Day 9

Thursday, June 10, 2010 – Darren loaned me his cell phone this morning, once again enabling my mobile addiction, while also ensuring I wouldn’t have to move into the City of the Dead.

Since he had a lot of work that he’d been putting off since I arrived, he walked me to the corner and stuck me in a taxi. It was kind of like a mom walking her kid to the school bus.

Like that, except the kid didn’t speak the language or know anything about his neighborhood and how to get home.

I’ve always liked cab rides in foreign countries for the same reason other people like roller coasters, except I think my way provides way more of a thrill.

I got in the taxi, successfully avoiding the giant pile of cigarette ash in the seat next to me. There was no seat belt for the passenger, which probably goes without saying. The driver did have a seat belt, and to his credit it was across his chest and waist, although it probably would prove more effective if he had also snapped it in, as opposed to letting it lie there. Darren told me later that the driver was wearing pajamas, which proves just how weird something around here has to be for me to notice.

I know I keep mentioning the driving, but new things keep popping up. Back home in Denver in my neighborhood of Lowry, there are little traffic circles that people just can’t seem to figure out. All you have to do is yield before entering them and turn when you get to your street.

Here in Cairo, traffic circles give drivers free reign to do anything they want. They can go right. They can go left. They can turn from the inside without any signal. It’s utter chaos, yet seems to work about as well as the ones in Lowry.

I paid the taxi driver the costly price of $15 pounds (three dollars), when he dropped me across the street from the Egyptian Museum. I mention that it was across the street because it meant I would have to play a living version of Frogger.

The museum itself is unbelievable. Of course it has several artifacts and treasures from King Tut’s tomb. For those unfamiliar with the mummifying process for someone like Tutankhamun, as I was a few hours ago, they wrapped the body in linen before placing the golden death mask over the head. Tut’s solid gold death mask is the iconic image many people imagine when thinking about Egypt, and was made to look as much like him as possible to make finding his soul easier in the afterlife (or something like that).

From there, the body was placed in a sarcophagi, a coffin-like box made of solid gold, weighing 110 kilograms and elaborately decorated with a head just like the mask and Pharaonic symbols meant to protect the body. That sarcophagi was then put in a larger wooden and also elaborately decorated sarcophagi, which was put into yet another sarcophagi.

If you’re wondering where Russians got the idea for nesting dolls, I think I might have an answer for you.

One more thing, before they wrapped the body, they removed the organs and mummified them in containers to be placed next to the rest of the corpse. Apparently, they thought of everything back in the day.

While King Tut’s treasures are probably the most impressive part of the museum, the rest is truly amazing, as well.

There are so many artifacts on display – somewhere around 120,000 – that you actually start taking things for granted. After I visited King Tut’s area, I went into a room that must have had at least 100 sarcophagis (or whatever the plural form of sarcophagi might be). Seriously, they were stacked three high so you really couldn’t even see the top one. The whole museum is like that. I would hate to have been the person determining what was worthy of the spots that everyone could see and what should be placed in the hard to find areas.

And almost all of this stuff dates back at least 2,000 years. Yes, the stuff from just before the time of Christ would be the new stuff. Everything else goes a few thousand years beyond that.

One of the “star” exhibits according to the guide books is the Royal Mummy Rooms, where the mummies of 22 actual mummies lie in chronological order. To enter these rooms costs twice the price of the museum entry, and I figured a mummy is a mummy is a mummy.

So I went to the mummified animal room instead. Talk about fascinating. The ancient Egyptians actually had their pets mummified. And I thought animal chiropractic in the United States was taking things too far.

They had displays of cats, dogs, crocodiles and monkeys, among other animals. Now, before you start thinking this was absolutely crazy, they didn’t mummify the organs, like they did for humans. Well, they did do it for pets. And cows. And sometimes donkeys. But they didn’t waste their time and gold on any other animals.

There was a mummified pet baboon, which made me wonder where baboons lived in Egypt back then because I’m pretty sure there aren’t many around now.

Knowing I had only skimmed the surface of the museum, I left to take a little walk around the area. I noticed that instead of a walk sign on the traffic light, they actually had a man who appeared to run in green lights. I was fascinated enough that I stopped to take a picture.

Right then, a man told me what street it was, which was nice although I had not asked. Then he told me what the other streets were and where I could find good shopping.

I’m not an idiot. Well, not a complete idiot. I knew where this was going, but I kind of wanted to experience it anyway.

“No money,” he said after telling me that he had been a taxi driver in Minneapolis a few years back. “I just want to show you where the best places are to go.”

I’ve heard the line before, but it hadn’t hit me until that moment. “No money” is the Egyptian up-sell. What it means is that I’m not going to take your money right now, but I’m sure as hell going to take it in a few minutes.

He led me into his family shop and asked me to have a seat. He offered me tea, which I tried to decline, only to hear, “I’m Arab. You must take it or I will be very offended.” My question is this: since I don’t like tea, is it more offensive to make me drink something I don’t like or for me to not drink it? I drank it.

He showed me a picture of his family, which looked an awful lot like a British exhibition to the Pyramids of Giza, but I just shook my head and said, “Very nice.” He pointed at a photo of Dustin Hoffman and Mohammad Ali, proving I wasn’t the first American to get suckered into the store. In fact, the look on Ali's face seemed to scream, "How much will it cost just to get me out of this store?"

I looked around and realized it was a perfume/cologne shop, which is perfect for me since I wear neither and actually get a little annoyed when people wear too much.

I tried to get out of it by saying I was kind of allergic to them.

“Oh, but these have no alcohol, so you will not be allergic to these,” he explained, and flicked a lighter above the bottle to prove that it wouldn’t turn into some Molotov cocktail, which apparently reinforced his point (although I still have no idea why).

He started shoving bottles under my nose and asking which ones I liked. I asked him how much this process was going to cost me and he uttered something about “Only 2 Egyptian pounds, not dollars, but Egyptian pounds.”

At this point, I was hoping to get out of there for under $20, so I pointed at one that seemed to smell the least like a cleaning solvent.

Wanting to leave, I told him that one would be fine and asked how much. “I want to give you a gift, too,” he said and led me upstairs. Every Egyptian person I’ve met has been extremely friendly, but I still couldn’t help like I was heading to the back room from Pulp Fiction that had the gimp.

Upstairs, there were a variety of decorative bottles, and he told me to pick one out as his “gift.” I settled on a camel, which seemed like it was going to be among the cheapest (not to mention gaudy enough that it was kind of funny).

I said fine and asked again how much. He came up with 1,000 Egyptian pounds, which is roughly $200. I stood and said no chance of that happening. He offered a few different things, and I finally agreed to a fifth of that price, which I knew was still way too much. But I really, really wanted to leave.

I pulled out my money to hand him four 50s, and noticing that I still had more, he started throwing every offer he could think of to clean me out. I grabbed my box of precious fragrance and didn’t look back.

Later, I hailed a taxi and handed him the card Darren had provided me, detailing directions on how to get back to his house.

There’s nothing quite as fun as a cab driver with a led foot in the middle of city rush hour traffic. I think it would have taken me about 45 minutes, if I was behind the wheel. This guy got me home in less than 15 minutes and for less than $3.