In Egypt, Finally

Cairo—Omar and his friends pick me up at the airport at 11:30 p.m., practically jumping out of his skin when he recognizes me going through customs. At 22 years old he couldn't be more charming with his gallant manners and calling me "madam." But then the hair-raising ride though the streets of the city in a car the size of a microwave, everyone laying on their horns as if it makes any difference at all. I'd be taking pictures but I'm holding on for life. Welcome to Cairo.

I'm staying in an old-ish part of the city called Meet Okba that few tourists venture into. The apartment belongs to an Egyptian-American Friend who has not been invited along. Omar is his nephew. His family, most of whom have stopped by to introduce themselves, bring me sweet tea and cakes, or otherwise just get a look at me, all either live in the building or nearby. I have never met lovelier people. Communication is no obstacle.

In the morning I wake up for my first glimpse of the city in daylight, throw open the shutters on the balcony and look down as a donkey cart clops by right beneath my feet. I could sit here all day with my camera and a cup of coffee, but a friend of my Friend is due soon. We're going sight-seeing.

January 13

Essam and the Purple Carrots

We are headed toward ancient Sakkara when we pass a man in a galibiya driving a donkey with a cart. Though not quite used to donkeys, horses, and buffalos in the midst of six lanes of screaming traffic, I am captivated this time by the contents of the cart—a mountain of vegetables, half of them purple. What are those? I ask Essam. Carrots, he says. Would I like to try one? He pulls the car over and after what seems like a long time for a carrot he returns with a clean and peeled purple carrot for me, his daughter, and his wife. I do like the carrots and say so—they're more tender and sweet than any American carrots. So back he goes to the vendor and now I'm the proud owner of about 10 pounds of freshly picked carrots...to add to my 80-pound suitcase.

We go to the Citadel on a mountain at the top of Cairo, built by Saladin in the 12th century. The views of the city are arresting from up here, and there is no one else to interfere with the view. There is no tourism in Egypt right now—which is good for me, horrible for Egyptians.

We visit some tombs, museums, and the Titi pyramid and Sakkara, and I enjoy Essam's knowledge and enthusiasm for a history that must get tiresome for contemporary Egyptians. We try to get to the Great Pyramid but ordinary Cairo traffic is so bad we can't penetrate it before it's closed to the public for the day.

No matter. I am interested in antiquities and pharaonic architecture, but I am more interested in religious history and culture. It just so happens we're touring on a Friday and are still near the Citadel in old Islamic Cairo, in time for the noontime prayer. Essam joins the prayers at this greatest of all mosques in the world, leaving me at the car to watch as men stroll purposefully toward the door. I'm turned away because I'm clearly not Muslim.

Then the call to prayer begins. I'm in the middle of an ancient square with the Citadel just above me and all around me are the sky-high minarets of innumerable mosques that used to carry the live muezzins. Now, the call to prayer comes from all those spires via loudspeaker—that's LOUDspeaker—and the racket is overwhelming. For once you can't hear Cairo's incessant traffic. God has bigger pipes.

It would not be the last time that Essam would disappear for prayer. I don't know how a city can function with everyone disappearing in the midst of something they're doing to find a place to pray—usually a mosque, sometimes just the end of an alley that's been set aside for the purpose. While I wait for him in a parking lot, I watch the attendant abruptly sit on the grass, remove his shoes, and begin the ritual of prayer.

Despite the chaos that is Cairo, I have had a remarkably comfortable and enjoyable day. That evening at dinner with his wife and daughter—a surgeon and an architect—I tell Essam he is blessed with lovely women. I know he had lost this daughter's mother and her brother in a car accident not many years before. I think maybe that's why he's so quiet and sometimes far away.

"God takes away, but he gives," Essam tells me. "God is merciful."

January 14

Omar the Evangelist

There's nothing like standing in the center of a mosque in old Cairo trying to explain the Holy Trinity to an earnest 22-year-old Muslim with serviceable but unsophisticated English.

We had stopped during our saunter through the old quarter for Omar to pray; I was invited to join the women on their side of the large wooden screen. A man took a coin in exchange for my shoes and gave me a long electric-green gown with a hood—no mistaking me for a Muslim among the black-clad women on the floor before me. I was to meet Omar at a certain place after prayers in an area at the back of the men's side.

When I thought the prayers were over—the women began collecting the toddlers who had been cavorting around—I went to my appointed spot. Instantly, two small, leathery men intercepted me and insisted in increasingly urgent tones that I get outside. I could see from the open courtyard that prayers indeed were not over.

When Omar finds me he is in a missionary mood. We climb the steep steps to one of the towers overlooking Cairo and questions that tax my dusty knowledge of Christianity begin.

"What is this 'son of God' that is God?" he asks. "God is God. He cannot be both God and man." (This is the first and most significant profession of the Muslim faith: There is no god but God.) He wants to know if among Christians "the Christ" is also God. To him this is heresy. (As it was for many Christians in the early Church—a direction I definitely don't want to go.) When I try to explain "the Word made flesh" we are headed down a vortex of history, religion and culture that I hardly know how to escape. And we haven't even gotten to the Holy Spirit yet.

But this gentle young man who at his age in America would be hanging out in bars and chasing girls is determined to understand how people who are not Muslim think. He looks me right in the eye and asks about my faith in God. I have seen this coming and tried to dodge it; he has been so kind that I don't want to disappoint him.

The best I can do after much gentle prodding is an uninspired and unconvincing "belief" in "Nature."

"But who created 'Nature'?" he demands. "Where did it come from? Who started it? There must have been a beginning." We go along in this vein until I try a more humble approach, and suggest that these things are unknowable. Perhaps the best we can do with our limited minds is appreciate the wonder of the universe.

This satisfies Omar not at all.

He is getting exercised now and we've stopped to face each other. He walks me through the entire book of Genesis--all of it--and arrives back at the place where God evicts man from Paradise. Since man must redeem himself and reclaim Paradise through submission to God, am I not just a little bit worried that I'm not doing enough toward salvation?

Meanwhile I have a few questions of my own. Why do you need to pray five times a day to get your point across? Omar replies that it keeps the heart close to God.

Why do Muslims read the Koran all day, every day? (I of course know the answer to this—there's plenty of Hebrew and Christian precedent—but many Muslims read a 1,400-year-old classical Arabic that few modern speakers understand.) His answer is simple: God is God. Islam is a way of life. The Koran teaches us how to live.

For the rest of the day he points out book kiosks that carry copies of the Koran that I might like to study. I feel like an exam is forthcoming. I have brought a copy in translation of my own and hope to have much of it read before I return to Cairo at the end of February. No doubt we will resume this conversation then.