The Egyptian railways are cheap and efficient, so I rode as a paying passenger through the fertile Nile delta southward to Cairo. Cairo's Victorian-appearing railway station welcomed me, and soon the pubic busses took me across the city to the neighborhood of the big, impersonal, dusty Beet Shebab, where I took a dormitory bed.
Cairo's ramshackle, fume-belching busses were a curious mode of transport. There were 10 piastre, two piastre, and one piastre busses all following the same routes. At the time, a piastre was worth less than two US cents. The less expensive busses were obviously subsidized by the government. The two and one-piastre busses were universally JAMMED with humanity, at all times of the day. The windows of these busses had no glass in them, and young men would sit with legs hanging out of every window. To board was a claustrophobic experience requiring substantial bodily strength and determination, with people jammed against you on every side. The fee collectors spent their days physically forcing themselves down the center aisle and demanding piastres from the passengers. It was common for a rider hanging out of a window to jump off when a fee was demanded, and run along side for a block, then jumping back up to the window-sill perch when the fee collector had passed on down the bus. I kept my valuables well secured and concealed in my neck pouch , because there was no other way one could protect them from pickpockets in such a chaotic situation.
Cairo was crowded, bustling, and very dirty. Strolling around the city, I met a group of nice young Coptic Christian men, one of whom spoke workable English. We walked around together most of the afternoon, and I heard all about the discrimination by the Moslem majority against the Copts. Additional subjects were again, Middle Eastern Politics, Comparative Religion, and Sexual Opportunity. My curious new friends asked me at one point.
"But now you will please tell us, Mister Chick, how many times YOU ficki-fick ?!?"
I was taken aback, but it seemed to be a serious question, so instead of trying to explain that in my culture one just didn't ask such questions, and that a gentleman would decline to answer, I did a quick calculation in my head and gave them a conservative number which would not have even raised eyebrows in California. I was truly taken aback when my honest answer was greeted with universal derision and disbelief! None of those frustrated, virginal, hormone-packed guys would credit the truth, and all took me for a transparent liar.
I never made that mistake again. In future when I was asked for details about my own familiarity with females, I politely declined to answer. I am certain that my reticence was interpreted as an attempt to artificially inflate my macho status through an aura of mystery. Whenever that question arose, it was impossible to win. I had to choose between being thought either a liar or a poseur.
As with most tourists, I quickly found my way across the Nile to visit the pyramids. I fully expected the great pyramid to be impressive, but in spite of this, it took my breath away the first time I saw it close-up. The legions of persistent touts and trinket sellers were an annoyance, but the ancient monument, the ONLY one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing, is a true soul-opener. I walked all around Cheops' great pyramid, and paid an extra admission fee to climb inside along with all of the bus tourists. It was a great experience, and I am awfully glad that I didn't miss it. The king's chamber in the heart of Cheops pyramid is one of the most mysterious and interesting places on earth, and to have come to within a few hundred feet of it and not entered would have been unthinkable. I visited the Sphinx which is very close-by, and decided to come back another day to see the "sound and light" show after dark. The vagabond-telegraph knew that the "son et lumiere" show could be enjoyed for free by anyone willing to sit on the ground outside the "official" area of chairs prepared for the paying package tourists.
When I did return to the pyramids, I discovered something else about them. It is impossible to carry away in one's mind the impression of how HUGE they really are. Having visited only a few days previously, I still was stunned anew by their mass and unbelievable antiquity !! It was as though I were again experiencing them for the first time. On my third visit several days later, I was for the third time boggled by the scale those ancient monuments.
The morning after my first visit to the pyramids I visited the Egyptian Archaeological Museum. It is completely amazing, with so many exhibits, and such an abundance of archaeological treasures that I couldn't take it all in on the initial visit. King Tut's golden mask and sarcophagus were touring the world at the time, so I didn't get to see those relics, but I was captivated by his throne, with the delicate inlaid pictures of Tut and his sister/wife gently touching one another. In my opinion it is the greatest artistic treasure on earth.
While wandering in the museum I met Antonio, who I hadn't seen since the Tunisian border. It was good to talk to him. I repaid him one Tunisian dinar's worth of Egyptian pounds for the loan he supplied when I found myself out of Tunisian money at the frontier, compelled to reverse course for a new Libyan visa.
