Off the Beaten Tracks

by Irina Bogatyreva

  I have to work hard to keep the waves from knocking me off my balance. I have absolutely no desire to fall into this awful water – there’s so much salt that the water tastes bitter more than salty. Eventually I find myself in water up to my shoulders and I lie down carefully stretching out my neck to protect my eyes.

  It is indeed impossible to sink. But you can’t really swim, either: your legs keep getting tossed up like a floater. It’s more comfortable on your back: you sit on the water as if in a large armchair. It’s so funny! Hop! With one easy push you turn on your own axis. Hop! You turn in the other direction. You spin like a top, and just like a child watching a spinning top can’t conceal its joy and delight, so I too share my impressions with William, not in words, but with a ringing laugh.

  The sun apparently wants to follow my example and have a swim. It’s already slowly sinking into the sea. Or maybe it just wants to look closer and see who’s having such unabashed fun there laughing and tumbling in this big salty puddle.

  As the day’s ending I can’t refuse William’s invitation to spend the night in his house which makes the hospitable Jordanian sincerely happy.

  At home, especially for me, his wife prepars a dish of chicken with rice. For dessert they offer me their wedding photographs. I open the album – it is empty. What’s this? I opened it from the wrong end: here albums, like books, begin with the end. Though, it’s the end for us but for them it is the beginning.

  In the morning William persuades me to go have a look at a beautiful mountain valley not far from their village. Our conversation turns out to be more interesting than the view.

  “Tell me,” asks William, “is it true that in Russia there are people who put their old parents in the care of special institutions?”

  “That is true,” I answer. I don’t go into details, knowing that here it’s impossible to abandon elders or sick children, that it’s impossible to leave the neediest people without help.

  William asks about the relationship between men and women. News about our “freedom” in such relationships is renowned even in these parts.

  “I was engaged for a whole year,” says William. “And all that time I did not even touch my future wife. And I am happy it was this way.”

  William actually practices his religion. When the time to pray comes he leaves me and goes to pray.

  So what can I say about this striking “freedom” in male-female relationships? Or about the old people’s homes and the orphanages? How can I explain this to him? And I tell him about how the moral and religious foundations in our country were completely destroyed and only now are being restored.

  In parting, William hugs me tight:

  “You are the most surprising individual I have ever met.” And he adds with a secretive air: “You are like a sister to me now. Think of me as your brother.”

  I smile to myself as William tells me something that I already know.

  Chapter 4. Unexpected Egypt

  First meeting

  The ferry takes me across the Red Sea that separates Eurasia from the African continent. We are about to arrive in the Egyptian town of Nuweiba and I will step onto African soil for the first time in my life. But I’m not expecting anything good to come of this.

  Egypt is one of the few countries where hitchhiking is officially prohibited. I’ve heard dozens of stories from friends about roadblocks where my friends had to get out of cars that had picked them up. Inside the car you have to hide from the police, to play “cat and mouse” with the police, as my friend Anton Krotov put itt.

  Locals are prohibited from inviting foreigners to sleep at their house. By the same token it is prohibited to invite foreigners to visit.

  Sleeping in a tent is prohibited.

  All these prohibitions are supposedly aimed to improve security for tourists. In fact, obviously, they ensure income for the tourist business.

  I don’t expect anything good from Egypt. Will I be able to hitchhike there? Or will it be a constant cat-and-mouse chase and I’ll get sick of it and quickly regret having come here?

  These restrictive laws are not even the main drawback of one of the world’s most visited countries. The tourism network has ensnared the country and people’s minds so completely that Egyptians now perceive white people exclusively as walking fat wallets.

  “The prices are automatically raised two or three times for tourists,” they told me about Egypt. I’d also heard plenty of stories from friends who exposed these frauds by being able to read the Arabic prices and pointing it out to the sellers.

  “They ask for money for the smallest service. Even for things you don’t need and they’ll go on pushing them on you.”

  I’d also heard any number of frightening rumors about the prevailing chaos and messiness in Egypt.

  “Even in Jordan,” my friend Igor was telling me when we ran into each other in the port, “if they see some weirdo on the road driving in a slapdash way they say, ‘Oh, he’s got to be from Egypt.’”

  * * *

  Two or three hours ago to my question: “When will we leave?” the driver replies: “In half an hour,” and later he repeats the same thing.

  “In fact, the bus won’t leave until it is packed to bursting,” explains Igor, a seasoned traveler used to the way things work in Egypt.

  Finally, the last passenger who wants to go to Cairo gets on. They are carting a huge wheelbarrow filled with a mountain of trunks.

  “But there’s no more room on the roof.” I look puzzled at the packed roof-rack.

  “What do you mean?” Igor is also surprised. “It’s practically empty.”

  Indeed, through some miracle and a few ropes, the driver and his helpers manage to tie on all the luggage of the last passenger. But just as I was hoping for our imminent departure, a huge cardboard box falls from the roof onto the pavement with a loud thud. The driver and helpers look on impassively. Then they decide to see what’s inside. The box contains nothing less than a TV set. Somehow no one is particularly worried. No big deal.

