Postcard from Cairo

Do you know about the curse of the mummy? Legend has it that anyone who dared to open an Egyptian tomb would suffer the wrath of the mummy. All of this hullabaloo began when a certain Lord Caernarvon, the Brit who funded the discovery of King Tut’s Tomb, died shortly after its discovery in the 1920s. The path to his death began in the spring of 1923 when he was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito. During a morning shaving routine the Lord further aggravated the mosquito bite. It soon became infected and Lord Caernarvon found himself ill. A doctor rushed to the scene, but the medical attention arrived too late and Lord Caernarvon died. At that exact moment the lights in Cairo mysteriously went out.

Once Caernarvon expired the media went wild with stories of his death. They claimed King Tut wanted vengeance and cursed those who had entered the tomb. Not only did the death of Caernarvon whip people into a frenzy but other stories began to surface as well. Oh my.

Well, the quartet of travelers from KA last weekend might believe a little in the curse of that adolescent king. Let me tell you about the end of the trip to Egypt…

We left our lovely resort at the exact time our hotel said in order to be at the airport two full hours in advance, but the intense traffic dogged us and our one hour drive became two hours. On the way, one of our friends got sick, and since traffic was at a standstill, took advantage of the snail’s pace and just opened the car door to, well, you know. Okay, back to the clockwatching part of the story. As we four ran from the taxi into the terminal, we saw no flights departing to Amman. We asked the attendants, and they informed us, “Oh, you are at the wrong airport.” Yikes! We had one hour until the plane took off, and after we realized our driver, who had definitely deposited us at the wrong place, had left, we scrambled to get to the right place. Watching the minutes fly by, we snagged a driver, and arrived at the correct place at 9:25. Bags flying and limbs slicing the air, we ran to the counter. They refused to let us board! Two of our four pleaded in Arabic that it wasn’t our fault—we had confirmed tickets and just carry-on bags, and couldn’twejustgetonboardsowecouldgotoschoolthenextdayorwhoknowswhatmighthappentous.

Our sick friend vomited over by the Starbuck’s. I just sat and watched. And wondered what the taxi driver’s error was going to cost us.

Oh, the curse? Well, my weak-in-the-gills friend had purloined a little piece of the pyramids the day before while we romped around the ancient-wonder-of-the-world. A curse? As we calmed down and plotted what to do…we wondered…

So that is nearly the end of the story. Somehow it seemed exciting to relay the events of the weekend in a fractured, quasi-Quentin Tarentino-esque style.

To cut to the chase—we got back to Amman. It didn’t cost all that much.

So how was the weekend?

Exciting. Thrilling. Or should I wax alliteratively? It was Pharaonically Phabulous!

We arrived late on Thursday, after hearing gasps all day of, “you’re going to Egypt for the weekend? Cool!” and more than a few, “How stupid to go to Egypt for a weekend—you need at least a week.” Yeah, but how often can you hop on a plane, and in just a 60-minute flight later land in one of those fabled cities like Cairo???

It was an hour drive to our resort, the Swiss chain of Movenpick (say it like you say the poet’s name of Goethe—say it again, stretch out the umlaut-ed vowel a little more…) and it was gorgeous. Yes, on the way there we passed the pyramids illuminated at night, and giddily discussed that twelve hours later…

So after loading up on the breakfast buffet (a big reason why I chose this hotel for the package deal!) we took a bus to the pyramids. It can be a little bit of a shock to visit the Giza plateau and realize that the sandy mound that’s home to the pyramids is actually plonked in the middle of a congested city suburb. Heck, actually all of Cairo is a congested city suburb. But there they were!

The sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the (Ancient) World, the Pyramids of Giza still live up to more than 4000 years of hype. Their extraordinary shape, geometry and age render them somehow almost alien constructions—they seem to rise up out of the desert and confront us with their fascinating history. The ancient Athenian historian Herodotus visited this site 2500 years ago, and he gazed in awe at them too, wondering how the Hollywood-like scene of slaves built these mausoleums.

As we know, the Egyptians harbored intense desires to be one with the cosmos, and these tombs allowed the pharaohs’ spirits to rise up and connect the worlds mortal and divine. The pharaoh was the son of the gods and also their intermediary. Set between the earth and the sky, these symbols of power allowed the Egyptians to honor in life, and worship in death, the powers of the rulers. In the old days, before the vandals and grave-robbers and thrill-seekers and souvenir junkies arrived (which, from all accounts, has been for, oh, about 2500 years!) the pyramids would have been polished white and capped in gold. Can you imagine such a sight in the desert sun?

So we arrive, and we look for the best camels to ride. Yes, even after my legendary donkey ride at Petra, I did need to join the tourist brigade and ride a camel at the pyramids. Fortunately for all of us, our friend Zeina (she of the Kenya trip as well!) is an expert at negotiating, and she almost made the camel guys wince at the price she was willing to pay for our camels. I whisper in the ear of my camel, “I hope you are elderly—I like slow, dull rides, Mr. Camel.” After we indulged in the ritual of pictures, and “Look, look—I’m on a camel in Egypt, guys!” talk, we took our ride. Much easier than that donkey. And there was no racing up 800 steps either.

