behind it.

I drop my pack to the pavement and sit on it in order to re-consult my map. According to the map, or what I can make of it, as it takes up only one small page of my small guidebook, if the Nile Hilton and Nile are on my left – which they are – then the Egyptian Museum should be straight ahead of me at the end of the square, and the Magic Hotel is exactly in the direction I have just spent the last ten minutes walking away from.

Unsteadily, I re-encumber myself with my pack and hold my guidebook in my left hand, keeping a grimy finger on the map page. By this time the interruption in my forward progress has attracted the attention of several friendly Egyptians. “Hello my friend, from where are you coming? You looking for a taxi, bus, hotel?” I gratefully assure them that I am fine, and that I am looking for none of these things. “Where are you going?”

“To the Magic Hotel.” Confidently, I point in the direction I am now walking.

“I never heard of the Magic Hotel, my friend, but I know a good hotel – very close.”

“No, thank you. I’m going to the Magic Hotel.” I try to keep things polite

Several similar encounters and what seems like a great deal of walking finally gets me, sweaty and amazingly grimy, to the end of the square where the Magic Hotel should be just as the desert twilight completely gives out. Scanning the hanging signs and darkened doorways, I don’t see any indication of the Magic Hotel. In fact, if the Magic Hotel ever existed, it is not only gone, but its memory has completely faded from the collective mind of its neighbors, as no one on the street, in the pharmacy, bookstore or even the Pizza Hut have ever heard of it.

Ashamed as I am to admit it, I seek refuge from the darkening chaos outside inside the brightly-lit calm of a Pizza Hut. At one of its cold, smooth laminate tables, I quietly give up my search for the Magic Hotel, cursing Kent and his friend, and go back to the book. It’s funny how comforting something familiar – even if it’s repulsive – can be when you are in a foreign setting. I may not have been inside a Pizza Hut in the past fifteen years, but now that I am, I don’t ever want to leave. It’s light, comfortable and relatively calm; has an impeccably clean bathroom and even serves pizza. There is no reason to leave. It seems much nicer than the Pizza Huts at home – hardly a “hut” at all really. The patrons are well dressed, stylish and mostly women. About three quarters of them wear headscarves. They chat and laugh, lingering over personal pan pizzas and sodas. I feel guilty sitting there consulting my book and using their spic-and-span marble bathroom without purchasing anything, so I order a pizza of my own. I’ve been in Cairo less than twenty minutes, and already I am retreating to the cheesy comfort of American franchise fast food.

It’s just that everyone seems to be enjoying them so much. The pizza and sitting there among this well-heeled set gives me a warm, doughy sense of security. Once the last cheesy scabs have been peeled off the bottom of the box, however, I again have to face the fact that I still have no place to sleep. Fair or not, my initial impression of Cairo is that it is not a place where I’ll be able to pass a night wandering bars and dozing on a bench.

Outside, Midan Tahrir is still in full swing, only now it’s darker. In fact it’s darker than I would expect a city to be. A circus of slowly weaving headlights adds a dizzying visual aspect to the confusion. The dust seems to absorb the low-slung glare of the lights before they do any real illuminating and somehow the buildings absorb more light than they give off.

I make my way around the perimeter, away from the Nile Hilton trying not to be run over. My unnerving is accelerated by the fact that in Egypt the horn is as important (actually more) than lights as an indicator to others of your existence, position and intentions. Crossing the street is an exercise in white-knuckled determination involving staring down the traffic and taking a few, measured steps at a time. It’s like wading through a river. After a while I feel like I can sort of gauge the distance and speed of an oncoming car by the sound of its horn, like a bat. This is probably not the case, but it is comforting to believe.

At last I turn down one of the many streets leading away from Midan Tahrir. The darkness doesn’t help my already shaky sense of direction – there no longer being a setting sun to orient me – nor does the fact that the street signs, when I can find them, are in Arabic, a language I have not exactly mastered. It probably doesn’t help either that three years of law school has reduced me to a squinting nearsightedness that I have not yet fully admitted to. Glasses, if I had remembered to bring them, might help.

