2016-11-25 – ISTANBUL-CAIRO-ADDIS ABABA – I meet a
pyramid
Find the biggest, widest lady in full black robes on the
street, get right behind her and keep walking. Do NOT look around, especially
not at the 16 million cars snarling
around you. Focus on the big, black back and just keep
walking. This is my strategy for surviving life on Cairo's streets. It has
worked every time I have braved a walk in Cairo. Crowds part, cars, trucks, pushcarts, donkeys, camels all swirl
around us. I suspect Moses used this technique at the Red Sea, large Egyptian ladies
being in good supply.
The technique has its limitations when boarding an airplane.
I'm on the jet ramp to Egyptair flight
838, destination Cairo. Stopping traffic directly between me and the door is a
mass of black cloth of a size most charitably described as 'Giza-esque', as in
the pyramids. And Miss Pyramid 1943 is
not happy. She, her cloths, her mound of bags, and huge suitcase will not fit
through the door. Behind me crowds
mumble. In front two ashen-faced, wide-eyed male flight attendants wince and shrink
under an assault of sturdy Arabic consonants, heaving arms, and matronly
indignation. I'm Italian. I read Irate Lady Semaphore fluently, even backwards:’This
plane is going NOWHERE until me and my stuff get through that door'. That extra
finger-flourish directly into their faces is the coup de gracelessness: 'And I
Will Tell Your Mother'.
The Red Sea parts.
Miss Pyramid 1943 grabs her bags, straightens her 3-foot wide
shoulders in triumph and slowly leads me and the rest of the passengers through
the door and down the aisle, scraping the sides like a
supertanker power
sanding the Panama Canal.
My seat is row 30. She processes slowly up the numbers, rumbling
past 27, then 28, then 29. I detect braking. She lurches to a stop at 30. It
takes a while for the black cloth (and what it doesn’t quite disguise) to stop
its quiver-rumble-shake, a super-sized bowl of jello in mourning drag. I quickly load my small backpack and Abel's
computer bag next to a suitcase already sitting inoffensively in the bin over Row 30. She gives me a look intended to
Put Me In My Place. The Red Sea curdles.
Miss P 1943 lifts a bag the size of the Sphinx, hefts it easily and power launches it into the
overhead. The plane tips. Bag 2 follows, only slightly smaller. The bin
protests. The laws of physics mumble, relent. The bag goes in. I hear my bags
squeal 'help'. Miss P moves on to row 31. Bag 3 fills that bin. The crowd is silent, awed by this avalanche of certain entitlement. I sit. I
don’t know where she finally lands. Then, she reappears, having reconsidered
her entitlements. She attacks the bin over
my head, pulls out the other guy's suitcase, dismisses it into space. I
catch it before it brains me. In full sail, she hefts her bag, harrumphs,
glares, and advances back up the aisle, all minions subdued.
We sail over Turkey, cross the Mediterranean, nudging the
western tip of Cyprus, and drop down into Egypt. The Egyptian call it el Misr,
which is why the code for Egyptair flights is MS. The name 'Egypt' is a
corruption of an ancient Greek corruption of the name of an Egyptian city, not even
of the whole country. And, yes, being in the land of the Nile, the pyramids, the
Sphinx, the female pharoah Hatshepsut, beautiful Queen Nefertiti, her husband,
Akhnaten, the first monotheist, and of the boy king, Tut, her
step-son/son-in-law… gets me every time, even if I am here this time for
only 7 hours.
Super helpful Hamdi, totally charming, takes his Egyptair uniform
seriously, welcomes me to the transit desk and offers a hotel room and meal for
the long layover. I skip the bed, should have skipped the lackluster meal. The
on board Hindu meal at 35,000feet was delicious,
however, and my taste buds generously overlook the shortcomings of this meal at
sea level.
I hunker down with my Kindle for the 6 hour layover,
slogging through a 'time travel with dinosaur' epic of stupefying
predictability and repetitiveness. It’s perfect jet-lag fodder.
The trip gains many points when I meet Mulay Lud, who tells
me the sad story of his homeland, the almost-country of Western Sahara. The
travel bug starts to gnaw at another spot on the map.
Passport Guy and Customs Guy yawn me into Ethiopia.
A cab to
Mr. Martin's Cozy Hostel is no problem, even at 4-am. Gate Guy lets me in.
There is no one else in sight Then the
pile of blankets on the couch stirs, starts, bolts upright, checks the ledger. There
is, alas, no room at the inn, my reservation misplaced. Mr. Martin's Cozy
Hostel loses several stars AND the 'Cozy'. I have been up for 20 hours. The
floor looks good. Blanket Lady notices my covetous glances blanketwards and offers
the hotel across the street. That works. There is a room, and, even better a bed,
and mattress, between me and my plunge
towards the floor. It’s spotless, spiffy, quiet. I succumb.
I will awake once
again in Ethiopia.