Travels With Omar

Cairo—I'm back in Cairo for the last time before returning home March 1, and now I can relax in the apartment where I'm staying as if I own the place. The cold that kept me in bed and shivering for a day in the Bahariya Oasis has turned into a ferocious and unrelenting cough, but I'm planning on continuing my exploring anyway, at least today. Young Omar is my guide again while I'm in town—a birthday present from my Egyptian Friend back home, Omar's uncle. Today we are going to a city about an hour north by train, beautified with gardens and stone bridges by the Turkish general Mohammed Ali who in the 19th century made himself king.

We start the day by walking to the corner microbus stop for a ride to the train station, where I learn that the suicidal underpass I've been walking to get to the Internet cafe has a parallel pedestrian tunnel. Yesterday I'd witnessed a boy getting his head cracked open by one of the zooming drivers who honk their way mindlessly through this underpass whether there's anyone in there or not. Now I can use the pedestrian tunnel with some semblance of safety and undertake my internet addiction anew.

It takes us a couple of microbuses to get to the main train station because Omar is impatient with the traffic delays and can get us there faster by foot. He pulls me by my sleeve through the narrow, traffic-clogged alleys to speed up my pace, steer me around the many obstacles, and assure himself that he knows where I am. As with many things regarding Omar, I will get sick of this.

We emerge from an alley right at the edge of the tracks, with the trains and the station on the other side. There are no trains moving right now, thank God, because Omar leaps down the four-foot ledge, puts up a hand, and tells me we're going to run across the tracks. "I'll bet you've never done THIS in America," he says. No, I have not, and I don't want to now.

But today and for the rest of my time in Cairo Omar won't be shy about telling me what to do. He tells me I should carry a toothbrush, put on my jacket, comb my hair, change my seat, hurry up—even dress my salad. ("Pour the dressing ON the salad.") He grabs my sleeve again, we run across about five sets of tracks, and he helps me onto the platform on the other side. He finds a policeman to ask about the next train to our destination. All I recognize from their cheerful conversation is the word "American."

The next train is leaving in a few minutes and it occurs to me to ask if there's a W.C. on it. Since there isn't, I run back to the station, use the loo, and run back just in time to leap aboard. Every seat is filled and once again it's a big surprise that no women or foreigners are on board.

Omar turns on the charm and pretty soon some men start shuffling and two seats open up—first for me and then for him. The men who yield their seats ride for the next hour in the wobbly space between the cars where poor Egyptians can ride free—even though these men have paid their full 1 EGP (1/6 of a US dollar) fare.

Tourists are not supposed to ride fourth class, and at first I thought that was so the railways could bilk the tourists. But it turns out to have more to do with competition for the cheap seats: Everyone uses public transportation here, and most Egyptians are poor. None of these trains runs with extra seats, no matter what class the car, so it's better for everyone if the cheaper cars are reserved for the people who can least afford them. (And anyway the first-class cars are so cheap as to make sneaking down to fourth class absurd.)

I have ridden in first class toward Luxor and second class from Alexandria, but this is my first fourth-class ride—a gift from Omar who wants me to see how real Egyptians live.

The open platforms between the cars are stuffed with the free-riders, some who look so frail they might blow away in the wind. I try not to draw attention to myself by looking around, but when I perceive something moving in my peripheral vision I can't help myself. Scooting along the luggage rack within inches of the ceiling, there's a man with a stuffed flour sack that he uses as a pillow once he reaches a point where he can stop and stare down at me. Every time I sneak a peek at him he hasn't moved—or, apparently, blinked.

As I've been warned the glass in the windows is gone. I don't think about the effect of traveling in a train with no windows until the black smoke from the diesel locomotive comes furling into the car. Add to that the dust and dirt of thousands of years of Egyptian decay and now I'm hacking violently, uncontrollably, until tears run down my face.

I have wrapped my scarf over my head (to keep my hair from tangling), around my neck (because I'm freezing), and across my nose and mouth (to maintain an airway), and now I look like Lawrence of Arabia, except for the eyes. (Ever since I bought this scarf in Luxor a month ago I would no sooner go out without it than I would without my passport. It's also camouflage for a haircut and dye-job pushed way beyond their expiration dates.)