The sidewalks are almost as busy as the streets, and I stumble along bent under the absurd weight of my pack, guidebook open in my hands, desperately looking for a landmark that I can reference on the tiny map. I should have bought a real map of Cairo. For some reason none of the hotels listed in my book seem to be where I think they should be. It’s like I’m following the plan for the wrong city. Entering a building whose location on the street matches exactly the location of a hotel on the map, I encounter an Egyptian man dressed in a dishdasha and skull cap who appears to live in the stairwell.

He addresses me in Arabic to which I responded hopefully, “Salaam,” and “Hotel?” He doesn’t seem to understand what I am asking, so I point to the name printed in my book, and say it again slower and louder like an idiot. While the name of the hotel means nothing to him – entirely understandable since not only is it in the wrong language, but also the wrong alphabet – the sight of the book seems to get response. He gently takes my arm in his and begins leading me out the door. I hesitate, looking back up the stairs where I hope and believe the hotel should rightfully be.

“No, no,” insists the man, “hotel, hotel,” as he pulls me along toward the sidewalk. Outside he leads me through the throng by the elbow like a blind man continuing to mutter “hotel, hotel.” Soon we’ve left the area illuminated by my half page map and I am in real fear of never being able to get back on the grid. I remove my elbow from his grip. He looks baffled, “hotel,” he urges and points further down the darkened street. I’m not at all sure where I am anymore, but I’m pretty certain I don’t want to follow this kind fellow any further.

“No hotel, thank you.” I reply, inexplicably I’m sure to him.

“No hotel?”

“No, thank you.” I begin to walk back in the direction we came from.

The man walks up beside me. “Hotel?”

“No, thanks very much.”

“Backsheesh?” he says now. I keep walking, ignoring him. “Baksheesh,” he says again thrusting out his hand. It’s not really a question this time. It doesn’t take a linguist to see he wants a tip. I hesitate – I don’t really want to give him money for leading me wherever we are now, but I understand that he did taken time out from his sitting under the stairs to do it. I feel like we are beginning to attract attention and it makes me uncomfortable, so I fish in my pocket for some of the change I got at the Pizza Hut in order to end the standoff. I have no idea how much I give him, but the coin feels fairly heavy. He knows what it is, as he doesn’t bother to withdraw his hand to count it, and apparently it’s not enough. Increasingly uncomfortable with this scene, I fish a bill out of my pocket. This does the trick, and he withdraws his hand smiling and says, “sukran” (pronounced shookran).

Yes, that was it, “sukran”. I remembered now how an extremely kind Dutch guy in Jerusalem told me this was the “magic word” in Egypt. It means something like “thank you” in Arabic, and if you insisted, “no, sukran,” you would be relieved from unwanted offers far more quickly than by saying “no, thank you.” Of course it could still take eight or nine “no, sukrans” to get someone to desist from selling you an alabaster pot pipe, but the “no, thank yous” could conceivably go on forever.

Now completely lost, but at least free of my guide, I head back in the opposite direction. Within a block I am approached by a young man. Unlike the previous guy, he wears pressed blue jeans and a striped polo shirt, and he speaks to me in English.

“Hello my friend, what are you looking for?”

“Oh, nothing,” I assure him not really wanting to get into another baksheesh relationship so soon.

“You need a hotel?”

“Yes,” I admit.

“I know a hotel, my friend.” He smiles.

“Really, which hotel?”

“It’s a nice place. I can take you there, come on.”

“Oh, no, no thank you. I actually have a hotel.”

“You have a hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Which hotel?”

“The Tulip Hotel.” It is a name I remember from the book, but I have no idea where it is.

“The Tulip Hotel? I have never heard of it. I will take you to a good place.”

“No, thank you really. Sukran. I’m going to stay at the Tulip Hotel.”

“OK, OK my friend. No problem.” He holds up his hands like I am pointing a gun at him, continuing to smile. “Where you from, England?”

