Crossing Streets in Cairo

The sun was setting when we rolled into Cairo. Talaat Harb Street teemed with people, entire families on foot, scooting between and among tiny cars in every state of disrepair. Lights glimmered through the dusky air—or was that the Cairo smog, a unique mix of dust from the desert only a few miles away and the exhaust of a million tired automobiles?

Men in djellabas glanced into our cab and leaned down and murmured, “Welcome to Egypt.” I was in love before we got to our hotel.

Fellow-journalist Ellen Davidson and I had decided to see Egypt before joining the Middle East Children’s Alliance delegation to Palestine(see “Lifta, Which Was His Home”). The Hotel Luna in downtown Cairo, where we had reserved a double room with bath for 110 Egyptian pounds (US$19) per night including breakfast, offered a free airport pickup service.

Countering our usual impulse to begin our visit on public transportation were the late hour and our intimidation at the idea of finding our way, jet-lagged and exhausted, through a subway system labeled in Arabic. So we had accepted the Luna’s offer and had been met at the airport. Air France had fed us several times on the long flight from New York to Cairo, and we were more tired than hungry. We settled into our room and went to sleep and got up the next morning ready to see Cairo.

That was when we learned about crossing the streets. Talaat Harb, which was now our home, turned out to be a Cairo rarity: an avenue of pedestrian-jammed, slow-moving traffic. One block away on either side of it, we found ourselves in very different territory: street after street of cars and buses, honking incessantly and whooshing by nonstop—nonstop even in the face of traffic lights, which appeared to be issuing advice rather than orders, nonstop even in the face of the occasional traffic police officer, who generally took care to keep well out of their path. We saw people crossing the street between onrushing cars and buses, but the prospect of trying it ourselves was terrifying. For half an hour or so, we wandered up and down Talaat Harb and the two parallel streets.

It was about 95°F in the sun, and there wasn’t much shade. At least half the women and children on the street had ice cream cones. Some women were covered and veiled from head to toe; a few wore bareheaded and in short skirts; most were modestly dressed, with or without head scarves. They didn’t speak to us, but many men, in djellabas or western clothes, said as they passed by, “Welcome to Egypt.” That was one of the only two English phrases we heard. The other became clear through the din of car horns and street sounds: Taxi drivers, slowing down as they drove by, honking at us, and calling out, “Cheap taxi to pyramids and Egyptian Museum!”

I was still in love, but it began to look as if I wouldn’t get to see much of my new beloved. At last, however, bored with Talaat Harb, we marched to the square at its end, Midan Al-Tahrir. Then we stood there, hopelessly waiting for a break in the traffic—

Until one of the djellaba-clad men grabbed my arm in one hand, Ellen’s in the other, and, dodging the cars and buses, pulled us across the street and deposited us on the other side. As he walked away, he said “Welcome to Egypt.”

We had learned to cross the street in Cairo.

©2008 by Judith Mahoney Pasternak
Photo by Ellen Davidson