  Cairo sketches

  There are only a few truly large cities in the world. It’s just not easy to get an accurate count of the population, to separate the city from the suburbs, and so a few of the world’s biggest cities fight to be considered the largest and most populous: Shanghai, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, and Cairo.

  Cairo! It’s hard enough for me to live in Europe’s biggest city, Moscow. And now Cairo!

  I’m walking along sidewalks thick with pedestrian traffic on Tahrir, one of the main streets in Cairo. On intersecting alleyways the cars are parked so close together it’s impossible to squeeze between them, they seem to be leaning in for notso-tender kisses.

  No turbulent river could compare with the noise rising from the madly rushing street traffic. And the noise gets even worse when the traffic jams. Car horns are used much more in Egypt (as in most Arab countries) than in Europe or Russia. Is it simply that the desire to communicate is stronger here?

  I observe the language of traffic with amazement while still on the highway. The driver wants to pass: HONK! Giving a warning, apparently. But then once he’s already passing and even with the other car: HONK! As if to say, hey, I’m passing you, look out. And then once he’s passed: HONK! As in, everything’s fine, see you later. A tractor by the side of the road: HONK! A man walking: HONK! A donkey: HONK!

  So now just imagine what happens in a city teeming with taxis when none other than a foreign woman is walking along the side of the road. All the taxi drivers salute me and offer their services, not suspecting that I can’t stand the noise.

  Along the sidewalk packed with all sorts of traders, pedestrians and parked cars, a motorcyclist goes speeding by. How is this possible when even pedestrians can barely make their way through the crowds? The motorcyclist doesn’t take his hand off the horn. Still, everyone is so accustomed to this sound that the motorcycle dude has to apply his finest driving skills.

  And then right behind him a guy on a bicycl
e comes rolling by with a large wooden construction filled with freshly baked bread on his head. How can he keep hold of all that while pedaling at the same time?! And how can he find his way among the dozens of people walking, standing, sitting? The guy asks people to step aside.

  “Ps-s-s, ps-s-s, ps-s-s,” he hisses softly. And people, oddly enough, make way for him.

  Road theme, continued

  Traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are rare. How do you cross these streets, clogged twenty-four hours a day? You just have to throw yourself into the stream; at least the current’s not too fast. You won’t get knocked over although cars don’t really stop either, they’ll just continue to move on slowly waiting for you to make your way through and jump back out onto the sidewalk.

  And even when there are traffic lights… In Russia I never walk on red and here I wait just as patiently for the green. When the little green man appears I walk with him even though the cars continue driving across the black-and-white pedestrian walkways. Fortunately, I’ve learned to get by even without the stoplights.

  Metro

  Because of constantly rising prices in the Moscow metro I’m anxious to find out about the price of metro tickets in Cairo. I breathe a sigh of relief and surprise when I see that it isn’t much: one pound (this means five rubles).

  On the platform, here and there you can see placards with the image of a woman: there are special train-cars for women only. There are no men in these cars, well, if you don’t count the occasional brazen salesmen offering all sorts of trinkets for which women worldwide seem to have a weakness.

  I rode in these cars several times. It seemed like the women would burst out laughing any moment.

  Women can ride in the other cars too, especially if accompanied by a husband or male relative. I also noticed a couple of single women. Apparently they’re not too fond of the chicken-coop either.

  The AFT House

  In Cairo I didn’t stay in a hotel. In this unusual city I had a chance to stay as a local rather than a guest.

  My friend Anton Krotov, a true traveler, writer and founder of the Society of Free Travelers, thought up a new way of exploring the world. Instead of just travelling in the sense of getting there and going through, you rent a house or an apartment in an interesting country for three or four months. You live in this interesting place and make short trips to the environs.

  So in late December 2008, Anton rented an apartment in downtown Cairo and filled it with a whole crew of interesting people and travelers, myself included. The place was on the sixth floor of an ordinary building with Egyptians living in it, a hardware store on the ground floor and a mosque right around the corner. The call of the muezzin and the Friday sermons resounded through our apartment. It was just a pity we couldn’t understand a word.

  Culture

  On the first day Anton led me out onto the balcony of our apartment. The very center of the city – Tahrir Square (after the main street) – was indeed only steps away. The roofs of the tall buildings surrounding us were piled with trash.

  “There you go, take a nice long look,” laughed Anton. “Only the tallest buildings are clean. All the other ones get dumped on from the windows of the surrounding buildings.”

  Coming out of the building I often had to jump over piles of trash left by people taking out their trash to the dump. You either have to jump over it or walk around it.

  Subway tickets are cheap but not always so easy to get.

  One man pays while the next one is holding his money ready, and I’m third in line. When it’s my turn to buy a ticket, an Egyptian man nonchalantly shoves his money to the cashier right under my nose. Discouraged, I look back at him while another guy does the exact same thing. It’s just my perception of the situation that I was next in line: they don’t have this concept. Or at least I never picked up on any signs of its existence.

  Cairo Museum

  I always used to think that my favorite museum was the Tretyakov Art Gallery. Now I’m not so sure anymore.

