Sensuous Cairo. I guess we can only appreciate a place through our senses and Cairo is, in most sensual aspects … exotic. My senses continue to be stimulated by strange sights, smells etc. Very different sensations from those that confront me in Brisbane.

So “sight”. With so many people in this large city, and so many cars … largely old cars with worn rings…. it is little wonder that the pollution levels are high. Add to that dust drifting from the deserts and a lack of consistent strong winds to blow it away, and you have a haze over Cairo that ranges from mild to severe. This is really noticeable when you drive back into the city. Clearer (but never pristine) blue skies of the nearby rural areas make way for a brownish-grey fog (smog). But, like all things, you get used to it by and large.

The buildings are unique as well. A lot are apartments. These tend to be quite large and, I am told, generally very well appointed inside, at least in Dokki and Zamalek, but the effort has not been placed on the facades or the entrances. Some have elevators but these are very old, double metal-gated affairs that take me back to my childhood in some of the department stores in Brisbane, elevators manned by lift drivers. (We still have lift drivers in Cairo). I previously mentioned the building style of leaving reinforcing steel exposed from the columns for future building. This is probably a reflection that builders and architects have not shown much interest in outside appearance in general in more recent years.

However, there are lots of delightful old buildings and the embassies are often quite beautiful buildings. There are also lots of wooded squares and boulevards around Dokki. Proud old trees but sadly with “dusty” leaves. I can’t help urging them on to de-tox the air for me. When walking it is a bit hard to appreciate the trees because you really need to keep an eye to the traffic at all times.

One major downside is the litter that “is” Cairo. There are street sweepers but rubbish is just put out on the streets and people think nothing of littering. It wasn’t unusual to see someone littering in Brisbane in the 50s and 60s but these days, in Australia today, if you see someone littering it seems dreadful. We have a different culture here.

“Touch” – well I don’t much touch Cairo, but it touches me. The smog tends to gather in my nostrils and sinuses, and my eyes are constantly red – a combination of the dust and smog and the dryness of the air-conditioning in my hotel room.

“Sounds” are a major attraction of the place. Car horns play a never-ending symphony. It is a thrill for me to walk among people speaking foreign languages and Arabic has a particular appeal. It is a harsh language, often spoken loudly and it can sound aggressive when people are not being aggressive (sometimes they are). The call to prayer (five times a day) is part and parcel of the Middle East and that is no different in predominantly Muslim Cairo despite a strong Coptic Christian influence. I like to hear the call, although in other places the early morning call has awakened me. I never hear it here and generally the mosques are quieter in Cairo than in other places I have been. Egyptians are very keen on music and most taxis and cars will be playing cassette tapes of Arabic music. It always seems to me to have a strong “belly dancing” feel to it but I am sure the locals would have a better appreciation than me of that.

“Tastes” are mostly confined to meal time. I have been opting for fairly bland food by and large – a personal preference – but some Egyptian food can be very spicy. Others are not so spicy and are really very good to eat, leaving you feeling well satiated. Probably the best meal I’ve had here so far was a combination of entrée-like dishes (mezza) at an Egyptian restaurant in Zamalek.

I really like Egyptian bread – very puffy pita bread – with a great taste and smell when served fresh and warm.

Which beings me to “smells”. These unique smells range from shisha pipes – ubiquitous in restaurants and sidewalk coffee shops – to smells of the street. Shisha is a very popular social conduit here. Smokers abound anyway, but shisha smoke tends not to be very acrid and if you have to passively smoke anything, the smoke of shishas – often fragrant with apple tobaccos etc. - is probably the way to go.

While there is no shortage of carbon monoxide on the streets, there are also other gems. Like the sweet potato roaster with his barrow and oven. I pass one every night on my way home and the smell is just great. I am not so keen to eat the products but I do enjoy the smells.

My social life has improved dramatically of late. I went to the pictures to see “Rabbit Proof Fence” at a building in the Opera House complex. This was part of an Australian Embassy film festival. I hadn’t seen it but I enjoyed it immensely. I also had a home cooked meal on Thursday night, generously cooked by a young Dutch chap for his 8 or so friends and couple of old codgers who tagged along. We all went to a 10:00pm session of Casino Royale afterwards. I had not previously seen a Bond movie with so few romantic scenes, but our movie had been trimmed a little for Egypt. An old style, large cinema, the locals seem to converse loudly all the way through. Perhaps that is because they do not need sound, being able to read the sub-titles.

I went on a work social club outing to old Cairo on Saturday. This visited two old Coptic Churches, a Greek Orthodox Cathedral, a Synagogue (one of the two? In Cairo), a Mosque and the Coptic Museum – all fascinating, the museum was probably the highlight. Really excellently set up and some wonderful exhibits. And I met some really nice people.

