Spiritual Journey | Confessions of a Cruise Director

Ramadan, the most important Muslim holiday, is celebrated for the whole month, and it changes almost everything about Cairo.  Ramadan is a time to get closer to God, making self-sacrifices to be awake and aware of your choices, so people fast all day every day during the month of Ramadan.  This means not only no eating, but no drinking (not even a sip of water), no smoking, no sex, and no smoking!  I think the no smoking stricture may be harder on the Egyptians than no sex.

The result of people not eating all day is that, for the most part, everything is closed during daylight hours. With few exceptions in the tourist areas, where the poor waiters and chefs are serving food they cannot eat all day, the stores and restaurants shut down and open all night instead.  At sundown, however, the whole city of Cairo goes crazy.   One night at sundown, we visited the Al-Hussein mosque, which is perhaps the most important mosque outside of Mecca, to experience the real Ramadan.

The mosque is in the heart of the Khan El Khalili market, but this evening, we couldn’t get closer than a half-mile.  It was like a rock concert, with cars everywhere, parked all higgledy-piggledy.  To get a spot, a kid about eighteen hopped up onto our hood and directed us as we drove down a bizarre narrow alley with cars parked so close we had to hold our breath just to pass.  Walking back out of the alley after cramming ourselves into a tiny space, we saw two more “parking attendents’ and the owner of a yellow car rocking the cars in front and in back of him.  Shifting the cars a few inches at a time, the yellow car finally was able to maneuver out of the spot, whereupon it was replaced by another car.

On the street, it was equally chaotic.  At Ramadan, the rich are supposed to feed the poor, and everywhere we looked, shop owners had set up impromptu cafes in the street, which were full of people breaking their fast by gorging on the free food.  Close to the mosque, we passed a covered hall where huge pots and pans were set out on the ground, and people sat around guarding the meal until it was time to eat.

The Al-Hussein mosque was like a fairground, so full of people you could barely move, part church, part circus.  Every vendor stood by a tiny stand hawking religious artifacts, beads, or spangled LED tops that could fly high into the night sky with a simple flick of the wrist.  Leaving our shoes among the hundreds of pairs at the entrance, my girlfriend and I wormed our way through the crush to the woman’s side of the mosque.  We could barely breathe as the undulating mass of women pushed us forward into the doors of the mosque.  But inside, we fared no better, as we literally couldn’t go another step.  Women sat cross-legged everywhere on the floor, knee to knee, chanting and praying and touching the marble wall which contained important relics.  Disappointed and nearly squished, we turned and wriggled our way back out.

The men had a much more enjoyable time.  Obviously a much larger space, the entrance to the men’s side was empty, so my husband and two other travelers left their shoes with us as they strode into the mosque.  Once inside, they were immediately taken under the wing of several Egyptians who, seeing them, announced, “Sit! Pray with us!” This is typical of the Egyptians, who we have found over the years to be welcoming and inclusive in their worship. While we waited for them to come back out, I looked around the main square of the Khan.  Always bustling, tonight it seemed to almost burst at the seams with the friendly, raucous, joyous celebration of the end of the day’s fast.  It may change everything in Cairo, but I was glad to be there on during Ramadan.

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After you’ve been in Egypt for a little while, even a week, you start to realize that a basic understanding of Arabic must start with the following conversation:
“Saba al khir?” (There are three ways to say Good Morning in Arabic, and this is the most common one. It means “Morning the Good.”)

“Saba al ful!” (This is the second most common, and the most typical response. “Ful” is the way the scent of morning jasmine fills your nostrils, so roughly translated, this means “Morning the Nose Hit.”
The third way to say Good Morning is “Saba al nur,” which is “Morning the Light.” Arabic, in my humble opinion, is definitely a Romance language.)

“Quais?” The next step is to ask how you are – “Good?” is the slang for that.

“Hamdulullah. (One always responds with “Thanks be to God.” Technically this is really probably Hamdul Allah, but it all gets run together.)
“Inta quais?” (This means, “You good?” Colloquially, “How about you?”)