“Canada.” I half lie, not having actually lived there (except for a couple of summers) since I was ten, but I don’t feel like talking politics with this guy.

“Canada?” he replies in the first part of what would come to be a familiar exchange.

I nod.

“Canada Dry!” He laughs. I don’t get it, but I laugh too.

I locate the tiny dot on my map meant to represent the Tulip Hotel and hold it up to him. “Do you know where this is?” The map doesn’t seem to mean much to him and he shakes his head and shrugs apologetically. “OK, sukran anyway.”

He smiles and replies, “afwan.” I feel really good about the whole exchange, and continue down the street completely lost but upbeat.

Having located landmarks that surround it on three sides – at least on the map – I know the Tulip has to be close. The Tuesday night strollers weave around me, as I stand in the middle of the sidewalk looking up, like a plane-spotter, for any sign of the place. I feel conspicuous and sweaty and my desperation must show, because a guy in his late teens or early twenties breaks off from his group of friends and approaches me.

“My friend,” he smiles looking genuinely concerned, “what are you looking for?”

I cringe, and more firmly than I probably need to be, tell him that I’m really not looking for anything, just looking around.

“You need a hotel, man?” he asks not seeming to know quite what to make of me. “There’s a good place really close. I can show you.”

“No thanks, sukran.” I shrink back into the wall of the building fronting the sidewalk.

“You sure?”

“Yes, thanks, I don’t need any help.” I smile and begin to walk away.

“Hey, it’s the other way,” he calls.

“Thanks.” I wave back to him.

Two blocks later there’s still no sign of it or any other hotel. While there isn’t really any place to sit down, my legs need a rest from confused wandering. I drop my pack to the sidewalk out of the flow of foot traffic and sit on it leaning back against the brick wall of the building behind me. I open my guidebook and pretend to read, knowing it is useless but simply wanting to avoid talking to anyone. It’s so nice not to be walking or carrying my pack that I wonder if I maybe I could just sit here all night. My mind quickly shifts from sleeping on the street to the luxurious swipe of my credit card at the front desk of the Nile Hilton. It is tempting, but the very thought of it brings back memories of my interrogation by the Israeli security guys at the airport in Madrid:

“You have no money, how can you make such a trip without any money?”

Cairo Postcard Trust, from TIMEA

Gradually this time – thank God – the bus decelerates, and comes to a stop at the bottom of the hill where the road is cut by the water. We file off, and watch as it rolls onto a small, flat-bed ferry along with three large trucks. Once the vehicles are safely on board, the passengers are allowed to walk on. I stand next to the bus not wanting to get too far away from my ride and my possessions, and look over the side. It isn’t until we slip away from the shore and begin the crossing that I realize this is not a river, but the Suez Canal. “Wow,” I think, “the Suez Canal,” because I don’t really know what else to think. I didn’t bother to read much of anything on the history of Egypt before the trip, but I have a solid hunch that the Suez Canal is important. I try to immerse myself in the awe of this vague sense of historical significance, and recall a dramatic scene from “Lawrence of Arabia”. With my knowledge of history, the pyramids are sure to be fascinating as well.

The journey across the canal, off of the Sinai Peninsula and onto the African continent takes about five minutes. I have never been to Africa before, but not having consulted a map, I don’t actually realize I am here until sometime later. (Does that mean I was in Asia before?) Besides, this isn’t the “dark continent” of Conrad; it is the beige continent of sand fired hard in the sun’s kiln – I think that is from Lawrence of Arabia too. Africa or not, it feels like the Middle East. And I guess if you can fight a land war with Israel, it is.

We re-board the bus and the original driver, to my relief, resumes his rightful place behind the wheel. I have no idea how many more hours it will take, but decide it is time to start figuring out what exactly I am going to do when I get to Cairo. I try to mine Kent and his friend for more information, but finally decide I am on my own. It is time to read the instructions – I pull out my guidebook.

