Return to Cairo

The first day

After so many years, chance brings us back to Egypt, crossing only its main gateway, Cairo, but this time together with the kids. The real object of the vacation is another country, but a cheaper flight allows us a layover of almost 3 days, and so I decide to seize the opportunity, to let the boys begin to get to know something of this country, something more authentic than the plastic cities built on the splendid Red Sea. I remembered with a certain dread the vast scale of the city and the way so many desperate people pounce on you to push all sorts of things on you or to get a bakshish for imaginary reasons, so, also to make the most of the little time available, I tried to plan everything from home and, above all, to find someone who would escort us.

After various contacts, expensive and very "oriental" in their manners and offers (papyrus factory, very indirect ways full of bowing and scraping, restaurant with belly dancing, special permits that only they have, etc.), once again it was chance that led me to Saladin, an Egyptologist who speaks our language with a refinement and naturalness that would make anyone envious, extremely cultured, too honest and...very un-Egyptian. An acquaintance of mine had gone to Egypt in April and had had him as a guide, because he was a friend of her brother-in-law: she had spoken well of him and so we organized ourselves.

Back to us: at 16.15, perfectly on time, we landed with Alitalia; on exiting the plane a powerful hot blast blocks us and seems to push us back: we are in Africa! We get off and immediately go to change some money and buy the visa for the passports, which cost 12 euros or 15 dollars. Already on the plane we had filled out a personal entry card and it was the first of an endless series and a real bore, since I, for some unknown reason, am always the one saddled with certain nuisances, and since during the whole vacation, which also includes Syria and Lebanon, we entered and exited these 3 countries several times! Whatever! With our documents in order, we officially enter Egypt, collect our luggage and go out looking for a taxi.

Contrary to my expectations, we are not mobbed by a crowd of taxi drivers, but, in compensation, the only one we find with difficulty still quotes us an absurd price (110 lire, when I know well that 80 should be the right and maximum acceptable figure), but time is passing and it's already late..so we already start the vacation off on the wrong foot by accepting the price out of desperation...as always with these people. We reach the Novotel in Zamalek after 45 minutes, overheated and already with that sticky feeling this sweltering and filthy city gives you and, after another argument with the taxi driver, who is NOT happy AT ALL with the robbery he has just committed, we go into the hotel.

More time to deal with formalities and then, finally in the room, where, now at 18.30, I immediately call Saladin to see if he was still willing to take us around, even though I hadn't called earlier. Fortunately yes, he gives us half an hour and arrives by metro directly at the hotel, from which we set off by taxi toward Islamic Cairo, which Simone and I had not visited 17 years ago, having opted for the Citadel. I had been told that Saladin has a tremendous culture and that he is a "particular" type, an expression that we later summed up as: a man who lives in a context he loves and desperately hates with total rancor and awareness.

The ancient Islamic part of Cairo is very beautiful; we visit a mosque, the famous Khan El Khalili souk, which dates back to the Middle Ages, and we walk through many less touristy and very beautiful alleys, until we reach a gate along the ancient perimeter walls of the old city. Then we have dinner together and at the end we part with arrangements for the next morning: he goes home by metro and we with a taxi driver who rips us off again, because when he has to give us the change from the sum agreed with Saladin, obviously he doesn't have it. To me this feeling of always being ripped off is squalid, also because these things, contrary to what these people seem to think, affect me a lot and I simply decide that this country or this city will not see me again...unless after another 17 years.

Finally to bed...though I personally spend the night awake...maybe from too much excitement, maybe because, I haven't said it yet, but after so many years away from this city, I found a substantial and unexpected difference..almost no woman was without a veil. Disturbing, also because it is a secular state and because Saladin will tell us that in reality people are moving further and further away from Islam. So, what does it mean..?...that the substance diminishes but the form increases?? This will be my obsessive leitmotif of 14 days of travel...and beyond.

La città faraonica

On the morning of the 22nd, after an abundant breakfast, at 8.30, as agreed, we meet Saladin and a van with driver in front of the hotel. A long day awaits us. The first stop is Saqqara, barely 30 km from the city center. Once out of the city, we drive alongside one of the many canals branching off the Nile: something smelly and full of garbage, where there are even a few fishermen and which nonetheless makes everything nearby green. Nile wonders. We pass through the usual 3 or 4 checkpoints, even in the middle of the fast-moving roads in the city and whose true meaning I do not want to investigate, but which as usual unsettle me quite a bit. We reach Saqqara in less than an hour: Simone and I hadn't been here either. At the site we are practically the first and only tourists; only at the end will many other caravans of vacationers like us and cruise passengers arrive.

It's hot and the salt burns, and moreover you really get the idea of the desert. Indeed, this is the desert, running endlessly toward Libya. From afar, as in a mirage, you can see the pyramids on the Giza plain, the ones that in our imagination are THE pyramids, but in reality..what can I say about where we are now? Step pyramids, like the oldest one, of Zoser, and prism-shaped ones here there are in abundance, like so many mirages..just look around! The pyramids can only be seen from outside, but we visit a mighty temple and many Mastabas and hypogean tombs of noble figures with very beautiful high and low reliefs, to make the frescoes of the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings in Luxor envious. Very beautiful. Calmly we return to the city, where, practically on one of its outskirts, are THE Pyramids, the ones of our imagination.