“Hamdu’lah.” (The even more foreshortened version.)

“Meya-meya.” (This means literally, “a hundred/a hundred”, or more accurately, “A hundred percent!” Basically, “Great!”)

“Meya-meya.” (Which you should repeat back to the person who just said it to you. Congratulations, you can now speak Arabic better than many tourists.)

This is all well and good when you are a tourist who has learned a little Arabic. In fact, the above phonetic conversation will serve you well in almost any situation. When an Egpytian greets another Egyptian, the polite opening conversation takes on an elevated status. It’s like a Chip & Dale marathon where each person tries to outdo each other in a waterfall of polite speech. It’s almost like a race to see who can get the most nice words out fast enough, a contest of kindness. Every conversation, whether in person or on the phone, includes this elaborate dance, with each person saying something like the following to each other, both at the exact same time:

Person 1: Hello, how are you?                Person 2: Hello, how are you? I am well!
I am well! Thanks be to God! I               Are you alright? Thanks be to God! I
hope that everything is wonderful         hope that everything is wonderful
in your life and is as amazing as it       in your life and is as amazing as it
is in my life! I am so glad to hear          is in my life! I am so glad to hear
you are well! A hundred/a hundred!     you are well! A hundred/a hundred!

If the people are standing together at the time, they usually are shaking hands the whole while, nodding politely and smiling at each other. I was once walking with my friend Mohamed the block between his home and his office when a man jumped out of his car at the intersection and ran over to shake Momo’s hand. Even with his car stopped in the middle of the traffic, the exchange sounded the same as if they had met in his office. On the phone it is just a matter of both talking into their respective receivers simultaneously. In comparison, it makes the typical English greeting seem just a shadow of acceptability. However, every Egyptian has done this same dance about a hundred million times by now, to literally every person they have ever met. So there is a perfunctory quality about it that cannot fail to occur after so many years, like when an American says, “Hello, how are you?” to someone passing on the street and then keeps walking because they didn’t really mean to inquire after that stranger’s health, it’s just how they say hello. But magnified, because the speech must be made, in full, to nearly everyone. Even inside of a family unit, or a business where people talk with each other many times a day, the greeting is only somewhat less formal.

Learn just these few words of Arabic and not only will you have a better trip to Egypt, you will be able to understand many of the conversations around you!

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After lunch, I wanted to smoke a hookah.  Mohamed, our other guide, laughed.  “You mean a shisha, my sister.  What kind of flavor do you want?”  Shisha (called a hookah in places like Turkey), is tobacco is soaked in molasses.  Often, the molasses is flavored, I guess so it’s a little like dessert when you smoke it after dinner.  It turns out there are a lot of shisha flavors.  Apple, mint, and coffee are the most popular in Egypt, but I have also tried honey, cantaloupe, mango, raspberry, strawberry and new car smell (I’m kidding about that last one).  It’s also fun to mix two or more flavors to create a new one, but that’s more likely to happen at the hookah lounges in Vegas than in a little outpost of hookah heaven in Cairo.

For about a dollar a person, the waiter will bring you a huge, standing water pipe, with the flavored tobacco of your choice on the top of the stand, and a hot charcoal disk on top of that. Most restaurant shishas have at least two pipes, long snaked hoses that end in cigarette filter mouthpieces.  To share with others in the States, you get a plastic tip that you can take off and put on as the pipe is passed to you, but in Egypt they simply cover the mouthpiece with a bit of foil.  This means you are fairly protected from the last group of people who smoked this pipe before you, but you’d better be comfortable with the hygiene of the ones you are smoking with now.

