Just now up on Lonely Planet’s Travel Blog: A short entry about my encounter with a sweet older “guide” in Cairo’s Khan al-Khalili. An admittedly rare case of a person who wants to sell you stuff actually being nice as well!

Although that then reminds me of the guy who normally pushed papyrus on Talaat Harb taking the time to explain the small protest for Ayman Nour that was going on. So helpful!

See, in retrospect, Egyptians come out looking pretty good. It’s just dealing while you’re there that can be a little challenging.

All your nagging questions answered!

No, being blind in one eye did not prove a hindrance in Cairo. In fact, it may actually have helped.

Before my trip, the half-blind thing was just one small part of the much larger wad of anxiety. My thinking went something like: the traffic is so hideous and chaotic there, surely I won’t be able to keep track of it all and get blindsided by a bus! But the disproportionately higher number of people in Cairo with disabilities who get around just fine every day…. (Breathe.) Or maybe it’s not disproportionately higher, because they get killed off faster! (Stop breathing.)

But crossing the street proved no more difficult than it had back when I had two working eyes. Cars still careen nonstop, with no traffic lights, and you have to convince yourself that they will in fact drive around you once you step down off the sidewalk. It is still an overwhelming process that you eventually get a little better at. (Or not–Mandy, who’s lived there ten years, admits she still panics during street crossings, and happily takes taxis just to cross particularly bad intersections, such as the mess around the Ramses Hilton. One native Cairene once said to her, “I don’t understand–you speak Arabic. So how can you not have learned to cross the street?”)

So it’s not like you step off the curb casually, midway in a chitchat with a friend over where to get the best koshari. No, it commands all your attention, and usually gripping tightly to the arm of said friend–there was no chance that I would just, say, forget to look to my left.

But where the blind spot actually came in handy–and I was not expecting this–was with street hassle. It turns out it is so much easier to ignore people if I genuinely cannot see them!

Of course, they don’t know I can’t, so they think I’m a callous bitch either way, but in desperate situations (like trying to dodge someone while crossing a street–v.v. complicated!), it worked like a charm.

Speaking of callousness, I did notice a few beggars trying to capitalize on half-blindness, usually with one eye looking all cataract-y, or rolling horribly off to one side, or just not being there at all.

Dude. Please, I wanted to say. I can see right through you.

Aw–all the goofy little details I like about Cairo, bundled up in one video:

(Khalid, was that what the hospital was like?!)

If you ever have the chance to see Hakim in concert, go! You haven’t lived until you’ve seen about 12 Egyptian dudes in ’80s-look jumpsuits doing full choreography for a screaming crowd…and that was just in Brooklyn. Can’t imagine in his hometown.

And this was the song that was all the rage on the streets:

Uh, it’s called “Grapes.” And the lyrics are something about, well, how sweet grapes are. And how the red ones are good, and so are the yellow ones. Is that dirty? No one, apparently, is sure, but everyone loves the song. I won’t blame you if you stop the video partway through, given the hideous quality–and you sort of get the point of the song anyway.

Looking through all my pics has made me a little sniffy and nostalgic. Photos are sneaky that way–that’s exactly how I got talked into going back to Burning Man.

Come to think of it, Cairo is sort of like Burning Man–lots of dust, everyone wants to talk to you, and a lot of people want to have sex with you. And seriously–some of the getups are amazing. Also some scary crowd-control issues.

But enough belabored metaphor. What I like in the end is that people there are happy, and they’re ready to make you laugh too.

Part of my attitude readjustment re: Cairo came from reading an excellent book: Max Rodenbeck’s Cairo: The City Victorious. It’s a broad history as well as commentary on contemporary life. Somehow, reading that Cairenes were exceptionally proud of how they completely ripped off the king of Mali or somesuch, many many centuries ago, made me feel better about all the tedious little shopping scams you encounter today.

