And, This Is Why Cairo Does My Head In

Cairo is a city of many wonders, endless fascination and, frankly, more than its fair share of hassles.

I have met some wonderful Cairenes, and had some great experiences. But, while Cairo has charisma in spades, if it were your boyfriend, you really wouldn’t take it home to meet your parents. Even if it could show them the pyramids.

Today went beautifully until about 5pm, when we left the art school in the country to return to downtown Cairo, where I had errands to run, among them buying train tickets.

Now, few things in Cairo are as simple as they might appear to be, so I’d checked out the train situation in Lonely Planet Egypt and on seat61.com. Two tickets to Aswan on the morning train. Easy!

We’re in gridlock at about 6.30, and the volume and consistency of hooting is such that you need to close the windows to hear anyone speak, when A, our cab driver, reverses at random under a bridge.

“Why are we stopped?” asks Z, though quite how he notices the difference between our previous pace and our current stasis, I do not know.

“We’re at the station,” I say.

“Oh great,” he says. “How long will this take?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “We’re in Cairo.”

“Where is the station, anyway?” he asks.

“It’s that big pharaonic building over there,” I say.

“That’s the second biggest station in the world,” says A, our cab driver. “After [mangled name] in London.”

“That can’t be right,” whispers Z to me. “Surely China has the biggest…”

“Leave it,” I say, and walk under a web of bridges, their concrete already flaking, through gridlock and cheap shoe sellers, in a storm of hooting as if all Cairo has just put its hand on the horn and held it there, to the brightly lit frontage of Ramses Station.

Men hiss at me. “Alex?” “Scandria?” I’m not going to Alexandria, and if I were I wouldn’t buy from the touts outside the station, so I ignore, ignore, ignore.

After Chinese trains, and their systematic, if crowded, train stations, Ramses Station strikes me as weird.

There is a spanking new marble-esque concourse, complete with modern art sculpturette and electronic departure board, the sort of place around which one would, in most parts of the world, find ticket offices, or at least an escalator leading to a concourse full of them.

Not here, however. No ticket offices in sight. It’s most confusing. As if someone paid the bribe to win the contract but bribed so high they couldn’t afford to pay for ticket offices.

I find a policeman and try some rubbish Arabic. “I wan tickie Aswan!” I say.

“Platform number 11,” he says, in excellent English.

“Platform 11?” I ask. “I want a ticket, not the train.”

“Platform 11,” he says. “Over there.”

I pass one of those weird security scanners they have in Egypt — weird in that it doesn’t work and everyone walks past it, but there are still four people staffing it — and descend, thanking the lord I have at least learnt my Arabic numbers, into a vaguely squalid underpass that brings me through to Platform 11.

There are two ticket-looking places there. One is rather fetid, like the Black Hole of Calcutta, with handwritten Arabic script on the door. The other has a shiny, new and exclusively English sign saying “Sleeper Train Tickets”. It’s like apartheid writ large.

I don’t want the sleeper train tickets. I often like sleeper trains (we loved the trains in China), but this one exists purely for tourists, is priced accordingly, and doesn’t appear to have the spec to justify a 300%+ price upgrade on the day trains, or, for that matter, the non-sleeper night trains.

Bugger.

One of the guys loitering outside hisses at me. “Aswan?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Night train,” he says.

“I don’t want the night train,” I say. “I want the day train. The morning train.”

At the ticket window, I unleash my rubbish Arabic again. “Speaks Engly?” I ask.

“No,” he says, pointing to the chap next to him.

“I want two tickies Aswan,” I say. He points again to the chap next to him.

I wait my turn, the guys by the entrance watching me. “I’d like two tickets to Aswan on the morning train,” I say, in English.

“No trains till Thursday,” he says.

“WHAT?!” I say. We’ve extended our time in Cairo by another day to have some really rather excellent fun, but I am itching to leave by now.

“Night train, Thursday,” he says.

“I don’t want the night train,” I say. “I want the morning train.”

“Thursday,” he says. Which is weird. There is no conceivable way, with tourist numbers at this level, that all the trains can be booked until Thursday.

“I don’t want the sleeper,” I say.

“Giza,” he mutters to me. “Go to Giza.”

I don’t want to go to Giza. I want my train tickets. “But I want the morning train,” I say again.

“8am,” he mutters, conspiratorially. “Platform 8. 8am.”

“Yes!” I say. “That’s the one. Can I have two tickets please?”

“No tickets,” he says. Some warning begins to stir dully in the back of my brain about how these guys try to deter you from the day train by pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s all horribly reminiscent of the boat sketch in Vietnam. I decide I’ll go and get some Arabic-speaking assistance.

It is only once I am out of the station that I realise quite how many taxis are gridlocked under the bridges outside Rameses Station, that there are three bridges, and that I don’t know where our taxi is parked.

Now, for reasons you could describe as me being crap, but a psychologist might read as me being a bad liar and wanting a bona fide excuse not to have a number to give to the various random men who request it daily, I do not actually have an Egyptian SIM.

My British SIM, further, is out of credit.

I wander through the shoe stalls and corrugated iron to a wall of shared taxis, minibuses and white taxis. Was this where our cab is? I don’t know.

