I first heard about the February 22nd terrorist attack on Cairo’s Khan-el-Khalil market when a friend called from Germany. Hours passed in a daze before I went online and found more details about the attack on the famous market, where I had spent a memorable Sunday evening, just last winter with my son, Michael, and his Egyptian friends.
I have a photograph from that night. We were gathered around a tiny brass table laden with water bottles, small teapots and glasses. We were inside the bazaar at a table in the alley outside Fishawi’s Café. Beside each person, save me, was a sheesha, or standing water pipe. In the photograph are my son and his friend Sharif, who lives in London but had come to Cairo for a family wedding; his sister, Yasmin; and their step-sister, Natalie, as well as a family friend, Steve, who was a university student in Pennsylvania. Also at the table were Khaled, a high school friend of Sharif’s whom my son had met in London, and Khaled’s friend Waled.
In a way, we were there because of Khaled, who had offered to show Michael around if he came to Cairo and graciously included me in his invitation. Since elementary school, I had wanted to see the pryramids and as a college student, I had studied Egyptian history as part of my major in Middle Eastern Studies. At that time, I couldn’t afford to travel to Egypt but later, when I could, the country always seemed a little too dangerous to visit, especially with two children in tow, especially after the terrorist attack in Luxor. But as I approached 50, I realized that it was time to take a few calculated risks. Egypt was at the top of my list of dream destinations, the place I would immediately hop on a plane to see if I ever got a terminal diagnosis. So why wait? Going to Egypt meant confronting not only a fear of terrorism but also more personal fears, of being raped, which I very nearly had been while traveling as a young woman in another North African country, and fear of getting sick. My intrepid son offered to come along but a sudden spike in airfares delayed our plan for a year. When Michael met Khaled the following Novemeber, the timing suddenly seemed serendipitous. A fortnight later, we had booked our trip, arriving in Cairo shortly after my 51st and my son’s 27th birthdays, at the beginning of my sabbatical year.
Sharif and his sisters turned out to have booked the same flight to Cairo. On our arrival, Sharif showed us where to get a visa and negotiated a taxi to take us to the boutique hotel we’d found on-line. After checking in, we met Khaled across the road at the local Gar, an Egyptian fast food chain.
Michael and I both noticed the Viagra sandwich on the menu but were too embarrassed to ask what it was. Khaled ordered hummus (garbanzo bean dip), tabbouli (cracked wheat salad), baba ghanoush (eggplant dip), falafel (garbanzo bean patties) and fool, (fava bean dip) to go with the hot pita bread. I was nervous about getting Pharaoh’s Revenge, but relaxed a little when Khaled pointed out that in a place this busy, the food wasn’t sitting around and was more likely to be fresh and hot, which it turned out to be, as well as tasty.
Late the next afternoon, Khaled took Michael, Steve, and me to see the pyramids. We drove through the back streets near the famous tombs, eventually stopping at a stable. It had been years since I’d been on a horse and to say that I was anxious would be an understatement. Fortunately, when my horse started trotting off on its own, the guide grabbed the reins, slowed its pace and steered us in the right direction. Gradually, I got used to the rhythmic gait of the horse moving through the sand. I started to relax and really enjoy the amazing scene. There were no cars, no buses, no houses, no pedestrians even, just horses and camels, with or without riders, the pyramids to our right, and elsewhere, desert as far as the eye could see. Despite the occasional dune buggy whizzing by, there was a timeless quality, as though nothing much had changed in the past century, We headed up to a ridge where a weathered man handed us cups of hot tea as we watched the sun set. Then back through the falling darkness, the guide now managing not only my horse but also Steve’s, which kept heading in the wrong direction. While my son rode peacefully alongside us, Khaled had disappeared. No, he hadn’t gotten bored with our leisurely pace; his horse, eager for dinner, had galloped all the way back to the stable.
For our own dinner, we headed to Andrea’s, where we met up with Sharif, his brother and sisters and several of their friends, male and female, most of whom had gone to Cairo’s American High School. Before reaching the main entrance, we passed women baking pita bread over an open fire and rows of rotisserie chickens being roasted outdoors. The food was simple but cooked to perfection. In addition to moist chicken and hot pita bread, the 12 of us shared mezzes, or appetizers, including filo dough triangles stuffed with spinach, grape leaves filled with rice and ground meat, grilled eggplant, meatballs, French fries, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes, drumsticks, and various dips including yogurt, baba ghanoush and hummus.
The following day, Michael and I visited the Pyramids again on our own and took each other’s pictures in front of the Sphinx. We toured the Egyptian Museum and saw some of the finds from King Tutankhamun’s tomb; we had seen some of the same funerary items 25 years earlier at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum, although my son, who would have two at the time, had no memory of them. Later that afternoon, we had Cleopatra Cosmopolitans, made with hibiscus instead of cranberry juice, in the bar at The Mena House Hotel; we could see one of the pyramids through the window. For dinner, Khaled took us to a traditional Egyptian restaurant, Abu El Sid, where my favorite dish was the Circassian chicken, a mound of rice and chicken blanketed in walnut sauce.
