Walid

It’s been over a month since this happened, so regrettably, this story isn’t as fresh in my mind as I’d like it to be.

I had been staying in downtown Cairo for almost two days, after about two weeks in the suburbs, and hadn’t yet met up with anyone I had contacted from AIESEC AUC. I was pretty unfamiliar with the area; I knew where my hotel was, where I could find a good bowl of qushary, and where I could find a wireless signal, but that was about it. I wanted to wander aimlessly around the city, armed only with a sometimes false sense of direction, as I have a tendency to do, but Cairo was much more intimidating than anything I’d wandered. I could have easily gone to the typical tourist traps, but I’ve always felt that tourist traps in general are quite a bit removed from the true essence of a place. So for this day and a half, I hadn’t left the block my hotel was on.

I was walking back to the hotel at 8 or 9 in the evening, having just eaten, when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hey, what’s up, man?”

I knew from what I’d experienced at Khan al Khalili, a touristy bazaar in Cairo, that many people there knew a few words of English, as well as of many other languages, so I wasn’t really surprised. I kept walking.

“Hey, you there, how are you doing?” the same voice said. I turned around and saw a guy, maybe 28 or 30 years old.

“Why are you speaking English to me?” I said, “Is it just because you could tell I’m a foreigner?”

“Yes, just like that,” he said, as he snapped his fingers.

“So, why?” I repeated.

“I have nothing to sell you. I’m just interested in meeting people who aren’t from here. Interested in learning about different people, different mentality, different ideas. I’m going to a café a few streets away, if you’d like to join me.”

A good reason, I thought. I was interested in the same thing. I considered the alternative: sitting in my hotel room reading. Sure, it was risky to go somewhere with a stranger in Cairo at night, but I was feeling adventurous.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go. What’s your name?”

“Walid. Yours?”

“Thomas.”

We walked a few blocks, talking about where I’m from, why I was in Cairo, what I thought of Egypt so far, and things like that. Anyone who’s been there knows how chaotic traffic is, and how pedestrians seem to suicidally weave through moving traffic to cross streets. We came to a roundabout. To get where we were going we could have crossed two streets or directly through the roundabout. He put his arm around my shoulder and guided me, walking quickly, tangentially through the roundabout. After we reached other side, he removed his arm and explained to me that it’s very common for Egyptian guys to walk with one’s arm around the other (or even holding hands) in a perfectly heterosexual way. I’d heard about this and seen it several times already so I wasn’t weirded-out or anything.

We walked into a somewhat dark alley, where there were tables and chairs, and very humble, kind of run down-looking café. We sat down with a friend of his, who’d been waiting for him. I ordered shisha toufeh (apple tobacco in a hookah; I was eager to flaunt the few shreds of Arabic I knew). I told him to order me something Egyptian to drink. The usual drinks at such places are hot black tea or Turkish coffee, and I told him I wanted something different. He said something in Arabic to the waiter.

I got the drink and it was hibiscus tea, deliciously sweet, thick, and cold.

We sat at the café for an hour or so, chatting about random things: Egyptian culture, American culture, American music…Egyptian music? I had almost no idea about it. I told him I’d been interested in finding Egyptian music, but didn’t really know what to look for. He said that I could easily find something on the main streets, but I would get the tourist price, since everyone looks on the main streets. He said he knew a good place to go. I opened up to him a bit, which could have been risky, and told him I was in Egypt for an undetermined amount of time, trying to get a visa issue resolved. We concluded that I’d be able to do things such as contact consulates, make flight arrangements, and get in touch with AIESEC AUC people much easier if I had an Egyptian phone number. He said it’d be simple to get a sim card, and that he knew a good place to go for that, as well.

I learned that he was a tour guide for an Australian travel agency, and that he worked one week out of every month traveling around Egypt with foreigners. He’d met many people from all over, so it was fitting to his interest in meeting people and finding out about other mentalities. It also meant that he knew foreigners’ weaknesses and how to exploit them. This was a double-edged sword.

