Journal entry:
I am in the air above the Adriatic.
We will soon be crossing over Sarajevo, down across Greece, above Athens, across the Mediterranean, and then, in 2 1/2 hours, landing in Cairo.

Somewhere along the way we will cross an invisible line that separates the world I know from one that is completely foreign to me, ancient, mysterious.

My pulse is picking up with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. I got back from Egypt a week ago and every night since my return I have dreamed of Cairo. In some of the dreams, I walk endlessly in a maze of twisting streets. In others, I sit along a busy thoroughfare, watching time and a hundred thousand black and white taxis stream past. One night I dreamed that I was alone on the Cairo subway with 3 al-Queda types, sitting in a row, breathing fire, long knives between their teeth.

A few times I have awakened in the early hours of the morning to peer around my darkened room, groggy and confused, seeing a foreign country where there is only my desk and my chair and my own four walls. Eventually, the strange shapes become familiar and I recognize the moonlit shadows on the floor. The noise and the bright lights of the bazaar recede. I am home, I remind myself, in my own bed.

And then there is the dream where I find myself standing in a dusty alleyway, near sunset, leaning over a volatile game of dominoes. An old man in a turban shakes his finger at me. The droning, mysterious song of the muezzin, a call to prayer, sweeps along the street, reflecting off the hard stone walls, surrounding me like thick smoke. Is this a dream, or is this real? When the morning comes, I wake to see my sandals in the corner by the door. From my bed I can see the yellow dust still clinging to them.

It has been a week and I am still mixing up my dreams and my real-life; how can I explain that?

For starters, there are the obvious things about Egypt: the mosques with their impossibly tall, slender minarets, graceful as trees, towering over the crowds below, looking as if a slight bump would bring them crashing down in an instant. And there is the surreal chaos of the streets with taxis and trucks and donkey-drawn wagons and the careless pedestrians who stride effortlessly right down into the whirling heart of it all. And the intensity of the sun in the hot, white, implacable sky.

In addition, there is the language and its impossible script, more like art than syntax. And the forceful jargon of the street salesman, reducing tout and tourist to hunter and hunted. And the food, yes, the food. And the faces that tell a thousand secret stories.

In all of these ways and a multitude more, Egypt pursues the foreigner, paints you into a corner. If you are not ready for this, you may find yourself feeling a little confused, under-prepared. Egypt insists that you play your part. Egypt is clever. It will get what it wants from you. And also Egypt needs you, like an old woman needs flattery, thinking to itself “I must be important, because the foreigner pays attention to me.”

And then, just when you were about to give in, Egypt will push you away. “You will come this close and no closer,” it will say, “for you are an outsider and do not understand.” The mystery will remain intact; 10,000 years of time hidden away in a box on the shelf just out of reach. In this way, Egypt is like a walled fortress with lights in all the windows; you are mystified, enthralled, outside. Egypt is like sweet music playing in the night, somewhere in the dark. Egypt is like a man, leaning forward, one hand beckoning, one hand holding you back.

All of this can be disorienting. It makes you feel sometimes like you’re walking in a dream.

There are a few possible responses to this disorientation. Some people run for the nearest McDonalds. In Cairo, you can even go for a long lunch hour at the Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar. You can order yourself a nice plate of Boneless Buffalo Wings or the Ragin’ Cajun Bourbon Street Steak. It is a natural response to the confusion and intensity of the city. But even there you aren’t safe, not even there, from Egypt’s push and pull and this is why: in Cairo, the Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar has large windows and it is situated on a boat. In the middle of the Nile River.

Another option if you want to avoid the confusion is to hide in your hotel, to only eat from the buffet, to drink the safe water, to take the air-conditioned tour bus to the museum. This will insure that everything, mostly, will be explained to you in your own language and that you will not have to worry about much of anything except to buy enough film for a few nice pictures of the camels at the Pyramids and to save space in your luggage for some pretty papyrus art. But what would you do about the security guards at the door with their machine guns and metal detectors? Obviously, not everything is safe here. What about the veiled Muslim women in the elevator? An what would you do about that view from your room, the one that overlooks the river and the mosques and the sprawl of that sun-blasted city? Can you really hide in a place like this?