Perhaps the hardest thing that has confronted me since being here was facing the fact that the Ashes Test in Brisbane was going on without me. I saw an interview with Ricky Ponting after day one, on the Gabba pitch, and I felt quite homesick and thought “I should have been there”. At least I was able to follow the good performances on the TV and net. This seemed like a very one-sided match.

Oh! I should include in “sensuous Cairo” something of the “sixth sense”. By that I mean the knowledge that you are someplace significant. Such history, such contributions to civilisation, such a cradle of humanity. Yet, for instance, the Nile still drifts by as much to my delight as it was, no doubt, to Tut Ankh Amon. I am embarrassed to say that the other night when I went to the Opera House complex I had to walk across the bridge from the west bank to Zamalek – across the Nile. I managed to get half way over before I realised that I was crossing the Nile. I couldn’t help chastising myself that I did not have more awareness, more respect, more reverence for this unique opportunity. Sorry Tut!!!

I am entering my third week in Cairo now and I guess, as familiarity grows, I am getting more relaxed with my unusual life – so far mostly spent between my offices and hotel. Although I have so much to learn, I no longer feel so out of place on the streets.

The friendliness of the people continues to impress me. On the streets, I get no favours. It is “a jungle” out there. By that I mean that it is each to his own when it comes to crossing streets and navigating the footpaths and intersections.

Last week I had occasion to travel by car (driven by experts - not by me) to four separate destinations. The first was to the other side of town to a complex that was built by the Brits in the early 1900s and is a delightful combination of old Edwardian-style buildings and beautiful gardens. The two other excursions took me to other Governorates, to the north and east. There are 27 Governorates in Egypt and they form an important decentralised government somewhat between an Australian state and our local government areas.

Al Qalyubiyah (cal-you-bé-ya) is north of Cairo and situated at the southern end of the Nile delta. Cairo is situated on the Nile but is essentially in the desert. The founding fathers clearly wanted to be near to the fertile delta for its agricultural value but not so near that they would be flooded. Most of the delta is low lying with a high water table. Of course, the pharaohs didn’t have the Aswan High Dam to protect them from some of the effects of flooding. Rural Egypt is quite different to Cairo – but still crowded by Australian standards. No sleepy dogs and empty small town streets here.

The villages tend to coalesce so that you need to be told when leaving one and entering another. Each has its weekly market – different days – so when driving about you will run into a market or two. These are a great hubbub with people, cars, trucks and donkey carts coming from everywhere. Of particular interest to me are the women who go to and from with what seems like large loads on their heads. Some make use of a scarf folded into a doughnut to give a solid base on their heads for their loads. Others just balance a carton or bucket directly onto their heads – and walk with ease apparently unaware of their balancing task. I guess if you’ve done this for years it is a snap.

Building is a bit variable here. Timber is in very short supply but cement, bricks, mortar, mud, and render are readily available and form the basic building media. Even the animal houses tend to be solid walled. It is not unusual to see a poultry house, made of bricks, three stories high.

Our thrill was having a flat tyre at speed when re-entering Cairo, on the freeway. Thankfully a rear tyre that was pointed out to us by an obliging overtaking lorry driver. I was sitting in the back seat on that side and thought I felt a vibration but the road was rough at that point and we were driving with that wheel running along the lane marks (these are for decorative purposes only). Changing a tyre is never much fun but on such a busy freeway was an extra challenge – for the driver. His three passengers looked on appreciatively and the two Arabic speakers no doubt offered words of encouragement.

Incidentally the Government has expressed an intention to ban donkey carts from Cairo. That would probably also take them off the nearby freeways.

The second rural trip was towards Port Said on the Mediterranean – in Ash Sharqiyah Governorate (shark-key-a). This was a longer trip of about four hours all told, including a short period being lost. A major canal (the Ismailia Canal) runs towards Suez from the Nile. Built to enable the Suez Canal to be constructed, it now feeds a major irrigation area. An amazing job is being done of reclaiming the desert with large circular paddocks of crops, on desert sands conditioned with manure etc., and watered by large pivot irrigating systems. Peter Cundall from “Gardening Australia” would be impressed. The fields are large but still harvested by hand – or, at least, by lots and lots of hands.

My final excursion was a private one to visit two farms owned by my Egyptian friend, Karim. These are north-west of Cairo, past the Giza Plateau and off the Alexandria Desert Road. He has large areas of citrus trees, mangoes and table grapes growing on one established farm and another that he is building up. He is also having a house constructed on the new farm. I am sure it will be beautiful when finished. It is spacious and tiled and rendered with exposed rocks facing much of the outer walls. The beauty of the climate is that it practically never rains so there is an ill-defined separation between an outdoor and indoor lifestyle. We came away with a supply of delightful oranges.