The site has been reorganized and no one stresses you too much and, what matters most, is that Simone and I have reconciled with this site: this time no disappointment, we grasped its grandiose and magnificent spirit more fully. We did not go inside, because we remembered that it truly isn't worth it, but we wandered around, saw it from various perspectives and then went to visit the Solar Boat. It is a vessel 4600 years old, found buried at the foot of the Pyramid of Cheops and disassembled into...1224 pieces, reassembled over 14 years of work. Archaeologists nicknamed it the Solar Boat because in ancient Egypt, it was believed that the pharaoh's soul would be transported to the sky to join the Sun god but this would happen through the use of a Solar Boat.

In fact it resembles the vessels present in ancient tomb paintings or on papyrus, where the Sun god makes his journey through the skies. Therefore, it is not clear whether the boat was buried as a gift to the Sun god or left to the pharaoh for his celestial journey. The solar boat is made of cedar wood, the wood shows signs of use in real waters before being buried, it may have been the funerary boat that carried the body of the pharaoh Cheops from Memphis to Giza. 43.3 meters long, 5.9 m wide and 1.48 m deep and an estimated 45 tons in weight, with a central cabin of 9 meters, it has 5 oars per side plus 2 at the stern with the function of rudders: in short, something grandiose, like everything on this plain. In fact, we then move on to "greet" the Sphinx.

The Sphinx of Giza is the largest monolithic statue in the world: it is about 74 meters long, about 20 meters high and 6 meters wide, of which only the head is 4 meters; it was built about 4,500 years ago and depicts a mythological being with a human face and the body of a crouching lion. The monument was probably carved from an outcrop of rock, during the construction of the pyramids of Giza. Strangely the Great Sphinx is an isolated monument, when, instead, later sphinxes were placed in pairs to protect the entrance of a building and, in any case, its grandeur is proportional to its role: that of protecting the plain and watching over so that the sunlight enters every morning. One of the mysteries of the Sphinx, fueled by popular legends, is certainly the presence of hidden passages inside it; there are at least three, of which only one is of known origin.

After this immersion in the deep past, we are exhausted, both because of the time and because we drank too little. So, we go to a small grocery shop outside the plain to buy water, something we had postponed because according to Saladin it would cost too much on the plain and...to his great disillusionment, we pay too much in the shop! At this point, our driver, who has always waited for us sleeping with his mouth wide open, takes us to the Egyptian Museum and drops us off there. We quickly go to eat some horrible fried and American food at a Kentucky Fries..Something, so as not to waste time and then we go to the museum.

This remains the same dusty museum we had already seen, eternally waiting to be replaced by a new building that has been under construction for years, but it contains wonderful things over which towers one of the most beautiful, involving, exciting, wonderful and moving things I have ever seen: the golden mask and the various sarcophagi of Thut-Ankh-Amon.

Again this time, I came out of the room crying and just talking about it, now, overwhelms me. Forgive me if I seem silly, but you have to experience it to believe it.

Once the museum was finished, where obviously, we had neither the time nor the energy to properly look at all the rooms, we said goodbye and we reached the hotel on foot in 10 minutes. In an instant we were down at the pool, the only one of our whole trip, where we stayed to cool off and absorb the many emotions of the day until they closed. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and then went almost immediately to bed.

L'ultimo giorno

This morning we would have wanted to devote it to a visit to the City of the Dead: places where the dead and the living live together, sharing space. But there is no time, because at 11 we have to take a taxi to the airport, so Saladin, as an alternative, proposes a visit to the Coptic Churches. Only that Irene wakes up with nausea and stomach ache, so only the boys go with Saladin. They are back before 11, satisfied and escorted by our friend who came to the hotel especially to say goodbye to me. It was a pleasure to meet this man, who struck all of us and especially my son.

If you ever need a guide, let me know!! Moreover he lets us leave Egypt with the hope that this country is not inhabited only by thieves, however desperate: his official pay is 21 € a day and this morning he even wanted to give us this!! But we do not accept and we give him much more, with difficulty and with the excuse that we want to find a compromise between the cost of a guide in Egypt and one in Italy. The taxi driver also leaves us with this hope: he asks us for 55 lire, a kind of intermediary in front of the hotel BUTTS IN asking us for double, but this time it's me, who, very un-Islamically says NO, IT'S TOO MUCH, fed up with these exploiters who treat us like imbeciles and I imperiously walk off, followed by my family. Luckily, the tactic, which was not meant to be a tactic, works and the taxi follows us too, and we jump in, in defiance of the mediator.

In the end, however, his humility and honesty will be rewarded, because we leave him 20 lire more than what he had asked, and I tell him: shukran, thank you. Thank you for letting us leave with the idea that there are also honest people, however desperate, I think. We finally get a big smile, for the money and for that magic little word said in his difficult language. The airport is cool, new and clean. After 2 hours we are airborne toward Syria and toward many more forms to fill out.