Therefore, in light of this, a challenge: if you are ever in Cairo on a morning when the sunlight is slanting through the gaps in the buildings and the smooth blue face of the Nile looks like a piece of the sky fallen down, walk out the front door, right away, before the late-rising city comes fully aware. Slip through a crack in the wall. Pick up a stone and put it in your pocket. If you are ever in Cairo and the noise of the traffic begins to sound like a great chorus of voices singing one immense song, then I advise this: get out, get down to the street, put one foot in front of the other, and see what reality you can wrestle from the dream. And take your camera, because no one will believe you otherwise.

The morning after we arrived in Cairo I left the hotel and crossed the street to look at the river. It was my first experience with hello-where-you-from. I was caught by surprise. He looked like any other pedestrian, and he was speaking English. I answered his question; I told him, “I’m from the United States.” “I love New York,” he said, with an air of deep sincerity. He shook my hand warmly, “Welcome to Egypt.” Here I am, I thought to myself exuberantly, in the country for only 12 hours, and making friends already. “I am an artist,” he told me. “What a coincidence!” I exclaimed. “I am a photographer!” Look at me, taking risks, talking with the locals. I was so proud. He had just finished art school, he said, and he had a little gallery just around the corner, would I like to come and see? I had only a few minutes before I was to meet with my friends, I told him. Just a quick visit, he assured me, so he could give me his card. What can it hurt, I thought, and, besides, it will be an adventure.

After a few days, I discovered that the hello-where-you-from routine is an almost surefire tipoff that you are being pursued, or seduced, or whatever it is that they do so well. Hello-where-you-from is, in fact, the opening line of every street salesman’s script; maybe they all read the same book. Another thing to realize is that no one ever really seems to have a card to give you once you have arrived at the shop. It is just another script element. In general, this is how it goes: first, the friendly greeting on the street. This can take any one of a million variations. One man dressed in a pink polo shirt told me he was a doctor, a doctor of perfumes, would I like to come see his shop? One pair of motivated students offered to show my friends and me a good, inexpensive restaurant. It was. Then they sat down next to us for the next half hour while we ate, telling crude jokes in English, asking about America. After dinner, they finally returned to the script. “Let us give you a business card,” they said. “Come along, it is just around the corner from here.”

Assuming you go along with the act, like I did on that first morning by the Nile, you will then be herded toward the little door off an alleyway. Stepping inside, you must first sit down. You drink a cup of tea, no, no, you must take this cup of tea, please, drink, it is our way, our hospitality, please, sir. And look at these fine paintings. Which one you like, sir? Not to buy, of course, just to look. In that particular shop two blocks from the Nile, there were hundreds of paintings hanging in rows down a long wall, lit by fluorescent lights. In my estimation, many more than one “just-graduated” art student could have painted. But this is just how it works. Nothing to be upset about. He follows your eyes. That one? Yes, that one is nice, sir. And somewhere along the way you move from the friendly chatter to the serious talking and you feel the pace quicken and you realize that this is something different than what you thought it was, that this is an expert you are dealing with and that you are being run headlong into a box canyon.

Soon prices are being tossed around, of course, much reduced (only today and only for you.) Soon you find yourself in a daze, reaching in your pocket for the money that you just changed 15 minutes ago, the money that was supposed to buy you lunch and dinner and the taxi rides in between, and giving it to the man in exchange for nothing you really need. And then you realize suddenly that you are long past your appointed meeting time in front of the hotel. So you set down the half finished cup of tea, grab your tube of “handmade art” and bolt for the door. And, as you step outside into the street, you shake your head and rub your eyes as if just waking from a dream.