Above Cairo sits the old citadel, a medieval fortress which has been rebuilt and reworked many times over the centuries. Major Citadel attractions are two beautiful old mosques, the Muhammad Ali and the An Nasr, as well as the Egyptian War museum.
Riding the two piastre bus to near the citadel, I arrived in an area of many huge old mosques at the base of the hill. Nearly every ruler of Cairo throughout the Moslem centuries had built a mosque for his own funerary monument, and in this area they were very thick. I climbed the historic entry ramp to the fortification. The Mohammed Ali mosque at the summit of Cairo's citadel is the largest and most breath-taking, with an immense interior space and four slender minarets at the corners. I took off my shoes (and tipped the attendants to mind them) in order to enter. Both mosques are beautiful inside and out. The glorious architecture is somewhat spoiled by the mosque authorities, who clutter up the huge interior volumes of both structures with innumerable chains and cables and hanging lamps. Mosques were an excellent sanctuary from the gangs of talkative young Egyptians. When sitting on a mosque floor in quiet contemplation, no one would accost me.
The War Museum on the Citadel grounds was fascinating. Visiting in 1975, shortly after the 1973 war, the whole first floor of the museum was devoted to the recent heroism of the Egyptian soldiers while fighting the Israelis. The display had a slap-dash hurriedly thrown together feeling to it, very jingoistic and self- congratulatory. Outside in the courtyard of the museum were displayed a half-dozen destroyed Israeli vehicles, and a couple of shot-down Israeli jets. Inside I examined captured Israeli equipment, including such trophies as a civilian Zenith television set, Israeli military issue sun- block creme, and a genuine Israeli telephone pole.
Egyptian authorities took a clever position at the end of the 1973 war. The Egyptian public at large was never told that, militarily, they lost that war. Nobody in Egypt had heard, or would believe, that the Israelis came back across the canal, encircled Suez city on the Egyptian side, and cut off huge numbers of out-of-supply Egyptian units before Kissinger's diplomacy stopped the fighting. This was smart because it later allowed the Egyptians to make peace at Camp David without losing face at home. The Egyptian man-in-the-street believed that they had whipped the Israelis in '73, and therefore could negotiate from a morally superior position. In essence, the false victory facade allowed Egypt make peace before actually winning a war. Once I realized the implications, I also supported that fiction, keeping my mouth shut about the true situation at the end of the '73 conflict.
After a night in the soul-less youth hostel in Cairo, much better lodging, only slightly more expensive than the Beet Shebab, presesnted itself. I moved into the nice run- down, centrally-located Pensione Roma where I had my own room stuffed with heavy antique furniture, my own sink, and a bathroom down the hall with unlimited hot water for only $2 per night !! It was luxury, and I really enjoyed my stay there. Bath water was heated on demand, not stored. When the hot water tap was turned, a pilot light ignited a big group of gas burners, and these directly heated a series of exposed serpentine copper pipes through which the water flowed immediately before it issued from the tap. It seemed like a good (if not energy efficient ?) system, and certainly worked very well.
Eating in Egypt was easy and inexpensive for a vagabond. I became enamoured with Egyptian "street vendor" foods, especially a starchy concoction called Kusheri. For only five cents the pushcart vendor would shovel lots of little pieces of warm pasta, some cooked lentils, sometimes rice, and sometimes even fried onions into a bowl and dribble a thin, tasty red sauce over the mixture. It was good, and filling, and great value. I ate Kusheri almost every day, often more than once.
My Coptic disciples had made me aware of the suppressed Christian community in Egypt. I went to visit some wonderful, remarkably-old Coptic churches in the shabbier quarters of Cairo . They were low and thick-walled, not at all like the amazing elegant tall mosques of the city. Seemed almost as though they had been built with an eye to defense. While being given a tour of one ancient church I learned that the Copts claim to have invented movable paintings. Up to the early Moslem era in Egypt paintings had always been done directly on walls, as murals. The Egyptian Christians, finding that their churches were burned in pogroms every couple of generations, decided to create their sacred paintings on gessoed boards which could be removed and hidden during troubled times, and re-hung on the church walls after the buildings had been repaired and re- painted. I was shown one of the oldest movable paintings in the world, a dark-ages image on cedarwood of Christ as the savior.
Next time: Fury trumps Judgment