  In front of the famous Museum of Egyptian History there is a papyrus plant growing in a small shallow pool, its leaves spread out like the fingers of a hand. It’s one of the few papyrus plants left in Egypt. In his book Ra, Thor Heyerdahl, the famous Norwegian traveler and ethnographer, writes about how difficult it was to find Egyptian papyrus to build a papyrus boat.

  “Miss! Ma’am! Mister!” Swarthy Arab sellers surround you as you exit the museum.

  “Papyrus! Papyrus! Original papyrus!” They are hawking large “papyrus” posters with images of the pharaohs, pyramids, and symbolic maps of Egypt.

  “Ten pound!” They fix you with an anxious gaze while you patiently make your way forward.

  My friends and I wonder what they actually make these “original papyrus” from – probably just dried palm leaves.

  I have the good luck of getting a guided tour of the museum. Otherwise I’d have a hard time getting oriented among the five thousand pieces on exhibit.

  An hour, two, three, four… and my eyes are still wide-open, my lungs still giving out sighs of astonishment.

  The Cairo Museum amazes with the wealth of its historical treasures, despite the fact that it is also the most burgled museum in the world.

  I was there at the very end of my journey and nevertheless decided that I would have come to Egypt just to visit this museum.

  Food

  An apt observation: in cheap countries you spend a lot more money than in expensive ones. When everything is expensive you don’t buy anything. But when everything’s cheap you don’t hold back and buy everything on sale.

  I’ve never tried fresh-squeezed orange juice in my life. Until now. Two pounds – ten rubles in Russia, or around 30 cents – and the shop-keeper picks one orange ball out of the pile, a second, a third, slices them in half and into the maw of his squeezer. A minute later, the juice comes pouring out in a cheerful, fidgety stream into the thick transparent glass.

  And the fruit cocktails they make there!

  I’ve already made short work of my cocktail but I still remain standing by the kiosk to watch the nimble hands of the cocktail-master at work. A white (probably milk-based) beverage pours into the bottom of the glass, then yellow (probably mango juice), then strawberry. The whole thing is crowned with a headdress of banana, apple and strawberry slices carefully arranged and lined up against the sides of the glass. But why does the vendor have a small plastic bag? Oh! He pours all of this beauty inside. It turns out this particular cocktail has been ordered to go by a woman wearing a dark-red burqa. So the decoration process was just to give her aesthetic pleasure?

  Kosheri! A mysterious word, right? Amazingly, the ordinary hotel tourists who come to Egypt don’t know this word. So why am I bringing it up? The kosheri spot is another place I love to observe the vendor’s dexterous work, unable to keep from drooling.

  I get my portion to go (this is cheaper, by the way): so the vendor produces a plastic box, puts in a pile of rice, different kinds of pasta, peas, deep-fried onion and all of it bathed in a thin tomato sauce, plus two other sauces in small plastic bags. I am holding a warm box giving off a tempting tasty aroma.

  Two pounds! Ten rubles! And you’re full.

  You find yourself trying to convince yourself over and over that you’re hungry again.

  All she needs is a hookah

  All of the ground-level floors along the street are occupied with shops. Sometimes the shop-windows move apart as if to let one into the cave-like semi-darkness. A tea-room! Small tables only big enough to accommodate a few small tea-glasses and two pairs of elbows. You never see any women in these places. But they never go without men. To accompany the tea and conversation there are hookahs and backgammon.

  I love tea but in Russia we don’t drink just plain tea. So first I go peek into my favorite shopl, the one selling sweets. What a pity we don’t have anything like these sweets in Russia. Enormous round metal trays present finely sliced baked goods of every possible va
riety. Sweet and very rich. Sometimes with pistachios, their green color highlighted dramatically against the golden-yellow background. They are really lovely but you have little time to admire them before you eat them up.

  I’m carrying a plastic plate with these Eastern sweets, enjoying its weight. This time I take a table outside. The waiter brings out a glass of hot sweet tea and a glass of water to wash it down with. Casting glances at my solitary feasting, Egyptians promenade past. I don’t pay attention to anyone and peacefully enjoy my treat.

  “There she is! Look at her! All she needs is a hookah,” a familiar male voice rings out loud and slightly indignant nearby.

  It’s a friend from the AFT apartment coming back from his trip round the environs.

  “What, can’t I sit here?” I say apologetically for no apparent reason, also smiling in response, and invite my friend to join in my exotic feasting.

  Religion

  The spot! Half of all Egyptians (men) in Cairo have a dark plum-sized spot right in the center of their swarthy brows (the percentage of spotted men is much lower in the rest of Egypt).

  Like a medal, this spot is a mark of particular piety and religiosity. Muslims touch their foreheads to the floor several times during the namaz. So they develop this sort of callus. But why don’t other, no less pious peoples have such spots, like in Afghanistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia? We put this question to a number of Egyptians. And hear several different explanations in response:

  Egyptians have softer skin than other nationalities.

  The prayer rugs in the Cairo mosques are made of very rough material.

  Egyptians are more fervent than the others: they don’t just touch their heads but bang them against the floor while praying.

  We have our own explanations too. Egyptians probably just paint the spots on their foreheads. Maybe to demonstrate their piety. The second explanation: the prayer rugs in the mosques are not rough but just dirty.