The 4th of July in Cairo!

Well yikes, it feels like it's been a while since I updated. After arriving to Dubai, I reclined in the seat of the most luxurious hotel I've ever set foot in for two nights, and then hit the road. Wireless has been a bit hard to find after leaving the posh hotel. More on all that later.

For now, there is an epic tale of the 4th of July to tell!

So, I left Cairo on the 5th. On the 4th, I spent the first half of the day exploring the Giza Pyramids area. I walked all around, turned down easily 100 offers of horse or camel rides, and took lots and lots and lots of pictures on my main camera (which I've unfortunately been barely able to upload any pictures from. When I get the good ones onto Flickr, I'll post a link so y'all know)

The Pyramids are outrageously big. It's really not something you can express in a picture (not to say I didn't try...). They're just incredibly, mythically huge. The sense of history and ... for lack of a better word, place, there was really overwhelming, and wasn't particularly dampened by the standard try-to-sell-you-everything manner of the entrepreneurial locals there.
And you can go right up to almost everything there - the Sphinx was the only thing closed off to visitors, and I think that's only because of repairs or restoration work.

After returning from the Pyramids, I wandered my way in the direction of a large Souk that the wikitravel page had recommended. Now, there are 2 real Metro lines in Cairo, and one that's still under construction. It wasn't clear from my map that the under-construction one still wasn't open, so I planned my route around it.

Needless to say, when I tried to transfer from my first line to the under-construction line, it wasn't there so much.

So I left the station, figuring I'd walk it.
Conveniently, however, the Souk was so big (or maybe I was in a different Souk?) that it went right up to this station's exit.

And, wonder of wonders, it wasn't a big, touristy marketplace with english-speaking shopkeeps trying to jam fifteen scale-models of the pyramids into your arms the second you make eye contact. No, dear readers, it was a real, honest-to-goodness, marketplace where the locals shopped.
I was probably the only non-Middle Eastern person there.

So I wandered that marketplace for some time. It was huge, cavernous, crowded - all the things a marketplace should be.
I went into one store, and got a carafe for making Turkish/Arabic Coffee (a delicious, thick brew - more like mud than coffee). I'll be shipping it home, and look forward to experimenting with making the stuff.

After more wandering, I came to a foot-bridge over a highway. There were a few shops on the bridge itself (and I encourage you to interpret the term 'shop' most loosely), but most noteworthy was a young fellow and his family who, on the exit stairway, were hawking fireworks!

Did I mention this was the 4th of July?

I bought several, having plans to meet up with some friends from GWU, Yong and Abby, who are currently living in Cairo, for dinner and catching up. I figured I'd break the news of having found sketchy Egyptian fireworks, and we would find someplace to set them off in a festive, Patriotic manner.
Oh, what an adventure would ensue.


We all met for dinner at a lovely restaurant in Zamalek (a more western, upscale area of Cairo, on a large island in the middle of the Nile), called Sequoia.
Their food, including sushi, was pretty good. Their atmosphere was excellent and local. The conversation was interesting, and, generally, a good time was had.

After dinner, probably around 10(?), we set off to try and find a place to set off these mysterious fireworks (I should mention here that, A: the word the storekeep used for 'fireworks' is the same as the one I know for 'bomb,' so politely asking someone was out of the question. and B: other than some gesticulation, I had no idea what any of these fireworks would do.)

We walked south, along the Nile. By this hour of the evening, the Nile park was closed. Also, areas that might otherwise have been abandoned were not, because apparently everyone was getting married that day. We passed easily 3 or 4 wedding parties.

After walking pretty much the entire length of that island, and finding nowhere that would actually work and not get us shot/arrested/otherwise in trouble, we pondered some other ideas.

I'd suggested that we try seeking out a hotel with roof-access in my area (Talat Harb street, a more local, downtown-y area where every building has 3 or 4 'hotels' in it, run by locals for the most part).
We found one right away, but, upon entering the roof area, we found some people living, and, by this hour, sleeping there. So blowing stuff up on that roof was out of the question.

The next hotel we went to had some people at the front desk. We explained, in a mixture of English and Arabic, what we were looking to do. They said it would be a problem anywhere in the city, but that maybe we should give some money to a policeman for him to let us set them off somewhere.

This was a sub-optimal solution as well, so we regrouped at a nearby KFC. Who knows how late it was at this point.

Abby ventured that we find a taxi driver who spoke good enough english that he would understand what we wanted to do, and ask him to take us out to the desert somewhere, and back.

We tried. None of them spoke terribly good English. However, one fellow was so insistent, and so enthusiatic, that we just had to take his taxi. He spoke enough English, and we spoke enough Arabic, that he eventually understood what we wanted.

We set off for Giza, back to the Pyramids area.

Now, I must interject here to mention that the Pyramids close after 6pm, and the only way to get close is through a rather roundabout walk or camel/horse-ride through the desert. There's a large wall keeping people from entering the Pyramids area without going through the central gate.

So we were dropped off as close to that roundabout walk as the taxi could go. Immediately, we were set upon by extremely insistent fellows with horses. They wanted to sell us a horse or camel ride, or something other than our own feeet, to get to the desert.

After much heckling, and moments wherein we nearly had to beat them off physically, we got close to the desert.
The passage, of course, was used mainly by horses and camels. Consider for a moment what animals do sometime after they digest food.
Now consider that Yong and Abby were both wearing sandals.
I request that you now take a moment of silence to commend these patriots for their perseverance in celebrating a proper 4th of July.

In short, we walked through a passageway full of feces.
We arrived in an open field, perfect for setting off fireworks!

But alas, the horse-hawkers followed, and were frequently galloping through this open area.
But we were not deterred.

Double-Alas! I had lost the matches somewhere, and nobody had a lighter.
But luck, of a sort, was with us by then. A Bedouin man wandered by, smoking. We asked him for matches, and he offered us a light.
Eventually, he understood that we needed to use the box for a bit.
He stayed around to watch, curious what we were up to. (I'd chosen to describe our activites to him, in Arabic, as a 'small party' rather than 'setting off bombs.' You may call me Mr. Ambassador.)

Fireworks! Amazement! Delight! Terrifyingly short fuses!

The cheapest ones (1 Egyptian Pound, or about 1/5th of a dollar), were basically just cardboard tubes full of gunpowder. One worked, in so much as I dumped it out on the sand and lit the powder.
Another emptied onto my pants, and the third ... well, I don't recall.

The next step up, a pair of what looked like ceramic pipe-bombs, about Twinkie-sized, shot off a dazzling display of sparks for about 3 seconds. One out of two actually worked.

I should add that our Bedouin companion was thoroughly delighted with all this. I believe his precise exclamation was "Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!"
Clearly a dyed-in-the-wool syncretist, I applaud his patriotic fervour nonetheless.

The last was a ceramic vase. After lighting the horrifyingly short fuse, it as well sprayed sparks for a few seconds. Then it sat there and was on fire for a little bit, much less dazzlingly.

The Bedouin wanted my (blind-your-face-off, amazingly bright) flashlight as 'a souvenir' in exchange for letting us use his matches.
I settled by giving him 20 pounds (about 19 pounds more than it would've been worth on any other day of the year), and kept the flashlight.

Did I mention that there were wild dogs all over the clearing? There were. They were yelping and fighting with each other, which was rather frightening. They stayed well-clear of us and the fireworks though, so it was alright. The Bedouin assured us it was safe (I cannot stress how unconvinced we were).

The taxi driver, as he'd promised, was waiting when we came back out. He drove us back, complained about the more than generous price we paid him, and we went our separate ways.

The entire adventure lasted until about 4am.
It was an excellent 4th of July.