According to the book – and this is a good one – “most travelers wind up in Midan Tahrir at the beginning of their visit to this surprisingly compact city.”[1] This is good news. The one bit of useful information to come from Kent and his friend was their Magic Hotel recommendation. They really liked the place – in fact it seemed to be the only thing they liked about the entire country. If they weren’t going to sleep at the airport, they would, they assured me, go to the Magic Hotel. And, it was on Midan Tahrir. Kent marked my tiny map to show its precise location. I “can’t miss it.”

There is no entry for the Magic Hotel in my guidebook, and after following these peppy Australian books more or less across the globe, through countries I had no idea about or probably business being in, I have come to regard them as a sort of gospel. But Kent’s enthusiasm combined with my less than pleasant stay the night before in a Tel Aviv hostel persuade me to veer from the guide and try for the Magic.

Cairo first becomes apparent through the windshield as a greasy, shimmering smudge on the horizon below the reddening sun. My hopes of arriving in daylight fade as the shadows stretch and the highway traffic thickens. By the time we reach the outskirts the sun is gone.

It is at this point that our guide begins to render his services. He walks down the aisle of the bus inquiring gruffly whether everyone has accommodations in Cairo. I overhear his conversation with a hapless couple a few rows in front of me:

“You have hotel?”

“No.”

“No? No problem. I can take you to a hotel. Very good – very cheap.”

“Where is it? How do we get there?”

“No problem,” he assures them, “the bus will take you there. OK?”

“OK,” they nod.

Considering myself an experienced, independent traveler, I am disgusted by their malleability. I would never blindly follow someone to a hotel they were pumping, let alone a fat guy with a revolver shoved down his pants. My travel philosophy, much like my life philosophy, is that true gems have to be mined, often through hours of wandering around sweaty and disoriented with fifty pounds on my back. How can you sleep knowing you haven’t utterly exhausted your possibilities, not to mention yourself? Who knows where this guy is taking them?

“You have hotel?” he asks me.

“Yes,” I nod, defiant.

“Which hotel?”

“The Magic Hotel.”

“The Magic Hotel? I never heard of the Magic Hotel.”

“It’s a good place.”

“Where is it?”

I don’t know. I look at Kent who shrugs and says, “It’s near Midan Tahrir.”

I nod and repeated, “It’s near Midan Tahrir,” not having any idea really what I am saying.

“Midan Tahrir?” says the guide, seeming to shift his weight to make the pistol more obvious. “I never hear of the Magic Hotel. How much does it cost?”

“I don’t know.”

“Midan Tahrir is very, very busy, very noisy, very dangerous.” He draws the last word out for maximum effect. “I have a hotel that is much better. Much safer. You will like it. My brother, he owns it – very nice and very cheap.”

I am undaunted. “No thanks, I’m going to the Magic Hotel.”

“Impossible, the bus does not go to Midan Tahrir.

This is a surprise, as I am sure that I read somewhere that the terminus of the trip is Midan Tahrir (whatever exactly that is). Kent and his friend apparently read the same thing, and as, Midan Tahrir is where they plan to catch a bus to the airport, become visibly agitated. They demand that we be dropped off at Midan Tahrir. A debate ensues with the three of us demanding to be taken to Midan Tahrir and the guide bellowing that the bus does not stop there. Eventually a couple of Dutch girls a few rows back come to the realization that the bus is apparently being hijacked and join our cause. “Midan Tahrir!” we all shout feeling it has become something like a human right. In the end, half the bus is demanding to be let off somewhere none of us but Kent and his friend have ever seen. The guide, finally relents in the face of our uninformed insurrection and laughs good naturedly, “OK, OK, no problem – you want to go to Midan Tahrir, we take you to Midan Tahrir.”

Ten minutes later the bus stops and lets out a sigh of compressed air. The guide looks at us rabble-rousers and shrugs, “Midan Tahrir.” I scramble to get my belongings together and get off the bus while the driver throws our packs from the cargo compartment into the street. Watching the bus pull away heading to god knows where, and the guide’s brother’s hotel, I can’t help but think, what a bunch of rubes the rest of them are.

This feeling does not last.

