A Glimpse of Cairo

Her cumbersome feet never fit correctly into any pair of shoes. The best found thus far were sturdy sandals, but after a few hot hours in the summer Cairo sun, the bottoms of her feet were beginning to blister. It was either the heels in her Merrells, her toes in the ballet flats, and her soles in sandals. Had there never been a shoe invented for her feet? It is possible I do not walk correctly, she thought as she stumbled down the broken sidewalks of famous Talaat Harb Street. I think one of my legs is longer than the other, that’s why I am always tripping or gracelessly scraping my foot. I am naturally unbalanced. Uncoordinated.

Welcome, says the man at her side, hoping to break her zen like trance that enables her to see her surroundings yet ignore the distractions of Egyptian men trying to gain her attention every few seconds. She had been here over half a year but still the barrage of welcomes come every day. Some are harmless, most are not. They echo with desire, or sometimes with nonchalant feeling that does not expect results. She is a western light haired harlot walking alone, never mind her conservative dress. They all know she would lay down in the filth of the road, in the shadows of the minarets, to give into her uncontrollable womanly passion. She hides behind her dark sunglasses, the headphones in her ears make it more plausible that she simply has not heard or will not hear. Maybe it will cause them to give up faster. Sometimes she recites a verse from the Quran. They always laugh.

The unfortunate thing about sandals is that her feet always get dirty. Garbage and dust, the putrid and fermented smell of the streets, the feces of animals, cigarette butts, saliva from mouths of brown stained tobacco teeth, rotting skins of mangos, sugar cane juice, and plums. The washing of feet has so much more meaning in this world. She is listening to Mozart’s Requiem, having recently returned from marbled Vienna. She laughs to herself remembering a snippet of the audio guide from the Hapsburg palace tour. There was a long ago royal yearly tradition of washing the feet of peasants in an act of humility, symbolic of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. The peasants were picked after they were thoroughly cleaned and had undergone an extensive medical examination. Best not pollute those sanctioned by God himself with the dirt of the streets.

The same buildings she saw in Europe are here in Cairo, grime covered and rotting in heat waves. Already showing more signs of decay than the immortal ancient structures always conjured up in thoughts of this city. She is walking to Groppi’s again, wondering if her previous twenty or so sights of the patisserie that was legendary in its heyday had somehow escaped her tendency for nostalgia. It was still there, sterile, dust covered, without any of those redeeming qualities that can still be found in an aging beauty.

Very good, what’s your name? Russian, no? The stink of his breath close to her is almost enough to break the trance. Another one of them so sure that she must be a harpy in the disguise of white skin. No, there is nothing she has been missing here. Whatever was here died long ago.

How much she wanted to love the romantic decaying places of Cairo, mentioned so gracefully in The English Patient or the guide books. But this Cairo echoed pain, anger, suffering, loss and hate with the stern concrete buildings and rotting neoclassical remnants of a day when the West was embraced. In the hard and congested streets there is now a clinging to religion and faith on the verge of fanaticism without the understanding of why. It is the West that brought them here. It is America. It is Jews who control everything. It is globalization. It is anything but themselves. They are not agents of change in this already predetermined world. Best only to turn to Allah and emulate the days of the prophet, and the white harlots don’t count. They ask to be harassed, to be objectified, to be regarded with no respect. The deserve it for tempting us from our chastity. Their immorality causes earthquakes.