I also did some dining out this past weekend. On Friday night, I went with Karim and a group, and on Saturday, with a couple of work colleagues from here. Each was very pleasant and the change from routine was just great.

On a very sad note, two other consultants working here were killed in a car accident in a rural area on last Saturday. Travel by road is a real hazard here and terrible events like this bring the reality of that to the fore.

My time away from Australia is already passing quickly with more than 20% gone already. I am in that strange twilight zone where it is difficult to recall how the past days disappeared so quickly and it seems both a blink and an eternity since I travelled to the Brisbane airport.

My week will be a little different this week. But life has a habit of throwing up surprises, particularly in Egypt, so I will leave open all possibilities. Tell you about it next time.

I have now been a “resident” of Cairo for over a week. But first – my retreat from Rome.

My appointments finished early on the Friday afternoon and I was free to play tourist again. I was keen for a walk, so set off for a four hour “walking tour”. I had been conscious of not having seen the Spanish Steps during our previous visit so, although it was a fair way from my hotel, like a yet to be climbed mountain for the mountaineer, this became a target for me. I walked across the Circus Maximus, walked through the forum, viewed the forum from a vantage point above, and went to the Trevi Fountain. Taking an each way bet and keeping my options open, I threw a very small coin in.

I made it to the Spanish Steps (I walked down them – they were covered with tourists so I couldn’t really see the steps). There I realised how tourism works in Rome, when I was quoted 7 euros (around $11) from a kiosk for a Coke that costs $2.20 in Australia. I walked to St. Peters, and looked at the Pieta again. This was another icon from my art books and is truly magnificent. In fact the Vatican could not fail to impress and St. Peters is awe-inspirng.

I returned to my hotel a little tired but very much stimulated by the sights and sounds of Rome. The weather was changeable in Rome for my visit but clear and sunny on the last two days and pleasant to walk in. But it was very cold – ranging from 0 – 11 degrees Celsius.

Everything has gone smoothly so far, and so was the trip to Cairo. I flew Alitalia this time (all other flights are Emirates). It seemed more like our domestic flights than an international event, and was relatively short at a little over 3 hours. We flew across the “toe of the boot” – near to Calabria, and also over-flew Crete and Alexandria.

Arriving in Cairo I was met by a lady from the hotel who was first in the name-signs queue (before immigration), grabbed my passport and whipped me past everything and everybody. This is fairly valuable because the queues are long and the scene a little frantic when one arrives in Cairo. We beat my luggage to the carousel by 10 minutes. She had a car arranged for me. The drive across Cairo brought back a lot of memories and gave a reality to the notions of traffic and chaos that, although you think you remember them, need to be re-experienced to really be understood.

Maybe the contrast with the serenity of where I stayed in Rome was involved but I was quickly reminded that this is Cairo – it is not neat and it is chaotic. Egypt is a very poor country with a very large population. Like many similar countries, it has a lot of very rich people as well. Cairo is huge with some 8 million living in its boundaries and nearly the same moving in to work each day. The area I am staying in is Dokki – regarded as a good area but quite central and old. It is largely high-rise with narrow streets.

Cairo drivers are very skilled in avoiding one another. If we drove like that in Australia we would quickly become victims of road rage – but, beyond a few shrugs, everyone seems to accept it and squeezing ahead of the car next door seems part of a game.

The footpaths are often un-navigable so people walk along the edges of the roads. The locals are care-free about this and wander all over the road. The rule seems to be that the cars should look out for you. As they approach they sound their horns to let you know they are there. They do the same with every other car they encounter. This makes for a constant cacophony of car horns. Drivers always seem to have one hand on the horn. The other curiosity for us is that at night many prefer to drive with their headlights off.

My walk to work takes about 20 minutes. I have to cross three major roads. This is quite an art because there are no walk lights or crossings. The rule is to make eye contact with the driver and walk in front of the car. In effect, as one walks across there are cars (and buses and trucks) whizzing past in front and behind you. On the first few occasions the term “cheating death” came to mind but surprisingly, I have become used to it and the adrenalin doesn’t even flow any more. The secret is not to do anything “sudden” or unexpected. I did make the mistake of changing direction suddenly without looking and almost had an intimate relationship with a push-bike.

This will be a new experience for me – living in a hotel for three months. It was tempting to find a flat but that carries additional complications that I don’t need. I have pretty much settled down to the life here. Egyptians are very friendly people in general and are gracious to foreigners like me. They are keen to help. English is spoken by many but by a relatively small proportion of the general population. Sadly, my Arabic is non-existent – so there are some problems. This did come to the fore on my first walk home from work – one wrong turn and the language problem meant that I was consistently pointed in the entirely wrong direction. The 20 minute walk became two hours (but I did see a lot of back streets).