On my first free afternoon in the city I went to Old Cairo, the Christian section, a district full of museums and ancient churches. This was for me, I admit, very similar to running to McDonald’s or hiding out in my room, seeking something familiar. But I was trying to adjust. And I was not the only one. In a country where the tourist industry has almost completely collapsed in the wake of international terrorism and war fears, Christian Old Cairo was full of Western travelers. After an hour of photo-snapping families and aggressive, arm-waving tour guides, I became restless and found myself sneaking away from the crowds, hurrying down a side street. I surfaced near the subway station and was immediately accosted by the locals. This happens almost everywhere in Cairo. “Hello!” someone shouted. I did my best to appear absorbed, out-of-touch, fiddling with my cameras. “Hello! Hey you! Hello!” People were turning around to look at me. I gave in and looked up.

He was a tall man, well dressed, standing in the shade along the street, “Where you from?” he asked, rather forcefully. I took a breath. A number of curious onlookers had already gathered. “I’m from the United States,” I said. He put out his hand, looked me straight in the eye, “I’m from Iraq.” There was a pause, during which I thought of about a million things to say and none of them seemed right. “I’m sorry?” I ventured. He burst out laughing. “No, really, I am from Egypt. Welcome to Egypt. But do not take pictures of the police station.” He nodded his head toward the armed man standing in the doorway. This led to a discussion, or rather, a forum, which soon came to involve the tall man, the policeman, a shopkeeper from around the corner, a large group of teenagers leaning against the wall and a miscellany of others, as to what things I could, should and should not photograph.

Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion -- the stairs, right here, of course, these would make a good picture, or maybe those kids over there, hey kids, let him take your picture, how about the policeman? no not the policeman, hello hello can I help you find something sir? why are you looking around? do you want to find the train? are you thirsty? would you like a Coke? come with me, what you need? what is your name? where you from? I fled the gathering crowd, crossing the street to sit on a bench in the sun. An old man at other end of the bench looked up when I sat down. He eyed me for almost a minute. Finally, the inevitable. “Hello, where you from?” he said.

Journal entry:

It is nighttime, just past 12 o’clock.
I am sitting at the edge of the Red Sea where we have driven today in mad race across 90 miles of desert.
I am alone (which is a rare thing in Egypt.)
On the horizon, like stars, the lights of six, or ten, or a hundred container ships are flickering in the desert air.
They are waiting to pass the Suez Canal.
I am picking out the constellations in the sky above me.
They are the same as the ones at home, which is strange, because everything else here is different.
The still night air is carrying the faint sounds of laughter from some window somewhere.

We were driving alongside a trash-filled, dry canal in roughly three lanes of traffic. I say roughly because, for one thing, this was Cairo, after all, and for another, cars kept zooming toward us, racing the wrong way on the one-way street. I was keeping a steady eye on the road. Our driver was not. Rather, he was carrying on an animated conversation with my friends in the back seat. He would occasionally turn his head enough to glance at the road in front of us. Most of the time, this would give him enough warning to ease the car toward the right to avoid the oncoming, renegade cars. Other times we would swerve hard, honking. When I ventured a comment, “Isn’t this a one way street?”, he waved his hand airily. “Yes. Mostly,” he said.

Egypt is the Nike running shoe and blue jeans that you glimpse in a flash just below the hem of the woman’s robe.

One evening I went to the Islamic quarter, and climbed to the top of the minaret in a mosque built by the Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri in 1504. The sun was setting across the sprawling city of 8 million, turning the sky to gold, lighting the rooftops and the rocky bluffs above the city on fire. The stairs of the minaret curled upward, tight and twisting, up to the roof of the mosque and then another set of spiraling stairs through cramped darkness where I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, ascending a step at a time, one hand on the wall, another in front of me, until I rounded the corner into light glorious light and then found the ladder to the very top just beneath the curving crescent spire and I sat down with my camera and journal and an hour of time and took in the voice and the breath of the seething city below. There was a warm breeze rising. It was heavy with the smell of the spice market and incense and the exhaust of the ubiquitous taxis.

At my feet, the main street of the bazaar made its tangled way along the base of the tower and toward the south, disappearing around the corner of another larger mosque. A few buildings away, a man sat on his balcony overlooking the street. Through an open door a woman handed him a plate of food. A block over, two children peered out a window in my direction. On the roof of a building below me, two young women sat talking in the soft evening light, covered head to toe in dark robes.