Every once in awhile I notice Omar chuckling to himself. Finally he tells me that back at the train station the policeman he'd talked with, who asked if Omar wanted a tourist policeman to accompany us, asked also if he had gotten me off the Internet. Omar told him yes.

As we travel north it's easy to see how Omar, who was raised in relative privilege with an education and the instantly recognizable badge of white, straight teeth, can cross back and forth easily between this world and his family's. He strikes up a conversation with his seat mate, includes a man standing in the aisle, and pretty soon they're talking with the easy camaraderie of old friends. Omar does this everywhere we go—asking for directions and advice, helping someone board a bus, picking up a wallet a woman has dropped, giving money to a beggar on the sidewalk—always with that winning smile. He just got a job in reception at a hotel in Alexandria and hopes it will lead to his dream of touring the world with a backpack. He wants to meet people who are not like him—real people, he says—and with his friendliness and warmth I have no doubt he'll do it.

When we arrive we have to step over the sprawling free-riders crowding the platform between cars. We make our way through the crowded, noisy, dirt streets toward the Nile, which Omar tells me is more beautiful here than in Cairo.

As we walk along he wants to know about my city, so I give him the highlights: clear lakes, the Mississippi, bike trails and walking trails that go everywhere, a vibrant youth culture and music scene. But he wants to know if it's legal there to spit on the sidewalk. Well, I don't know, and I tell him so. He says he saw a European spitting on the sidewalk once in Sharm el Sheikh. "Disgusting," he says. I look at the donkey cart driver throwing orange peels overboard, at the goats upside down in a garbage bin, at the herd of feral cats raking through piles of garbage someone has just dumped from a window, at the steaming mounds of animal waste underneath my own feet, and I think, Really? Disgusting?

We reach one of Mohammed Ali's famous bridges, which has what looks like small, medieval castles on either end. We're out of the worst of the traffic because the bridge is too narrow, but we still have to watch for the lunatic motorcycles and toc-tocs that roar around us. (Toc-tocs are the noisy, smelly, three-wheeled roofed motorcycles you see all over Bangkok. They're new in Egypt and are the worst kind of pestilence since God persuaded Pharaoh to free the Israelites.)

The Nile is wide here as it gathers steam for the delta and the Mediterranean. Fishermen dot the blue, gently flowing waters; some of them ride the current on old tires, their feet dangling in the water. It is a tranquil scene and I'm happy to be here.

We take our time crossing the bridge to the other side, where I can see the gardens Mohammed Ali built extending far along the river. But as soon as we touch foot on the other side we are swarmed by toc-tocs. Over and over Omar says "la, shukran," we want to walk, but they won't leave us alone. They follow us step by step, shouting at us and beeping. Omar keeps putting himself between me and the toc-tocs because they're crowding us and the drivers are hollering threateningly. We escape them momentarily when we turn into one of the gardens, but then the tea sellers start following us to get us to come into their shops. By now my nerves are rattled, my chest is raw from coughing, and my breathing passages are choked with soot and dirt stirred up by traffic and toc-tocs. I agree when Omar suggests we go look at the waterfall and then get out of here.

But back on the street the toc-tocs swarm once again. One boy of about 10, driving illegally, persuades Omar to take his toc-toc to the falls for 50 piastres--1/2 a pound--for the brief ride to the falls. Omar gives him twice as much and we try to walk the rest of the way but the boy, like everyone else, will not go away until the caretaker of the lock and dam chases him off the riverside terrace.

Once we're back on the road the toc-tocs return with the boy in front, and now he's demanding 5 pounds for having waited for us. Nobody asked him to wait and in fact we did not want him to. Some obviously ugly words are exchanged and Omar is angrier than I could ever imagine him to be. I can't believe the guts of this little brat taking on a man more than twice his size. We escape him briefly but here he comes up on me from behind, practically running me over and shouting at Omar. He must be the leader of this little army of toc-tocs because they all follow us step for step the whole way back into town, shouting and honking their obnoxious little horns.

