Memories and lasting impressions - mixed feelings about Egypt

Lasting impressions of Egypt

It is difficult to form any real impression of a people after spending ten days in a hotel. Some things are readily recognizable – the formal welcome of the check in, the helpfulness of the concierge, the politeness of staff in and around the lobby. All that can be found anywhere. It is when you step outside that you get closer to reactions that are more authentic and slightly more indicative of what the indigenous people are like, but even then, you don’t get that close – not really.

For here you are – an obvious tourist; your camera around your neck, florid shorts and tee-shirt, carrying a small backpack, wearing a baseball cap to keep the sun off – you are instantly recognizable – if you dress like that. I don’t, though I do carry a camera and a small bag with my things in it.

Walking along the corniche in Alexandria, from the less crowded end at Montazah, we head for a man selling something he has cooked on a charcoal stove – it is sweet potato and very delicious. Whether he slightly overcharged us because of who we are, who we appear to be, we cannot tell. The price seemed reasonable so we partook of what was on offer.

What if the sweet potato seller had charged us a little over the odds – more than he would have charged an Egyptian passer-by, would we be upset and feel cheated? I doubt it for something as negligible as a snack. It is only when you want something either more expensive or something you have the equivalent of where you come from that you feel you have been ‘done’.

If you sit down in a café and drink a cup of tea, you often don’t ask the price of it – it seems churlish, almost rude. A cup of tea costs about the same all over the world – it will certainly be more expensive in central London or Berne or Stockholm, but in Egypt, you reason, it will be cheap, and it is. Whether it is the same price to a local doesn’t really enter your head.

Now let’s try buying something more expensive – a leather jacket, for instance. Now you want two things, a reasonable price and good quality. You get both and you are happy. If one is wrong – the price is too high, or worse, the quality is poor, you are more dismayed – you leave the shop without buying anything – you tar all the jackets and their owner with the same brush. Outside the shop you shake your head and move down the street on the look out for another shop selling leather jackets – a better quality of shop.

It’s a nice surprise then when you find a place that sells good quality jackets at a price that you think is reasonable. It is even nicer to be sold it by a gentleman – a former sailor – a captain, who, having sailed the seven seas, broke ice in the Artic, crossed the equator countless times, stayed ashore in Lisbon and Valetta, and who now looks after the shop for his ailing father, Ibrahim – well known around these parts, who has his own leather factory behind the shop. You feel you have been treated fairly – you saw the photo album of the slightly younger, fitter looking man who now sits before you offering tea, you inspect the jacket, look at each other as if to say, “This looks OK, doesn’t it?” and you cough up.

Later in the hotel room, you try it on and it looks better than it did in the shop – it’s a nice fit, a good colour and you are pleased with yourself. All is as it should be. Buying something should be like that, not traumatic or stressful. When it is the other way – stressful and traumatic, you are right in not opening your wallet or purse to the prevailing winds.

Walking around Cairo, looking for the Egyptian Museum, thinking happily that at last you will get to see the golden mask of the boy Pharoah, Tut-ankh-amon, the last thing you want is to be told that the somewhat drab, pinkish building down the street is closed, that it doesn’t open for another half hour or more. The man who lets you into this says he is a teacher, that he can show you a nice little museum to pass your time until 12.30 when the bigger one opens its celebrated doors.

The other, smaller museum, is always just around the corner. This one is a ‘papyrus museum’ it has the word ‘government’ painted in garish blue above the door. We know this is a sham, and we know we have been had, and turn in and quickly out of the place. The man who gave us the information is, of course, nowhere to be seen, though we do see him again later as we near the museum housing Tut’s death-mask; he is giving another couple of tourists the once over. We can almost hear him telling them that he is a teacher.

The Egyptian Museum turns out to be everything that is said it is, and more. It has a small bookshop on the way out in which the staff are almost invisible – helpful when asked but not pushy or insistent. After all, it’s not their business. They don’t get paid commission on anything bought, so they leave you alone.