[1] Middle East on a Shoestring, 2d. edition, Lonely Planet Publications, 1997. Lonely Planet – don’t leave home without it.

Inside, the hangar is pure pandemonium – rows of un-staffed windows waiting for a rush; long lines of people that, though apparently not constituting a rush, nonetheless wind around the massive hall and through each other; signs I can’t read; and baggage, boxes and people everywhere. Despite the separate entrances, the doors all lead into the same giant hall, and there the guidance ends.

At the window our passports and visas are checked then taken. There is some confusion over what to do next. In the absence of any actual direction, our recently-born fellowship of travelers simply waits where we are. After half an hour of watching what seems like a million people pass us, someone, probably Australian, finally steps silently into our power vacuum and becomes our leader. I eavesdrop intently as she asks the customs official, who took our passports and then promptly went to work on something else, when we are getting them back. He looks confused and seems to notice our encampment for the first time. Giving up on verbal communication, he points repeatedly down the length of the hall as if trying to physically prod us in the direction of the mass of luggage and humanity at the other end. It seems we were supposed to proceed to the other end where something else would happen, but we have missed a step. With all the initiative and individual thought of a herd of sheep we shoulder our bags and shuffle down the hall. If the plucky Aussie hadn’t spoken up, I might have waited there for days. Patience is something I have stocked up on for this trip.

Nearly an hour and half later, we are reunited with our documents, and back on the bus, grinding our way across what I take to be the Sinai Peninsula. The impressive Israeli military desert vehicles that escorted us to the crossing have been traded for a very ordinary white Toyota pickup with two Egyptian soldiers dozing in the back. At some point the road makes its way up to the coast and I can catch glimpses of the deep blue of the Mediterranean between deserted looking stucco villas. It looks inviting, and altogether out of place.

I had hoped to find some fellow travelers on the bus with whom I might join forces for the plunge into Cairo. The stories I heard in Israel made it sound like traveling in Egypt is exhausting and best not undertaken alone. The passengers, however, offer few attractive options – no one even resembling the cute, blonde Texan I met on the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Most look to be overly-sensitive, under-washed Europeans. There are several women, but they all look to be part of the same neo-hippie, lesbian, drum circle. I simply don’t have the energy at the moment for the earnestness I know a conversation with them will require.

I end up talking with two American guys who are actually kind of disgusting, though it has nothing to do with them being American. They are from Iowa. They wear t-shirts with stretched out collars that are either very dirty or just permanently stained, and those nylon running pants that make a swishing sound when you move. Neither looks like they have washed their hair for at least a country, and their faces are a mix of whiskers, dirt and acne. On the other hand, they are friendly.

Kent, is a teacher, as is his friend, who’s name I never quite get. It turns out they aren’t staying in Cairo at all. In fact, they hate Cairo, they hate all of Egypt. The plan is to find a bus to the airport as soon as they get to the city, and try to get on the first flight out. They are nearly out of money and vow not to spend another dime on crummy Egyptian food or another minute in Egypt if they can help it. Not only are they planning to leave Cairo as soon as possible, but they suggest I do the same.

“It’s a fucking hole, you’ll hate it.”

“Disgusting,” adds Kent’s friend.

They have been traveling for three months through Africa, and it sounds like they have pretty much hated all of it. This will be their second time in Cairo – they began their trip there. It doesn’t sound like it started well. Whether on the soft recliners of an earlier flight home, or just the cold stone tiles of the airport, Kent and his friend are determined not to spend another night in Cairo itself. They assure me that the city is filthy and dangerous, and that everyone in Egypt is dishonest and will try to rip me off. Without offering much in the way of information on where to stay or go, they are doing a hell of a job of ratcheting up my anxiety.

Kent’s friend produces a plastic bag containing a flattened loaf of sliced wheat bread, and a large jar of Smucker’s strawberry jam from his day pack. Kent hands him a jar of the soupiest looking peanut butter I have ever seen. I wonder if they’ve been adding water to it. He lays out four slices of bread across the knees of his grimy blue nylon running pants and proceeds to assemble a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a Swiss army knife. I can’t help but notice the amount of dried matter caked on the blade of the knife as he uses it to distribute the watered-down peanut butter.