About 100 yards away from the pyramids, away from the parking lots and bus lanes and postcard hawkers, there actually is a great desert scene—really like the kind in Lawrence of Arabia, and we rode out there and back. As we get out there, my camel driver, named Abdullah, asked me about Zeina. “What is her problem? Why does she like money more than happiness?” He told me it was okay to give him a big tip and not tell Zeina. Somewhere in the middle of this pastoral (can you use the word pastoral in a desert??) moment my camel driver yelled over at Zeina that it cost extra to get us off the camel. Thus started an absurd fight (while we were all on our respective camels) over the cost of the camel ride, and how the camels needed to be fed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Zeina won the fight. We would come to find on this trip to Egypt, that nothing happens there without some fight over money. It might be the cost of a cup of tea, or a taxi ride, or of course, wondering about tickets back to Amman.

There is a small pyramid nearby (there are 9 at this site in all) and you are allowed to climb on it—so here we go—when in Cairo…

It was on this little child-like adventure (although taller and more historically significant than any jungle-gym known to me previously) that our friend Tristan picked up a stone on the pyramid, and said, “Don’t these look like hieroglyphics on this stone? You don’t think…? Well, it will make a nice souvenir.” Could that be the source of the curse???

On this exquisite sunny day we lingered down by the sphinx, and then took leave of the pyramids. The other highlight of that day was our evening with the Hamati family. Prior to this evening we hadn’t even met these Hamatis, but there is a Hamati at KA—a gregarious 9th grade girl with a devilish smile and quick wit. When her father found out we were going to Cairo, he called me and said, “My son and daughter are in medical school in Cairo. They will take care of you.” And they did.

They whisked us off to a dinner on a boat on the Nile, and even though we had just met them, their laughter and ebullience proved contagious and delightful. After dinner they wanted to take us to classic, old Cairo, a neighborhood that smacked of a Warner Brothers picture of the 1930s and 1940s, a place Hollywood would have called “The Casbah,” or something. Indeed, the proprietor looked just like actor Sydney Greenstreet, that corpulent, hammy actor who owned a rival club in the film Casablanca. This place, known as El Fishaway is where Egyptians go and watch the world go by, sip coffee, and smoke those not-just-in-the-movies shisha pipes. There is something so alluring in seeing the wide-eyed tourists and the Cairenes mingling together. The Hamatis hired one of the best-known Egyptian singers to entertain us there. On the phone I described the singer to my friend Anne as “an Egyptian Mel Torme-type.” He was funny, charismatic, and certainly crowd-pleasing. We got back to the resort late that night.

We had only two imperatives on this trip: see the pyramids, and see the King Tut stuff.

On Saturday, we headed to the Egyptian Museum, the great warehouse of a museum stuffed with thousands of items from the ancient tombs. The must-sees in this museum are all the “masterpieces” known to us from every art history textbook, but seeing them in this musty old museum is a treat beyond just any old museum trip. The Egyptian Museum is a throw-back in many ways, well, actually it is a museum from 1907 that never has been modernized, so really a relic itself. It has those old-fashioned wooden and glass cases with typed index cards for information—nothing at all “cutting edge,” and the place looks like you would see Indiana Jones cruise by at any moment.

I know this sounds lame, but I almost got emotional seeing all the iconic pieces of Egyptian art (Khafre, Seated Scribe, Rahotep and Nofret—just to name a few). I had these great flashbacks of teaching this art over the last 7 years and thinking of all the great art history students I enjoyed at Hackley, and running from room to room (much the way Jill and I did at the Uffizzi way back in 1985, our first time being real art history mavens) pointing and staring and drinking in the cool beauties of the Egyptian artifacts.

Then we got to the King Tut stuff—it is spectacular. There are hundreds and hundreds of items—from fishing gear to musical instruments to walking sticks to chariots to thrones and then the grand-daddy room of them all: the sarcophagi and death mask. Yes, you have seen it in pictures forever. Yes, it is stupendous, and looks new and breathtaking. Yes, the gold and semi-precious stones are spectacular. I know I already used the word spectacular—but it is worth repeating the word. Linda, another of our group, almost started to cry—she had sketched the King Tut death mask as a child of 9, and she couldn’t believe she got to see it in person!

We walked out of the museum hovering around Cloud 9. The rest of the day would be gravy: a boat ride, a visit to the bazaar and a mosque, and some time in the spa before heading to the airport at 7:00.

Yes, well, you know that the story doesn’t end as smoothly.

Cut to the airport. After the smirking airline staff dismissed us, we called the Movenpick (don’t say the vowel as delicately this time) to inform them of the pickle in which their driver had landed us. Shouldn’t they provide us with a room for the night? It had been their designated time and their designated driver; thus it was their mistake. A repeat of a scene just 30 minutes before: pleading in Arabic, Tristan sick in the corner, and me sitting and wondering about the costs (yes, if you know my family, I come by this habit honestly…). We couldn’t see the smirks over the telephone, but we know they wore their haughtiness proudly. No dice.

So we chose a hotel near the airport. We checked in about midnight, called some people at school and told them we were stuck in Cairo, and would return to regular life soon.
Once we checked in, we decided to relax and enjoy the extra day in Cairo.

The following day—no more sickness, we figured out the plane situation, the Hamatis met us again, time poolside, a visit to a mall modeled on the pyramids, and a smooth flight back.

We beat the curse.