Ruth Frank lived in Oak Cliff until February 2009, when she married a captain in the United States Army and moved to Schweinfurt, Germany.

My husband Jude and I left for Cairo on a rainy Friday morning from Frankfurt. It was a short flight, a little over three hours, and we crossed over the Alps and the Greek Isles on the away. As we began to fly over Africa, the terrain changed drastically. The mountain peaks disappeared, and I could see nothing but sand below me and the tops of large houses with pools and palm trees and space between them for miles. Then, there was nothing but desert until the borders of Cairo appeared. I could not quite make it out from the sky—it was an enormous cluster of rectangular objects below without color or definition. I was nervous as the plane hit the ground and I heard the captain tell us over the loudspeaker that each of us would have to fill out a medical information card and have our temperature checked on arrival by authorities. The Swine Flu has been a problem in Cairo. Upon exiting the plane and entering the airport, it was alarming to see most of the airport staff wearing protective masks on their faces. We handed our medical cards to a person in a mask and had our temperature and photo taken from behind a line and then proceeded to the baggage claim. This entrance, all very swift and efficient in a surprisingly clean and attractive airport terminal, would be the last glimpse of order before our descent into Cairo as tourists.

Jude had organized the trip through an agency, and so we were greeted by an agent at the exit and led to our van. He was a young, thin man, deferential and eager to please, with tired eyes and a kind demeanor. I did not feel the culture shock that others had warned me of before I left. Rather, I felt I was back in Sicily. Everything had the same feel as we walked outside the terminal and heard the horns honking and saw the people gesticulating wildly. The difference was in the women, who almost all wore the traditional head scarf or, though less frequently, the full body covering with only slits for the eyes. It remained unsettling for me throughout the trip to see these women covered completely in their black, flowing garments, layer upon layer in the hundred degree heat, with only the glint of their eyes peering through. I could not help but feel with my strong American sentiment that they were set apart like lepers in the community, hidden and hushed away and shameful, moving like shadowy ghosts through the streets. I observed a group of these women eating breakfast at our hotel one morning. They sat apart from their husbands, and they lifted a piece of fabric that fell over their faces to let food in. It was a marvel to see the food disappear from their plates and to never quite see where it went.

The most vivid experience of Cairo happens in the car. There are no street rules whatsoever, and people follow their instincts. If there are traffic lanes, they are there in spirit only. The drivers weave in and out and squeeze in between spaces in which it would seem the sides of the car would tear off. Pedestrians wander across roads we would call highways and somehow do not get hit by the cars honking ferociously from all sides. Several times in our cab rides, we barely grazed by an unfazed pedestrian who seemed to have accepted like faith that he would not be hit when crossing a road without looking. Once, our cab driver was careening wildly down a small street and honking like a red hot demon while laughing in high pitched tones, (he was quite insane) and before us stood a man talking to a street vendor in the middle of the road. The cab driver, with eyes glazed in mad excitement, honked wildly and continued to drive at full speed at this man who, completely unfazed, continued to talk to his buddy in the middle of the road without even looking at us. The driver swerved around him at the last minute in mere inches of ending his life, and from behind I could see that the incident had no effect on the man whatsoever. He talked on without moving. We drove on alongside donkeys laden with heavy bags and bicycles stacked with baskets and people walking through cars miraculously. To be dropped off at our destination time and time again was a miracle.

