The joys of the Cairo Jostle

The life I led while on holiday in Egypt was virtually insulated from
the financial-crisis-news that is covering London wall-to-wall. In
Egypt, things are sufficiently absorbing as to render the rest of the
world's news feel remote and pointless.

In London, I learn that Iceland has been virtually wiped out as a
modern economy, with the prospect of Russia 'bailing it out' being
given very serious consideration by the government in Reykjavik.
Commentators here see this Russian 'expansion' as a classic cold war
move.

The UK government is going to force people like me to 'bail out' the
banks to the tune of £50 billion. I hate this. They gave themselves
massive profits and did not share a penny, now they have failed, we
the taxpayers have to step in and cover their losses.

My day of travel began at 6am and involved possibly the worst lines
at Cairo airport I have ever experienced. Except they were not lines.
It was the usual Cairo jostle. The jostling was done through airport
trolleys - it was like driving in Cairo streets, but with trolleys in
the airport hall.

Normally, after you've checked-in with the airline, you get the
security check-in. But in Cairo, they screen everything first, before
you can go through to the airline counters. The screening process was
controlled by two officers and it was bizarrely slow. When I finally
pushed through, I was highly irritated to find a very long line,
twisting four-fold, for the airline check-in counters.

At one point, I was going to 'call the cops' on some guy who had
brazenly cut the queue, jumped about fifty people, and stood right
behind me. I told him off. But no one else said anything, and the
tourists kept silent too (I suppose they thought it typical in
Egypt). When I did finally get to talk to an official, he smiled at
me like I was naive and said "absolutely, that's so wrong" and did
nothing.

Things were sped-up, thank God, when they announced that London
boarders should be prioritised. So, we all scrambled forward, cutting
through the lines to get to the check-in counters. A European-looking
female tourist on her own had an anxious reaction when I hit her
trolley in my scramble. "EXCUSE ME. DO NOT GET IN MY WAY," she yelled
in one of those "I am an assertive American woman" voices. Sorry
lady, just cos you're not a native, don't mean you should not get
jostled like everybody else.

As ever in these situations, tension is discharged through an extreme
reaction, someone cathartically expresses our anxiety. And so,
without any visible reason, a gentleman yelled: "You do not have
manners" (in Arabic) to a young man. He did so ad nauseam - more than
twenty times. (May be I should have tried doing the same thing with
my queue-cutter.) The younger guy, being a tour guide, constrained
his reaction and kept his mouth shut.

Check-in was followed by another wait at passport control. Then
another passport check, then another security check. Then another
passport check. I moaned to the security officer "how many more
passport checks?" "Cheer up," he said, "I am the last one." I wanted
to tell him: "Normally, my friend, I am cheered by news of 15
visitors to my blog. I am not normally cheered by news that someone
will be the last officer out of 5389 to check my passport today", but
I didn't.

On the bus, I asked an English couple what they thought of Cairo. The
wife was not in a good place: "It's a dump!" she said. I instantly
yelled out to the driver: "Stop the bus, we have an ungrateful
tourist on board". I also stopped hearing anything, regretted asking
her in the first place, and felt all Cairenes in the bus egging me on
to avenge our pride. Some Cairenes flashed their gritted teeth to me,
an agreed-on way of saying "I am ready to bite hard".

No, none of that stuff happened.

"Whoo!" was all I said, showing some displeasure.

She moaned about all the passport checks, the chaos of check-in, how
the passport officer told them to queue for another 45 minutes just
because they had not filled in a form, etc. Her husband tried to
soften her mood: "It was beautiful weather though, and we had a great
time in Hurghada". I felt I was doing Cairo a favour: by getting her
to vent her frustrations with me, she was hopefully going to ease up
on the criticisms when she gets home. I took her "Goodbye, sun!" just
before she set foot in the plane as a good sign.

On the plane, I sat next to a poised, quiet guy from Yemen who works
as a software engineer for the UK transport service. We lamented the
state of the Arab countries; he named tribalism, bad education, and
corruption as his top three reasons for Yemen's backwardness, I named
corruption, apathy, and disrespect for others as Egypt's. We shared our
international experiences. He told me about Malaysia, Indonesia, and
Mexico. I told him about South Africa, the US, and Canada.

I arrived in London to find my landlord had still not put up my bed
as he had promised. Luckily, he was at home and we spent an hour or
two putting it up. Now, I have to face the chaos of my room - which I
had left virtually boxed-up after moving-in and then flying out. I
also need to unpack the new bits of 'things to handle' that arose out
of my time in Egypt.

This integration of 'things that came about from a particular trip'
is very hard. My instinct is to 'freeze' one life and 'unthaw' the
previous one. But, somehow, stuff needs to be transferred from one
life to the other.

Leafing through the Starbucks copy of The Times (old habits die
hard), I was struck by the repetitiveness of the UK worldview.
Nations have certain 'scripts' (like the subconscious scripts people
have) that they constantly play. So it was that I found the headline
"The Cane: a brutal, barbaric practice". And the witticism that it
has kept generations of Brits not run down a corridor, or play tag in
an empty pool.

One of the more stimulating things about London is the quality of
people you may run into in a mundane setting. Married to a husband
who works in Google, and working herself as an IT consultant to some
of the biggest corporations, the Moscovite who sat next to me was
very smiley, effortlessly intelligent, and quite pretty to boot. Our
conversation ranged over the financial melt-down, her savings,
Iceland, Putin, Judo, Georgia, James Bond, and a bit of IT geekery.

Moments like these make you wonder what London might be if they
sucked out those Brits who are shy, reticent, and banal!

"Whoo!"