How to Travel Through Cairo on an Empty Stomach

I spent Ramadan 2003 in Amman, Jordan, and I celebrated it wholeheartedly with plenty of dates, soup, lamb, chicken, and a nice side of Hepatitis A. I fasted for about a week, an honest-to-goodness fast with no cheating, no snacks in the bathroom, no kisses, no cigarettes (ok, so those last two weren’t such a problem.) But then when I really started feeling the Hepatitis, when my skin turned genuinely yellow and my eyes sort of looked like egg yolks, I quit. I had an enormous craving for chocolate, and not the good 72% cacao chocolate that I usually, snobbily, crave. Any chocolate. Twix. Hershey’s. Even Arab chocolate (which is really terrible.) Coincidentally, at this time I also found the only two bags of chocolate chips I have ever seen anywhere in the Middle East, sitting right there on the bottom shelf at the grocery store in the University. I bought them both. Instead of doing the noble thing, which would have been to introduce my Arab friends to the wonder that is the America chocolate chip cookie, I ate them all myself. I sneaked chocolate chips into my classes and pop a few in my mouth when no one was looking. They melted on my tongue and for a few minutes satisfied my craving, and no one ever had to know. I owe a great debt to the chocolate god who sneaked those chips onto that grocery shelf.

Fatema and I celebrate iftar in Amman, 2003

Excepting my chocolate frenzies, I really enjoyed Ramadan in Jordan. It felt celebratory and festive, even though everyone was cranky, nicotine- and sleep- deprived. We had iftars of garlic soup and couscous and lamb, plenty of qatayif afterwards, oregano tea, zaatar tea, mint tea. I stayed in Jordan for Eid, which coincided with the American Thanksgiving and made me homesick, but a few of my friends ventured down to Cairo for the week. They came back with stories of dusty hostels and mean cab drivers, sleeping in airports and getting stopped at borders. All in all, it didn’t sound like an ideal vacation.

I forgot about their tales until a few days into our own Cairo-during-Eid trip. I’d wanted for a long time to see Cairo during Ramadan and Eid—18 million people celebrating a month-long fast and a week-long Festival must be something. Cairo is known for its sheisha and belly dancing, night-long iftars. But you have to know people. Luckily, we did know people. We knew Loay and Rebecca and Anthony, all of whom know/are Egyptians who know how to party like Egyptians, which translated to smoking sheisha and riding feluccas. Which is great by me. Unfortunately, these people we know all have day jobs, so we were left to our own devices during the day. I spent much of my summer in 2002 walking through Cairo, mostly lost, so this was not intimidating to me at first. After a few days, it, oddly, grew more intimidating.

Egyptian Woman

In 2002, I was with a bunch of foreigners who were either practically Egyptian or lost just like me. I had all summer to explore, so I didn’t need to worry about wasting time being lost while trying to get to the Citadel before it closed. Maybe I was also a little looser, unflinching, less spoiled—I refused to take taxis, I knew the metro stops by heart, and I wasn’t scared to ask questions. On this trip, I took taxis-plenty of them-neglected the metro but for one day, and grew increasingly skeptical of asking questions, particularly to cab drivers or storekeepers (granted, those two types are not notorious for giving you a straight answer, no matter the country.) After a few difficult exchanges with cabbies and a lot of time lost in the streets of Cairo, I grew a little more intimidated by the sheer immensity of the place, the dust that never settles, the noise that never subsides. Why this hadn’t bothered me before…perhaps it was because I had no expectations of what Cairo would be like. I had a vague impression of some pyramids, the Nile, maybe some guys in robes. When I arrived with a blank slate, I let Cairo fill it up with its flaws and beauties, and I wasn’t disappointed. This time I arrived speaking the language and expecting to know the place, and I was disappointed. It took a few days for my attitude to adjust.