“The worst thing has been the food,” he explains.

I am not surprised.

“Some of it is really disgusting. We’ve been living off this for weeks.” His mouth works the sandwich like a cement mixer as he speaks.

It turns out they brought the jam from home, but ran out of peanut butter part way through the trip. Thankfully, they were able to get more through a contact and a grocery store attached to the U.S. embassy in Nairobi. I am beginning to be sorry I started talking to these two. To their credit, they offer to share their precious peanut butter. I feel sorry for the eager schoolchildren of Iowa who will, no doubt, be hearing about this trip.

As a source of information, they are not completely useless. Besides telling me that everything in the entire country basically sucks, and that I should get out as soon as I can, they recommend a place in Cairo called the “Magic Hotel,” that I am never able to find. I’m not sure why they recommended it exactly, but they seem to agree that it didn’t really suck – aside from some attempted swindle by the manager. They also tell me of a small grocery store in the rather upscale neighborhood of Zamalek where many western businessmen and diplomats live. This, they assure me, is the only place in the entire godforsaken country where I will be able to get anything resembling American food. This information will turn out to be useful, not because I develop a longing for sliced bread or Kraft singles, but because, unbeknownst to me, we have crossed over into the land that toilet paper forgot.

Sitting sideways across two seats, with the back of my head smearing the grimy window, and looking out the opposite side at the undifferentiated brown of the desert, I listen to Kent and his friend blather on through mouthfuls of sandwich.

Without warning I am launched into the back of the seat in front of me, and land on the floor, sitting on my day pack. After a few stunned seconds of listening to the screech of the bus tires on the pavement, we resume a steady speed and I collected myself and climb back into my seat. Looking to the front of the bus, I wonder what the hell we hit. By now we are barreling across the desert just as before, except for the fact that the driver is no longer driving. He’s still in his seat, but sitting on his lap with his hands on the big, black wheel is the “guide”. The driver laughs nervously and speaks to him animatedly while, as we all watch, he slips out from under the guide, leaving him in sole control of the vehicle. So far the guide is not really living up to the hype he received at the travel agency in Tel Aviv.

According to a painfully thin and terrified young German woman sitting in front of me, who like me has just climbed back into her seat, but witnessed the hand off, our sudden deceleration was caused by the driver agreeing to let the guide take a turn behind the wheel. Instead of waiting until the next stop, which turns out to be twenty minutes up the road, they decided to execute the switch in motion. It seems the plan was the guide would sit on the driver’s lap and assume the controls, at which point the driver would slip out from under him. Sometime during the maneuver someone inadvertently stomped on the brake, sending us into a fishtailing skid at seventy miles per hour.

Both driver and guide shrug off their embarrassment with shrugs and laughs that seem to indicate no real harm done, and the guide continues to play the wheel between his hands as we come upon a solid column of what the British refer to as “lorries” coming the other way. The pitch of noise being pushed before them comes to a screaming crescendo, then drops as they pass and recede into our background. I look across the aisle at Kent who is cupping his nose in his hands and rocking back and forth in what looks like a great deal of pain. He mutters something about it being broken.

It takes a while for everyone to gather themselves, but once they have located their belongings and put the batteries back in their walkmans etc. they glare at the driver for a while and then resume their various bored postures. Almost imperceptibly the grade of the desert, and the highway rolled out upon it, changes, and the diesel engine relaxes from its steady roar into a gliding sigh. We start down a barely noticeable incline, and ahead, through the bugs and dust on the windshield, I can see what looks like a river painted on the desert floor.

If you are looking for insight into Egypt, you’ve picked up the wrong story. Not only did I do absolutely no research for this trip, bring only one book, and mostly pack the wrong clothes, but I also forgot my glasses. This is the most clueless, uninformative travelogue you’ve ever read.