In the small but well appointed Museum in Luxor things are different; the man selling a quite nice selection of books about the Pharoahs, Luxor Temple and Egypt in general seems to be on commission – but he doesn’t know his customer, at least he doesn’t know me. When I browse around this kind of shop, I don’t want to be continually offered knock-down prices, and I don’t want to be continually harangued to buy something, however reasonably priced it is. What I want is service, when I want it. I want some knowledge imparted to me when I ask for it.
“Does this book really tell the story of Hatshepsut’s ascendancy to the throne of Egypt – or not? Its price, I can get from inside the back cover or somewhere equally prominent.

I am only concerned that it is the right book for me in terms of content first – if that is not right, I won’t buy it no matter how much the price has been reduced. If it is, I will be happy to pay what I think is a fair price for it and I will consider myself fortunate to have found the very book I have been looking for and will consequently be happy with the man for pointing it out to me. But I will not be happy to be pushed into buying a book I don’t want, or can’t afford, no matter how good the sales pitch is. I do not want patter in a bookshop, I want intelligible, informative, accurate advice.

Checking out of the Sheraton Cairo on our last morning, I do not expect to find a car parking fee on my bill, and nor do I expect to be billed for 18 – yes 18 telephone calls I haven’t made. I can, however, appreciate that this might be a genuine mix up, I am getting 902’s bill instead of my own from 901.

What I find harder to take is charging me for the little sachets of tea and coffee left for our convenience in a saucer at the side of two cups and an electric kettle. I take it that those are included in the 100 USD I am paying per night in this magnificent hotel. It’s not the money – well, actually it is, but it’s the principle – the fact that I am being charged for something I get for free in four and five star hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi, Bangkok and Singapore.

Before we leave Cairo, let’s eat; there is probably nowhere nicer than Felfela Restaurant in downtown Cairo – actually on Talaat Harb Street. Here the ambience is wonderful – one can feel the elegance of people who eat here. The lady sipping water at a table near the entrance does so every day of her elderly life – she is the owner’s mother and is justifiably proud of her daughter’s business acumen and her cooking.

The head waiter, an elderly gentleman in immaculate livery, is patient, helpful, alert to his customer’s requirements, and solicitous of their need to eat well cooked, hot food. When the food promptly appears, it is well delivered and well cooked – it is lovely, delicious – everything that food should be.

The one man who left a lasting impression on me, but who I had the good fortune not to meet face to face, was the young man who imagined he could steal something small and made of gold and of course very ancient and precious from the very room in the Egyptian Museum we had been dying to visit.

This young man, I read yesterday on the Internet, stayed behind in the museum when all the doors were locked for the night. He hid himself in the toilets until it was safe to come out. He then prized open a glass display case, took several things, a golden dagger amongst them, and waited for the morning to come. He planned to just walk out with the other visitors when he would melt into the background as just one more of the hundreds visiting the museum that day.
He was caught, I am pleased to say, before he could abscond with his ill gotten gains. The missing items had been missed, and he was caught with them. Apparently, he looked as if he had spent the night awake, which of course he had. He was taken away, as they say.

I have two questions here; the first is to the young thief – where did he expect to sell his ‘finds’, undoubtedly worth a small fortune; the second question being to the authorities charged with keeping the museum and its priceless exhibits secure – how was this allowed to happen?

This last event sort of sums up my feelings about Egypt; it is a country with a wonderfully rich past, a legacy from 40 centuries, and yet it is held secure in a sort of cavalier attitude as if it the exhibits were no more than poor farm implements from the last century.

Perhaps that too is the appeal of Egypt; that they do not take themselves or anything too seriously. That is not quite true; they take money a little too seriously for my liking. This is not to say that I don’t care for Egypt and its people – I do, but I take what they say with the pinch of salt it deserves and with which they most probably intend it to be taken.
Robert L. Fielding