May 2006

Alarm was set for seven, but when it went off I reset it for fifteen more minutes. When that alarm went off, again, I turned it off and just rolled back over. The next time either of us woke up it was eleven o’clock and we decided that since this was vacation, it was one of the treats. We got ready to go out and caught a cab to the train station so that we could buy our tickets for Luxor, leaving in two days. Then we headed to Islamic Cairo and Al-Hussein mosque. We got our first Egyptian meal, pizza, and made our first Egyptian friend, Nargi. We sat in his restaurant for a little while. Nargi and his nargila joined us and we watched people fill the mosque for one of the five daily prayer sessions. The mosque filled until people were left to pray outside and we were able to take in the whole ritual.
After their ceremony, we finished our lunch, took our shoes off, and went inside the mosque. Some were still chanting and others just relaxing on the rug lined floor. I did not feel extremely welcomed and it was not like we blended in. No one said anything or was mean, but the looks we received were not all smiles. If I made eye contact with someone or gave a nod, then they would acknowledge me, but no words were exchanged. We kept it brief and made for the Khan El-Kahlili market. The mosque was at the mouth of the market and the following alleys were just lined with street shops and shacks. We walked around and admired, then crossed the street to the Mosque Al-Azhar, the oldest institution (university) in the world.
Then continued down the street and met Egyptian friend number two, Mohammed. He was a very nice guy, the Muslim Arnold Schwarzeneger, and wanted to show us around Islamic Cairo. We figured why not and began to follow him; he first took us Mosque Al-Salih Ayyub. The mosque was very old and had a minaret with a wonderful view of the entire city, even the pyramids in the distance, our first glance. The stairs go up in a circle and during the final leg up the minaret, the staircase goes pitch black and you must put a hand on the wall in the center to help yourself balance while you figure out where to step. From the mosque, Mohammed took us to a papyrus shop and we saw some beautiful artwork. Doron and I each got a couple of pieces and said our goodbyes to Mohammed. From here we headed for the Egyptian museum, home to a plethora of ancient Egyptian artifacts.
One of the many challenges in Egypt was the language barrier. Neither of us speak nor understand any Arabic, for instance, when we get cabs it is a challenge to communicate to the driver where we want to go. For the most part, we are hitting up the main sights, but even some of those require a lot of hand signals. So when we got a cab to the Egyptian museum, the driver thought we wanted the Nile river. Luckily the museum is on the Nile and we were a couple blocks away, so we just hopped out and walked the rest of the way. As we were about to cross the road in front of the museum, friend number three came into the picture. His name was Sharky (Sharuki?) and he recommended that we save the museum for another day, when we could afford more time to walk through. He suggested we split a cab with him to Giza, just outside the city of Cairo and where the pyramids sit. It made sense, the museum would close in an hour and sunset at the pyramids would be pretty special. So we took him up on it and headed out of the city.
Now, as nice as all of our friends have been, two out of the three have led to Doron and I spending some money. Sharky was one of the two and led us to his buddy’s guide shop. We ended up heading into the desert and checking the pyramids out by horseback. It turned out to be a wonderful experience and fun way to see the pyramids and the Sphinx . We got to go up and climb the third biggest pyramid, something that I do not believe would have happened if we were just walking around on our own (I don’t think it is allowed, I mean, our guide kinda snuck us around the side of the pyramid and was whispering the whole time). This concluded our tour and we rode back to the guide post and there was Sharky, just hanging out.
He invited us over to his house for dinner and cocktails, but we passed and cabbed back into Cairo. As we drove out of Giza the sun was setting behind the pyramids and it was like a painting, absolutely magnificent. We seemed to go the long way home, but D and I were not complaining, we just looked out the back window.
When we returned to Cairo, we decided to go for a bite and this is where we met friend number four, Doctor Sherif. Doc Sherif worked at the Egyptian museum as an Animal Mummy Reconstructionist (he restored discovered mummies of animals). The Doc led us to an Egyptian restaurant that was very cheap and looked pretty clean. We ordered kabobs (lamb) and falafel.; it was our first truly ethnic meal and we were both satisfied with the outcome. Doc only stayed long enough to help us order, but told us to call him the next day while at the museum and maybe he could bring us downstairs and show us his work. After the meal we were both exhausted and walked home to our “apartment” for the strangest shower I have ever had.
There were three bathrooms in our hotel/hostel and all three contained showers, well sorta. On the wall was a shower head and no where in the bathroom was a designated shower area (the toilet is in the shower, the bathroom floor was also the shower floor, the shower is the bathroom). The water just sprays from the wall and the floor was somewhat slanted toward a drain. After a shower and a couple games of sheshbesh, D and I went to sleep, promising not to sleep in the next day.