I had some button problems and needed some cotton to do some running repairs. I found an old cotton shop on the walk home from work. With a short diversion into a back street and two inquiries, I found the little shop with years of dust on everything, undisturbed by the ancient shop-keeper who hasn’t tidied up for a very long time. His movements about the shop are restricted by the ravages of age and by being unable to find a clear place on the floor to put his feet. But I got my cotton and enjoyed the exercise.

I am not planning to play at being a tourist here, at least not initially but I will regularly post some of my responses to “the report”. So, stay tuned and keep safe and happy.

And so, the odyssey begins ….

This blog commences with my departure from Australia for Egypt. The trip is a work trip but this blog is not about work, but rather the places and people that I encounter….. how I react to them and, I guess, they to me.

I left home at 5:30pm on Tuesday, 31 October 2006. My first stop was Rome where I arrived at my hotel at around 9:30pm on the following day, Brisbane time (12:30pm local). With a 90 minute transit at Dubai, I was 27 hours door to door and just over 24 hours airport to airport. This is not only tiring but says very clearly that, although all roads lead to Rome, we are a long way from this city.

The travel all went very smoothly. This was my seventh trip through Dubai airport in the last 11 months but the place continues to fascinate me. I arrived just as the dawn glow was creeping over the horizon to illuminate the desert haze. This, and a port side window, provided me with a wonderful view of the lights of Muscat and Dubai and the incredible street-light equipped highways that run between them and all over the desert.

My first entry to Dubai airport in December ’05 was stunning – the huge domed terminal full of people from seemingly every nation in the world. Subsequent visits have been less busy but no less interesting. This time we had chaos again – crowds and crowds of people – more westerners than middle-eastern people but moving through the duty free area was a time consuming process.

Our route to Rome passed north from Dubai across the Gulf and over Iran, which we traversed south to north, skirting Iraq. There was a good deal of cloud but the same port side window gave me magnificent views of the very mountainous Iran, showing clear indications of a long history of earthquakes (and of a couple of craters that spoke of visits by extra-terrestrial rocks). But I was really surprised by the extensive snow coverage of the mountains to the north of Iran to southern Turkey. I had expected some snow capped mountains but this was on a massive scale – hundreds of square miles of just pure white snow. Was this the last of the previous winter or the start of this? Maybe a bit of both but a number of towns and villages were nested in the valleys, cropping the flood plains of the rivers that flowed from the melting snows and some of these were adjacent to the snow line. I wondered what the area might look like in a few months time.

The “track was rough” across the Black Sea – only cloud below and an interrupted food service due to “bumps”. Then we flew over the Adriatic and across Italy. Landing in Italy is a very smooth process with an express trip through immigration and customs. A black Mercedes spirited me down the autostrade peaking at 150 km/hr. It might have gone faster but I couldn’t always read the speedo as my eyes were shut for some of the time.

My hotel in Rome is delightful – an old building on the hill adjacent to the Palatine Hill – a few streets back the buildings would look over the Tiber. This is a quiet residential area but only an easy 15 minute walk to the Colosseum. When in Rome … do as all the other tourists do. After a much desired shower and shave, and despite my body telling me that it was actually around midnight, I set off on foot to do some walking.

I walked past Circo Massimo, the Colosseum and forum, past the Monumento a Vittorio Emmanule II. By then I was so far from home that I just followed signs that give no indication of how far. I went on to the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. We had visited all of these in 1997 but, maybe because it was the summer then, everything seemed “bigger”. Except, thankfully, the Pantheon. I had been disappointed in ’97 to see the thing I so much admired in my art texts as a young boy, in a little square with the forecourt being excavated (an archaeological dig) and the unique golden arches of a McDonalds about 30 metres away. Now, no dig, a seemingly bigger piazza and no arches, although it seems from the signs leading to it that Ronald is still active in the area. The multitudes were being entertained by a somewhat extravagantly dressed Germanic marching band (that wasn’t marching but had set up in front of the portico). They played very well but they were a distraction for me to pondering the great antiquity.

In Navona, the Bellini fountain is being restored and the church opposite is scaffolded. The whole of central Rome was crawling with tourists, more that the summer of ’97, yet the weather is a bit ordinary right now – the hotel says it is still a high season.

I was starting to head spin from the jet lag so I took a shortcut home, crossing the Tiber twice via the Garibaldi and Sublicio bridges and buying some Coke and water en route. This area is definitely off the tourist map (perhaps not mentioned in the Dan Brown books) – a relief in many ways. Back at the hotel – no interest in dinner – I hit the sack at 5:30pm (local) and slept like a baby until midnight. I rested until 3:00am and arose to capture the events so far on this text so I can later post it to “thedouglasreport”.

Later this morning, I start the real reason for coming here and will be departing the ancient city in two days time (for an even more ancient city).