Snaking Through Cairo’s Churches and Traffic

Our tour group was taking a side trip to Alexandria. I decided to stay in Cairo. Since the famous library of ancient Alexandria had been destroyed, I had no interest in what was, essentially, a modern city.

I spent the morning going about Cairo by taxi, which didn’t get me into too much trouble. As good a group as we were in, I had to go out on my own now and then to have a sense of adventure.

It was a three-hour bus ride to Alexandria. The minute my wife walked into our hotel room she was sick. They had had an Egyptian lunch aboard a boat in Alexandria; I suspected it was something she ate; either that or it was the Coke we had drunk at King Tut’s tomb. There might be something in that famous King Tut’s curse.

Some friends on the tour had Egyptian friends, and we had been invited with them to dinner in a private apartment. We didn’t want to miss it. Our Egyptian friends were most gracious. According to custom, the sumptuous buffet was not served until about 11:30. My wife was too ill to eat and we had to be driven home. Our host, a medical doctor, had given her a pill, and by morning she was OK.

We went shopping the next day in Khan El Khalisi Bazaar, a labyrinthine quarter of shops in which I was afraid of getting lost. My wife bought five T-shirts for our grandchildren, a transaction that took at least half an hour and involved the unfolding and display of dozens of shirts. We had lunch in the bazaar, which was notable by the fact that, in keeping with Muslim tradition, they did not serve wine or beer. Fortunately, my health did not suffer.

The next day we went to the Coptic museum. I was not in the mood for another museum. The Copts are members of an ancient Christian sect that still practice their faith, though a minority, in Egypt. The museum was full of fine reliefs and frescoes reflecting the Coptic theology.

I was especially engaged by a fresco of Adam and Eve. It showed them before and after the fall. In the first version Eve was naked. So was Adam. Standing beside them the two were depicted after the fall. Both were covered by leaves. A snake was whispering into Eve’s ear. Oddly, her eyes now looked like Elizabeth Taylor’s in “Cleopatra.”

I tired of Coptic art, though, and we decided to take a cab back to the hotel with a woman in our group who wanted to go. It was a cab ride not to be forgotten. There seem to be no rules. It is every man for himself. Drivers miss one another by inches. There are no lanes. Major intersections were locked tight. There are few traffic lights, and they evidently are hand operated. A traffic officer in the usual white uniform stood on a corner, regarding one massive traffic jam with what appeared to be bland curiosity. Finally he stepped out into the morass, put up a hand, and gradually made order out of chaos. The cab had no seat belts.

If one reason for traveling is a thrill, we had had it.

That evening at dinner we got good news. Our bus would leave for the airport at 7:15 p.m., our El Al flight to Tel Aviv would be at 9:45. It would take an hour or so. We looked forward to an early bed.

El Al is noted for its security, and one cannot blame them. When we cleared our bags at the airport they did not body search us, but they questioned us aggressively, and hand-searched each of our bags. They asked if we had left our bags alone at any time; if we had received any gifts. I worried about the time our bags were untended in the hotel hallway. But the hand-search reassured me. My wife remembered that she had left her carry-on bag untended for a few minutes. Conscientiously she searched it.

The strenuousness of the search reminded us that we were entering a country that is surrounded by enemies, and lives in constant tension.

We got to bed late and got up early. The next day we were to visit the Dead Sea, Massada and Jerusalem, among other stops. On the road we passed several combat vehicles. And soldiers, men and women both, were often in evidence, though there seemed to be no emergency.

The Dead Sea was serene and blue in its desert valley west of the Jordan Hills. We had lunch at the Hod Hotel and some went swimming in the sea.

I was content to lie in a deck chair at the end of the little pier and wonder what I was doing there.