Day 254: Cairo and Ma’adi (المعادي)

Dec 13 - Arrive 1:00 in CAI and wait over an hour for our bags. Stumble out of the terminal but fail to see our ride (requested from the hotel we are staying at). It takes another 40 minutes to figure out that the driver has fallen asleep somewhere, so the hotel orders another ride free of charge. We are in bed by 3:00.

No time to sleep late, or we will miss our included breakfast. Struggle along until about noon, at which point I decide we need to move on to our last task in the Cairo area. We pay our 20 cents and get on the metro at Sadat station, destination Ma’adi.

Ma’adi is a suburb south of Cairo and takes a lot of what is great about urban living in Egypt while leaving behind the more difficult parts. It has long been the area where embassy families and other VIPs live, hence more expensive housing and cleaner streets. Like everywhere else in Egypt, it has changed a lot in the 40 years since I lived there but retains much of the atmosphere I remember.

It took awhile after entering, while Odette played on the jungle gym, that the memory of my time there began to sink in. Walking through the high school building, modified as it is, really impacted me. Rather than being just a high school, it was the center of everything I did in those five years. I cannot think of any lasting negative emotion I associate with it. In a sense it was my launch pad for much of what I’ve done since.

Also went by Road 9, the street where we used to buy virtually everything.

Back to Cairo, and a quick dinner at Kazaz (Egyptian fast food). I go down to Tahrir Square to meet up again with my Syrian friend Ammar. I am early, so stand around the the Sadat Square entrance of the metro station. There really isn’t anywhere to hang around this spot except at the fence along the street. I go there and lean against it, but within a minute a policeman walks up and tells me I can’t be there. It seems such petty nonsense. After all, the armored vehicles are all parked at another part of the square so here should be fine. I move away and entertain myself watching other people doing the same thing, usually busy with their cellphones, until being berated by the policeman. One guy has earbuds in, and really gets the police guy angry when he doesn’t acknowledge him for the longest time. It does bring back memories of this sort of thing when I lived here.

Ammar shows up, so we go for a tea. He is still trying to get the call center job in their English department. Since I’ve known him, his capacity in English has improved a great deal. The job itself won’t be much of an advancement if he gets it, but the larger picture of fluency in English will benefit a great deal. We talk about the ‘Hafez Dynasty’, that is, the father-son presidents who have ruled Syria since 1971. When I was there in 1992, I likened Hafez Assad’s presence to that of George Orwell’s Big Brother. His portrait was in nearly every store, restaurant, and public building. It felt like you could never be away from his gaze. Ammar tells me that school was the same under the son, Bashir Hafez. The lessons were infused with official praise for the regime, in a sense blanketing everything in life with propaganda.

We talk a bit more about Egyptian-style scams, since I guy walks up and tries one on us in the street. Ammar says that really took him by surprise, the level of ‘scammery’ he found in Egypt, where so many people have a fake story to tell or a useless thing to sell. It was something he just never had to deal with at home.

I wish him the best of luck in getting the job. Life for him now is just trying to make some money and looking for better opportunities. Like other disembodied individuals I have met, cut from a future in their home cities or countries, there is a sadness to the randomness of fortune. Where you are born is such an overwhelming factor in what roads are open to you in life.