All I Need Is the Air That I Breathe

For the past two weeks, it's been hard for me to breathe in Cairo. Literally. The smog is so bad here that when combined with the hot weather and sand and other atmospheric things I don't really know about, the air quality is horrible. It's always polluted, but it's been worse this month. I wake up every morning with puffy eyes and a cough that lingers throughout the day. The pollution is so bad that sometimes you can't even see from one Giza pyramid to the other (the 3 pyramids are a short walking distance from each other and there's nothing else in between them.) It's crazy!

In spite of all of this, and the wicked heat, Cairo is also beautiful. And sometimes, when you're on the Nile, in the middle of the city, things are peaceful and quiet and breezy and calm. Everything is still and you can ponder the things you only do in stillness.

You can watch the gorgeous bright colors of the sunset in a sand and smog-filled sky and find beauty in it. I guess you could say that about the city itself. And like many others before me have said, it's a city that calls you back time and time again. I haven't left yet, but I already know I'll be back. Many, many, many more times. To catch another smoggy, sandy breathtaking sunset. Literally.

Scratch That

I'm not sure about everybody else, but I'm a bit clumsy. It's not uncommon for me to cut a hand or foot or arm or leg on something random. Now, this in and of itself is nothing particularly new or exciting and has little to do with Egypt except for the fact that I've realized how slowly these scrapes and cuts heal here. I'm not sure if it's some kind of vitamin or nutrient that I'm missing here, because it's dirty here or if it's something else. Whatever it is, I'm not the only to suffer from it. In order to speed up, or even encourage any healing at all, I have to take extra special care to rinse my cut with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide after I shower and before I go to bed. Even then, it takes a while and I have to make extra sure that I keep Band-Aids and Neosporin on it. Not that you can find Neosporin or Hydrogen Peroxide here...)

Actually, I suspect that it's the water. The water from the tap comes from the Nile and is not very clean. My parents and I not only don't drink water from the tap, we don't even brush our teeth with it. I know it goes through some kind of chemical processing and/or cleaning because I can smell it every time I shower. The water smells like chemicals and chlorine. Like some kind of cleaner's getting sprinkled onto me whenever I clean myself. This crazy chlorine smell. I think I'm actually going to miss it when I leave here. It's just one of those smells that is so distinct that it reminds you of a particular time and place. This smell will always remind me of Cairo and of my parents apartment.

The Land of 60 Jews

I have it on the authority of Inji, our tour guide, that there are only sixty Jewish people in the whole of Cairo. (It might have even been all of Egypt.) That's right. Sixty Jewish people. It's not the first time I've heard this since I've been here. My dad said the same thing, but I thought he had been spreading some urban myth that he'd heard thrown around his work. But Inji is a trained tour guide. She went to school for four years learning Egyptian and World History, Religion, and many languages to do what she does. She had to take an exam to get her certification and has to renew it every five years. She knows what she's talking about.

Even hearing it from her, I thought it was bullshit. But I guess if you're Jewish, unless you're the Israeli Ambassador or his staff, you're probably not going to want to live here. At the very least, you probably won't admit you're Jewish to many people. And I don't think there are any synagogues that are functioning anymore. Egypt has had an established, if not fragile, peace with Israel for a while now. At least to the extent that the rest of the Arab nations halted trade with Egypt at some point over their objections. That said, Egypt is growing more and more conservatively Muslim every year; and I could imagine that it could be really dangerous to go to a synagogue here.

The Israeli Ambassador is just down the street from where I live, but the street leading up to it is barricaded with armed Egyptian guards on all sides. The synagogue is also blocked off. This Arab/Israeli tension is something all of us know about. We've seen the video clips of bomb sites and fighting and war torn streets. But it seems like something far away. Like if you just choose not to visit Israel or Gaza or the closely surrounding areas, it doesn't directly affect you and you'll be safe. It's only the metal detector you go through before you can go inside the 1st Synagogue in Cairo, (and the comment Inji made about how dangerous it is for the people who live so close to it) that reminds you of how close you really are to everything.

And it's not just the synagogues and Israeli Ambassador. Egyptian police and security check your trunk and run bomb detectors under the car before you enter any big shopping mall or hotel where tourists would go. And there are metal detectors before you enter some of the hotels and tourist attractions, and even high school graduations at the pyramids. I've heard that they won't let cars drive up to the front of hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, a Red Sea resort town on the Sinai where a bomb exploded last year. It's something that goes on in the background and really doesn't interfere with everyday life. But it's there. Reminding everyone that these people aren't fucking around.