In the bazaar one afternoon, I saw a man whose face caught my eye, an old man. I asked him if I could take his picture. Without answering me, he turned his head and shouted something over his shoulder. A young man came out of the stall behind him and walked up to me, speaking Arabic, standing close. He grasped my hand as if to shake it and held it tightly. I smiled at him, waiting for the predictable greeting. He didn’t fail me – asked me straight out, in English, where I was from. We stood in this funny stance for a good minute. He gripped my hand, pulling me so that I was almost leaning against him, speaking quickly again in Arabic, looking at me steadily in the eye. I was a bit alarmed after awhile, when he would not let go. He did not appear unfriendly, or openly angry, but neither was he welcoming. He held on, pulling me close, pushing me away. Eventually his grip loosened. I nodded, smiled, slid away down the street. I am still curious. I would like to know what it was he was saying as he grasped my hand so tightly.

So, I ask, like the old game show, will the real Egypt please stand up? Can we stop this little game of charades? Why is it that I seem to be just another role player in some big desert stage show? Okay, you play the part of the clever Arab. I’ll play the wealthy, bumbling tourist – hello, sir, where you from, sir, put this cloth on your head, red and white like the Saudis, sir, you look impressive, like Lawrence of Arabia, only 2 dollars, sir. Why do I feel needed, and admired, and ignored, and despised, all at the same time? Why is it that almost no one wants to know my name but everyone wants to know where I come from?

Journal entry:

Time seems to move differently here, like the river, slow and seamless, steady.
How long have I been here?
I don’t know.
Maybe I have lived a year in this place, maybe a lifetime.
Who knows?

The afternoon sun was burning high in the sky on my last day in Cairo, and the air was heavy like a thick blanket of heat, foreshadowing the oppressive summer months to come. I had been walking all morning, anxious, aware that my time was short. Just a little more, I was thinking, a few more pictures and then I’ll be done. I was tired and irritable and almost out of film. I was hoping for a few quick shots when I entered the square, but there was nothing, just another dingy street full of honking, torrential traffic. The heat was getting to me. I put my camera away with a strange sense of relief and crossed the square to rest in the relative coolness of the shadows along the edge of the street. Finding an empty step in front of a bookshop, I sat down. Miraculously, no one seemed to notice me. The minutes slipped past and I felt myself begin to melt into the background, joining the busy swirl of life around me. To my left, two men sat on stools talking, watching the traffic roar past. Further down, a young man stood leaning against the wall, apparently seeking the same shelter in the shadow.

And then one of the men noticed me and tried to catch my eye. I looked away, steeling myself for the inevitable. “Hello,” he said, waving his hand, “Hello.” I pretended not to hear. After a short time, he stopped, but a few minutes later he was at it again. Finally I looked up. “Hello,” he said and pointed to a frail stool a few feet away from me, nodding. I looked at him, surprised, moved over, and eased onto it, testing its strength, thanked him. He smiled and turned back his friend. I waited for the question, waited for the show to begin, 10 minutes, 20. Maybe this time I would tell him I that I was Chinese, or Eskimo, just to see his reaction.

After 30 minutes, he seemed to remember that I was there. He turned and held out a half empty pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?” he asked. “No, thanks,” I told him, “No smoke.” He nodded and leaned back against the wall. And that was all. Nothing else. I suddenly realized that I had somehow slipped outside the script, outside the dream. Suddenly, I was just another sitter along the wall. I sat still, not wanting to disturb the moment, feeling the hardness of the street beneath my feet and the heat of the air all around me. In the street in front of me, a woman stepped out of a car, walked a few steps, turned back to wave good-bye. A boy brought cups of tea to the men on the stools. A man came by pushing a cart of propane tanks, banging on them with a heavy spoon, watching the windows and the doorways. The young man against the wall smoked a cigarette into the afternoon heat. It was my last afternoon in Cairo. I picked up my backpack and started for the hotel.