By Phil Roberts
In this installment, I’m writing about some memories of Cairo.
I first came to Cairo to help Peggy get settled in at Bahgat Ali Street. She had been there for a couple of months and had lived at another place prior to that point. The flat on Bahgat Ali was probably best known for its ancient elevator, a relic from the days when the building was, in the 1930s, a British flat of quite modern vintage.
The building was mostly occupied by Egyptians but a few non-Egyptians lived there. too. The next-door neighbor, who we met the following year, was the well-known art historian and anthropologist George Scanlan.
Our flat was a commodious one with three bedrooms, one converted into an office, and a veranda out on the southeast side that wasn’t closed—but had to be later to keep the cats, Zamalik and Doqqui, from jumping off the building. Our balcony was eight stories above the street and, occasionally, a workman would climb up the side of building on frayed ropes to clean the windows or to carry heavy TV antenna to the top of the building.
The bowab was very old and he had been working at the building for most of his career. His name was Mahmoud. He always dressed in a grey gallibaya and was hatless most of the time. The building held many apartments that had been lived in by the same families for a very long time.
Our flat was furnished, but we added some additional furniture like a beautiful mashrabiya screen and several tables made of the same intricate mashrabiya. Much of our artwork and sculpture that filled the place came from the Khan al Khalili, Cairo’s main market.
We became quite acquainted with many of the shopkeepers in the Khan. One was the leather maker Osama. He had a very nice shop where he sold pyramid-stamped leather goods and other pieces made of camel leather to the tourist trade. There were always tourists in the Khan and it was a lively place in those days.
We frequently asked our driver Hassan to take us to the Khan. He would drop us off and meet us afterward at a designated location, like the nearby mosque parking lot. Sometimes we took a cab one-way and caught a cab back when we were bringing various large objects back. Traffic is always terrible and parking was even worse anywhere near the car so we were lucky if we could hail a cab to get back to Baghet Ali Street. Other times, we walked back the two or so miles to the flat—good exercise on pleasant, cool evenings. (Cairo, in those days, was very safe for pedestrians).
Occasionally we went to merchants who were not located in the Khan like Fine Wool, a tailor shop that made very high-quality suits. I still have a couple of suits made by them. Even though Cairo is a busy city, we could always locate places like Fine Wool the second or third or fourth time. There were no street directories of any value to get us to where we wanted to go, so we trusted the cabdrivers to know where to take us and where they could drop us off.
Hassan was always willing and able to take us, too. He did have an annoying habit, stopping in the middle of the street (even with the heavy traffic) to look under the hood if something seemed to be going wrong with his ancient Peugeot station wagon.
One time, when David was visiting Cairo, we decided to look for a suitcase and the one department store that carried suitcases was the Omar Effendi store downtown (the oldest department store in Cairo). David and Hassan stayed with the car parked along the street while Peggy and I were shopping for the suitcase. Hassan took time out to do his daily prayers. The bureaucracy inside Omar Effendi store was truly a nightmare. It took us a long time to navigate through the various stations to get the suitcase purchased.
Meanwhile, outside, David was relaxing and taking pictures of the “Egyptian street” when, suddenly, a crazed pedestrian ran down the street wielding a knife, swinging it wildly and trying to outrun some police officers. He ran right in front of where David was standing. The man was finally tackled by the policeman and hauled away.
Hassan appeared just about that time to see the action. It was not every day, even in pre-revolutionary Cairo, that one encountered a wild man in the street. We came out with the cheap suitcase just after the police and their crazed prisoner had left. There stood David and Hassan, both OK but looking a little dazed.
The suitcase had an unfortunate fate. It was very poorly built and David loaded it up with all the goodies he had purchased in Cairo, including lots of items from the Khan al-Khalili. By the time the suitcase came down the luggage carousel at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, it had broken to pieces. All of David’s valuable contents (as well as his socks and underwear) were strewn along the edge of the rotating luggage carousel. We caught what we could and slammed them back into the suitcase. We borrowed some string, more like twine, and tied it together as best we could. The airplane was taking off soon for London’s Gatwick Airport.
The Omar Effendi suitcase, now done up like a Christmas package, was still with us until we got to London. But what do you know? By the time we passed through passport control, we got to the luggage carrier and saw that the twine had broken off and David’s contents were strewn all over the luggage carousel.
We were directed to a luggage shop in the concourse nearby and bought a new suitcase at the Gatwick shop, making certain it was not an Omar Effendi model. But we found that the shop wouldn’t take the old suitcase, so we took the old suitcase (that was empty) and the new suitcase that had David’s stuff in it and checked into the motel just south of Gatwick airport. I asked the desk clerk if he could dispose of the old suitcase, but he said “no.” David looked surprised, but he didn’t say anything. Huckster that I am, I tried to convince the desk clerk to take it off our hands. I said, ”Can’t you, at least, take it to bury a dog in it?” He scowled and walked through the door behind the desk, shaking his head vigorously.
We checked out the next morning, conveniently leaving the suit case remains on the luggage stand in the room.
Word of advice—don’t buy an Omar Effendi suitcase in Cairo, but if you do, come armed with lots of tape, string, twine, or even baling wire—unless you’re planning to bury a dog.