While Egypt appears to run on corrupt socialist principles practiced by principally corrupt socialists, driving here is like an Ayn Rand novel: everyone for themselves. It's an all-out, self-interested scramble for forward and lateral movement involving drivers, pedestrians and animals alike. The lines on the roads aren't even suggestive (like in say, Virginia) they're decorative at best. Drivers have no problem whatsoever making left turns across four lanes at the last second and almost without looking. They also have zero qualms about playing high-speed chicken down a narrow street with women and children. And chickens.
Likewise, if wanting to walk across the street -- a fifty-fifty shot of survival here -- I've found it's best to just wade into traffic and for a hurried second, the oncoming cars will part like the Red Sea. But Moses, I ain't. Dawdling will cause you to share the same fate as the Egyptian army. I've already been smacked by several side-view mirrors as I've attempted many crossings and my legs have also just missed being taken out from under me numerous times by decrepit Peugeots and way past-their-prime Datsuns.
Far from the road, though, I've found this chaos exists everywhere, pervading every aspect of the country. My first sampling was in the customs section of the Cairo International Airport where a yelling, howling mass of travel agency escorts held white cardboard signs and hotel and transportation touts harassed everyone with luggage in their hands. I was able to avoid some of it because the adept baggage handlers working for Alitalia had misplaced my bag along with the bags of four German art students and a foxy girl from Halifax. I don't even want to discuss the "Italian food" served on board.
Losing my bag was a first for me, yet completely fitting that it happened in a country where they've given bureaucracy an even worse name. The entire process of alerting an authority to the problem and then photocopying my passport for identification purposes, was needlessly drawn out to about seventy-five minutes, at least. When asked about the hold-up, the dark, lanky man I complained to told me, "the photocopy machine is far away." As in Libya.
My cousin, Wag, who was waiting outside of the terminal the whole time, drove me to his family's apartment in the Cairo suburb of Gisr Suez. Not only was I jarringly introduced to Egyptian driving on the way, but I saw my first microbus drive past us. More or less a hippy van, these vehicles were jammed to the dashboard with locals, riding for the equivalent of about 6 cents. Arabic billboards plastered the landscape. Black smoke billowed into the air, chasing that pesky oxygen away. Horns were being laid on as frequently as the gas pedal and my arrival coincided with the afternoon call to prayer. Every mosque, and there are plenty, mans a loudspeaker five times a day and the air is all of a sudden filled with conflicting middle-school, PA system announcements. Street vendors were loudly peddling their wares to passers by and/or shouting across the street at their competition. Tiny dime-a-dozen corner stores bustle with business, where the concept of an orderly, polite line is lost on all customers. Random canines yelp as little boys throw sticks at the numerous stray dogs wandering around. Local Egyptians exclaim, well, everything in loud voices. The blare from mobile phones of the latest Arabic music announces an incoming call. Twenty different fuul and kebab places all line the same street and are hard at work constructing delicious little pita sandwiches. Hundreds of neon bedecked boutiques show off the latest in haute head scarf fashion. Cars double, sometimes, triple-park. A general all around visual and audio cacophonic symphony.
And yet, somehow, everything moved along seamlessly.
We arrived to a collection of concrete block buildings with not so much roads in between them as dirt trenches. Driving past everything mentioned above, I was somewhat startled to see herds of large, ugly sheep feeding and screwing alongside the neighborhood's main drag. Wag explained that the sheep were for sale to anyone with a craving for lamb. Depositing the car in front of a building that, from exterior observation, looked as if air strikes made weekly visits, we went through the main door and Wag conversed briefly with the stocky, curly-haired man in a traditional galabayah who stood up to welcome us. He was the doorman, as every residential building in the country has, who not only lived on the first floor, but who would often run errands for you and even wash your car.
A flight of stairs later and we had reached a handsome, warm interior. I was introduced to Wag's wife, Laverne, her sister Inez, and Wag's two tiny tykes -- cousins all -- for the first time. The moment probably best describes the initial unfamiliarity of arriving in and being absorbed by the country of my forefathers. Yet at the same time, while enjoying a simple meal of freshly grilled fish and rice with these almost complete strangers, I had an odd sense of comfort. I was listening to and somewhat comprehending, the Arabic language I grew up with alongside people I didn't and yet nobody felt out of place.
As for Cario itself, I had learned to tame her relatively quickly. Within a couple of days, I was fearlessly crossing streets without local human shields and bargaining over this and that. I could order things in coffee shops and was even able to engage in small-talk with cabdrivers. The Cairo noise; the chaos, began to feel normal.
My bag eventually showed up one morning, too, albeit almost three days later. My cousin joked that Santa Claus had delivered it. Yeah right, Santa could never pass a Peugeot.
