A Guest’s Week in Cairo

I flew from London to Egypt on a nonstop service, landing late on a February evening. As the plane sighed and began to descend, the southern coast of the Mediterranean came into view, illuminated by setting sun, glowing in the center of my porthole. A golden cloud of sand was suspended out over the wine-dark sea, which, I imagined, had originated thousands of miles to the south, having tormented the 80-odd million citizens of Egypt before enveloping the super-tanker that was resting in the sea below us. We followed the western edge of the anciently fertile delta of Alexandria, circled Cairo a few times and finally landed; I haggled a taxi, who I paid in the small bills of three different currencies, and then there I was, in Cole’s dining room.

Egypt is kind of an upside down country. The Nile flows from the southern border, where it sneaks in the back door (dropping its famously fertile silt in a giant fake lake called Nah-sir, I mean Nasser, which, the US failed to the fund in the ’50’s because we felt threatened by youthful Gamal); meanders up dawn the length of the country and dribbles out at the top, into the Mediterranean. The alluvial fan is at the top not the bottom — this leaves me confused regularly.

Furthermore, adding to my feeling of inversion, Egyptians and their drivers fail to follow the traffic laws — the only non-divine laws which are patently and unquestionably just. The term circus becomes more abundantly rich; cars wear their collection of dings proudly. When a flow of cars seeks to split and merge with other stream, a hundred blood pressures rise as vans full of bodies vie for a little space between hulking brown truck and hulking Hummer H2.

I suppose the readers of this blog deserve a sort of independent review of the American University of Cairo. I can’t review the school itself — I’ve only been a student for a few days, attending what my handlers describe as only the best classes, professed by only the finest professors — all corn-fed Americans. There is, however, the new campus — a shimmering feat of architecture and fundraising, (USAID paid for $100 million of it). I suppose I am qualified to talk about that, at least.

Besides for its circumstances, the campus is unexceptional — built with a certain cleverness on one hand (lots of shade), and a certain lack of for sight on the other (location; dozens of fountains?!?), characterized by the liberal use of ceramic tile which will cause many future Americans feel as if they have truly arrived in the Arab world, and feel compelled to give generously. The influence of artistic/propaganda movements like Constructivism and Suprematism upon the architects is also on full display when one walks between the three or four story buildings — one feels a little uncomfortable being alone, like maybe one did something wrong even when one didn’t.

The new AUC campus, its location, conception and execution have drawn sharp criticism from the students who I have met, Egyptian and otherwise. Each critic had his or her own way of pointing out the usefulness of the new campus as a symbol of all that is backwards about the administration of the school; a desert temple to their folly. I suppose I would say the same things if I were a student here — there’s nothing like seeing wasteful people doing wasteful things to stir up resentment towards them — but the campus could be much worse (its location, maybe not.)

Expatriated Americans abound, as do Europeans and Canadians. Upon several occasions I have forgotten that I was 6200 miles from home, I was so surrounded by familiar clichés, political views and prejudices. As I have discovered, Cairo is somewhat famous for its concentration of expatriates. One night, I even took in three Americans sing a cover of Wagon Wheel as their cultured audience sipped alcohol under tacky Christmas lights. Cole and I, feeling a little too at home I think, wandered outside and watched a 12-year-old Egyptian tennis prodigy return serve after serve from her hired coach as her father looked on and we talked with ourselves about being from the midwest. (Sidenote: I noticed yesterday that if you draw the shortest line over the surface of the globe from Viroqua to Cairo you can, your line passes directly over London provided you use a thick-ish marker.)

My first week in Egypt ended with a visit to the pyramids, west of Cairo, with Dina, Cole and Dina’s family’s driver. I was struck by their hugeness, although according to my companions I was too awe-filled. As one approaches on the freeway, the pyramids possess only a two-dimensional gigantism — like when the disk of the harvest moon appears on the horizon; you know, you just know, it’s not going to look that big after it wheels into the sky, it’s probably just an optical illusion — big by way of being surrounded by little things. The pyramids appear the same way, smooshed into the sky by yellow-brown pollution and sand, foregrounded by Giza and a endless warren of half-finished brick buildings. But when you finally get there, and their edges pop out to form volume and suggest mass, they only seem bigger — not elegant, not holy as the Parthenon felt, just very permanent and determined against the sky.

Whatever elegance is lost on account of the pyramids can be found in the Great Sphinx, and her tremendously expressive tail. About the size of a large midwestern barn, the sphinx is, in its own right, a moving work of the human spirit. The lighting, however, is permanently, ‘a little too much’. I got a headache looking at it for too long.

After having all of these thoughts and seeing all of these things, Cole and I were deposited back at his apartment, sunburnt pink and a bit jaded, Dina notified us that we were invited to go with her and her family to ‘their place’ on The Red Sea coast, an invitation fraught with intrigue, history and political wrangling. Tune in next time!

- SJH