Street Behind the Khan

It also took a few days for my appetite to adjust. The thing about traveling during Ramadan is that Ramadan is the month of fasting. Y3nni, there is no food to eat. Y3nni, after walking through Cairo all morning, you get a little hungry. But I learned that if you wait until about 2 PM and just keep going, your hunger subsides and you can eat a decent evening iftar and go along your merry way. By Friday I had this figured out, but it didn’t stop me from carrying around a packet of sugar biscuits in my purse. Not only am I not a Muslim, but I’m a traveling non-Muslim. I figured I should be allowed some biscuits, even during Ramadan. (After a week there, I came back and discovered that I was five pounds lighter due to the long, long days and few meals. Naturally, I gained it back in about two weeks, but it was nice while it lasted.) The iftars we shared with Rebecca and Anthony were delicious, all lentil soup and restaurant-home-cooking, ma7shi and bechamel sauce, with tea for dessert. It was a different flavor from my Jordanian iftars, both culinarily and psychologically. It was more basic food, salt-of-the-earth food, roasted pigeon and bread and rice, things you can imagine your grandma, if she were Egyptian, cooking up to fill your belly. Oddly, most of my Jordanian iftars were eaten at homes, and most of my Egyptian iftars eaten out, but it was the Egyptian food that felt homier, and the Jordanian that felt more festive and exotic.

Tamar Hindi for Sale

Empty stomach or no, we did a lot of walking. We walked around Zamalek, and we walked down the cornice. We walked through Khan el-Khalili and down Port Said Street. We walked through M3aadi and through the Coptic churches. We also took a lot of taxis. It’s a walkable city for your daily needs-bread, water, whatever, but not if you actually want to get anywhere. You can’t walk from Zamalek to M3aadi unless you have a lot of time on your hands. So you take a cab, which is bound to be an interesting experience, if not a cheap one. We could have metroed, and perhaps we should have, more often, but we didn’t. The cabs gave us at least a sense of downtown, Tahrir Square and Zamalek, The roads that cross up to Mohammed Ali and down to the Coptic Churches. I’m sure we paid double what is appropriate for most of our rides. I’m ok with that.

Muddy Street in Cairo

And still, I have no sense of direction in that city. I have no idea where we are on the map at any given point. I have no sense of North or South, even when I am staring at the Nile, which runs North and South. Something about the condensed sprawl of the place, the people upon people, the dust upon the old, grand buildings with their sky-scraping billboards telling you to drink Coca-Cola. Something about the energy of the place makes me forget directions and lost my aim, wanting only to sit on the curb with the men and their sheisha, watching the chaos go past me instead of trying to keep up with it myself. It is not a romantic city, as Paris is romantic with her cafes and boulevards and angst-filled poets, or Marrakesh with her piles of alluring spices and secret alleys, or even Amman, who wafts her jasmine kisses over you as you stroll up and down her hills. Cairo is big and dirty and old, but these sometimes take a romantic turn: on the felucca gliding down the Nile, a river so long you can’t imagine the end of it. And it’s romantic to look up across the dust and skyscrapers and see pyramids nestled in the distant desert, pyramids that were built before English was a language. It’s romantic to see the Nubians, dark and serious in their galabayas, padding along next to the fairer Cairenes, Upper and Lower Egypt represented in these men, brought up miles apart, passing each other on the street corner after they buy their bread. And sometimes in the morning when it’s quiet, you look up at the old buildings with their intricate, curled molding and great, imposing doors, their charming windows that look out over the tall, old trees lining the street, and you imagine, for a moment, a whiff, what it was like when these buildings were new and full of life, swept and proud, when they saw dancers and weddings and elaborate iftars. Then it feels romantic, as a lost love is romantic; sometimes I only miss the man I wanted him to be, and sometimes it’s only the imaginary Cairo that I miss.


But sometimes I miss the real Cairo too. Even after being so fed up, so overwhelmed, so ready to JUST LEAVE THIS CITY, now sometimes when I get a whiff of desert air, or hear an Egyptian accent, or crave some koshary, or remember the cityscape sprawled beneath me, I miss Cairo.

Dahab Means Gold

I travel as respectfully as possible, as I generally consider myself to be considerate of other's plans. But when we decided, at 9:30 PM in a silent Nuweiba, to change the next days' planned trip to St. Catherine's with Mr. Hamdi's friend/guide, personal comfort had taken precedence over sticking to the plan. We walked a few doors down to Mr. Hamdi and requested, if it weren't too much trouble, if at all possible, could we maybe get a trip to Dahab and cancel our plans with his friend...if it's not too much trouble...

