Stacey’s Mini-Extravaganza to the Middle East

View of Cairo from my hotel balcony (note the smog)

 Same view at night

Before I arrived in Cairo I had heard tons and tons of stories of the hassles I was likely to encounter here being a solo female traveler. Fortunately, none of it came to pass. As I’ve mentioned before, I did not feel threatened one minute of my time in the city and indeed never felt I was the target of any ill-will or contempt for being a foreigner. In fact, everyone I encountered was friendly and helpful and the interactions with men I was told to avoid were completely innocuous. Sure, I was swindled a bit here and there by paying more than I probably should have for a few things but that’s to be expected to some degree. I rapidly discovered that if I didn’t want company walking down the street the key was to not react at all when they tried to get my attention. And even when that failed and I found myself with a companion I did not feel threatened in the least. I did speak with a married couple from Atlanta who found the treatment of the wife to be somewhat disconcerting. She was essentially invisible to the front desk staff at their hotel who deferred to her husband for everything…including asking “what is her name?” when she was standing right there.  Maybe being solo has its benefits after all?

 View of Cairo and the Nile

 Another  night view

 A local university

Interactions with women, on the other hand, were another story. In short: there were none. Not a single woman initiated conversation with me…I did speak to a few who worked in the museum and one old woman smiled at me at the Khan but other than that I was completely ignored by the female population of Cairo. It’s puzzling. Maybe it’s a language issue or maybe a complete inability to relate to each other’s lives? I’m not sure but it did feel strange. Of course I was chatted up by a couple of groups of kids…once in the Christian quarter of Old Cairo by a trio of 12ish year-old girls and later in Islamic Cairo by a gaggle of 10ish year-old boys. Fortunately, kids are the same everywhere…goofy and silly and amusing to behold. And hey, they all got to practice their English a bit.

Going back to the women for a moment, I was surprised to see as many Taliban-style burqas as I did around town. That is, women completely covered head-to-toe with only an eye slit in their veil and sometimes even just a sheer netting instead of a slit. I’d say about 90% of the women I saw in Cairo had some type of head scarf or burqa-type covering though I was under the impression that full burqas were mostly common to extremely conservative regimes such as Afganistan and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it’s amazing how stylish the women can look and still have only their hands and faces exposed. Lots of them wore cute short sleeve shirts with some type of body-suit garment underneath to cover their arms. Many were wearing jeans and other western-style clothing with brightly colored head scarfs and looked very stylish. Some had more traditional long-skirts. I still can’t get used to the full burqas though…I just wonder what those women are thinking about underneath all of those layers…

 Cairo Tower

A farewell to Cairo would not be complete without another mention of the traffic and driving. OH MY GOD. It is madness. Absolute madness. It amazes me there aren’t constant accidents considering how crazy everyone is driving and how crazy everyone is stepping into the street without looking! I have been on some crazy car rides in my travels before but nothing previous even comes close to this scene. Between the cigarettes and the pollution my lungs may not miss Cairo…but the rest of me truly enjoyed the experience. Every crazy bit of it.

 Koshari: noodles, lentils, fried onions, spices with tomato sauce to pour over it

 Not sure what this is called but it was kind of like a philly cheesesteak sandwich but with awesome pickled veggies added

 Fresh strawberry juice was a bit of a risk but it was yummy and I suffered no ill effects

 Fresh lemonade, tahini dip, falafel and tomato salad

 Egyptian pizza…sort of like a stuffed pizza but the crust is super, super thin

Tags: Cairo, Egypt, Egyptian Food, traffic

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 5:36 am and is filed under Egypt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.