The Days Are Just Packed in Cairo

July 2, continued:

First thing out the door I meet Mustafa, an unhesitatingly outgoing 22-year-old Bedouin who is in Cairo during his final summer off from University. Sometime in the coming weeks, he tells me later, he will marry. Or rather, commit to marry: his father is rich, and so up to $8,000 will be spent on dowry, paraphernalia and ceremony, and between these purchases and the arrangements that must be made by the two fathers, it will be November before the ceremony.

Of course, all of this may be moot. Mustafa takes me back to his shop and, over shisha and tea, tells me in increments of his forbidden British love. He and she fell for each other last year. She invited him to be with her in Britain, but he worried what might happen if things turned sour: "She might throw me out! And then what would I have?" It might not have worked out anyway: Mustafa is deeply Bedouin -- their wives must convert to Islam if they do not already practice it and live with the husband in the family house.

In fact, wives take over responsibility for the family from the aging matriarch. In fact, this is why Mustafa must marry: Western-style bachelorhood or marrying abroad would deprive Mustafa's family of a matriarch (or, depending on how you look at it, of a hand-and-foot servant for the retiring generation). Most of his peers married at seventeen. He is years late to the party -- or, as he unhappily refers to the institution, crossing his wrists dramatically, to "jail".

And no wonder he thinks so: His Bedouin would-be, meticulously vetted in both person and family by Mustafa's father, cannot hold a candle to the knots in his stomach whenever he contemplates the "Together Forever" teddy bear that hangs conspicuously in his perfume shop. Mustafa wants to please his family and his God, but he plainly cannot get excited about wedlock while his sweetheart lies over the ocean. If she hadn't cut off ties when he demanded conversion and relocation, closure might be more attainable. For now, he prepares to walk the plank.

(Side note: As I write this, sweltering in the hostel's stagnant air, the young man behind the front desk is checking his friends' Facebook walls).

To end the incident at the beginning, Mustafa's shop is a model of efficiency. It's located about 3 minutes' walk off Talaat Harb square in Cairo's downtown, a very high-commerce area. A couple of twists and turns through alleyways and you arrive at his shop window which contains rowns on rows of delicately handmade bottles plus, oddly, one mass-produced Western-style cologne called "FAHRENHEIT". Some of the bottles, wrought in gossamer glass, are shaped like peacocks or fantastic animals. To the side is the entryway.

The shop itself is unexpectedly warm and welcoming given its size. Plush red benches run round the edges, and the mirrored walls hold almost as many simple, sturdy bottles of his various wares as they do pictures of his family. Prominently displayed in the center is his heart-wrenching but, to the uninitiated, saccharine teddy bear. The whole shop is just one five by four room.

The wares themselves are supplied by Mustafa's father, who has been making alcohol-less perfume from his own flowers for decades. Mustafa presses samples on me -- quite literally! -- shaking bottle after bottle, removing the flass stoppers and rubbing the collected perfume on my arm. "See?" he asks, pointing to the Arabic label. "Rose. Wehrrd. Wuh -- rrrr -- duh." He sounds it out for me. Roll the "rrr" and you've got your first Arabic word.

(Now two of the hostel staff prepare for evening prayers, aligning their mats with the patterns in the linoleum, which must bast been laid out just so exactly for this purpose. It is 7:20 PM. With gentle synchrony and only one speaker, the three staff stand, kneel, bow, rise and breathe to the slow rhythm of a murmured "Allah-u Akhbar!" Serenity rules the moment. What must it be like to know that you will have the opportunity five times each day to share the most personal and important aspect of your life with anyone you choose? It must lower the stakes on other social enterprises. It must be easy to reckon someone a friend, or at least an equal. Could anyone of your faith ever truly be a stranger?)