Mr. Hamdi sounded optimistic and sympathetic as he informed us that yes, his friend would easily take us to Dahab tonight. We were relieved with a relief that had only just realized how unhappy we would be if it hadn't worked out. But when Mr. Hamdi's friend arrived, he was not relieved. He was hopping. We were disrespectful to change our plans this late, he was going to lose money because of us. We assured him that we didn't mean him any harm, and that we would pay him just as he expected to be paid for our reservation tomorrow. After a few minutes, he had calmed enough to take us to his van and then to a van that he had arranged going to Sharm al-Sheikh. We could just be dropped off at Dahab - the Hilton, I requested, not knowing any other hotel off the top of my head - on his way.

But our stay in Dahab was worth the trouble it had taken to get there, the late, exhausted ride, the inconvenience of the tour guide. We managed in one day with the helpful staff of the HIlton to find out the bus schedule (for the bus stop was not 3 km from our hotel as in Nuweiba, but just down the block) and arrange for tickets back to Cairo at 7 PM, much better than the previously planned 3 PM departure from Nuweiba. We breakfasted richly on crepes and omelettes, jams, and real coffee. We strolled to the main drag and finally felt like we were vacationing at the Red Sea. The first little surf shop we saw arranged for a ride to St. Catherine's, a snorkeling adventure at the Blue Hole, and a camel ride back. This was exactly what we wanted.

Camels at St. Catherine's Monastery

St. Catherine's is an impressive monastery at the base of Mt. Sinai, built by the ambitious and pious hundreds of years ago. The road to Catherine goes through a magnificent desert whose horizons are vast but never straight: they are always marred by the tips distant mountain ranges. Sand dunes occasionally sweep across, but not in a hostile way, as in the Western Desert. In a serious, lonely, pleasant way, the sand nestles into the crags of occasional sharp black mountains and blows across the road that seems to stretch into, perhaps, China. For as far as you can see, and surely as far as you can walk, it seems flat and manageable, particularly if you are a lonely sort of person or if you are a beduin with a herd of camels. But just beyond where you presume you could walk in a day rise reddish-brown rocks, dry, intimidating, soft against the horizon because of their rounded shapes. The desert is an ever-changing, ever-deepening palate of camel and sienna and terra cotta. The hostile Western desert seemed simply miles of stale dust, while this seemed warm and full.

Sinai Sand

And then you reach St. Catherine's, an oasis of humanity and commerce, pilgrims and tourists, nestled into a nook which would be otherwise indistinguishable from the rest. Her bell tower rises up in a geometric contrast to the round rocks, and her golden rooms are full of scripts, textiles, incense, and bearded priests. Her spiritual bounty is in stark opposition to the desolate, albeit beautiful, desert that creeps up on her doorstep. You wonder about the men who built this, who came from other countries, probably on horses or camels, with their clothes and their Scriptures.

St. Catherine's Bell Tower

Our ride back was quiet and thoughtful. We sped to the horizon we couldn't see, almost as if rewinding our trip up to the monastery; we would recognize a mountain, or a change in color, or a particular gathering of camels.

Our guide met us back in Dahab and we took a bumpy jeep ride to the Blue Hole, where we snorkeled and saw many fishes. It was in the late afternoon, or it felt late, and by the time our camels had arrived at four, we were tired and wet with tangled hair and pruney fingers, like little children at the beach. We changed, sloppily, into our damp clothes and mounted our camels, led by a small withered but spry man with a blue galabaya and big rubber sandals.

The Blue Hole

A trip on a camel from the Blue Hole to Dahab is longer than you think it is, but we saw the sun set over the mountains of Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, and to see that from a camel is, well, really cool. The light changed gradually from stark shadows of the sun behind the mountains to a twilighted pink and blue haze that made you rub your eyes instinctively in order to see clearer, like when you put a filter on a camera lens. It was methodical and refreshing to feel the camels beneath us plodding, bored, toward our destination.

