2016-11-25 – ISTANBUL-CAIRO-ADDIS ABABA – I meet a pyramid

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.