“Taxi?” says a guy.

“No,” I say. “I want MY taxi. I can’t find MY taxi.”

“Taxi!” he says, beckoning me.

Given his English runs about as far as my Arabic, I have a stab at some rubbish Arabic. “No! Taxi I! Taxi I! Boy I! Taxi I!” I make frantic shrugging, searching gestures. I pull out my phone. “English!” I say. “English! Taxi I! No have! I want taxi I!”

I must, I think, learn some conjunctions and prepositions. Prepositions make life so much easier, although, as Arabic has cases, they may not improve my comprehensibility.

“Can I help?” asks a gent in a suit, who appears to be the tourist-wrangler for Ramses Station cabbies.

I explain my pathetic situation, that I have lost my taxi, with my child in it, and would like to call my taxi driver, but have no credit on my phone. Chap one hands over his phone, and invites me into his taxi to shield me from the hooting.

I call A, and locate both him and Z. They are under the second bridge, to the left.

I thank the nice man, and offer him some money for the call. He refuses to take it!

I’m super chuffed.

A is pretty much ready to go, after some protracted negotiation with a boy of about Z’s age whose parking spot/market turf this appears to be. I’m wondering whether he has a date (unlikely in Egypt) or is just desperate for a joint.

“A,” I say. “We can’t go yet. This is really weird. But can I ask you to go and buy two tickets for us to Aswan for tomorrow morning?”

“No,” he says, looking worried. “I can’t do that. Foreigners are only allowed on some trains, so if I buy tickets for you, you could be in big trouble. They might not let you on the train.”

“OK,” I say. “The problem is that the man keeps saying there are no train tickets until Thursday on the foreigner trains, and no train in the morning, and I think there is. I can’t believe there are no train tickets until Thursday: there’s hardly any tourists here to take them. I think he just wants me to buy the expensive tickets.”

“Yes,” says A flatly. “He is lying to you.”

“OK,” I say, glad we are making progress. “Can you come with me and help me work out what is going on?”

“Yes,” A says. “But we all need to go.”

“I need to go?!” says Z, who is getting rather into his Asimov at the moment. “How long is this going to take?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “We’re in Cairo.”

The three of us traipse in a merry caravan through the station.

“Why did you say it’s pharaonic?” asks Z.

“Because it’s big and imposing,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “Well, the architecture is clearly neo-Islamic. Look at those windows and the latticing.”

“Mm,” I say. Normally, I love a smartarse. Right now, I am not in a zen frame of mind.

Inside, the policeman directs us again to platform 11, and the same ticket office.

“You see,” says A. “There is another problem. The travel agencies here in Cairo, they buy up all the tickets. So you can buy them from the travel agency, but you can’t buy them at the station.”

“Ah!” I say. “So the guys standing outside the ticket office work for the travel agencies? And they have the sleeper train tickets the place is out of?”

“Yes!” he says. I feel that I am beginning to understand the system. Egypt, for the record, makes Indonesia look like Germany.

We arrive at platform 11, and bypass the cubbyhole with the Arabic sign and the population density of the Black Hole of Calcutta, in favour of the foreigners’ bit with the English sign.

“Was this the guy you spoke to?” A asks.

“No,” I say. “The one next to him.”

We talk to him again. “He says there are no trains until Thursday,” A says. “But there is a 10pm train that tourists can take, not the sleeper. It will cost you 170.”

“How about Z?” I ask.

More Arabic. “He’s 170 too,” A says.

“But what about the morning train?” I ask. “I heard there was a morning train.”

“There will be Egyptians on the train,” says A. “Ordinary Egyptians. No police. Not like the tourist train. On the tourist trains, you have special carriages with police and no Egyptians.”

“That’s OK,” I say. “Ordinary Egyptians are OK. We’re in Egypt. But can you find out about the morning train?”

At which point a policeman hoves into view, which is odd, because I don’t think I have appeared particularly agitated, just bewildered.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“Yes!” I say. “I am looking for tickets for the morning train to Aswan.”

“The morning train to Aswan,” the policeman says. “Goes from platform 8 at 8am, but you need to be here at 7.30 at the latest. You can buy tickets on the train. No tickets here.”

“But foreigners can go on it?” I ask, not really believing anything could be that simple.

“Yes,” he says. “Foreigners are allowed on the train, but we cannot sell you tickets for it.”

Some Arabic, and then A explains the situation. “That man, you see,” he says. “It’s his job to sell you the expensive tickets. He is not allowed to tell you about the morning train, or sell you tickets for it. You just get to the station early, buy tickets on the train, and it’s OK: you pay full price, Z pays half price. But he can only sell you tickets for the tourist train.”

“Right,” I say, struggling with the logic here, although I do at least understand that the man was muttering because he was potentially risking his job by letting me know that the other train existed. “So I just come to the station, get on the train and buy a ticket?”

“Yes,” he says. “Platform 8. 8am. Train 890.”

“You know, Mum,” says Z. “Ever since the Reunification Express, I’ve hated day trains.”

“Tough,” I say. “We need to get out of Cairo. It’s doing my head in.”

