It is my first official day in Cairo. I am here for the Ahlan Wa Sahlan Festival, a huge convention for dancers from all over the world held in the shadow of the great Pyramids. When I checked into the Mena House Hotel, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I exclaimed, “It’s like being in Las Vegas!â€, which my handsome porter did not quite understand. The journey from Los Angeles was so incredibly long and tiring that I didn’t have the energy to censor myself. Actually, I never ever have the energy to censor myself, which is probably a good thing sometimes.
Driving in was an adventure unto itself. Cairenes do not all believe in headlights. Our driver Tamir said that when it is late, Egyptians do not wish to disturb people with their headlights. It is amazing. The road was filled with potholes and little dips and hills, and there seemed to be no shock absorbers, so as I tried to fill out my registration form with an old capless Sharpie I found at the bottom of my bag my writing looked like perfect Arabic.
I had to keep myself from backseat driving, a serious compulsion of mine that has almost made me completely friendless. Self censorship was only attained by not looking out the window at all as we near-missed our way blindly for the entire hourlong drive to Giza. I settled into my room with the Las Vegas style view and fell asleep instantly, realizing I had not been able to lie all the way back for two days. I slept harder than Amenhotep. Then, when I woke up from my deep, relaxing, mummified sleep, my remains realized I had already hurt my back from hauling my huge, heavy backpack across two continents and dance classes didn’t even start for another day. I put an old lady menthol patch on my lower back and went out for breakfast.
The restaurant was filled with dancers from everywhere; beautiful women of all ages, nationalities and sizes. The one thing they all have in common is that everyone is dressed flamboyantly. There is hair down to there, lots of jingly foot jewelry and hot pink Juicy couture sweats mixed with orange Michael Stars t-shirts. I had listened to the advice of well-heeled travelers like Morocco and Princess Farhana and Suhaila Salimpour (watch your feet – I just dropped all those names! I know a million mainstream celebrities but they don’t impress me enough to even think of, let alone mention; but when it comes to bellydance stars suddenly I’m Army Archerd) who all advised modest dress. Even though Egypt is the birthplace of Oriental Dance, it is still a conservative Muslim country. I had on a very long silk shirt, buttoned up to the top, with button holes I literally had to cut open because I have never buttoned it before. In addition to that, I wore big, billowy pants that touched the ground and long, stripey wool socks that went up to my thighs. Over everything, I draped a huge, blue cotton shawl around my head, shoulders, chest and back. I looked like a chair that I had just undressed next to.
Since everyone told me not to go anywhere in the city alone, the first thing I did was go into the city alone. I got a cab at the hotel, and asked to be taken to the Khan Il Khalili, which is the oldest mall in the world, having been established somewhere around the tenth century. The driver asked me what I had planned to buy there, and then appointed himself my driver and guide for the day. I didn’t want a guide or a driver, especially when he tried to take me to an incredibly overpriced jewelry shop, and from there, his sister’s perfumery in suburban Mina. When he pulled into the perfumery I started to scream that I didn’t have time to smell perfumes and that I had only paid for a trip to the Khan and we were going to the Khan and that was that.
The city was blazing hot, and hotter still underneath all of my modest clothing. My head was melting from the thick, dark cloth absorbing all the sunlight and distributing it evenly all over my already enraged feminist scalp. Aida, the driver, relented and took me to the Khan. Despite my protests, he parked the car and came into the marketplace with me. I was glad actually, because having a man escort me felt more comfortable, and besides that, I had a hard time seeing through my veil. We walked the streets of the confusing marketplace as we searched for Al-Wikala, the bellydance department store- a sequin and appliqué Mecca, four stories high and filled with anything and everything anyone would want for the dance. It was impossible to find, and Aida asked people every few feet where it was. Nobody seemed to know, and we were getting more and more lost.
I bought a nut cake for myself and baklava for Aida and shoved it into my makeshift burka, and I was so overheated and crazed with hunger and jet lag I didn’t even mind being shortchanged. This is a poor country, and not only that, it is the slow tourist season. People do what they must to survive. If that means fucking me over for a few Egyptian pounds, that has to be okay, especially when you consider the exchange rate and kind of salaries that are made here. The poverty is grinding and horrendous, with evidence of it everywhere you look. I am not going to start a fight over the equivalent of $2US when there are so many poor people around just trying to feed their families.
We finished eating and went through a dark alley filled with men kneeling on their prayer mats. They ignored me as I tiptoed through them, feeling like such an infidel. We continued down the corridor and reached a small city of cats, all mixed breeds and purring, looking longingly at my lap. I wanted to pick them up but Aida urged me forward. We went into a small glittery shop where the owners proclaimed that this was Al-Wikala, that I had found it! I was very suspicious and I said that Al-Wikala had four floors, and then I started to climb the stairs in the back. The owners stopped me and I ran out of the store, followed by Aida and one of the owners of the fake Al- Wikala. I know that they really weren’t being malicious or trying to trick me. Egyptians hate to say no, so they will tell little white lies, bend the truth, in order to avoid being the bearer of bad news. It’s frustrating, but endearing, too in its own way.