My Brother In Cairo

It’s like I’m swimming. [You think I’m kidding] It sounds like I’m kidding, but I’m not. It’s like I’m swimming against a tide of Egyptians all heading for the exits. The call to prayer is floating out above the city, broadcast from the minarets that look like birthday candles stuck into the brown sheet cake of the Cairo skyline. If you’ve never heard it, you should. It sounds different to me than anything in the world, and I love it, but it’s not what I want to hear right now, because it is propelling everyone in Ramses station toward wherever they need to be for evening prayers, and it is the opposite direction of my train.

Sometimes it’s best not to know – not to know what you’re up against, not to know how it ends. Sometimes it’s best to just keep going, pretending. That’s why I’m not showing anyone the folded piece of toilet paper in my pocket. It isn’t really toilet paper, though – they don’t have toilet paper here – it just feels like it. I’m hoping it’s a train ticket, but I have doubts, serious doubts, so I’m not showing it to the guy at the information booth, or the porters, or even to my “friends” who offer to help carry my bags. I have a lot of friends here in Egypt. It’s the friendliest place I have ever been. That’s how I managed to get the paper.

I’m afraid if I show it to someone they might read it, turn it over in their hands a few times. I’m afraid they might smile widely and laugh the gentle laugh that they laugh here. I’m afraid they might say something like, “ah, my friend, this is not a train ticket – this is a crumpled piece of tissue someone sold to you.”

Of course, I know that’s what it is, but I won’t admit it. I don’t want to admit that I can’t pull this off, and I can’t face another turn on the merry-go-round of trying to get a ticket out of this place. It’s not that Cairo’s so bad, it’s just that it is completely insane. And if this crumpled piece of paper doesn’t get me out of here, I don’t know what will.

Even the bus to Cairo was a little nuts.

#

Three Days Ago.

I leave Tel Aviv early in the morning after a sleepless night in a top bunk at the youth hostel. I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime after the wave of loud, stinking drunk Canadians hit their bunks and before the Australians, I realized I am no longer a youth. Hoping to balance my sleep deficit, I find a window seat and rest my head against the grimy glass as the bus heads south. Physically unable to read my guidebook the last few days for some reason, I have no idea of the route – geographically or geopolitically – other than that I am supposed to end up in Cairo in four or five hours.

When I wake up, we are at some sort of a military checkpoint. It bristles with guns in a way that I have never seen before, but, having been in Israel a week already, weaponry alone no longer impresses me. I am impressed a few minutes later when I see we have an armed escort of very tough looking off-road vehicles with large, mounted machine guns. There is one in front and one following us; we are, in fact, an armed convoy.

I find this exciting in an admittedly juvenile way. I sort of wish someone would attack us, so I could see the guns fire. It never crosses my mind that we are traveling through the Gaza Strip. Eventually, our escorts drop off the road and turn around sharply in the desert. Watching the burly tires kick up sand is not nearly as cool as seeing the guns fire, but it will have to do. After a few minutes of nerve-wracking – and, I feel, completely inappropriate – unescorted travel, we pull up to a border crossing. The Egyptian “guide” advertised by the bus company asserts himself for the first time. So far he has draped himself over the two front seats smoking and chatting with the driver, but now he stands at the front of the bus and says something that is unintelligible to me – which does not necessarily mean it is Arabic – then points to a long, low slung building that looks like an airplane hangar. I notice for the first time the pistol tucked mafia style into the waistband of his slacks; it had previously been obscured by a brown knit shirt and a roll of belly fat. While no doubt for my protection, I find the presentation of the firearm to be not very comforting.

Straining under the ridiculous weight of my pack, I fall in with the ten or so other tourists, or “backpackers,” heading toward the hangar. There are three distinct entrances to the aluminum sided building. One is designated for Egyptian nationals returning to Egypt, one is for foreigners, and one for Palestinians. The metaphor seems obvious, but just out of my reach. I couldn’t say where we are, but I think it might be Rafah. Wherever it is, it is the absolute middle of nowhere, yet feels like it must be close to hell.