21 Day in Cairo. Looking through a positive lens Part 2 2. The City: Time for some harsh realities after the nice words of Part 1. The city is atrociously huge, with a jungle of freeways and byways and streets and alleys and subway lines, far extended beyond any limit I am used to or remember, to too many new suburbs I couldnt name. (My old city is like a small insignificant pit of a huge new but rotten apple). and it is always jammed to the dazzling stand-still traffic, almost everywhere you go. unless it is 1 AM, when you can drive (Not me) really , really fast at your choice of speed. Parking is next to impossible, and you double park in many cases, no problem. It is dirty and polluted and there is garbage everywhere, mounted on sidewalks at assigned spots. It looks like a by-product of the revolution that the garbage collecting system has been compromised and it hasnt been fixed yet. People are everywhere all the time. 18 millions and growing. It never sleeps. 4 AM is still a good time to party and visit. Cafés , tea shops, restaurants, boat-restaurants and night-clubs moored along the banks of the Nile, underground and above-ground clubs and bars are always open and welcoming you. Everything is available and I mean EVERYTHING under the sun, most expensive, most exquisite and most bizarre. I found a good shirt on sale for the equivalent of $ 300!! almost bought it but felt so guilty I couldnt. Found another one, almost as good, in another mens clothing store down the same street for $ 20. People live in 7 million dollars (I said Dollars) homes in gated communities (I have been to one, owned by a family member never seen before who invited us, I suspected, to essentially brag) and also on sidewalks and condemned buildings and medieval mausoleum, and everywhere and every dwelling in between but almost always in apartment buildings. Architecture is anything you can imagine, Parisian style from the 1860s, Victorian from the 1880s, art-deco from the 1920s, match-boxes from Nassers era and then all the crap of slum dwelling where anything goes, ugly , dirty and decrepit, and haphazardly growing. The great city grows on you after a week or so and then you dont want to leave and of course fall in love with everything; the music, the food, the traffic and legendary smart-ass-ness and the double-talking but sincere crushed and rushed people. A city of 5000 years history. Just passed thru 2 brand- new revolutions. Below are 3 pictures I took PART 3 to follow. (RELIGION)
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 02:03:49 +0000
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