I walked out of my final final at noon today, feeling much lighter since all that knowledge had fled my head. I had four hours to get all my things together.
First, I went to pick up my driving stipend, and then to purchase a scarf and under-scarf that I matched to go with my jelbab. I had been wearing the jelbab all day without a hijab which attracted quite a bit of attention; one of my classmates Jordanian friends approached and wanted to know why. I could hear her laughing about it with her friends as I left.
I then made a quick trip home to finish packing, write my curriculum vitae to a professor for a recommendation letter, and buy batteries. I arrived at the 7th Circle to wait for Becky so we could share a cab to the airport together. I sat, waiting; soon, I was approached by a young woman, who asked me in Arabic if I was waiting for the bus. For the next 20 minutes we had a conversation in Arabic and English, establishing both of our life stories. I thought little of it and then went off with my friend and another CIEE student who had showed up looking for the airport bus. We shared a 10JD ride to the airport and went to look for where to go through customs. My flight, however, was with a different airline, and we were soon split off. I then spent a good fifteen minutes looking for another terminal and learning the Arabic words for terminal, departure, and arrival. Good to know.
Without problems, I handed in my passport and sent my baggage through the scan. This, however, is when my problems began. Now, it’s not a crazy airport like O’Hare, Dulles, or even Dayton…..the terminal was more like a gian warehouse; few people milled around and there was no wait for the security line. I didn’t even have to remove my shoes. My bag, however, was taken aside for a security check. Great, I remembered. I didn’t remove my baggie of liquids.
However, they didn’t care about the liquids. The man spoke no English – not that he should, of course, considering that this is Jordan and not America. However, shall we just say that several personal items were confiscated along with my camera batteries, and that it required an extra security guard and a random German tourist to get things straightened out? Shall we also just say that the words that you need in situations such as these are not ones that are likely to be taught in a class - ever? And shall we finally conclude this discussion with the caveat that a bilingual dictionary is essential if one is not perfectly fluent in the language? Yes. Yes, we shall.
Feeling somewhat frazzled after that ordeal, I wandered over to the check in counter and received my ticket. I then spent another eternity (okay, two minutes of confusion) looking for where to exit towards the upper storey. Finally, a security guard took pity on my plighted state and motioned me towards the “Immigration” station. I present my paperwork and walked through.
Upstairs, I spent my time looking through the duty-free shop and buying a reasonably priced drink and croissant. I peeked my head into a bar and coffee lounge and found a group of my program’s students.
“Hey, guys, how are you?” I walked up to them cheerfully.
Blank stares of confusion met me. I guess they hadn’t seen me in jilbab before.
Finally one of the girls recognized me. We established some of us might be on the same flight, but that they had a connecting flight in Cairo, where I would stop. I went on to wait for the flight, but did not wait long; soon, the gate attendant began calling out “Al-Qahiro, Al-Qahiro. Cairo, Cairo.” Surprised at the early time, I presented my papers and passed through. Then came another scanning station, where the men and women were separated to get a brief patdown. I was ushered into another waiting room, finding myself to be one, the only female and two, the only Westerner, and three, the only Western female, in a room full of working-class Egyptian men returning home. They paid me little enough mind, however, and went about their business of performing prayers, talking and arguing loudly, and stretching their arms across the chairs.
The flight was uneventful – and then I found myself in Cairo late at night and alone. I easily disembarked and purchased my visa. I arrived in the enormous main Cairo terminal and went through customs. I settled myself in the waiting area to wait for Becky who had gotten in on antoher flight before me. We had made arrangements that she would meet me at my terminal. I waited. And waited. I saw that my terminal only had EgyptAir flights and I knew she was on Royal Jordanian. Finally, I approached the information desk. First question, as always, is “Do you speak English?” He did, and informed me that her flight would be in terminal one, floor three and pointed me in the direction of a bus to take me there.
I got on the bus and drove towards terminal 1. The bus stopped in a decidedly non-terminal looking location and all the passengers got off. I approached the bus driver and asked in Arabic, “Excuse me, terminal 1? This bus?”
“Eh?”
“Terminal 1?” I was a little unsure of my pronounciation, since I’d never heard the word pronounced. I held up my finger. “One?”
He got the idea. “That bus, that bus,” he pointed in front. I thanked him and got onto the second crowded bus. It left the station and started heading out on a road. For a moment, I was decidedly nervous that the bus was heading into downtown Cairo towards a hotel or something and that my brief Arabic question to the bus driver had been sadly misconstrued. Soon, however, reason got the better of me. There is no way an airport would be furnishing a bus like this for free to a hotel downtown in Cairo; and there is no way there would be no place for baggage on a hotel bus. So I settled in to enjoy the ride.
We finally arrived at terminal one, and I dashed off to circle about the terminal. By now, nearly thirty extra minutes had passed and I feared I had missed my friend. Quickly, I ran outside and caught the next bus back to my terminal. It was the same bus driver as before.
“Terminal 1?” He asked.
“Yes.” I said. “I mean, no. This is terminal one.”
“What do you want?”
“Terminal 3. I want terminal 3.”
He looked at me skeptically, but motioned for me to enter the bus.
Arriving again at the terminal 3, I allowed the other passengers to exit before me. I had jost gotten off, when I realized the bus driver had followed me.
He smiled. “You speak Arabic?”
“A little.” I said. “I’m a student from Jordan.”
“Jordan? Ah. Welcome to Egypt. Islamti?” He motioned to the hijab.
“No, I’m a Christian. But it’s better this way.” I replied.
He smiled. “Ah. Beautiful, it’s very beautiful. Welcome to Egypt!”
I thanked him. Turning, I saw Becky and eagerly ran towards her as an island of welcoming English-speakingness and familiarity in a sea of uncertainty and Arabic. We quickly rehashed the last two hours of searching for each other and finally decided that we would get a taxi from that location.
The taxi-touts had been eyeing us in our conversation.
“You need a taxi?” One approached.
“Yes.” I let Becky do the talking.
We established where; he was asking for much more, but one of Becky’s Egyptian contacts had assured us that the ride should be no more that 50LE (Egyptian Lira, or pounds). He finally came down to our price when Becky put on her sad face and pitifully said please.
The taxi took us to the island of Zamalek, where our hotel was located. He stopped twice to ask for directions to our hotel. This, we decided, was probably not the best sign.
We arrived without problem, however, and went to check in. They had our names from the online reservation we had made but then insisted that we had to pay. Becky had made the reservations, but used her credit card; we were certain that we had already paid. Finally, the night clerk told us to go to our room and we could talk to the manager in the morning. (He really reminded me of my cousin, L.) We got onto the mirrored elevator that smelled of sweat and pungent men’s cologne. Our room was guarded by a door that was nearly impossible to open – it took the two of us, one pulling on the giant round knob in the middle, the other turning the key and throwing her body weight against the door as hard as possible. We put our things away, had a quick glimpse of the Nile from our small balcony, and decided to go back downstairs since the promised wi-fi didn’t exist in our bedroom. We went out to find the balcony; instead, we found a dark half-constructed room filled with toilets huddled around a center post.
We then went downstairs and had an interesting evening watching the people going up to the roof restaurant and bar. We decided we would not be two of them. Even if we could have found it.
Tired, we eventually returned to our room, eagerly awaiting the following day: the Pyramids!
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