Egypt: Day Five, Part Two

After an onslaught of hawkers almost blocks our bus’s departure, we head to the Cairo Museum.  Traffic has picked up but we reach Tahrir Square, now calm after many rowdy days over the past few years.
       Patiently and knowledgeably, Ahmed explains the highlights of the museum to us.  (I don’t think even the curators can know all they have!  Some of the explanatory panels are so old and faded...  And French is the second language on them, not English!)  We cover both floors of the museum under his guidance, except for the special King Tut room which he cannot guide us through.  No idea why.  The upshot of this is that, not having seen the sign over the door, I get sharply and loudly rebuked for taking photos.  Of course it was about the sixth photo I’d taken, and it was a different photographer who drew the guard’s attention.  “DELETE, DELETE!” he shouted.  And I did, one photo.  “Show me!” he yelled at the other photographer, and I made quietly my exit before he turned his attention back to me.  I told Ahmed he should warn people, and he said that he really didn’t know it was forbidden, even without flash.  Maybe it’s a new rule?

     At the end of two hours, we’re given about 45 minutes to wander on our own.  I choose to fly solo a bit after being in a group all morning.  I happen upon the prehistoric part of the museum and note that all mankind, at that moment in time, seems to have been at the same point of evolution.  No difference with prehistoric France.  It makes me wonder what made things move faster artistically here in Egypt than elsewhere after that point.

     After buying a book in their understaffed and under-inventoried gift shop - which was evidently ransacked by looters looking for easy money during the recent Revolution - it’s back on the bus.  Ahmed, in his inimitable fashion, has scared up a book that has almost all the treasures we’ve just seen, and he takes orders on the bus for those, like me, who want one... and at an unbeatable price.

We have lunch nearby at a kitschy looking, Ali-Baba-type place called Felfela, with a distinctly Middle Eastern decor.  I choose to sit with Arlene and John in a quiet corner.  It’s 4:00, the hunger has come and gone somewhere in the museum, but the food is good:  Egyptian cuisine, very similar to Lebanese cooking back home, where nearby Dearborn has the largest Middle Eastern population outside of the Middle East.

The Nile waterfront

     With the traffic jams, which have returned to their normal density, there’s just enough time to change at the hotel, do my laundry and make it to the Zahi Hawass lecture, Chapter 2.  In spite of my dislike of his pharaonic ego, I sit in the front row again, joined by Floyd, a physician.  Tonight Hawass starts with his autobiography, as he did two nights ago, but gets caught up in the history side of his presentation.  There are fewer “I”s tonight, perhaps because he’s not feeling well, as he later reveals at table.
       Still, he eats with us... or rather in our presence.  Floyd and I sit opposite him and we both are determined to make him talk to us, which we manage to do.  Somewhat.  But soon I leave him to Floyd and his wife Victoria*, and concentrate on Hawass’s Assistant, Tarik, to my right, who is much more simpatico, and a colleague of his seated across from me, who is Chilean with a French father.  More at home in French, he and I discuss Easter Island and its archeological treasures.  Then Hawass rises and prepares to leave, quipping something over his shoulder about the Pharoah needing his sleep, meaning himself.  I guess I wasn’t far off with my earlier metaphor.
       Back to the room, shower and wash my hair, then bed.  Our 5 am wake-up call looms all too soon.

(* Side comment:  Over dinner, my Lost Hat Issue comes up and Victoria kindly offers me her second one, which is very generous of her and will save my scalp from burning off during our remaining time here.  February in Egypt is mild, but relentlessly sunny just the same.  And I’ll manage not to lose this hat as I did Sally’s!)