Where was I....?

Posted by Jordan Reiter on December 12 2007 at 1:33 p.m.

As my mom helpfully pointed out, I should have written that I would "do my best" to post the rest on Sunday, rather than "promise" I would.

So,right, where was I. Oh yeah, right. The Aswan airport. But before we all pile into the plane for the short 1 hour flight, a few more memories of Luxor and Aswan. Like the time just before the light show, when Toby, Mom, Dad, and I all sat in an qahwa munching on Gibna Roumi for dinner and drinking tea while watching professional wrestling on the TV along with the locals, who cranked the volume all the way up even though it was doubtful that they understood a word of what the wrestlers were shouting through clenched teeth. And, by the fire, being taught an Egyptian card game that turned out to be almost exactly like href="http://www.pagat.com/fishing/casino.html">Casino; the cards were so worn that they felt like pieces of waxpaper. In the Nubian-styled mosque, picking up a Koran with the intention, for the first time, of actually trying to read it (and mostly failing). The pillows in the hotel, hard and heavy.

We arrived back in Cairo and my folks, Sonia and Michael headed back to the hotel. Toby and I went back to my apartment. Toby was set to leave early the next morning. The next day he woke up, we gave each other heartfelt goodbyes, and then I futzed around on the Internet while I waited for the rest of my family to wake up and head to my apartment. We headed over to Kalimat so they could meet my classmates and the ever charming receptionist/teacher Heba. The plan then was to make our way to the Giza metro, and then perhaps go to the Egyptian museum and perhaps an interesting site like the city of the dead in the afternoon.

This is not what happened.

Instead, around noon my phone rang. On the other line, mostly static. I could barely make out who it was who was speaking. But as soon as I recognized the voice, my heart sank. It was Toby. Despite our hopes that a fine or fee would allow him to travel, the absence of a Visa on his passport was indeed taken seriously by passport control. They wouldn't let him leave. He missed his flight, and was waiting for us near the hotel. The whole family squeezed into one taxi and sped towards Tahrir. We all got off at Mugamma, the government building, and I went inside with mom while Sonia, Michael and Dad went off to meet with Toby and then go for lunch. Inside the Mugamma building, it was chaos. In case I don't get a chance to go into further details, basically you need to go to the Lost Passports window (as of writing #42), fill out a form and provide them with a photo. Then you need to go upstairs with the form and take it to some head guy, who will write some kind of note confirming you should get the visa. Then you go back down to the Lost Passport window where your passport will be stamped; this acts as the visa. Not all that complicated if you know where to go, but I didn't and we ended up travelling across three or four different windows before finally finding the right one. Fortunately, it was a Thursday which meant, I think, that it was less crowded.

Most of the day, until around 6, revolved around the problems stemming from the visa issue. We also had to get Toby's flight rescheduled. He was pretty upset about the travel being delayed; rather than going straight home he'd been planning to go to New York and basically all of his plans there were completely disrupted.

So for most of the day poor Michael and Sonia ended up just hanging out at the hotel which was probably not the most fun thing to do all day in Cairo, even if the Osiris is a very nice hotel.

To make up for it I took them over to Al Azhar Park again. We arrived just in time to hear the final call to prayer. Al Azhar Park is beautiful and definitely worth visiting anyway (and cheap at, I think, just 5LE for tourists and 3LE for residents, although I may have the prices all messed up). But if you can make it up there for the call to prayer, you will be able to hear the hazzan coming from what seems like every mosque in Cairo. We stayed there for a little while longer, and then walked back down towards the Khan el Khalili market.

We bought a galabeyya for a friend of Toby's, and then we did very brief loop through the Khan and then headed out to Attaba where we were going to try to find some shirts for Michael. We found some, and as we later found out paid way too much, but still prices that were perfectly reasonable from our standpoint, and a lot more reasonable than the prices we'd paid down in Luxor and Aswan, where I'd been a fish out of water. Back in my own turf, I felt confident enough to at least steer my family a little closer to a reasonable price. We headed back to the hotel in Wust el Balad (downtown Cairo) where we discovered, to my chagrin, that better shirts were available with retail prices lower than what we'd paid in Attaba. For one thing, I learned I probably shouldn't pay anything more than 25LE for a shirt in Attaba, especially since I can get them for around 25LE from a store in downtown.

That ni

Original Post: http://wanderingjordan.blogspot.com/2007/12/where-was-i.html

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