My Greek grandmother, who was illiterate, had no trouble navigating her way around Athens’ streets – her secret was an old Greek saying – “by asking you’ll find you’re way to Constantinople”.
I’ve always adhered to that saying and so when in strange towns I am far more likely to ask for directions than to pull out a map.
In Cairo that doesn’t seem to work so well.
Here, not only does my lack of Arabic make me illiterate, but people are also struggling to understand my pronunciation of places. Either that or the city is so big that many people don’t really know their way around it because we’ve been given a wrong steer quite a few times.
I wish the Lonely Planet Africa edition had a bigger Arabic language section. I’ve been looking and looking for a bookshop with an Arabic-English phrasebook but not yet managed to find one. This adds to my current feeling of stupidity. Now I truly understand why translators are so highly valued by foreign correspondents. I also keep thinking of the story I once heard about the translator who brokered a peace deal by deliberately mistranslating what each side was saying.
I’d love to be able to know what people are saying about us. We were harassed by a bunch of teenagers on the banks of the Nile – we were the only tourists around and I’m sure they were just having some fun but it went too far. Luckily, a choice swear word I was taught by my Lebanese friends at high school sent them packing and made the Egyptian girl next to me break into a beautiful huge smile.
Aside from saying ‘hello’ and ‘welcome to Egypt’ the city’s reson d’être seems to be commerce. It’s everywhere. On the street you walk between classy glass-fronted shops on one side and people selling their wares on blankets and cardboard boxes on the other. Most of this commerce is not directed at tourists but the chance to make a higher profit margin than you would from a local certainly appeals to some for some others the entry visa stamp on your passport is a sought after commodity. We have been asked three times in three days to buy things for people duty free – my favourite was this afternoon when a taxi driver dropped his price from 20 Egyptian pounds to 5 on the proviso that we buy him some duty free. Unfortunately, we’d already given over our quota for a tour of downtown and some advice on where to buy cheap lunch.
I’m not a fan of haggling, I don’t find it fun, and so today in the bazaar was stressful. I felt insulted when a guy started his asking price for a synthetic scarf at 75 Egyptian pounds and walked off. This in turn insulted him which I felt bad about – especially because tourism is so slow at the moment. On the other hand we’ve been lucky in not getting ripped off too much. I know the price for corn on the cob on the street is one Egyptian pound, the price for water is one pound 50 pence, for juice sold on the street and drunk out of a glass which you hand back it is one pound and the price for Koshari – a mix of pasta, chickpeas and crispy onion is six pounds. If you hand over the right money street sellers won’t argue with you for more. I still haven’t worked out what the right price is for tea. But no drink is the 15 pounds we saw advertised on an English menu in a tourist square.
I hate stereotypes. I hate the stereotypes we have in the west of people from Arabic and African countries but equally I don’t like being looked at as a dollar sign, or a dumb westerner or a loose woman.
And yet, I understand that people are poor and looking for ways to make money – and besides this can sometimes lead to fabulous experiences. By far the highlight of today was when we stopped to ask for directions (again) at a mosque. As well as getting accurate directions the man convinced us to take a tour with him up to the minaret for ‘free’ with a donation. It was highly illegal I’m sure as part of the minaret’s staircase was pitch black and we had to feel our way in flip-flops but he was lovely and genuine and the skyline, with the barnacle-like satellite dishes on flat roofs punctuated by elegant minarets and two Pyramids emerging from the haze in the distance – was spectacular.
My second favourite experience of today was simply sitting in the café in the funky student quarter outside our hostel, locals watching soccer in front of me, a mural to the martyrs of the revolution behind me – free wifi which allowed me to Facebook my brother delivered by an establishment where the seats are plastic garden chairs sponsored by Coca Cola and the ground is regularly watered to keep the dust down – as I tweeted to a friend – this sort of progress feels great.