Arrived at the border at half past nine and began the process of crossing into Egypt. I could not have had an easier time getting out of Israel and into Egypt, but my traveling partner did not have it so easy. Doron is an American-Israeli and did not bring his Israeli passport with him, just his U.S. one. The customs agent on the Israeli side then pulled Doron away to fill out some paperwork, so I went and hung out in no man’s land between the two countries (as well as continents).
Thirty minutes later he joined me and we continued the crossing process. We walked into the Egyptian arrival hall, put our bags on the x-ray machine and walked through the metal detectors. I went through without a hitch and started to fill out a customs form, but again, Doron was held up. It had nothing to do with his nationality, but rather the machine picked up on something in his backpack that was not welcome to experience Egypt. After a bribe and handing over the unwanted object, we got our passports stamped and entered Egypt, into the city of Taba on the northern tip of Sinai. We had only eight minutes until our ten o’clock bus to Cairo and had to hire a cab to take us the 1/4 kilometer (got accustomed to the metric system) down the road to the bus stop.
We just made it to the bus on time, threw our bags beneath and climbed aboard. The bus pulled off and within the first thirty minutes, we went through three checkpoints. At all three, the soldiers would ask us for our passports and bus tickets. I did not mind these interruptions because it made us feel safe. We drove west, through Sinai, and through the Suez tunnel into mainland Egypt.
I went in and out of sleep for the next six hours, but once we got closer to Cairo my head was going from side to side in awe. The city is amazing and buzzing with action. Public busses do not close their doors and people just hop on and off, sometimes even hang off the sides. There are not many traffic signals and if there are, they are rarely obeyed. Pedestrians only walk in crosswalks by coincidence and cars seldom stop to allow a pedestrian to cross. Everyone just weaves in between each other, something that took a little while to get used to.
Once we got off of the bus the cab drivers were right there soliciting, making it hard to get off the last step of the bus. Even though we knew the price the driver wanted was more than we should pay, we hired him to take us to our intended hotel (even the “Tourist Police” officer was assisting in the racketeering). The entire way there the driver was telling us not to stay at the hotel we wanted and tried to sell us on his “buddy’s” hotel. We got to the hotel and climbed the six flights of stairs, only to discover that the accommodations were not what we were looking for and walked out. Instead of walking down the stairs we took the elevator, by far the scariest elevator ride of my life. It was a cage of death, with old french doors that did not close. It leaned to one side and shook the entire way down. I almost kissed the floor when we got out, but remembered where I was.
There was another hotel that I read about in my guide book and it was just around the corner. It was pretty grimy, but cheap and had a good location. The rooms was not bad, but the bathroom and building represented the price. Doron and I got a double room and it was something like $3 a night. We got settled and went out for some food. A lot of people had told us of stomach illnesses that resulted in some Egyptian cuisine, so we played it safe for our first meal and visited a McDonald’s (ha ha). It was definitely the most satisfying and cleanest McDonald’s I had ever been in, a little scary. After our dinner we walked around and got associated with the streets of our neighborhood, downtown Cairo. We decided to go to a movie and have a lazy night, thinking it would prepare us for a full day of sightseeing the next day.
After the movie I mapped out an itinerary for the next day and called it a night; I was overcome with excitement for what was to come our way. Finally put the guide book down and went to sleep, by the way, lots of mosquitos.

On May 21st, 2006, Doron Schulman and Josh Goldstein got on a bus leaving from Kibbutz Ketura and destined for Eilat. Their journey had one mission, obtain a visa to visit the African country of Egypt. This was supposed to be an easy task, but like most things in foreign countries, nothing is easy. This trip only set the tone for a journey that would change two men forever.

5/21 Visas[u]
The bus ride was not too long and the Egyptian consulate was not far from the bus stop. After a brief cab ride we were climbing the stairs, only to find a group of irritated travelers hanging out on the front porch. One of the guys greeted us and invited us to sit down and get comfortable. Apparently the General Consulate was busy with a conference call and would not be signing any visas until he was finished with the call. Fortunately, this worked in our favor because what our friends who had visited Egypt never mentioned, was that a passport photo needed to be handed in with the visa application.
So we hailed a cab and went back to the bus station where there was a Kodak shop was nearby. After getting some pictures taken we cabbed back out to the consulate. The wait was only thirty minutes and we received our stamped passports at the same time as those who had been waiting since the consulate opened. Then it was back to the kibbutz to pack and get some rest.