Well.
It was official. I was without a guide or group wandering the streets of Cairo, once again. And you know, it was rather fun that evening, for a while at least. I think (I wish I could remember) that I ate at a fast food chain called Ma'Momen. It was one of the places our guide deemed safe for us non-Egyptians to eat. Fast food in Cairo is NOT like unto fast food in other places. Sure, there are KFCs and Arby's and McDonalds' all over Cairo, but I'm a local-style traveler (within reason). And eating at Ma'Momen was an adventure! No one there spoke English. There were lines and lines and lines of people crowded into the open-to-the-street style walk-up ordering pavilion. I reviewed the photos of the local food and pointed to something that looked like a Kafta sandwich and the young worker looked puzzlingly at me, so I said to him "Kafta?" and pointed once again. He punched something into his cash machine and motioned for me to wait to the Left. Everyone around me received numbers on their receipts that would be called out when their orders were ready, but my order-taker didn't even bother giving me one, knowing that I didn't understand Arabic and wouldn't be able to read the number.
So I stood around, watching the swarms of Egyptian men around me, ordering, shouting, lulling around waiting for their food to be dished up from piles of Falafel, skewers of hot sliced kebab and vats of chopped tomato and onion. Within a few moments, of me standing there, the atmosphere around me changed from one of slight hostility to the blonde woman standing in what must have been mostly a man's venue to curiosity to friendliness. The workers would take turns coming up to the counter next to me and smile or wave. The customers around began to nod at me and some even said "Whereareyooooofrom? Youarewelcome!" And then my food came, I had no idea what it would turn out to be, but it took about four workers to hand me the bag and they waved as we all said goodbye and I headed away down the street.
I ate as I walked. I was on a mission. You see, when I was gleefully galloping across the desert on my gorgeous Arabian horse, I unintentionally made a sacrifice to the gods of ancient Egypt: My camera's lenscap.
HORROR! PANIC! Argh.
Knowing that it was futile, I embarked on another walking safari of Cairo, this one at night, to find a new lenscap for my camera. Cairo at night is even more seedy and dirty than it is in the day. I stopped at various electronics shops only to be directed further along, further away, to another street, another district. I passed the auto shops, the clothing sellers with their windows full of bright neons, I traveled through Crowds of Egyptians all staring at the foreigner who dared mingle with them in the dark. It was a gutsy thing, I must say. But I was determined to give it my best and try to save my camera lens.
Finally, after walking miles and having spent the rest of my energy, my legs protested walking any further. I found the main road that my hotel lived on and began to walk back. Miles and miles. And then I was home again. Back to the small room on the sixth floor of a building that had been nice sixty years ago. It was passable as far as lodging goes. Much better than my room in Amman! I flipped the breaker to turn my AC unit on, once again. (It would run for twenty minutes and then shut off, only to come back on after flipping the breaker again.) I dared open the creaky shutters once to find my small window overlooking a large street, caked and covered in years of city grime. The previously muffled city sounds came through at me, loud and crisp. I closed the shutter and quickly locked them again and sat down on my small single bed, covered in a rough nappy brown blanket and realized what this room reminded me of...
It was the room from Spy movies.
It was the room you see the ex-pat or person on the run hiding out in: Small, dingy, confined, non-descript and unmemorable. Except that it will be forever burnt into my memory as the hotel that I stayed in that was like the Bourne Identity.
But it had a wonderful, clean, newly remodeled bathroom with a fabulous bathtub that I spent the next hour doing laundry by hand in.
View from The Capsis Palace Hotel. Ramsis Road, Cairo. Photos from TripAdvisor.
Oh! And because I know you're dying to find out just how I managed my missing lens cap problem: Zip Lock baggie wrapped around the lens + hair scrunchy to hold it in place. LOVE my ziplocks while traveling.
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