Still on the hunt for Al-Wikala, we ran down even darker corridors. We nearly tripped over more men praying and then finally walked into the real Al-Wikala. I could tell it was the right place because it had the correct number of floors and it was filled with women from the festival. I bought several costumes, having my two guides hold all my merchandise and help me decide which ones were better. I shopped for almost three hours and marveled at the patience of the Egyptian men. No Western man would ever endure such a test. Aida and the fake Al-Wikala proprietor started to hustle for all the bellydancers in the shop, getting different sizes and colors for the ladies, running up and down stairs, giving opinions, etc. Of course they would not look at the costumes being tried on, but they folded them neatly after, readying them for sale.
When I left Al-Wikala, the bags were extremely heavy, and I was glad for my companions because they carried the spangley burden without complaint. We walked out to the street and Aida started to argue with the fake Al-Wikala owner, and then he left the shopping bags on the ground next to me and said he would be back. The two men walked away to continue their argument in private. I thought of leaving, but I had to pick up a cartouche that I was having made at the first overpriced jewelry shop that I was taken to against my will, and I had already paid for it, and was dependent upon Aida to take me there again. Besides, the bags were too heavy for me to carry alone. A woman in a heavy, black veil motioned me to sit on her chair, but then Aida arrived, flustered and apologetic and swept me back to the car. He was angry at me for spending so much money at Al-Wikala. He scolded me for not bargaining, which I thought not to do since the people who told me to go there also said that the prices were fixed and very good anyway. I said I was very happy with my purchases to which he replied that he was sick of me but if I was happy then he was happy. He drove me through the City of the Dead, a cemetery where the living coexisted with the dead in complete harmony. I wanted to drop Aida there and go back to the hotel for all his criticism and forced, non-consensual shopping.
We finally made it back to the jeweler, and after declining a hard pitch at a million different pieces of jewelry I liked but did not wish to buy, I was given the cartouche. The owner, Safy, said “Here you go! See? It is spelled B-A-R- H-A-N-A. I yelled that it was supposed to be F-A-R-H-A-N-A, not B-A- R-H-A-N-A! He quickly took it back to have it remade. Then Safy and Aida started to argue about the pieces of jewelry that they wanted me to buy, Aida bargaining prices for me, long after I had refused to purchase anything. The cartouche was spelled correctly and we were finally on our way.
I felt sick from the heat and the headscarf and the misspelling and Aida and Safy and the fake Al-Wikala and the smog and the poverty and the traffic and the all around culture shock and I was so grateful to be headed home. Then Aida’s back tire blew out. At first, I thought it was a bomb. Not such a strange thing, as there have been terrorist bombings in Cairo as recently as a few weeks ago. Plus, I thought a terrorist attack would be the perfect topper to this extraordinary and insane day. I thought, “Oh great… watch me get beheaded. That would be so typical.†Instead of a bellydance costume, I would have on an orange jumpsuit, and I am pretty sure the Bush Administration would not bend over backwards to ensure my safety. Just a hunch. Aida didn’t get it, and told me to sit in the air-conditioned shop. As Aida fixed the tire, Safy and I sat in the cool darkness drinking seven up. We discussed the war in Iraq, and the mistakes that George Bush could not bring himself to admit to. He said the deaths in Iraq are far more vast than we will ever know, that so much of the devastation is covered up by the media to keep Bush looking less like a criminal and more like some kind of freedom fighter. Safy agreed that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy but that Bush was far worse, and Iraq could have survived well enough with Saddam in power, but now, the situation looked hopeless. He said he prayed for peace constantly. As do we all. We gossiped about Dina, the most famous and scandalous bellydancer. He told me that she had made some kind of dirty film with her boyfriend. I thought, well, who hasn’t done that? But I didn’t say it of course… my own standards and practices still working overtime. Safy’s little boy came up and sat with us quietly, a beautiful child, with black eyelashes that seemed to create a breeze whenever he blinked. Aida finally was ready to leave and as we departed, Safy shook my hand and said, “I do not say goodbye, because we will see each other again.†Aida dropped me off at my Las Vegas style home away from home.
As soon as he pulled into the front of Mena House he started screaming at the doorman about Al-Wikala and how hard it was to find. In between curses over that particular part of Khan il Khalili, he requested about $40US, an exorbitant amount for a taxi ride in Cairo with frequent stops and opinions and detours and a terrorism scare and all, but I gave it to him – censoring myself yet again from many choice expletives and swear words for taking me to all these places I didn’t want to go because ultimately he deserved it. I wanted to go shopping, and he took me to the very heart of Egypt.