Arriving in Egypt

A few days before I left Marseille, I made a confession to KO over dinner: despite my having had traveled the world over and living in two Muslim countries, I was nervous about arriving in Cairo by myself. Add all the terrible stories about Egyptian taxi drivers to my notorious ability to land myself in sticky situations time and again...it seemed like a recipe for disaster when traveling through Cairo by myself in a taxi to arrive at KO's apartment.

She laughed and assured me that I would be fine. She'd ordered a meet-n-greet service to pick me up right at the gate in the airport, get me through passport control, and drive me straight to her place. They'd proven themselves reliable many times over, and she trusted them to treat me with respect.

"You'll be fine." It never crossed our minds to worry about HER.

Two days later, she flew from Marseille to Rome to Cairo. That same day, I was stuck on a TGV train that was supposed to take three hours to return to Paris and instead took six. My normal "trouble finds me" self was not surprised. I figured it was a precursor of what was to come the next day, when I would fly from Paris to Cairo.

I woke up the next morning to my cell phone shrilling me out of my first good night's sleep in weeks...it wasn't even 7am. When I saw who was calling and at what time, I thought something might be wrong.

"bettercountry--it's the Chef. (My leader from the summer.) Have you heard from KO?"
"No, why?" Fearful butterflies in the stomach.
"She didn't show up in Cairo. No one has heard from her."

He proceeded to ask me questions as my mind shot through how many hours had passed since she was supposed to have arrived, all the possibilities of what could have happened, and that I was supposed to be boarding a plane in a few short hours to go BE with her. I was sure that she had fallen aslep during her layover in Rome and missed her connecting flight...we'd both been so utterly exhausted beyond being coherent, and she had not slept at all during her last two nights in Marseille.

Two hours later, the Chef called me back to let me know she'd shown up at the American Embassy in Cairo and she was safe. It was all he knew, so it was all he told me. I would have to wait until that night when I arrived myself to hear the whole story. Needless to say, my fears about arriving in Cairo by myself were not eased. I knew my nerves would not calm down until I could see KO and hug her neck, knowing that we were both fully safe and together again.

Just as she had assured me, the meet-n-greet was there at the gate, holding a sign with my name completely misspelled. It made me smile. Mohammed spoke English and was very polite, guiding me straight over to the passport control area. I eyed the long lines and thought, "Great...another hour tacked on until I see KO." Mohammed asked for my passport, showed it to some police, and breezed us past all the lines to a window that had no line extending from it. I paid my money, they put in the visa sticker and we walked on through. I'd hardly had time to blink.

Mohammed still leading the way, we went over to baggage claim. I pointed out my suitcase and he reached down and picked it up for me, pulling it along so I just had to follow him like a shadow as he walked over to a money exchange. He had quietly placed me into a taxi van before I had any time to feel nervous or excited about being in Egypt. Within less than a half an hour, I was hugging KO's weary little neck.

We plopped down on the couches and she proceeded to tell me about her ordeal. She'd arranged for the meet-n-greet to pick me up...something no one had done for her. Her bosses assumed that she knew her way around Cairo and she'd be fine to get herself home. She assumed that someone had always picked her up before and surely, since she was arriving at 2:30am, no one would expect a single woman to get herself home alone at that hour in Cairo. Two bad assumptions equaled a bad night for KO.

With no meet-n-greet to whisk her to the front of the line at passport control, she had to wait the hour that it took for the herds to move through it. When she'd finally gotten her visa and her luggage, it was past 3:30am...and no one was there to pick her up. She sat in the airport and waited an hour while annoying taxi men were ickyflirty with her. After an hour, she decided to get some Egyptian money from the ATM, pick the least flirty taxi driver, and make her way towards a friend's house.

While standing at the ATM, some guy ran by, grabbed her card from her hand and ran off. She was so exhausted--remember, she's on her third night straight of no sleep--that she didn't react quick enough to stop him. She looked down at the 20 pounds ($5) in her hands and hoped it'd be enough to get her a taxi to a friend's house.

She pondered through which friend's house to go to. She'd never been to the apartment she and I would be staying at for our two weeks there, and she didn't even have the address for it written down. Several of her friends had moved in the year she had been gone and she didn't know how to get to their new places. The only friend she could remember how to get to was Foxy. Foxy's it was.

When she arrived to Foxy's, the driver threw a fit that KO had only given him 20 pounds, even though that's the price she'd told him before she'd gotten into the taxi. He kept screaming at her for her to give him 30, and she--KO, who never shows a negative emotion ever--declared that she didn't have 30, she'd been robbed. She didn't have any more money. She walked away to him screaming at her.

Poor KO. She banged on Foxy's door with all her might, to no avail, there was no answer. It was 6am, she hadn't slept in three days, she knew people had to be worried about her, and she had no money to get anywhere else. She had no money or phone to call anyone. And all she wanted to do was curl up on the floor and sleep. Instead, she went outside, sat on the curb and began to sob.

Some taxi drivers eyed her for awhile, this poor little red-haired, white skinned, blue eyed foreign woman in Cairo, sobbing on a curb at 6am. I think even the creepiest of taxi drivers couldn't have been ickyflirty to her at that moment. They asked her what was wrong and she told them her whole story.

"You should go to the American embassy. They'll help you."
"I DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY!!!" She exclaimed, frustrated that she had no way to get to the place they had suggested that could help her. She must have been truly pitiful at that moment, because they offered to take her for free.

And so KO ended up at the American embassy, where they sent an email out for her to let people know where she was and to please come pick her up.

Well...while I could imagine that happening to me, I'd never imagined KO going through it. She's so sweet and pleasant natured that it really didn't phase her at all. After a good bit of sleep, she was able to laugh at the whole thing. I sat on the couch, looking at her, thinking about the next 10 days to come in Egypt.

Would it all be as exciting as simply arriving had been? Hopefully not as traumatic, causing people in four different countries to go into a panic. Turns out, it did involve some more Mohammeds, some more scary taxi drivers as well as some nice ones, more getting lost, but also some of the most memorable moments of my life, with one of my dearest friends. Stayed tuned...