From the café, we went two blocks or so, and into another alley. There was a tiny kiosk with a variety of merchandise: music, movies, jewelry, food, drinks, cigarettes. Most of the music was in cassette form, which I was surprised to learn was standard there, despite my perception that CDs and CD players are cheap and ubiquitous now. Walid talked with the guy working there, and I assume he told him I was looking for some Egyptian music, but couldn’t be sure. The guy took out two CDs, and put them on the counter. I looked at them, and of course couldn’t judge the quality of music, but could tell they were bootlegged mixes of many artists. After waiting a minute for the call to prayer to end, the shopkeeper put one of the CDs into a stereo hidden somewhere in the kiosk and blasted parts of several songs. They sounded funky and belly dancy and Egyptian, and I had no idea if these were popular Egyptian songs, but I eagerly took the CDs regardless.

As we were walking away from the kiosk, I retrospectively calculated the price I just paid. 170 Egyptian pounds – about 30 US dollars. I had paid the opening tourist price, the price a tourist would pay before haggling. For some reason unknown to me now, I stayed with him, and got into a taxi to go to the place where he knew I could get a sim card for my phone.

The driver drove away from the central area we were in, about 10 minutes’ drive. We got out in an area where the sidewalks were covered with café tables and chairs, with middle aged men (zero women) smoking, drinking tea, and playing backgammon.

We walked into a mobile phone store, and showed them my phone. The people working there said it would work, but Walid asked if we could try the card in the phone before buying, a smart move. It didn’t. My phone was “locked” and wasn’t compatible with non-Cingular sim cards, at least not in its current state. We’d have to find somewhere that could unlock it. This basically means they connect it to a PC, which runs a program and cracks whatever security is installed, a procedure that could potentially ruin my phone if done incorrectly.

Again, for an unknown reason I told him I wanted to find a place to get it unlocked. We wandered up and down the streets, asking in each mobile phone store (of where there were surprisingly many) if they could unlock my phone. We finally found a place that could, and I handed over my phone and sat down to wait.

After a few minutes, Walid came to me from the counter and said “They said it will be 130 pounds. It is because they have seen your face, that you are foreign.”

“No,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere else.” 130 pounds was a ridiculous starting price for something that takes two minutes and five clicks of a mouse.

The next place we went, I stayed outside, out of view, while Walid took my phone in and negotiated. After five minutes he came out.

“They said it will be 30 pounds.”

Even as a starting price, this was reasonable. I nodded.

After they unlocked it, I took my phone to get a sim card and a calling card, which were fortunately at fixed, indiscriminate prices. Walid saved his number on my phone and called it. It works with Egyptian numbers. I sent a text message to my brother Stephen back in the States, and got a response within a minute. It works with international numbers. Success.

It was about 11:30 by this time, and knew that it was too early to call it a night. Walid suggested we could go to another café, or that we pick up some beers and hire a felucca, an Egyptian sailboat, and hang out on the Nile. Awesome idea.

We took a taxi to Garden City, a part of Cairo not far from where we were, and hired a boat. When we got out into the middle of the river, it was just after midnight. A lot of people consider Cairo to be a pretty dirty, visually unappealing city, but the city on the Nile at night is beautiful. I’m not very good at poetic descriptions, so I’ll just say it was surreal.

We talked on the felucca more about America and Egypt, and about Americans’ perceptions of Arabs. Being the skeptic of my nation that I am, I talked about the mostly unwarranted fears that Americans have of Arabian people. Surprisingly to me, Walid gave a number of reasons as to why the fears are warranted. He told me that a couple months before 9/11, that he had planned to move to the US with his Japanese wife, to start anew, in line with the “Land of Opportunity” cliché. He said 9/11 made this aspiration next to impossible.

I had seen myself what a mess Egypt was, relative to other countries, and could see why he would want to get out. I hadn’t really thought about immigrants in the US, but realized that he was well-educated, open-minded, ambitious, and would make a completely legitimate immigrant, if that expression even makes sense. I had sympathy for him, but didn’t know what to say, so I was silent for much of the boat ride.

We left the river at about 1:30 and took a taxi back to my hotel. I agreed to meet him outside the hotel the following night to go somewhere, maybe a concert or something. I was pretty mystified by the whole evening, and wasn’t really paying attention at this point.

The next evening came around, and I chose not to meet him, but instead to meet with some AUC AIESECers, both because I didn’t know where he said he was going and because I was still a little in shock.