By Candice A.
Relative time in Egypt is still weird to me. We landed only nine days ago, but it seems like at least three weeks. I have trouble keeping up with what day it is because the rhythm is so different here. Back in America, you can sense what day it is because to me, each day has a ‘feeling’, if you know what I mean. Although at times it may be a Monday, and because it’s a holiday, you will think, “it feels like Sunday today”. So as of yet, no day has a particular energy to it for me. I wonder how long I will have to be here before I regain that ‘seventh’ sense.
Little by little I’m getting accustomed to walking in the street, as no one who lives here walks on the sidewalk, whenever there is one available to walk on. The curbs are so high that you have to give a big hop up and down each time a new block arises, which is kind of fun to me. But since you are immediately tagged as a foreigner if you walk on the sidewalk, I will stick to the street – especially since I’m not terrified of getting mowed down by a car whizzing by like I was in Cairo.
Today we had to run a few errands: pay a visit to the rental office concerning our new flat rental, visit the bank, and check out another flat owned by a clerk that works for the hotel we stayed in upon arriving here. Why were we going to check out another apartment when we just rented a perfectly good one a day earlier? Because when we told ‘Ayman’ that we were checking out to move to our new flat, he was horrified by what we told him we were paying and insisted that we should have spoken to him first because he had a place that was more than half less than what our rent was. To refresh, we currently pay 2800le (about $508us). He was offering his flat to us for 1000le, you can do the math and figure out how much that is in US dollars. Basically, it was an offer we couldn’t refuse.
So we hail a taxi to take us to the Mummification Museum, which is where we’d arranged to meet Ayman because we would have had trouble finding his place on our own, as there is not the ‘address’ system here that we are familiar with in America. ‘Mr. Fish’, the taxi owner we’d made acquaintance with on the previous day, didn’t make his way to President Mubarak Garden Park (where we were waiting in front of) because as we found out later that evening, he thought we were in front of Susanna Mubarak Garden (the first lady) – which was down the road aways. I will share more about Mr. Fish in Day 9, part II.
Being the green newbies that we are here, of course the current driver tried to charge us four times the price that he should have for the ride. “Forty pounds”, he insisted. (During a chat with our landlady later on, we discovered that we should wait until we get out of the cab, pass through the window to the driver the ten pounds he is owed for a local trip, then walk away). As he approaches, Ayman sees this fruitless negotiation taking place, gets in taxi and chats up the driver to take us to his flat.
After a few minutes we arrive to a very local part of Luxor and head up a lot of stairs. The place is mediocre, but workable for the rate – even with our other rental taken into consideration. We agree to meet the next day to finalize plans. We direct the seemingly unreasonable driver, who has been waiting downstairs for us all this time, back to where we live. As we pull into the street, he recognizes it and asks us in disbelief if we really live here, because his cousin owns the whole area. We say we do, his facial expression conveys a combination of surprised, happy and ashamed – gives us a bit of a better fare (though still more than local price), and drives off.
Walking back from a short toilet paper and snack run that night, we stop in the local market around the corner from our flat. We’d been in this store two or three times already, but tonight there is an older man there with the younger guys who we hadn’t seen before. We nod, give our hellos and start to look for what we need when the man ask us if we need help and where are we from. We say Chicago, and he gives Orlando the ‘soul brother’ three part handshake. We laugh and wonder aloud where he learned this from and he tells us that he lived in America for 22 years. Then he pulls a New York drivers license. Brooklyn baby! Soon we learn that this man’s name is Ali, and that he is Nubian. But wait, not only is he Nubian, but he was an apprentice under Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannon aka Dr. Ben! And, he knows Dr. Leonard Jeffries and Ashra Kwesi.
For those that aren’t familiar, these men are some of the most revered scholars concerning Egyptian history and anthropology and are responsible for bringing the wealth of the information on the ancient culture back to the Americas and spreading it among our generation. After chatting about 30 more minutes, it feels like we are all old friends, and he welcomes us as family and offers his home and whatever else we may need. Notwithstanding all of the hassles and frustrations that we may have gone through since arriving in Egypt, this was one of the connections that we were hoping to experience while we were here. And it only took nine days to happen.
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