Getting Lost. Finding Myself.

July 5 (Sunday)

Confession time: I love shisha. Contemplative, dignified, and uncontaminated by pretension (cigars, anyone?), designed to share, as varied and nuanced in its way as any wine or coffee, some quality time with a hookah brings me great peace. It's hard to imagine rushing anywhere while the coals turn slowly white and the smoke dissipates lazily like a dream you once had. I feel a little like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland -- wise, contented, enigmatic.

I'm writing these words while sitting outside a street cafe somewhere behind the Khan el-Khalil, Cairo's street market district. Tea, shisha and the hubbub of the street keep me company. An early start, several hours of satisfied wandering and a cab ride brought me to the entrance of the market. The gate itself is heavily guarded and barred, but pedestrians are allowed through without a second thought. On either side, timeless mosques with indubitably 21st-century sound systems call the people to noon prayer. The Imam's clear voice rings out over the square, dancing around each note and making the streets reverberate with the word of God.

It's a shame the bazaar -- or at least the one street of it that I see -- is such a tourist trap. It's filled with the same kitschy crap you can find at any stall in Cairo -- carven pyramids, cat-headed effigies of golden Gods, cheap shoes, hookahs, men who call you friend before asking where you are from, telling you about their friend in America and then demanding that you come see "something you won't see anywhere else in Cairo!" -- which would be true, I suppose, if I were a one-day tourist and hadn't seen anything else at all in Cairo. As it is, two separate vendors have already performed the same trick for me, lighting a match in a bottle of perfume while hinting darkly that we would both die together if it contained a single drop of alcohol (it doesn't, of course, being of a pure local recipe; all breathe a sigh of relief). Perfume stores like this one are hardly novel. I walk quickly through the packed but somehow half-hearted market street, carefully noting the trash in the corners, the children pushing carts of bread, the New York City-style t-shirts ("You can LOOK, but you can't TOUCH") on occasional display, and I take the first random turn I can. Then another. Then another. Quickly, gratifyingly, I am lost in the back streets of Cairo.

For a time these streets get smaller and smaller, more and more trash-filled -- the air sours and emaciated kittens forage for food in the rubbish and offal -- and at one point I am alone in a dingy, filthy alleyway that looks like all of its residents, touts and passers-by were raptured away in a long-gone moment: streamers hang greyly, garbage leans against the wall like tired beggars, and there is silence. I walk on.

Soon the streets reopen, gaining in width and verve and shedding the thick coating of detritus that marked the streets furthest from the beaten path. Old but serviceable cars beep and rumble around corners, dodging pedestrians every few feet. Vendors sell drinks and hookahs and falafel. Backwater mosques that look 1,000 years old beckon the traveler into their tenebrous worship spaces. The streets shine through their thick coat of dust, resplendent in the sunshine. Footsore and thirsty, I claim a seat at this quintessential streetside shisha bar to smoke a bowl and sip exquisite (if, regrettably, bagged) tea. Shops and street traffic jump to life as the afternoon wears on. Someone turns on a stereo; the area fills with the bouncing, infectious rhythms of popular Arabic music, all drums and chanting and, bizarrely, a touch of funk guitar. Everyone smiles and laughs, frequently in my direction. Two gentlemen invite me to sit with them, but I wish to write and so indicate my thanks but stay in my seat.

This part of Cairo is thick with the juxtaposition of age and modernity. Islamic latticework, grungy but evocative, climbs up many of the buildings. The streets are sized for walking, not cars. Chisel-marks are apparent in the squared blocks that support many of the buildings. Button-down shirts over wifebeaters (do we still call them that?) are more common than robes for the men. Jeans are ubiquitous in the younger generation while older men tend to wear slacks -- rarely well-laundered -- with a belt and a good shirt. The women all wear headscarves, rarely chadors. Here, as elsewhere, the children are giddy and adorable.

Rested, I walk for hours more. The busiest streets are lined with colossal walls that would have been appropriate for repelling an army 2500 years ago. Smaller make-shift walls hide the seas of slum living from casual passers-by, or perhaps from those who wish not to see. I come to the Ring Road, Cairo's answer to DC's beltway: On one side are trees and roads and apartment buildings; on the other, the dry and brittle clay-colored desert that must be Old Cairo, or maybe Islamic Cairo. It stretches for miles left and right, and in the distance to the sun-baked cliffs that demarcate the City by towering impassably over it. In front of me what might have been houses are now just four walls contiguous with the next structures, rows and columns in every direction. The sand is parched, the plants desiccated. In the distance the dwellings rise several floors off the ground and the undulating corpus of the eastern city is punctures in places by the triumphant spires and domes of mosques, each topped with a skyward crescent moon. I bake in the sun and slurp down my sixth liter of water for the day. Standing on the bridge over the ring road, I turn left and see posh hotels; right, the accumulated dwelling places of the last millennia. Awed, I descend to the street and catch a cab back to my hostel.