The most interesting part of the visit is Mustafa's fuestbook. It must be forty pages long and is full of effusive messages from the sundry tourists that Mustafa has evidently been accosting in Talaat Harb Square for years. He claims he does it to make friends, not to sell his wares, and at least at first glance the evidence supports this assertion. Handwritten testimonial after handwritten testimonial praises his hospitality, his kindness, and, most endearingly, his family -- Mustafa apparently invites nearly everyone to meet his father, two sisters and three brothers, to stay in their guest house, to eat their food. "If you meet 100% of the people in Cairo," he says, "only 2% would want to be friend. The rest are selling. This is why I hate Cairo. I am 2%!"

His words would ring truer if his family didn't arrange all-day cab rides for travelers to Egypt's historic sites or if he weren't so intent on demonstrating the virtues of his wares. Nonetheless I am taken in, writing my own soaring note in his guestbook, permitting him to write in mine (see previous page of journal), and, most tellingly, shelling out for his opium-derived (perhaps he means poppy?) perfume and an admittedly lovely bottle in which to display it. He plays the host impeccably and my guilty American conscience demand these things. I shall have to reflect on this later, especially in light of an admonition I received several days ago that my empathy would make me vulnerable to shysters. The worst thing that happens in this particular instance is that I part with some money, and in fact I have a good time swapping stories and life advice while drinking tea and shisha with my new Bedouin friend. It's possible that this routine isn't designed with a sale or two in mind. But perhaps it is. Food for thought.

I spend the rest of the day walking around Cairo's downtown. The Nile is five minutes from my hostel, and it gleams beneath the setting sun. Huge casino-boats and individual chartered boats ply its waters while children throw fishing lines into its shallower edges. Lovers perch on the rails, posts and benches that line its shores, the young men in the tight-fitting t-shirts and jeans --sometime even the greased hair -- I associate with '80s-era TV, the young women in dresses or long skirts or even jeans, but always with their hair colorfully wrapped. Cars pass by at meteoric speeds when they are not caught in traffic. The bridges across the Nile, from which one can see for miles, are packed with cars; on their footpaths, workaday Cairenes sweat and trudge their respective ways home. Wherever one looks there are crumbling buildings with faded facades nestled up against the glittering glass faces of the newer, more vitally commercial buildings. The roofs of the oldest structures are crowded with satellite dishes producing the effect of plastic-and-metal rooftop gardens, of modernity taking root in antiquity.

In the streets, familiar models surface: the dung and trash and stray animals of the poorer quarters directly across the street from five-star hotels and international buildings; the commuter buses, the streetlights and crowds and on-ramps of any self-respecting metropolis. There are many new facets, though. The air is dusty rather than merely polluted, the heat bone-dry. Many people carry buckets of water in the poorer areas of town. Markets occupy entire streets, with just enough room left in between the rows of clothes and melons to permit the occasional dedicated car to squeeze by. In the back alleyways of the markets, older women sit desultorily next to their produce while boys play pool on a transplanted table across the street. Everywhere the sun beats down.

I make it back to the hostel and head out for dinner with S., E. (both Frenchmen traveling together), D. (Australian) and R. (Brazilian). All are on personal odysseys of five months or more. D. began his trip in Australia and has seen the Philippines, India, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and now Egypt, along with places in between. He will head to Europe before he returns home. When I ask the group what spurred them to take their trips, he is the first to answer: "What, have you never worked in an office?" We all laugh, satisfied. I think of Alex.

S. and E. are headed back to France from India, all overland. They tell wonderful stories of finding, upon finishing many of their meals in Pakistan, that a stranger had paid their bill. They attribute this kindness to strangers to the teachings of the Qur'an.

This is R.'s first stop on a trip that will span what seems like every country in Europe after a brief tour through the Middle East. Though Brazilian, he doesn't care for football; this apparently gets him in hot water with his mother, and my wry inner monologue suggests that self-preservation might be the reason for his travels.

After dinner I mistake D.'s rice pudding for a gratis table treat and eat half of it. I'll get ribbed about this for awhile. But it *was* delicious.

Back to the hotel. I fall instantly asleep.