“Can’t we do the night bus?” Z says.

“I’ve just spent an hour and a half of my life on this,” I say. “Plus it’s one of the great train rides in the world.”

A drops us on Talaat Harb Square, close to Z’s official favourite restaurant in Cairo, but, because we’re coming from an unfamiliar angle, I have to look around for a few seconds to work out which street to turn down.

And in those few seconds, I am clocked as a tourist and the vultures zoom in.

The first is a guy in late middle age, wearing a fairisle sweater over a shirt. His eyes unnerve me. He’s making heavy-duty eye contact, not in the way the hustlers do here when they lech you, but as a close-up magician does when he’s working sleight of hand.

“Where are you going?” he says, innocuously, although he has body-checked me as I’m about to step off the pavement. “Can I help? Where exactly are you looking for?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Just looking for Cafe Riche, on Sharia Talaat Harb, it’s just down here, but I can’t…”

“It’s over there,” he says. “Sharia Talaat Harb is right there, and your restaurant is right there.”

My eyes follow his pointing hand, and then my hand goes down to my bag on reflex, or peripheral vision — I don’t know what.

Either way, it’s open. I look down, convinced I didn’t leave it open, and close it, which is when I feel the button of my back pocket pressing into my butt. That back pocket wasn’t open, either.

Mercifully, it’s the wrong pocket of the bag — and in any case, my purse is in an internal pocket with a second zip. I am torn between relief that nothing of significance has gone — I’m down the Egyptian pound coins I keep in my front pocket for bakhsheesh purposes, but that’s all — and admiration at the nifty teamwork that must have happened, when I realise I am standing still.

Standing still on Talaat Harb Square is a bad idea. Another man appears.

“Hello,” he says, blocking my way. He’s 60ish, jacket over shirt, looks respectable, but experience leads me to believe that there will be an antique shop, a government bazaar or an invitation for tea at a mystery destination that will prove to be one of those places at the end of our conversation.

I can SEE Cafe Riche. We are 50 metres from it. There is beer there. Nice staff. And no one will hassle me.

“Hello,” I say, English politeness kicking in.

“I learnt English at the British Council,” he begins, and spiels on about how he would like to practise it. What do I do in England? Where am I going? Where am I from? Isn’t my son charming?

“I’m a copywriter,” I say. “I write adverts. But, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. We are meeting friends in Cafe Riche, just over there.”

I make it a couple of paces before a third guy falls into step. “Egyptians!” he says. “They always want to talk!”

“Yes,” I say. By now I can virtually taste the beer that awaits me, and sense the blissful peace of Cafe Riche.

“Do you remember me?” he says (this is a common opener from street hustlers and salesmen all over Egypt). “You asked me directions to Cafe Riche two nights ago! Where are you going?”

I am absolutely sure I did nothing of the sort. “Yes,” I say. “Lovely talking to you. But we’re late to meet our friends. Gotta go!”

We burst through the doors of Cafe Riche and I emit a huge and audible sigh, like a drowning woman reaching dry land.

“Bloody hell!” I say to Z. “How many was that? Three? And how far were we from the taxi? 50 metres? 100 metres?”

“50, probably,” says Z. “Yeah, about 50.”

“Three in 50 metres, and the first man got my bag open,” I say. “Sometimes, Cairo really does my head in.”

CODA 1: CAIRO
After publishing this post, late at night, I went to the ATM to draw some money. On returning to our hotel, a street gentleman, clearly operating on the “Western woman = prostitute” basis, became a little confused and forced cigarettes on me, an act, I can only assume, given I was smoking at the time, that was supposed to form part-payment for upcoming sexual favours.

Grinning and beckoning, he followed me to the lift, attempted to enter with me, then swore at me in Arabic when I closed the doors and held them closed.

CODA 2: CAIRO
We caught a taxi to the train station in the morning, our usual man having said, “No” in Egyptian (AKA: “Yes! I want to! I will try! But if I am not there by 6.30, go with someone else.”), despite my very British attempts to get him to say “No” English style.

A toothless, bearded gentleman in a skull cap picked us up. “Meter!” I said, pointing at the item.

“No meter!” he said.

“Meter!” I said. He switched it on.

After a two-Egyptian pound cab ride, we arrived at the station. I looked at the meter, which was registering the equivalent of a taxi ride to Giza in rush hour.

“HOW much is that?” I said.

“No meter!” he said, and giggled.

“You are a very bad man!” I said, and laughed. We settled on a decent tourist price.

CODA 3: THE TRAIN
The day train was easy. As I suspected, while Westerners are not allowed to buy seats on the train, and are not supposed to buy tickets, it is possible to get on the train with a ticket, provided an Egyptian bought it for you. This is handy, as it ensures your seats are reserved for the whole journey. Some hotels can do this for you.

Train geeks: first class is pleasant enough, with spacious if tatty seats, and food and drink service, although the contrast of green Nile banks with golden desert tends to the repetitious over 14 hours.

We passed our time entirely undisturbed but for intermittent, normal, social conversation: in fact, when we were kicked out of our seats, a gentleman very kindly gave me his. Strike one to the men of Egypt, and long may it continue!