When we get to a place where we can hear each other, Omar suggests we skip lunch, hop a microbus now for the trip back into Cairo, catch the Metro to Tahrir, and get take-out koshiry to eat in the Square—the same sad, squalid Square surrounded by burned-out high-rise hotels and scraps of the occupation camp; the same bland, gut-bloating pasta as we'd shared a month before. I suggest alternatives and he snaps something about why I'm asking so many questions.

Later, on the bus, I barely speak to him and he tells me not to talk because he doesn't want the other people, who are staring at me in that unblinking way I'll never get used to, to know I'm foreign, which is so patently false that I store it away for a later fight.

When we arrive at the Square we go to order koshiry and Omar refuses my suggestion to eat inside, where it's relatively quieter and clean. It's not until later that he tells me that his pique was due to guilt because he had missed afternoon prayers. With that he turns into a covered alleyway, parks me with our koshiry on a plastic stool and joins three men who are praying in this make-shift mosque. It's clear now that the dinner and the destination were about his agenda, not mine.

When he rises he returns to me with that pearly, beatific smile and regales me for the whole walk to the park bench with how wonderful prayer is for restoring your mood.

I can feel it coming. "Are you not grateful to God?" he asks as we take up our bench. "Why do you not show God your gratitude through prayer?" He continues in this vein while I look meaningfully at the bag of koshiry growing cold at his feet.

In a pique of my own I ask him why he thinks prayers are better at demonstrating gratitude than works are, and how does he know whether I pray or not. I try to tell him that in my tradition your faith is between you and God, a personal thing, and that prayer can happen anytime, anywhere, and is free of rules.

But he's not listening. He launches uninvited into the propriety of prayer, the compulsions outlined in Islam that tell Muslims how to pray—when, where, how often, and with whom. The gulf between us—culture, religion, gender, age— is so vast there's no point in taking up my end of the conversation. Earlier in the journey this would have bothered me. Now, I'm glad that he's finally shut up.

What I'm coming to dislike about Omar is not really his fault, it's mine. He had me believing he wanted to travel the world and meet people completely unlike him—in China, Tibet, Vietnam, Russia, Eastern Europe. A lot of non-Muslims live in those places. Does he really think he'd make friends around the world telling them how wrong-headed they are?

The next day we're in a different town and it's time—again—for him to pray. But the mosque we're heading for is a lovely little example of Turkish architecture in a garden, and I drop my antagonism momentarily to see it.

Inside there's no one except the muezzin who smiles at me and lets me sit in a chair under the dome. That lasts about a minute before someone else comes along to object, and I'm moved with my chair to a low-ceilinged, curtained-off corner to stew in my own juices, in the dark.

Now my temper's really up. I grab my shoes, cut through the mosque and head for the garden. Whether Mohammed intended Islam to remain like mental handcuffs or not, the fact that women are forced to pray in a coat closet like some bad Catholic girls strikes me as reason enough to consider this religion a failure.

When Omar comes out and starts his happy preaching, he gets to a point where he describes how Islam around the world has united the people. I really don't want to get into it with him but he keeps it up and after awhile I can't stand it anymore. I say, "the men, Omar." "Islam has united the men." It's interesting that now he doesn't want to get into it with me.

This morning I was driven from the apartment by voices over loudspeakers coming from different directions preaching the Koran, since it's Friday. Once again, they were so loud there was no chance for reading, much less writing. Islam is the state religion in Egypt, its mosques and imams bought and paid for by the government. Although tolerance of minority religions is official state policy, in practice it's a different story. The largest minority, the Coptic Christians, who predate Islam by almost 500 years, suffer under a second-class citizenship that gives them inferior rights compared to Muslims, limits their access to government protection and programs, and otherwise marginalizes them.

One of the many things I love about my country is that in the beginning, religious zealots were so numerous, disparate, and afraid any one of them would dominate the others that the Framers could get away with writing a Bill of Rights that protected all of them from the government. Today, no state religion. In 200 years it's become part of our DNA to believe that pluralism is a virtue.