We made it to the bus station at 6:45 and boarded our final night bus, headed for Cairo and then to the airport. Our last night and day in Dahab had somehow made up for the troubles of Nuweiba and the sleepless nights leading up to it. We had vacationed, successfully, at the Red Sea.

Here, the time, it is not exact...

“Here,” Mr. Mohammed our fake Bedouin guide said, “Ehhh…time is not exact.”

No kidding.

Morning Constitutional

Lisa and I, after washing up on the shore of Nuweiba at 6 AM (see the keffiyeh-ed man taking his morning stroll? It felt very serene at 7 AM), waited in our little beach hut after a nice swim in the Red Sea. We waited and waited, past the climax of the sun, into early afternoon. Lisa fell asleep on the cushions. I walked up and down the packed sand that made up the main drag of Nuweiba, if it can be called a main drag.

Haji Lisa and the Blue Cushions

I approached Mr. Mohammed. “Ahem, where is the jeep?” I looked at my watch in the universal signal for, “You’d better have a good reason you’re making us late.” Mohammed urged me to just chill. “It is coming, I talked to him and he said 5 minutes.” Five minutes.

15 five minuteses later, I was no longer calmly inquisitive. “Mohammed!” my voice approached a yell. “It has BEEN five minutes. It has been THIRTY minutes. It has been TWO AND A HALF HOURS. WHERE IS THE JEEP?”

Mohammed looked concerned, but I wasn’t sure if it was concern that his jeep was late or concern that I was about to throw sand in his face. “Here…here the time, it is not exact.”

I looked dead into his eyes. “Mohammed. I have lived in this country and in Jordan.” I waved toward the Jordanian shore across the Sea. “I know that time is not exact. That is why we have waited. One hour, ok. Two hours…eh…” I shrugged, “but THREE. Mohammed, three hours is TOO MUCH to wait. Mish ma-OOL. MISH MA-OOL.” Mohammed continued to express his concern by shifting his weight and darting his eyes between me and the bright blue water.

We would have left Mohammed and gone to another (possibly fake) beduin, had we been anywhere but Nuweiba. But Nuewiba’s main drag is perhaps 200 feet long, and Mohammed looked like the only option on this sunny, lazy afternoon. We had waited since 1 PM and the clock was ticking towards 4.

“Mohammed, the sun is going down. There will be no light. HOW are we supposed to look at the canyons when there is NO LIGHT?”

Mohammed was quick to point out, “Oh, but this is the best time to see the canyons! It is beautiful!”

“But MOHAMMED! WE are not IN THE CANYON! By the time we GET there, the sun will be DOWN.” At this point I decided that the 350 pounds we had agreed upon was going to be halved.

At 4ish, the jeep approached. We got in the back, relieved that we were going to be doing something with our day, which was largely wasted waiting for this jeep. And we did indeed, see the colored canyons, which would have been more colorful in the SUNLIGHT rather than dusk, and we even got a bonus: a camel family outing on the road ahead of us. When we had strolled through the canyons, we joined the jeep driver and Mr. Mohammed for tea in the tent up in the mountains above the Canyons. Tea, as you know, makes everything better. We calmed, but I was still wondering if we should pay him the full amount. Three hours is three hours.

Camels taking a family stroll in Sinai

Lisa in Colored Canyon #1

The sun set and the starts blinked above us as we hurdled back in the Jeep toward Mohammed’s beachside resort. We still felt gypped by Mohammed, but he had promised us dinner upon return, and the promise of food lightens everyone’s mood. We waited as he prepared the fish, and then enjoyed his eagerly prepared, but ultimately mediocre, fish, hummus, and baba ghanoush. Stray cats played around us and the sea lapped up in delicate waves upon the pebbles. We finished our fish and leaned back, talking with the Jeep driver/Sheikh’s son-in-law, who told us all about his plans to marry a second wife sometime in the near future, but then warned us not to tell his first one. The Sheikh, an old, wise-looking man, joined us for a few minutes, curling himself up on the cushion the way old Arab men do, his knees twisted towards us and his hands resting calmly upon them. We didn’t manage to convince Young Sheikh that his first wife would probably be very jealous of a second wife (And besides, he had already thought of that: They would live far away from each other. Perfect.) But we were, by the end of the meal, feeling as though we had DONE something with our day. Canyons, sheikhs, fish, and discussions of polygamy in a foreign language—we were ready for bed.

