If you ever end a conversation with, "There are two options-we will either be kidnapped or have the time of our lives," you should probably turn back and stay at home.
Luckily, though, we didn't.
It was 11 p.m. Sunday night, and Mahmood-a taxi driver that one of my friends had casually struck up a conversation with and befriended-was coming to pick us up.
Earlier that day, my friend had been riding in Mahmood's black-and-white back to the upscale residential neighborhood where we both live, when he had decided he had enough up the cloistered expat experience.
Mahmood, I want to see Cairo, the Cairo you know. Take me somewhere interesting. Anywhere.
And Mahmood, the good-natured man that he is, turned the cab around and took my friend to his neighborhood, Imam Shaifi-a place where narrow streets are filled with children and a pungent mixture of car exhaust and fragrant spices.
Mahmood introduced my friend to his friends and even his mother. As my friend sat at a sidewalk café trading jokes with Mahmood and his middle-age buddies smoking sheesha, he caught the attention of a local politician. Not many white American college students come to Imam Shaifi, so naturally the politician, who turned out be a member of the Cairo City council, was intrigued. He took him out to lunch, and afterward invited him to come back later that evening for a small political meeting.
When my friend invited me to tag along for the night, I was excited but a little skeptical.
So, let me get this straight-we're going to a semi-slum that you actually don't the exact location of to go to a political meeting of an undetermined nature.
And still we went. Once I met Mahmood, though, I felt much more at ease, though we still didn't know what meeting we were going to or why.
Before heading to the meeting, we stopped for sheesha and tea and talked to a few locals. Because the meeting still hadn't gotten underway by midnight, Mahmood decided to show us another side of Cairo: the City of the Dead.
The drive between the City's tombs was eerie. No one was the except for a pack of feral dogs, which Mahmood-despite our protests-insisted on driving right through. He took us to the tomb of Abdel Halim Hafez, one of Egypt's most famous singers who in his heyday two generations ago was the heartthrob of women across the Arab world, so much so that four Egyptian women committed suicide after learning he had died in 1977.
After spending a few minutes outside Abdel Halim's tomb and commenting on what a bizarre detour we'd taken, we headed to the meeting. It was sort of a town hall forum in the bottom of a granite factory headed up by the local member of Egypt's Majlis-ash-Shura, the equivalent of the U.S. Senate.
We were seated at the front of the meeting, and much to our surprise asked to give a little speech about ourselves, the United States and its relationship with Egypt. Stammering, in broken Arabic, we talked about international relations and the possibility for understanding as much as one can with an elementary school vocabulary.
Soon after, the meeting got underway. Ahmed Salaama, the member of the Majlis-ash-Shura and a member of Mubarak's national party, presided over the meeting with certain authority. Salaama, a man whose barrel chest and square jaw projected power, settled disputes between tenants and landlords, gave loans to people getting married and provided assistance to the exceptionally indigent. His word was the final word.
All the while we were offered an endless stream of cigarettes, tea and sweets. When we left around 3 a.m. the meeting was still going on.
The whole experience-Mahmood's hospitality and getting to see the Egyptian government function, albeit in a limited and censored way-was extremely refreshing.
I tried to imagine the reverse happening in the United States-a foreigner walking around New York or Chicago and being welcomed without reservation to share in political and social life.
I don't think it would happen.
There are many things about Egypt that, as an American, frustrate and bewilder me to no end, but I've come to appreciate that the sort of experience I had last Sunday-a mix of the surreal and the sublime-doesn't exist in many other places.
Only in Egypt.
Yousef AbuGharbieh is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday.
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