The {…} that ate Cincinnati

I swear it was eight inches long, a blood-red color, and coming for my foot with little clicking skittery noises, determined to munch my toenails off and otherwise cause me all manner of buggy evilness. Actually, it was really only an inch or two long and probably more interested in escaping L.’s Boot Heel of Death than in nibbling on my toes, heading for the relative safety of underneath the bed… but alas, the boot heel won out, and the cockroach became nothing more than a slightly greasy smear on the carpet. Hey, you get what you pay for, and we didn’t pay much. What we did get was a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, which, except for the four-lane (-ish…Egypt doesn’t really use lanes) road separating it from us, was right on our doorstep. Making it across the road is a bit of a trick, but having been forged in the fires of Cairo traffic, we were undaunted by the hindrance of four to six lanes of swerving taxis and braved across to the promenade.

Michael Palin called Alexandria “Cannes…with acne.” The slightly more charitable moniker is the “pearl of the Mediterranean”, and the city undoubtedly has a Mediterranean flair to it, marked only by the occasional minaret to show it’s still in Egypt. Alexandria has several things that Cairo does not: little bustle, less traffic, clean streets, clean air, rain, a coast. We partook enthusiastically of these things, spending hours at a coastside café with lemonade and shisha, exploring the catacombs, recovering from food poisoning (ish…no one’s quite sure what caused ‘it’ or what ‘it’ was, aside from icky and thankfully not for me) on plastic chairs on the beach after a wonderful breakfast of couscousy, or dinking around the art exhibit at the new library of Alexandria (a giant testament to the fundamental split in Egypt: either things are completely unbelievably undeveloped, along the lines of potholed streets and donkey carts, or else they are completely new, shiny and automated, like the sumptuous new library).

Broadly generalizing, one could say the people in Alex are friendlier than in Cairo, and indeed, the unusual trio of three westerners, two of whom were unveiled women, attracted considerable attention, curiosity, leering, funny comments. “I looooooove you!” called one man from across the street; the most frequent comment was likely to be “you a lucky man!” comments directed at our sole male group member, and one youth insisted on introducing himself with the curious comment of “I am beautiful!” until we realized he was mixing up “I” and “you”, and what he intended was a compliment. We had groups of teenage girls stop us, ask us about ourselves, and introduce themselves—considerably more infrequent in Cairo—and had short but interesting conversations with various individuals. Unfortunately, while I now recognize the question of “do you speak Arabic,” I don’t know how to say, “I know Arabic like a marmot knows knitting,” instead only able to reply with shuwei shuwei (so so), which just gets me into trouble.

All in all, a fun adventure, a nice escape from Cairo—but to be honest, as much as I love the shore, I missed the bustle of Cairo. Just not the traffic or the air.