Only a year passed since I last visited Cairo and I am missing this city of lights. I was going through my memoirs and found these notes from my last visit. It was quite memorable visit as few interesting incidents happened. Let me share these with you for your delight.
Read my previous Egypt Visits Here:
I guess I am getting better and better in managing Cairo. Brave enough, I came out of the terminal building and fully ignoring the touts, occasionally saying “Shukran” to taxi offers pretending to be an Egyptian (lucky me, I can easily guise in most of the middle east). I headed straight to the car park across the building as I knew there must be few metered taxies around. Most drivers hanging around in the terminal building are way too expensive. Dressed in long taup (Arabic long shirt) like villagers, bearded, middle aged Egyptian offered me taxi. I ignored and continued. Don’t know why, I went few steps then stopped and turned to look at him. Let’s try him, he appeared like a gentleman.
Mustafa – The Cruising Driver:
‘Fu Tura’, I asked? Meaning receipt, many taxi drivers don’t provide one. They don’t want to turn the meter on, or they don’t have a paper receipt; not an acceptable option for me since I have to claim the expenses back from my office. He nodded yes. Within minutes we were on our way to Cairo downtown. Mostafa was an aggressive & fast driver; he was really flying. At times, well most of the times I held the door handle firmly. Almost all taxi drivers have small Quran on the dashboard and many listen to Quran while driving; I can understand why Mustafa had one; he had strong trust in God. A ‘bad’ driver suddenly came in his way; he hurled a long speech in fusah (decent) Arabic. Masha Allah, his accent was great!
I was staying in Sofitel hotel on river Nile’s bank. After crossing the Tahrir Square and passing over the famous “Kobri Qasr al Nile” Bridge, we entered the ‘Al Gazirah’ (island). River Nile splits into two in the middle of Cairo creating a 4 Km long & half a Km wide rectangle shaped island called ‘Al Gazirah’ (see photo below). This island hosts many famous public places (see above photo) such as Obera House (Opera House – dome building above), stadium, park, sports facilities & Cairo Tower (I guess this is the same tower once used to view Cairo from its observation deck but then it was blocked because people allegedly used powerful binoculars to peep into surrounding houses!) . There is an underground metro station here called ‘Obera’; I did not know this so walked more than a mile to next one across the Tahrir Square to catch metro.
Pistol Fight:
Anyway, we turned into Giza road which leads to the hotel. There were cars parked on one side and only one car could pass at a time. There was a young driver (in 30s) in front of us trying to park his car in a narrow parking space. Mostafa couldn’t wait and tried to pass from one side. The other driver had started to reverse into the space. Side mirrors hugged each other briefly. Hot argument erupted, why can’t you wait for a second, one asked the other? Why are you so rushed, he responded? (NOTE: the argument was in Arabic, this is my best guess translation). Suddenly argument flared up, young man ran to his car, picked something from underneath his seat. Guess what; it was a pistol. I heard a clicking noise; he rushed to Mostafa, aimed at him through driver side window. Oh oh, I was directly “in the line of fire”; literally, sitting beside Mustafa on front passenger seat. Run, run, run boy, I promptly & swiftly opened the door and ran outside. Other people rushed to the scene and cooled the young person down. Mostafa cooled down also (I guess he realised his mistake plus pistol played its role). Ceasefire reached with no shot fired, thanks God. Mostafa hugged the guy and said sorry and we moved on. This is such a good habit of Egyptians that they argue at full pace for a while, then say sorry and move on, no one keeping any grudge.
High Security & Sweets:
Sofitel Al Jazira Hotel is quite an elegant 30-ish storey round building; one of the most beautiful hotels in Cairo, much like famous Habib Bank Building in Karachi, Pakistan. The security was on high alert this time for some reason. My colleague was staying on a different floor; he reported seeing couple of guards there. It was unusual. Next day he was asked to move to another floor, reason some foreign delegates was arriving. Unwillingly he moved. As a gesture of thanks management sent him Baqlawa the Arabian sweets, which he invited me to enjoy. And I did so indeed; all & alone since he is not so sweet ‘teeth’ as I am!
It was not possible to go to Tahrir Square because there was a big demonstration going on (2011 – demonstration was against military not holding elections after departure of Mr Mubarak). I wanted to visit my favourite foods Shawarma (doner kebab) and Kushaari, both near the square. To avoid the any issue I walked to the opposite side, away from the square towards ‘Ad Doki’. To my surprise a branch of “Kushaari al-Tahrir” restaurant was right there in front of me. Next door was the delicious shawarma house “Taza Restaurant”. It tried both – not disappointed at all!
Next day, my plan was to visit Old Islamic Cairo, Read it in next blog…