It was near midnight that evening when Khaled found a parking place near the Khan El-Khalili souk, or bazaar, which dates back to 1382 A.D. There were four of us, including Khaled’s friend, Waled; Sharif, his sisters, and Steve would meet us later at Fishawi’s, a café in the bazaar which has been open 24/7 since 1773, with the exception of one day during WWII. Many of the shops in the bazaar were shuttered by this time on a Sunday evening, but a surprising number were open. They were clustered together by type: perfume sellers, clothing vendors, spice merchants. We wandered around for a while, watching a man making fettir, Egyptian crepes, and stopping in various shops for a quick peek. I was surprised by how many things seemed to be made in China.
At a perfume store, we checked out a variety of scents: from amber to gardenia to blends with names like Moonlight Garden. The clerk insisted that the perfumes were all natural, no alcohol, and put a lighter near an open jar to prove it. The shelves of the shop were lined with delicate blown glass bottles, some in the shape of animals, like the elephant that Michael bought for his girlfriend. I chose a small curved vial, with swirls of gold and red and 50 ml of Cleopatra’s Secret, which smelled of roses and spices.
Sharif phoned to say that they were on their way. When we got to Fishawi’s, the café itself was full, so the waiter simply grabbed a few chairs and a tiny table and set us up in the adjacent alley, adding another tiny table and more chairs when the rest of the group arrived. Each table was just big enough to hold one of the brass trays the waiters carried on their shoulders then set down with a flourish. We ordered soft drinks or tea-- I choose hot karkadeh, hibiscus infusion-- and everyone but me ordered a waterpipe with tobacco flavored with apple or watermelon. I would have tried one but I had arrived in Egypt with a cold that I didn't want to worsen.
After chatting for a while, Sharif led his sisters, Steve and I off on a shopping expedition. In one three-story shop, I watched Sharif and Yasmine haggled in fluent Arabic for a dumbek, or hand drum. They also bargained on behalf of Natalie, who had found a snakeskin handbag and a couple of chunky bracelets that would look great back in London. Steve thought he’d like several statues of the Egyptian gods to take back to friends in the States. When he asked how much they were, Sharif explained that Steve had to first decide what he was willing to pay for them and then they could start the bargaining process. Although I had studied Arabic at university for more than two years, I understood virtually nothing of the conversation but it clearly involved more than prices; there was a back and forth banter with smiles and laughter. In fact, the verbal interaction seemed to be the main point, with the actual exchange of purchased objects and Egyptain pounds a mere after-thought.
The next morning my son and I left for Luxor, where we visited the ancient temple complex at Karnak, with its statue of the lion-headed goddess, Sekhmet, tucked away in side shrine, and the temple of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh, carved into the desert rock, both monuments so enormous that it was hard to believe they were built by ordinary human beings. We saw descendants of the builders, dressed in long, traditional robes, living in mud-brick houses near the papyrus fields; the scene could have been from the distant past, save the ubiquitous cell phones. One evening, we ran into friends from Stanford, who suggested a hot air balloon ride over the city of the dead.
Waking early to meet the van on our last full day in Luxor, I was nervous and excited. Taking a hot air balloon definitely involves some risk, but I rationalized that the Egyptian government has a vested interest in keeping the number of crashes low. As it turned out, our pilot had previously flown jets for Egypt Air but had switched to ballooning to spend more time with his family. I tend to get airsick easily and I’m also afraid of heights. But my excitement over having a bird’s eye view of the monuments we had previously explored on foot won out over my anxiety, which proved mostly groundless. Perhaps because the ascent was slow, vertigo never hit and the only wave of queasiness I felt came at the end, when the basket hit the ground, and passed quickly. Overall, the ride was exhilarating.
I’m glad I took the chance and went to Egypt. Perhaps because I was an older woman, the mother of a grown man, I was accorded a certain level of respect, and not only by my son’s friends. Michael, who is engaging and genuinely interested in the lives of other people, was treated with respect and friendliness. Sometimes people assumed that I was my son’s wife, rather than his mother, which we both found hilarious. I had only one creepy moment, when someone touched my upper arm in passing; I turned and shouted “Imshee,!” Egyptian Arabic for “Go away!” but the offender had already disappeared into the crowd. Like every other tourist, we were accosted every few yards as we walked along Luxor’s main thoroughfare by men offering to sell us a boat ride, a taxi ride, a carriage ride, but a polite “Laa Chukran,” or “No, thanks” in Arabic was sufficient. I never felt in danger, but then again, there were soldiers everywhere, particularly in Luxor. Nor did I get sick, although I was careful to drink only bottled water or hot tea and avoided raw produce and dairy products. My only culinary regret was that I didn’t try the milk pudding, one of Egypt’s national dishes.
There is always a certain amount of risk involved in traveling, as in life, and therein lies some of the excitement. For me, traveling is a way of encountering other ways of being, thinking and doing, as well as a way to gain perspective on my own life. Often, I return with a deeper appreciation of what I have, both as an individual and as an American.
My decision to travel to Egypt was also an opportunity to face my fears-- of political violence, of personal assault, injury and illness, even my fear of heights-- to acknowledge them, manage them and move through them, and in the process stretch my capacity to do so again, in future situations.
The whole point of terrorism, whether political or personal, is simply to terrify, to cut away the ground beneath our feet, to rip away the illusion of safety that allows us to venture out into the world. While I’m not suggesting a vacation in a war zone, if we let terrorists determine where and when and how we move in the world, then we are surrendering our inalienable rights. Sometimes fighting back means taking up arms, other times it’s simply a matter of living life: getting on the bus in London the day after 7/7, heading back to work on Wall Street after 9/11, or sitting down for a cup of tea at Fishawi’s Cafe in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalil market.
