Halfway down the Danube

Cairene guest-blogging!

My first guest-blogger while on retreat is from Luke Schleusener! Luke is yet another member of the soc.history.what-if Usenet mafia, who crashed in my Brooklyn book-lined crypt apartment when he took the Foreign Service exam. He's got a dry wit and a warped sense of humor, so he should fit right in. Also, he swims.

Here's my first contribution for your readers' interest.

Flight time from the US to Cairo is about fourteen hours--theoretically, it's thirteen hours and fifty-five minutes. In actuality, it's somewhere closer to fourteen and a half hours, due to inevitable delays.

This only mattered because the nice folks from the State Department behind me remarked that they were "screwed" with coach rather than getting promoted to Business Class, as the cut off is the fourteen hour mark.

Coach on Lufthansa international isn't bad--it isn't great, either. The food is about as good as any college cafeteria, which is much better than United, but still, not great. However, the booze is free, which, for any American college student, well. That's a boon, especially when you're six-two and crammed into a totally full flight. If there's one thing I could wish for my compatriots, it would be, I suppose, travel manners. The Americans on my flight were by and large loud, boorish, and stupid. The row ahead of me seemed to have come direct from tallgating a Jets' game.

Frankfurt Airport is a wonderful confection of steel and glass. The inter-terminal train is reminiscent of Denver, but is in much better condition, with broader doors and nicer seats. But Frankfurt also allows smoking indoors--there's a particular underground walkway where all the smokers seem to congregate, hoping to pass along cancer to the maximum number of people.

The preflight lounge looked as if it had escaped "Catch Me If You Can" with plastic bucket seats and metal tables in a weird sixties chic. The Lufthansa attendants were bright, multilingual, and responsive--and their little yellow neck-scarves looked like they'd escaped the sixties, too.

The flight to Cairo offered more space, more booze--in the form of not one, but two reasonable shots cognac, and some Bailey's Irish Cream. Given that the composition of the flight was largely Arab and South Asian, Lufthansa reworked its in-flight meal to cater specifically to this demographic, with curries that were remarkably tasty, despite their in-flight microwave process. All this made my arrival in Cairo all the more tolerable.

Cairo International Airport is a pretty standard Third World Airport. Customs were amusingly lax, if intent on keeping up appearances. I had to wait behind a yellow line while the customs officer gossiped with his partner behind him, a woman in a pink hijab and a robin's egg blue raincoat with coke bottle glasses. I passed through promptly, only to be double and treble checked by Egyptian soldiers dressed in storm-trooper black, with submachine guns slung over their shoulders, and their seersucker counterparts, who had shoulderboards and lots of red piping. Serious bells and whistles, these folks are awful glad to carry your luggage.

Getting from Cairo International, which is out in Helopolis, to the city proper, is a test of nerves. There might be traffic signs, there might be lanes pained on the blacktop, and a soldier might occassionally gesticulate at traffic. Cars ignore all of these "suggestions" to do generally whatever they want. Two lanes can become four and cars swerve through them with seemingly no intent. The first time through, this all looks wreckless [sic. I'm leaving that in. -- CY] and tends to be nerve-wracking. But it's better to be in a car than to be a pedestrian--maybe.

The American University of Cairo's student residence is on Zemalik, the posh island that was home to the Khedive's summer palace. The southern three-fourths of the island are a mixture of Central Park and Chicago's Museum Mile, with a few historical curios mixed in. The northern third, where the student residence is, is populated by embassies, upscale private schools, and residences for expats.

The student residence is a fancy building in tan marble, with our own devoted security service with a metal detector, and a concierge straight out of a French Pension. The Mens' and Women's wings are segregated, and mixing is strictly forbidden on the residential floors, as is any sort of Public Display of Affection. These are approximately the rules of Christ College, Cambridge, C. 1950. Not that I mind.

Food here is dirt cheap, comparatively speaking. On the island, the 26th of July, named for the day Nassar's Army seized the Suez, is the Fifth Avenue by way of /Bladerunner/ with the massive overpass of the bridge bracketing a mixture of neon lights with the higher-tone lounges, bars, and restuarants further inland.

By and large, the nicer restaurants are done in a way to immitate pre-war France, with bistros and brasseries with green leather and lots of brass lighting leading the way. Finding a place
that serves alcohol here isn't hard, and a good meal is cheap--fourteen dollars for an appitizer, main course, and two glasses of Lebanese wine.

Yesterday was Jumma, which meant that the American University held no classes so that the Muslims could attend services. This meant that the cafeteria at the residence was shuttered, so I went down to Costa Coffee, about a block away, for brunch. It sits at an three-way intersection; inside, it operates as a Starbucks-cum-Pret a Manger. The high unemployment rate in Egypt meant that the place was packed with young Cairenes who served the (mostly) Western clientele hand and foot, while Arab pop plays in the background. Outside, more observant Muslims unrolled their prayer mats for the second time that day.

If I were Tom Friedman, I'd wield my Mustache of Understanding to talk about "the flattening" that this represents. Instead, I'm going to simply say that Cairo is a densely populated Third-World city, looking a lot like Southern Europe--say Spain under Franco--with its various needs intersecting from time to time.

More to come.