CAIRO SUNSET
AUGUST 2012
I arrived in Cairo at sunset. The Egyptair jet descended into a luminous orange-pink cloud of dust that blended the sun’s fading glow with endless dimly powered fields of quartz-iodine streetlights. I sensed danger as I stepped off the plane and into the hot night air. I gasped at the transition from cool airplane to hot dust and darkness. My friend and I travelled in a hired car with a professional driver, through hours of early night traffic – miles of snarl – dark vehicles with shadows at the wheels. Motor scooters sputtered and banged through the endless metal sludge of stopped cars and trucks. Dark outlines of ugly high-rise apartments passed by – many abandoned before completion, the driver said, because of greed, poverty, corruption or just bad luck. Cairo seemed like a sullen hulk of a city with small dark figures moving silently through dim alleys. The moon shone above the dust and shadows. Here and there I saw palm trees. Muezzins called the faithful to prayer into dark mosques silhouetted by the dim pinkness.
The next morning, I went walking alone through the hot crowded streets. I knew only a few words of Arabic. I used all of them. As I walked through the downtown area, I felt conspicuous as though my own paleness and corpulence was an insult to those who must endure the heat and relentlessness of desert sun and choking city air. A hundred and fourteen F degrees of dry heat imposes itself like a battle tank – no argument, just power and oppression. Unstoppable. Menacing. Indifferent. I wandered through the Egyptian streets ignoring the stares and the come-ons. They asked in English, ‘Where you from my friend?’ I said nothing and walked on. They were not my friends. They were hungry and angry and frustrated – made ruthless by the place itself – by the heat and the meanness of Cairo in mid-summer. There was sadness and pain in their eyes too, and contempt. Smiles seemed only to be part of the tourist show. On Cairo’s back streets, no one smiles. Children play, but they do not laugh. They learn to pray.
I slept in an elegant apartment on Zamalek, Cairo’s luxury island in the middle of the Nile. Our building was surrounded by security guards and green trees. There was air conditioning and fresh cotton sheets. Outside, at 3:00 a.m., the streets were silent except for the shrieking of a dog in death throes. A terrible and disturbing sound almost anywhere else, this now seemed sublime. It did not matter if the dog was suffering from an accident, or cruelty, or simply crying out in pain because of the place itself. Agony and outrage seemed more appropriate to this place than compassion and pity. I heard the dog’s cry of pain and desperation as music - an anthem for a dark place. The dog sound lasted until just before dawn, when the call to prayer proclaimed a new day of heat and struggle. On the streets below my apartment, indifferent men in uniforms with military berets, guarding wealthy homes, embassies and banks, sat through the night silently cradling their automatic weapons. They did not pray. They seemed not to hear the dog. I felt a growing conflict in myself between fear and compassion that made me cautious.
I spent several days observing the daily fight to survive in a prison of burning bricks, endless traffic jams, acrid air and petty aggression. Thousands of stray cats and dogs competed for the scraps on mountains of garbage left to fester in the sun. I felt the heat and the choking air, and the despair began to drain me of my own humanity. At the same time, I felt a growing need to witness a harsh rawness of living that I had never known or expected. I was an observer of life being lived without hope, in defiance of nature itself. I understood a deep truth that can only be known in the body, like love or spiritual revelation. I knew that for those who live such a life there is only struggle and eventual defeat with no expectation of improvement. For millions, there is only the mindless drudge of survival and the certainty of pain and discontent. For the faithful there is the promise of paradise.
Cairo seemed like an old boxer on the ropes, beaten to exhaustion, certain to lose, and hoping only for dignity before release. Once great and famous, now clinging to an old and useless set of memories that feel like dreams that have gone dim with old age. Living in Cairo, the only thing that cannot be tolerated is insult. Death might be more desirable when dreams are not possible.
People were still excited about the revolution that occurred less than a year ago. They say they feel crazy now – that the whole world seems crazy. What had happened? What had changed? ‘Everything and nothing’, they told me. After the first election in over 5000 years, the mountains of garbage and the shrieking dogs and the men with AK-47s were unchanged. The traffic snarl, the crime, and the hopelessness all remained. The people say the newly elected President would bring more discontent. Sharia law would prevail, dreaded by most with whom I spoke. The army would never give up its wealth and privilege. The heat and the poverty, the garbage and the traffic, would be there forever. Fantasies of freedom and prosperity were contemptible, brought and spread by foreigners, like me, to trick the people – to kill them and drive them into the sea. That is what many believe, I was told. It seemed pointless to argue.
I visited the Cairo Museum with its great ancient treasures – neglected amidst clutter and dust. Staff people read the paper and drank tea all day – ignoring the tourists. There is also a Museum of Modern Art – equally neglected and in a dilapidated state – book shop and cafe abandoned before completion – forsaken many layers of dust ago. Egypt’s modern art calls attention to the pain and the suffering of the place, sometimes by putting the truth in plain view, and sometimes by lying about it.
We traveled down the Nile – a ribbon of blue water that courses through the desert. Lush green farms and palm groves flourish for a mile, or so, on either side of the river – then the desert. Ancient Egyptians believed their country was only the Nile and its banks. The desert was nothing. it wasn’t even seen as real estate. Nobody wants nothing. Women wash their clothes in the river; men in row boats and feluccas, fish. Small villages and ancient ruins dot the shore line. As we traveled south, up the Nile, the heat increased, the pace of life slowed down. In Aswan, 300 miles south of Cairo, it was 125 degrees – 130 is not uncommon in summer. It has not rained there since 2008 but life there seemed somehow more pleasant and more orderly than in the big city. The people of Aswan are both Egyptian and Nubian – shades of brown and black, different from the lighter complexions of Cairo. At mid-day the streets are deserted except for tourists and a few air-conditioned cabs. In Aswan, in the heat of the day, surrender is the only reasonable option.
All over Egypt, I noticed that night-time is when the true nature of the people and the place can be seen most clearly. In the evening there is business, food, open markets and music. It is less severe and depressed than the streets of Cairo by day. Night-time is a time of reprieve when thousands bring folding chairs to the bridges over the Nile and enjoy the evening breeze. Lovers hold hands and eat chickpeas sold by late-night street vendors. Families stroll the causeway, women in long gallabiyahs and veils lagging behind their husbands. They linger into the early morning and savor the darkness and the warm gentle breeze.
I was told by many Egyptians, the pharos and the hieroglyphics are not important to the people of Egypt today, except as a means to attract tourists. Foreigners mean money and money means life. The tourists are despised for the insult of bestowing pity on living Egypt, while celebrating the glory of its infidel past. Islam teaches the interconnection of all people and all things. It bestows dignity and hope in a place where those things are more valuable than life itself. It has been said that the desert is God’s test for the faithful.
I carry Cairo like a wound that will not heal. I will think about the chaos and desperation, for years. I’m home now, in the cool mountains of the American South. I take refuge in the comfort and beauty of home. In Cairo, I had shocking insights into truth that I had not known before. I don’t know if the Cairo condition extends to other places in the region. I think it does. Maybe it’s everywhere, camouflaged by green trees, cool air, supermarkets, cars, credit cards and purple hills. I fear that most of the world is silent and suffering and hopeless. Everyone suffers one way or another. In Cairo the suffering seems more honest and more undeniable. The sun allows no convincing deceptions. You feel the truth of the place before the realization becomes conscious. You can smell it and taste it in the grit of the desert air. Being there is like falling into a hot dark pit - desperate to escape, everyone seeks the refuge of mythology - religion, politics and power that comes from guns and television.
Michael Grady 2012 © all rights reserved
