Egypt: Astonishment

Egypt was never really at the top of my list.

There were so many other places I’d sooner explore. I think something about the ubiquity of images of the pyramids and mummies made it almost feel as if I’d already been there. But I am rarely one to turn down an opportunity to travel to a new place, so when Chad told me he would be going to Cairo for a work conference, I figured sure. Why not? Let’s check it out.

As the trip drew closer, thought, it filled me with more anxiety than eagerness. Hamas attacked Israel a little over a month before we were to leave, and we thought a great deal about whether it was appropriate to even travel to the country bordering Palestine. We asked everyone we knew who had or did live in Egypt, less concerned about safety than about being tone deaf Americans in the middle of a war our government unequivocally supports. And, to be honest, we were also wrung out from an emotional and dramatic few months, both eager to be home with the dog.

But we were encouraged to go, and go we did.

I am so glad.

I wouldn’t call it restful or restorative or even much like a vacation. It was travel, and it was at once exhausting and delightful. Familiar and astonishing.

I felt almost instantly at home in Cairo, because it reminded me, in many ways, of Mexico City: a megacity (22 million to CDMX’s 27) with all the traffic, chaos, pollution and pulsing human energy that goes along with it. Life happening in the street, delicious and varied food in the street. People shouting and fighting passionately but also kind of joyfully for every square inch of space, yet somehow less concerned about the passage of time.

And in the midst of all that, I could come face to face with - and in most cases, if I wanted to, touch - mind-bendingly ancient and beautiful things. It seemed impossible to believe I was standing in and among 4000 year old structures. Luxor Temple illuminated at night was, as cliche as it sounds, other-worldly.

And also: government corruption and mismanagement evident everywhere. The sprawling Valley of the Kings, Temple of Hatshepsut, Tombs of the Nobles and of the Workers…ingenious, simultaneously immense and detailed monuments to the long dead surrounded by the grinding poverty of the living.

It was surreal to visit Tahrir Square, remembering so vividly when Freedom House’s office was raided and our colleagues detained 22 years prior.

All of it collided in my brain. Peering at the mummified remains of people who lived and breathed and thought about things 3000 years ago and then on the drive back to the hotel staring out the car window at high rise buildings with no electricity. Prowling around tombs that had withstood millennia of time and invaders of all kinds, and still had images that looked like they could have been painted yesterday, of people doing things they still do today.

Thinking about how the hierarchy and social order isn’t really all that different now. Dynastic rule replaced by capitalism.

But on a gentler note, the humans aren’t all that different either. I think when I decided I wasn’t really that Egypt it was partly because mummies and pyramids didn’t seem relevant or relatable. But there’s a through line from the people who playfully carved dragonflies on tomb walls thousands of years ago to the toothless old men in jillabas jockeying for baksheesh outside those same tombs today.

It sounds wacky, maybe, but that thought really stuck with me.People are people, people who lived 4000 years ago did things not all that different from those of us living today. How beautiful. How maddening. How human.