 The important thing to remember is that, while you can inhale the smoke, cooled by the water that is the whole point of this method, an unaccustomed smoker (a shisha ingénue) can still get what those in the know refer to as a “harsh toke.” There is nothing more hilarious than seeing your mother trying to French inhale, when she hasn’t smoked in about 40 years, causing her to  hork up a lung instead.  I, on the other hand, occasionally imbibe a ciggy butt when the mood hits, so I am capable of holding my own on the shisha front.  This mightily impressed Mohamed and Emil, who, in addition to the enjoyment of blowing smoke rings on a shisha, also shared a pack-a-day habit.

Eventually, this caught up with Emil, who had a heart attack and nearly died.  Both he and Momo quit smoking, but only Emil, touched by death and knowing he narrowly avoided the rigor mortis dance, stayed the course.  They both lost weight because of this brush with the Great Beyond, though, which of course only added to their pull with the ladies.

After lunch, we boarded the bus, with more music and dancing (and request for tips) accompanying our exit.  Suddenly, those who have had a glass of wine or beer with lunch are dancing with these locals, feeling less intimidated than the rest of us, or else more in tune with the music.  We all clap and take pictures and leave the restaurant very happy. And very full.  Another chance to improve relations with the Middle East, another successful afternoon!

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This is the next installment of my book, tentatively titled, “Travels through Egypt.” After visiting the Temple of Sakkhara, we always go to the same restaurant, one of everyone’s favorites on the trip…

In the afternoon, after Sakkhara, we stopped a desert oasis for lunch.  On our way down the steps to the open air restaurant, a tiny crew of musicians and dancers serenaded us with drums and homemade instruments.  On the left, in a covered area about 20 feet square, two women sat on their haunches, busy working fist-sized balls of dough into flat circles.  One by one, they slid the dough a mud brick oven, and pulled it out minutes later.  The layers of dough had parted, and a huge, pita-sized puff emerged.  They smiled and passed it over to those of us watching, and we greedily tore it to bits to share amongst ourselves.  The fresh, hot bread was immensely satisfying, and the women laughed, pleased with our expressions.  They shyly held their hands out for tips, which we gladly gave, then our guide Emil bustled us over to the main restaurant.

It was huge, and would have easily held a hundred or more people at the long tables.  A soda machine leaned against a tent pole at one end, a group of hookas clumped next to it.  The whole establishment was under a big group of tents, and in all the time I have been coming there, we’ve never seen the kitchen.  Our tables, as is often the case when we eat as a group, were already laid with an assortment of Egyptian mezzes, the appetizers so plentiful you could make a meal of them.  Little dishes held hummus (chick pea & tahini dip), baba ghanoush (a dip made of grilled eggplant), tabouli (little granules of cracked wheat with garlic, lemon, parsley and mint), assorted spiced olives, cubed boiled potatoes dressed in oil, a fava bean dip that seems especially popular with Egyptians, and my favorite, fresh white beans cooked al dente, drizzled with olive oil, and topped with chopped onion and parsley.

Everything in Egypt is fresh, and for the most part, macrobiotic.  Especially on the ships, you can see food being brought in that morning that was picked at most the day before, and will be on your table within hours.  The Egyptians eat at least two courses (for those who can afford it); a salad course consisting of these appetizers, and then a meat course, possibly followed by a fish course, with fresh fruit for dessert.  Pork is almost unheard of, and beef not particularly plentiful or popular, with chicken and lamb served everywhere.  After our appetizers were mopped up with plenty of the fresh bread puffs, plates of grilled chicken and lamb took their place, each with a side of local rice, threads of saffron streaking orange through the soft white granules.

The lamb is delicious and seemingly unspiced, the flavor delicate and rich at the same time.  The chicken is tender and perfectly grilled, full of flavor in my mouth.  A few years ago, the Egyptians were convinced to import chickens from Denmark, because they eat so many of them here.  The Danish chickens were larger and fatter, so it was thought they would quickly become more popular than the wiry little chickens so ubiquitous in Egpyt.  But they were practically flavorless, so they never caught on.  Emil talks about a European friend who brought his boy over to play with one of Emil’s sons.  Although the boy was only a year older than Emil’s kid, he was huge in comparison.  But Emil’s small, skinnny boy more than held his own with the big kid, outrunning and outplaying him until the older boy was exhausted.  ”The European boy,” Emil shrugged, “he is like Danish chicken!”  He laughed hard, slapping his knee.  Emil can be weird, but we love him.