Another thing I enjoyed immensely was going to the Souq al-Gumaa (Friday Market), which is this mass of shopping insanity that takes place weekly in the southern cemetery area. As our de facto tour guide, Anna, described it, the line between what’s for sale and what’s trash is pretty arbitrary–there will be some old woman presiding over a blanket covered with broken telephones, used-up ballpoint pens and one shoe. The other shoe may very well be in the trash pile that’s just a few feet away.

Beyond the random junk-sellers is the animal market–where it was sad to see desert foxes in cages, but hilarious to see people excited about buying fluffy white Persian cats–and also a long row of the dustiest antiques you’ll ever see. And that sort-of road winds up in a section selling nothing but toilets. The overpasses are soaring overhead, the din is shocking, and the crowds are so oppressive it’s not clear how anyone actually buys anything–you’re basically forced to walk at a slow shuffle, or else be trampled. Nonetheless, Anna came away with three pairs of great vintage sunglasses, and I nearly expired from the heat. It was everything to hate about Cairo, but also everything to love.

As a place to do guidebook research, it was surprisingly not too difficult. Perhaps half the information I was given will turn out to have been absolutely made up on the spot–but I did my part.

One interesting detail was how quickly I was picked out as “the Lonely Planet person.” When I was checking out hotels, I genuinely was looking for a place where Peter and I would bunk down for a while, so when I said, “I’m just looking now–my husband’s coming next week,” I was not lying. And in that case, it made perfect sense that I didn’t have any luggage with me. But nonetheless, at least five hotel guys said, “You’re the Lonely Planet person, aren’t you?” and then proceeded to shower me with tea and sodas. I have never had anyone call me out as a guidebook writer before–either because people in Mexico don’t care that much, or don’t have a keen enough eye for a disheveled person with a pen in one hand and a compulsive need to pick up business cards.

And incidentally, the fact that guys guessed I was specifically from Lonely Planet was based not on extra-cunning detective work on their part, but the fact that, in Egypt anyway, “Lonely Planet” is right up there with Kleenex or Xerox. (LP marketing should be doing high-fives at this point. Other publishers are gnashing their teeth in despair.) For once, I could see how being a guidebook author is actually sort of close to being a celebrity, in the way that Mr. Killing Batteries depicts his glamorous lifestyle.

One last note about the Cairo trip, and I’m sure you’ve all been wondering: I was only mildly sick, for about a day. I only count sick as incapacitated and unable to leave the hotel room–I spent this one day lying around thinking I might throw up, but never did. Other days I did have a few, um, urgent moments and some discomfort, but overall nothing akin to the gastrointestinal devastation I experienced ten years ago.

But unless you think Cairo has somehow improved its hygiene or generally become less of an assault on the system (my nausea could have just as well been from the heat and dehydration as from food), think again: The very next day, Peter was felled by vicious vomiting that actually required drugs to make him stop. Also, two other visitors I met there required IV drips because they’d gotten so ill.

Sigh. That’s just never going to make the tourists excited to come. Perhaps if you’re carried around in an air-conditioned litter and fed only sterilized grapes? I guess that’s what tour buses are, essentially–and that’s no way to see the world. Wading into the Souq al-Gumaa, sucking pigeon meat from the little leg bones, being invited to weddings by random people on the street–I’m willing to suffer a little incapacitation for that.

Well, that was a little whirlwind. Peter and I leave for Aleppo tomorrow morning at 10:30. We will be traveling in style to the airport in one of the new air-conditioned yellow taxis that actually use meters and print receipts. I hope they age better than most of the improvements that have been attempted in this city that decays faster than any one I’ve ever visited.

It’s happening of course: I’m getting nostalgic already. I left the Windsor Hotel bar, which is a museum of nostalgia, just at twilight, and something about the air, and the smell, and the honking of horns, and the men smoking sheesha and watching soccer, and the trees with the bright-red blooms, made me a bit sad.

That all vanishes when it’s 106 degrees out, as it was for one day last week, but for now I’m happy to have been back and found a new affection for this place that was so problematic for me for almost a decade.

Sorry no more tales of travel-guide-author road rage and all that. I will try to pull together a couple more anecdotes and post again when I’m in Turkey in another week and a half.