Thursday night, downtown Cairo, 2 am. The heat hangs in the air like a sauna, with the Nile humidity adding to the stickiness of the sweaty pedestrians enjoying the night. Tens of thousands of people shuffle up and down the Nile Cornice near Tahrir Square - sweethearts, families, foreigners, Arabs, and groups of restless Egyptian youth.
In the summer, Egyptian life shifts a few hours to avoid the heat. Families eat dinner at 1 am and then take a stroll along the Nile; youth sleep till 2 or 3 in the evening and awake to a full day of mostly darkness. With summer temperatures frequently about 105 degrees, it’s an issue of sanity.
Ironically, many people from the Arab Gulf States migrate to Cairo in the summer to "escape the heat." Foreign dialects of Arabic flow throughout the neighborhood streets, and dark-skinned children join the lighter-skinned Egyptians in endless soccer matches, or games of Counter Strike at the local internet cafe. These summer migrants bring more than their families, they also arrive with a lot of money.
Now Egyptians are treated by Gulf Arabs a bit like Latinos and Mexicans are treated in the United States. They receive temporary work visas for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, where they are put to work in difficult and often dangerous jobs, making much less money than the Gulf Arabs, but much more money than they could make in Egypt. Nonetheless, they are rarely treated as equals in their occupational situations.
In the summer, the flow of migrants shifts, with wealthy Gulf families renting flats in Cairo and driving around in Hummers, Escalades, BMWs, Mercedes 7-Series, and other expensive cars. Prices go up, as taxi drivers expect larger payouts from Arab customers, skipping over the out-reached hands of Egyptians and even light-skinned foreigners, a rare sight in other seasons. Naturally, Egyptians aren't too fond of these experiences.
Three am rolls around, and the crowd shifts to the Lion Bridge, connecting downtown to West Cairo. Thousands upon thousands of Egyptian youth are lined up on the bridge sporting flags from popular Cairo soccer teams and the national Egyptian flag. The Gulf Arabs, never known to hide their wealth, cruise up and down the bridge in a celebratory fashion in their posh cars and rented horse-drawn carriages sporting mainly Saudi Arabian flags. Egyptians and Arabs banter back and forth in a generally good-natured manner, throwing wonderfully colored insults (often too vulgar to translate).
As the tempo heats up and the crowd gets creative they begin cheering at passing carriages in a friendly fashion, before quickly hopping on the carriage and stealing the Saudi flags ride out of the passenger's hands! Less-intelligent visitors try to reclaim their flag by jumping out of the carriage and following the swift Egyptian, alas, the crowd is too big.
In another brilliant Egyptian maneuver, hard-working entrepreneurs sell bags of fireworks along the Nile to those passing by. Picture those pansy snap pop fireworks given to kids when they are young, the ones that hardly scare a cat when they hit the ground. Now remove all threat of lawsuits, and multiply the size of the firework by ten, and you have an exciting night.
More docile Arabs flow by with little more than fliers or confetti thrown at their cars, but get a group of young Saudi Arabian men looking to show off their wealth, and a true show ensues. One 20-something year old stands up in the carriage yelling, "Kullina Arab, Kullina Arab" meaning "We are all Arabs." The removal of his Saudi Arabian Flag, and a few fireworks lobbed into his cart calmed him down a bit.
As the night progresses and the pre-dawn call to prayer bellows from the city's many mosques, the revved-up Egyptians slowly make their way home with some pressure from the limited police force, enjoying the show as much as they are trying to send people home.
The sun rises over the hills of Mu'attam, bringing a ruddy glow to the Nile and crowded buildings, and the few citizens still awake make their way home to escape the heat, like vampires running from the sun.
I've made it back to Cairo for a whirlwind three and a half weeks of hanging out with friends, going to the beach, and bumming around the country I love. Due to my past travels, I had enough miles saved up through United Mileage Plus to get the ticket to Cairo for free!
Now one of the problems with mileage plus, is that they send you all over the world to get to your destination. I left Los Angeles after a great night with two of my good friends at 7 in the morning, and boarded a plane to Toronto, Canada; and then London, England, and then Frankfurt, Germany; and then Cairo, Egypt. Arriving 26 hours later at 7 pm in Cairo, I was a bit exhausted, but it didn't matter because the excitement was already pumping through my veins.
I've already seen a ton of my friends, and have yet to go to bed before 3 am (or for that matter to wake up before noon). Yesterday I was in a minor car accident, where a parked car decided to open their passenger door as my friend and I were driving by. No problems though!
Life is good... a few weeks here, one more week in Santa Barbara for a wedding, and then a mad rush cross country to begin graduate school!
miss you all
A large man from the United States enters a small coffee shop in the back alley of Pakistan. He is invited over by a Pakistani man who begins richfully describing his life. As the tea flows generously, and the local cuisine whets their appetite, the Pakistani man describes his experiences studying in an American college, his pursuit of an unrequited love, and his thoughts regarding the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. The story climaxes near the end with a brilliant cliffhanger as the Pakistani man walks the American back to his hotel.
This 192-page book flows as effortlessly as a Harry Potter novel, or the latest trash on Paris Hilton. "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid, is hands down one of the best books I've read in the last year or two. I started and finished it in the same night.
Here's the Amazon link, I've done all the work for you. You have no excuse not to read it.