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Following is an excerpt from my travel memoir, “Travels Through Egypt,” which I am currently working on.  Comments are welcome…

Our first day in Egypt, we all got on a bus and went to Lake Moeris, a sacred site to Rosicrucians.  The group, all Rosicrucians except for me and one other spouse, were having a ceremony there, which my husband Greg could participate in, but I could not. (Aside: I later became one on the trip, because of the trip and the things I experienced there, and it was my first spiritual home, for which I will be forever grateful).

Our guide Emil talked on the way about building cities in the desert, giving free homesteads to “youth” and tractors to clear the land, and long-term loans to build.  In ten years, he said, we will reclaim the desert, expanding it to create fertile land, and Egypt will once again feed Europe as they once fed Rome.  Well, it’s ten years later and I don’t think it’s happened yet, or even close, but it’s a nice ideal.

The second day, we visited Sakkara, home of the step pyramid of King Zoser.  Sakkara’s not my favorite site, although it has some interesting columns in one hall, and these days a lot of very friendly local dogs.  The problem for me is that the three Pyramids at Giza are clearly, vastly older, and yet the step pyramid is crumbling, whereas the three on the Giza plateau are obviously of a different caliber.  Though the Egyptians are proud of their homegrown pyramid, I can’t help feeling the inferiority of this burial tomb, which the Pyramids were never intended to be.  The orthodoxy would condemn me for these blasphemous natterings, but I cannot help the feeling I have when I look upon what I consider a relatively inferior site, as if a kid built a sandcastle pyramid and it somehow stuck around for a couple thousand years.

At Sakkara, Emil showed us some minor tombs, beautifully colored examples of men who were workers for the Pharoah — his scribes or his priests — and could afford to be buried in the way of the king, with the stories of their lives carved and painted on the walls.  We have never been inside the step pyramid, as it’s off-limits, but we often now perform ceremonies in what must once have been a large temple.  Now the walls have almost all fallen to rubble.  There is only the ghost of the building – a half wall to shield you from the unceasing desert wind (which always seems to whip me mercillessly here)  and some low stones that make up the rectangular perimeter.  On your way out, we take turns crouching down to peer into the eye holes of a stone box.  Inside, you see the statue of King Zoser (it’s his pyramid, remember?) staring back at you.  It’s kind of the first example of 3-D.

Afterwards, Greg, Lynn and I went wandering off on our own.  We did this so often on this trip we became known as the “bad kids” and later, our smaller trips were subtitled the “Bad Kids Tour” since we were usually off the beaten path.  An Egyptian man came up and offered us horses and camels to ride, and though I protested I couldn’t ride, hiked me up, threw my leg over a horse, and thwacked the horse’s side.  The horse took off, and after a moment I had to concede that as much as my fear would have kept me on the ground… this was the life!  Trotting through the desert sand, no one guiding or steering me, allowing the horse to go where it wanted without worrying about stops or other traffic – it was both exhilarating and freeing.  The horse would lean back, sort of tumbling down a hill of sand, and then lean forward, climbing up the next soft sandy ridge.  All I had to do was lean forward and back when the horse did, and I was an instant expert.  After about half an hour, we brought our horses back, spending a five bucks each for a ride I will always remember.

To get to Sakkhara, you ride into the desert, but the way to and from is surprisingly green and lush, full of farmland that literally hasn’t changed in a millennia. Forests of palm trees and native plants are visible through the large windows of the bus, and open farmland where we can see people picking or tending to crops.  Donkeys with their backs laden with hay wait quietly for more to be piled on, and once in a while, you see a man with no animals, out in his field, yoked to his own plow, dragging his livelihood behind him through row after row.  Not a life I would choose to live, but they seem, if not happy, at least accepting of this land, this fate.

