Word: cairo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...CAIRO, Egypt—Cairo has not met my wildest imaginations. My “Erol of Arabia” dreams of racing across the desert on a black Arabian horse, scimitar in hand, screaming, wearing a kafiyya, then arriving in Cairo, making a cameo at a local protest, with bullhorn in my other hand, burning a few flags and finally sheesha-smoking the night away has not been realized. Instead, I unglamorously touched down in an airplane, took a cab to my bare hostel room and have spent most nights studying Arabic. I have not been on a horse...
...Cairo is not the hornet’s nest of anti-American rage that I had deliriously imagined the night before I flew here. It is not the city of thieves that my Mom warned me about. It is not the mercilessly hot environment that everyone complains about (it’s more or less a dry heat). In other words, Cairo has definitely not been “keeping it real.” It is a place that is torturous to pin down, where you can buy your McArabia sandwich from McDonald’s, and enjoy...
Ironically, it was a belly dancing show that made me first realize Cairo was not the ethereal city of my “Arabian Nights” dreams. I sat in intense anticipation for the belly dancer, who in my mind would be buxom, with stomach flowing in rolls and waves, and with enough glitter on her costume to make me flinch. What emerged instead, after two hours of an Egyptian cover band, was a very thin woman. Belly dancers are not supposed to be very thin. Here was a woman with fake breasts, no waist to speak...
...that is show business, so maybe I can understand the belly dancers selling out. What really hurt me was seeing some Bedouin Arabs, noble inhabitants of the desert, pushing souvenirs, camel rides and water bottles at the many tourist sites around Cairo. Reading about Bedouins, dreaming about Bedouins, never did I imagine a Bedouin ensnaring me in a camel riding scam. But then there I was, at the Giza pyramids, atop a camel, begging its owner to let me down. The Bedouin who got me up there was telling me that he would only let me down...
...evidence strikes me as flimsy," says Egyptologist Kent Weeks, of the American University in Cairo. "If the mummy is female and if it is royal, then you still do not necessarily have Nefertiti. I think the jury is still...