Cry-O City
Beneath the balcony, the orchestral sounds of honks, beeps, screeches, skids, taps, groans, cries, whistles... knocks and rumbles and mumbles and songs – short and long, bursts of colors and smells – swelled. Same instruments, but a different tune than New York.
My eyes have been watering, throat parched and seemingly contradictory phlegm-laden, for the past twelve hours. Cairo and its pollution is living up to reputation.
We arrived in Cairo in a rush of heat and humanity at one am. It took an hour to push past the touts, the taxi drivers, the passengers carrying sacks of... bulge, to get into the city from the airport, climb five flights of stairs, and tumble into a white-sheeted bed where mosquitoes began to feed on my dried skin.
Beneath the balcony, the orchestral sounds of honks, beeps, screeches, skids, taps, groans, cries, whistles... knocks and rumbles and mumbles and songs – short and long, bursts of colors and smells – swelled. Same instruments, but a different tune than New York.
Today we went in search of food. Damn hard to find any during the daylight hours of Ramadan. In the span of three hours, I saw:
- A taxi kissed a man as he crossed the street. He walked the bump off.
- A truck parallel parked – into a standing scooter. The driver jumped out and pulled the dinged, zinged and scratched moped upright.
- A girl short-order cook in a diner fainted from the heat (and I gathered from her fast). Her parents were called, and they shot into the kitchen amid groans and carried her off.
- A woman reached out for coins. She couldn't follow us like the other touts and beggars because the limbs below her thighs were absent.
- A McDonald's was closed. Closed!
Pyramids tomorrow.