There are no sidewalks, and people walking or riding donkeysline the roadways in the busier sections, the tiny towns and villages; you almost never see an Egyptian on a horse unless it’s a member of the military or they’re joyriding in the desert on the Giza Plateau.  The bus, a modern and comparatively huge vehicle, travels easily across the paved roads, bumpy with gravel and sand, but occasionally must stop for donkeys, cows, or people who traverse too close in its path.  Once the bus stopped at an intersection and could not continue.  After a while, our guide Emil, ever impatient, jumped off the bus to see what was causing the traffic holdup in front of us.  He came back shaking his head.  “Goats!” he grumbled.  And indeed, a herd of goats had gotten mixed up in the traffic and their herder was trying to round them up.  About fifteen minutes later, the goats presumably under control, the traffic resumed its regular pace and the bus was able to move forward.

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This is the 2nd excerpt from my work-in-progress memoir, Travels Through Egypt.  This is the last part of chapter 3.  If you have a suggestion for the name, let me know.  I’m about halfway through writing it, and I’ll try to publish a chapter a week.

***

Food helps to ground me, but for two days, I foundered, as we traveled from site to site visiting Cairo.  Jet lag, the newness of the Middle East, the strangeness of the “getting to know you” period with the group, and my general work exhaustion, all seemed to overwhelm me until I felt as if I were swimming through sand.  The most important thing I remember from this period, is meeting our guides, Mohamed Nazmy and Emil Shaker.  Emil and Mohamed are the reason we go back to Egypt year after year now, and it was at their suggestion that we eventually began to lead trips.

Mohamed Nazmy, the President of Quest Travel, has always been a bit of an enigma to me. When I first met him, I described him as, “What if a bear and a beagle gave birth to an Egyptian?” These days, he is formidable, a big man with a full face, smooth skin, heavy lidded eyes, and jet black hair with a white Bride of Frankenstein streak at the front.  Mohamed wears Armani suits, and his every gesture is elegant.  His staff is obviously both afraid of him and worshipful of this father figure, who acts as sort of a benevolent dictator.  Everyone in the hospitality business knows Mohamed, and I once scared off a man on the street who was trying to hustle me by telling him I knew Mohamed Nazmy.  I believe Mohamed has done more for spiritual travel in Egypt than perhaps any other man, and he counts Marianne Williamson, Greg Braden and Graham Hancock among his many luminary friends.

To Greg and me, Mohamed is a teasing boy, who giggles and loves practical jokes and surprising people with gifts, unexpected opportunities, or little extras that he knows will make his guests happy. On our first trip, he looked in Greg’s and my eyes and called us his brother and his sister.  He obviously saw something there we did not, since at the time we would never have guessed we would come back to Egypt again and again.

Last year, I nicknamed him Momo, and to my surprise, the name stuck, and now Mohamed has taken to signing his e-mails Momo, or Big Mo (which is larger than life like he is, but sounds too gangstery to fit).  But, in typical Momo fashion, woe to the staff member who calls him by his nickname.  They all still refer respectfully to “Mr. Mohamed,” at least to his face. 

Momo is the most incredible marketer I know of, and has mentored me on many of his secrets over the years.  But his best one is simply understanding the dynamic of many of the people who visit, knowing to always give them nothing less than the trip of a lifetime.  For each of his guests, this is his goal, and that he almost always achieves it can, in Egypt, be nothing short of a miracle.

Emil and Mohamed have been friends for over twenty years.  Emil was born in Luxor, not just the city, but on the actual grounds of the temple, which in those days was still full of mud structures that were formed on three sides, and attached to a wall of the temple.  Emil can stand at the entrance to the main Luxor temple compound, point just behind the left Collossus, and say he was born there. Needless to say, Egypt’s in his blood.  When he was a kid, the authorities came in and kicked everyone out of Luxor temple and demolished all their homes, making way for the badly needed temple refurbishment in anticipation of the growing tourist trade, made possible by the advent of cheap plane travel. 