Daytime in Cairo Photo: Ruth Frank

As a tourist, it is expected that you tip absolutely everyone you encounter and tip the people who take advantage of you and especially the ones that cheat you, from the police to the locals whose sole occupation is to “help” unsuspecting tourists at popular sites and then ask for money. Our hotel was in the Zamalek district of Cairo, an island where all of the embassies are located, and it is considered the posh part of the city. Later, walking around this area and smelling the dust and exotic, burnt smells and feeling the desert heat cling to our skin, we would realize that one doesn’t take a stroll in Cairo. The streets, even in this area of reputed affluence, are torn and jagged and ripped from one end to the other as if bombs have hit them every day for years. Clusters of trash have become a part of the landscape and look like fossils embedded in the ground. There is glass and there are chunks of the pavement lying about everywhere, and a person cannot walk without a great deal of caution. Men sit in chairs along the street and stare at you as you walk by. The shops owners shout at you to buy things, and the cab drivers creep up on you and tell you they have a great price for you. The tourism police, military police, and many other labeled police, all in white uniform and black berets, sit in little stands all along the streets either sleeping or staring or accepting bribes from locals who need favors. During our tour of the museum the next day, while we were given free time to wander, a policeman would usher us into a prohibited part of the museum against our will and then demand we pay him when we were finished looking at the dusty jars behind glass cases which he had never chosen to see. Incidents like this happened frequently during our three day stay.

The night before our trek to the pyramids, we ate pigeon stuffed with rice along with hummus, flat bread, olives, and cucumbers and drank a local wine. I cannot tell you how used, weary, and manipulated you feel as a tourist at the end of the day in Cairo. It is a feeling I cannot begin to describe without lumps starting to form in my throat. Our tour guide warned us before he let us wander around the pyramids to not speak or smile to anyone, because they took that as a sign that you would buy from them. Unfortunately, Jude is friendlier than I am and speaks a little Arabic, and everyone loved him and wanted to speak with him. While we wandered, we were harassed by many men who would flatter Jude’s language skills and then try to sell us something. At one point, we were wandering in between two pyramids when a man and a policeman whistled at us and started shouting at us. We did not understand, and the man began to usher us away and lead us up a hill, and we did what we were told because the policeman was looking on. The man led us to a view of the sphinx below and then asked if we wanted our picture taken. We thanked him and said no, but he refused to leave and demanded that we pay him for showing us this view. “I take you all this way in the heat,” he said in broken English. “What will you give me?” I could see the fury descending on Jude as we were manipulated yet again. He took one pound from his pocket and handed it to the man. “This is nothing,” said the man. “I take you all this way and this is nothing. I need to buy water.” I thought Jude was going to kill him, but he told him to go away in a threatening tone, and the man scampered off. I saw him later leading three people in Hawaiian shirts and dangling cameras up that same hill.

After the pyramids, our tour guide took us to a perfumery where were again served chai and seated in a dark room with many couches and given a tutorial on scents and blends from a threatening looking man with two wives who kept asking Jude how many wives he had and measuring out the bottle sizes of perfume by the number of a man’s wives. He was a bully to his workers, and they looked scared and contemptuous of him. When we purchased the very tiny bottle of Lotus Flower oil for the man with only one wife, the man looked disappointed and turned rude. We grew used to this treatment.

That night we ate chicken, lamb kebobs, tomatoes, tabouli, hummus, and fresh, hot flat bread. Again, we drank a local Egyptian wine. The meal bolstered our spirits. On Sunday, we took a cab to Coptic Cairo, the ancient part of the city, and our cab driver charged us extra because we did not want to hire him for the day. We wandered through the dusty streets and went to the Coptic Museum and walked a bit more through what I can only describe as slums. In fact, I was not prepared for the sprawling poverty of Cairo. I had imagined something much more romantic, no doubt influenced by adventure movies and novels. What Cairo is in reality is so different. Surrounding extraordinary mosques are buildings so tall and ugly that they look as if they would tip at any moment or disintegrate into dust. Some of them have large chunks missing from them and some were never finished being built.

These colorless constructions stretch on for miles and miles, and they prick you at times with a sense of hopelessness. Sporadic picturesque locations are surrounded by dirt and the sprawl and the trash and the corruption and the chaos. But the nights in Cairo left me with a sense of wonder and mysticism. Each night, from a mosque near our hotel came the chanting of the call to prayer, and the chanting from other mosques reverberated and overlapped throughout the city. After the call to prayer, Arabic music played on, fast and exotic, and the street noises pulsed all night in a steady rhythm. The heat and smells of the night were strong and pungent, and falling asleep to this was enough to make Cairo beautiful.