Cell Phone Bedu-Our Dinner Companion

Mr. Mohammed joined us as we got ready to leave. We decided to just give him the money and be done with it. “So, 350, right?”

“..yyyes, 350 is what we agreed for the canyons and the jeep…”

“…” Lisa and I leaned in, waiting for the completion of the sentence.

“The jeep to the canyon, 350, yes…”

“..and?” Lisa inserted.

“And then there was fish, and I made you the dinner…”

We realized what he was doing. He said he’d get us a jeep to the canyon, he got us a jeep. Three hours late, but it was there, was it not? But the fish! The fish was extra. The tea with the beduins? Extra. The hummus? Extra. We couldn’t believe our ears.

“Ooooh, no.” My Arabic improves greatly when I am upset. “Oh no. You were THREE HOURS LATE. We waited ALL DAY on our ONLY DAY here, and you promised us dinner to make up for it. We will NOT pay you for dinner. You said that was a gift.”

“But I gave you tea! And fish! And…”

“I CAN MAKE TEA. I have never, ever been charged for tea, not in this country, not in Jordan, not in Lebanon…” I listed how many ways one could obtain tea for free, making sure he realized that I was not about to give him money for something that is taken for granted even in Wadi Rum, where there is no water.

The argument was loud, and our point was clear. We shoved money into his hand and left him counting it, calling back that it was exactly the amount of money he asked for and he needn’t worry, we didn’t gyp him as he had gypped us, and we wouldn’t be visiting him again.

The aggravation was not only over the extra money he wanted from us. It was a noisy night bus ride, a long day in the sun, and four hours of waiting for a jeep that took us to canyons we couldn’t appreciate in the dusk. It was the frustration of having no choice, no where else to go, and not even being near the bus station. It was being clearly, obnoxiously ripped off by a man who deserved neither the money he charged nor the money he wanted to charge. It was the concept of “Egyptian hospitality” falling flat, and with a thud. It was being taken for a stupid tourist, and occasionally living up to the title.

So we stalked back on the empty, dark street to our hostel, frustrated. We had arranged to go to St. Catherine’s monastery the next morning at 7 with a guide, and take the bus back to Cairo at 3 PM. “Plans could change,” one of us suggested. They certainly could.

Sacrificial Shirts & Hotels with Towels

The world looks different through tired eyes. When you’re tired, your standard of acceptable challenges lowers drastically and every obstacle looms ten times larger than life. The world also looks different through refreshed eyes. A good night’s sleep, and yesterday’s problems can seem silly, abstract, and ridiculous. They can also seem completely incomprehensible: What was I thinking when I signed up for…?

Many, if not all, of my solo journeys have been of the hostel variety. I stayed in Wadi Rum for a week with a change of clothes and a camera. I’ve hostelled in the French country and on the Beirut corniche. I’ve taken night trains in order to save on hotel costs. Four of us girls did Italy for two weeks in the cheapest hostels available- we got what we paid for, hostel-wise, but the stories? Priceless. I remember sharing a flat, wooden mattress with Stacy, whom I barely knew, on the outskirts of Venice, in the freezing cold. We’d sleep with our backs together and just as we warmed up, our hips would start hurting from the mattress and we’d have to shift our bodies in order to relieve the pain, maintain some nominal degree of privacy, and share body heat under the thin blanket as the wind blew through the crack under the doorway. We didn’t sleep much, but let me tell you, there’s no better way to make friends.

So I consider myself a sort of experienced low-budget traveler. Nothing much surprises me anymore, not after coming into our Roman hostel at 2 AM and finding other people in our beds. Egypt, I thought, should be a piece of cake. And it was, in that there are hostels, and they are dirt cheap. Budget travelers have an easy time of it. But by the end of the trip, I was ready to turn in my hostel card and graduate to the next level of world traveler: hotels with towels.