Emil was, by his own gleeful admission, a bad boy.  He will tell you as many stories as you like to prove this to you.  For example, when he was a kid, an old man who lived near him married a young, beautiful woman and was having sex with her every night.  Their bedroom was on the second floor, and Emil used to shinny up the metal downspout next to the window, so he could watch.  After a few weeks, the old man got wind of it, and wired the pipe to a circuit.  The next time Emil grabbed the pipe, Emil got a jolt of electricity that knocked him to the ground.   When he tells this story, he laughs uproariously and slaps his leg. 

At fifteen, Emil got into so much trouble, his mother decided he had to leave Luxor, and sent him away to school.  Eventually, he went to Cairo University and became an Egyptologist, and it was in this capacity that he met, and began working for, Mohamed Nazmy.  Emil has less than a full set of teeth, and even less hair, but women for some reason find him devastatingly attractive.  On every trip, they fight over Emil.  Who does he like best? Which one will he end up with?  I’ve seen a seventy year-old and a thirty year-old go nuts over the guy.  Emil gets the last laugh, flirting with everyone, making all kinds of promises, but when I ask him if he ever follows through, he says, “No! I am a good boy,” and gestures dismissively.  I almost believe him, but the seventy year-old seemed especially determined.

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This is the first entry in the excerpts of my work-in-progress Egypt memoir, tentatively titled, “Travels Through Egypt” (if you can think of a name you like better – that still has the word Egypt in it – please let me know!)  After 10 years of travel to many cities throughout Egypt, and with 5 years under me as “Julie the Cruise Director” for Spirit Quest Tours, I have some interesting stories to tell. Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, the Egypt I have experienced is always warm, welcoming, and one of my favorite places to be on the planet. I hope you enjoy my stories, and that Egypt is brought to life for you as you read them.  I also hope you will make comments, good OR bad, about what you think of the writing and the material, as it will help me make some decisions as I get into the editing process.

From Chapter III – All the Firsts

In the fall of 1997, Greg came to me.  We were working about a hundred hours a week – each – on a project, and we were exhausted.  He told me about this trip to Egypt he wanted to take, which included a Nile cruise.  At the time I couldn’t have cared less about Egypt, but the idea of cruising the Nile for two weeks sounded so much better than sleeping in the office that I agreed.  The following May, we took the first of what was to become an annual pilgrimage.

Egypt is an incredible place, and though so much has been written about it no one exaggerated.  It’s an amazing dichotomy, too, of the ancient coupled with the not-so-old.  Nothing in Egypt is new, really; they are about 20 years behind America, just like any third world country.  This, coupled with a thick layer of sand, dust and dirt, keeps many things looking much older than they are.  We have always found the people there friendly to the point where we call them family when we see them again.  They will tell you to your face – they love Americans, they hate our President.  But they don’t even seem to blame us for voting for him… twice. 

The first time I saw Cairo, I thought, “God, what have we done?”  The flight was just circling to land, and all we could see was these buildings, many of them looking no better than huts, all drowning in the desert.  And smog so thick I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to breathe once we landed.  Not much of an improvement, since in those days they still allowed smoking in the back of international flights.  As if the canned air in the back of the plane wasn’t toxic to those in the front.  At least once we landed we would be out in the open.

The Cairo airport did nothing to improve my first impression.  Now it’s been remodeled, with lots of shopping added, and vast halls of marble and carved stone, but ten years ago it looked as dilapidated as the airport in Bulgaria, a leftover relic from the Soviet Bloc.  We stood in a sprawling group, waiting for all our luggage to arrive and be identified

I had never traveled with a group before, despite extensive trips all over Europe since I was very small.  With everyone sleeping on the flight, no one had really met yet, and now, after over 16 hours of travel, everyone was too tired to socialize.  But we noticed a blond woman with hair down to her waist, traveling alone, and I went over to introduce myself, drawn to her somehow despite my exhaustion.  Lynn and Greg and I have been best friends ever since, the trip solidifying our initial connection to each other.  Honestly, I don’t know how groups can help but bond with each other, with everyone exhausted, wearing the same rumpled clothes for over two days and all smelling of unwashed teeth and armpits.  It’s bond, or kill each other.  Perhaps this is how early humans survived.

Eventually, after passport control and a 45 minute ride to the hotel, we all collapsed in our rooms.  They told us the Giza pyramids were right outside our windows, but by this time, it was too dark to see.  They would just have to wait until morning.

The next day, I awoke in cool smooth Egyptian cotton sheets, heavy drapes covering the windows.  I was not sure it was morning, but the balcony of our room beckoned, and I rolled out of bed to see our view.  The green rolling gardens were a surprise, as was the blue water of the vast pool not too far down the lawn.  As my happy eye swept up, I finally saw what all the fuss was about – the Pyramids and the famed Giza Plateau seemed like they were only across the street. 

 These triangles of stone are inexplicable.  From the outside, even from a distance, they seem so much more romantic than their simple shapes would warrant.  The view from our window, like much of the Mena House, features the Great Pyramid itself, the largest of the three structures that make up the pyramid complex.  Even over a mile away as the crow flies, you can tell it’s a big sucker.

We were staying, as we always do, at the Mena House hotel, legendary as the best hotel in all of Cairo.  A former hunting palace, the armistice which ended World War II was signed in what is now its main building.  It has a vaguely Moroccan theme, which suits the over-the-top décor in the main lobby, all glass chandeliers and gilt mirrors.  My favorite part of the hotel has always been the pictures from the late 19^th or early 20^th century, which feature the couple who owned the hotel, their guests, and the many servants, horses and camels who must have made up the bulk of any establishment’s staff in those days.  There is one picture of the lady, setting off on her afternoon ride, sidesaddle, with a full skirt and a Gibson hairdo.  A little black boy waits beside her, in full uniform.  It might have been 100 degrees that day, but there she goes, off into what can only be described as a fairly uncivilized heat.  Between the Egyptian and Indian climate, I think they must have built the English braver in those days,.

The main restaurant also overlooked the Great Pyramid – well, not so much overlooked as “sat right next to,” so the first day we were pretty overwhelmed by this iconic image we’d all read about, sort of looming about the breakfast table like the elephant in the room.  The pyramid was so tall, in fact, and we so close, that when you stood you couldn’t see the top, so it just seemed like a grayish wall.  Then you would sit down, and there would be this pyramid, having breakfast at your table with you. 

Many of the Egyptian hotel and restaurant staff people were trained in the way of French cuisine and service. So they do a wonderful job with food in Egypt, while there is none of the reputed French attitude (in France, a waiter almost kicked Greg out of a restaurant for ordering coffee, bread, cheese and fruit – at the same time, quelle horror!) The breakfast is sumptuous at the Mena House, and you can pick from made-to-order or a full buffet.  One of the first things I couldn’t wait to try was the local yoghurt with black honey – dark and treacly, it looked just like molasses, which was exactly what it turned out to be, only with a much more exotic name.  They do the whole silver tea and coffee service, and the waiters and the kitchen staff fawn on you.  I once sent my scrambled eggs to exchange for fried, and the chef himself came out with my plate to make sure I was happy with them.

My first Arabic words were “Chai, bi laban” (shay, bee lahbahn, with a break after the first word and the second and third ones all run together).  This means “tea with milk.”  My mother raised me to be polite, so the second thing I learned was “min fadlak” (min fud’luk), which means “please.” However, right after that I learned that you say “min fadlik” if it’s a woman, and “min fadlak” if it’s a man, and I got them mixed up.  So then I thought, “it’s ‘lick’ if it’s a woman, and ‘luck’ if it’s a man,” (Greg, trying to help, told me “Lucky men lick women”) and then I decided maybe I should stop trying to learn Arabic.