Our Pension in Cairo was a sweet little place in Zamalek, near embassies and a Panini Café, with a pleasant courtyard where old men gathered and talked all day and, as far as we could tell, all night. Our room had two beds, a little balcony, and a shelving unit. The shared bathroom was relatively clean and there was hot water. The owner, Mr. Hady, was nice enough, a round man with a friendly, but serious, face. Lisa and I were happy to have found an affordable room that didn’t have bugs or dirty sheets. But when we went to take our showers we realized that the cute pension didn’t have towels, either. Nor had we brought any. So we made a sacrifice: We each took our cleanest dirty shirt (an odd tribute to Johnny Cash, perhaps) and used it to dry bodies and wrap up wet hair. This was surprisingly effective, but also … grimy. The towels were dry by morning, ready to be packed up again and hauled to our next destination. We were satisfied with this system.

But then came Nuweiba. Our Lonely Planet recommendation turned out to be very, very lonely. Not a woman in sight, in fact, and no other hostellers, despite the fact that they told us that all the rooms were booked (which, if you ask me, was a weird, but baldfaced nonetheless, lie.) It was a tired, rickety little room with two single beds and clean pink sheets on the crooked sidetable. The door stuck to the frame and required a good deal of shoving to open. The whole room was about as big as my bathroom in my studio apartment. Not to worry! I thought. I’ve done this before! I thought. So we took it. Grand total: $1. That’s right, no zeros.

But then we had our adventures with Mr. Mohammed and the Jeep That Wasn’t (Be patient! That story is coming soon.) And we returned after dark to our small, tired room which was next to the tired, smelly bathrooms and had ants crawling under the crooked door. The room seemed smaller now that there was no sunlight peeking in through the rafters, and sketchier now that we knew there were no other women around. There was no sound. Our mouths had a bad taste after our aggravating exchange with Mr. Mohammed. Slight feelings of claustrophobia crept up on us from the wet tile floor. Lisa slouched on her bed and I slouched on mine, and we conspired. We conspired to leave, to get outta Dodge, and somehow get to a hotel, a hotel with towels and windows and no groups of silent young men playing cards on the balconies above us. We weren’t sure it was worth it. It would be more prudent to stay put for one night, deal with the ants and the crooked rafters. Wouldn’t it? It was only costing us one dollar. Who could beat that?

But it wasn’t worth it. The tipping point had been reached, and we tipped. We didn’t know exactly how to escape, since there weren’t any taxis (which only heightened the feeling of claustrophobia), and it turned into quite an ordeal when we managed to do it, but we did. We escaped to the Dahab Hilton, a five star resort on the edge of the Red Sea, a resort with whitewash bungalows, big square patios, and three swimming pools. A resort with minibars, wake-up calls, and towels. Never have I so appreciated towels.

We rinsed our sacrificial shirts and hung them up on the towel rack. We slept like the dead in an enormous, fluffy bed with feathery pillows. We woke to the sun streaming through our wooden shutters. And the world looked a saner, approachable, and refreshed. What were we thinking, staying in Nuweiba in that one dollar hostel? Why didn’t we plan this better? How absurd is it that we paid someone 300 pounds to go to a hotel we didn’t even know had vacancies? It seemed ridiculous and abstract to me, like it had happened long ago, back when I Didn’t Know Any Better. But after a good night’s sleep on a fluffy bed, I knew better. I knew that that trip was worth every piaster and the $80/night hotel was the best money I’d ever spent.

The silly part is that I’d stayed in the Dahab Hilton before, in 2002 on my first trip to Egypt. I knew it existed, but I had ruled it out as too chichi for our low-budget adventures. But upon further reflection, I realize my folly. At $80/night, that’s what, a Motel 6 in Grand Rapids? Yeah.

So I’m done with the hostel vacations, at least the rougher sort. It’s worth the extra few dollars to have a little towel luxury that will make my vacation a vacation and not an exercise in sacrificial clothing.

Christmas: $100

Some people do.