*** Monday, 11Sep06 ***
It's a mistake to think Moslems are anti-American. The problem comes from a narrow segment of extreme believers who should be more emphatically rejected by the majority. The trouble is there is no majority position since all is a welter of statements from frequently low-level (and often badly educated) clerics. The right Pope would do the faith some good.

I have finally been able to spend some time with locals who don't work for my program and whose English is may not be very good but who include good English speakers. It makes for a pleasant time even though my A-bomb of wealth is forbidden to be part of the equation -- they won't let me pay for anything. I like what I see.

My entree has been giving people pictures of themselves. Their appetite for their pictures is very high and they are grateful. All the guys I gave pictures to brighten up at my approach, shake my hand in gratitude and give me extra towels at the pool. I do enjoy the attention. There are also the gifts: sphinxes, pyramids, statues of Horus, glow-in-the-dark stone scarabs, etc. They wanted to say how much they liked my pictures; I think I do a good job; I know how to flatter a face -- and their male faces are handsome.

So at the pool I am a small star and I genuinely like the modest attention. I can signal to one group (life guards) to get some attention from the food service people who tend to hide in the shade inside and I can get my can of iced Sakhara beer that much sooner.

I know I am a pool celebrity because other workers know that I have taken pictures of their friends and directly ask me for pictures of themselves. Yesterday one of the guys who distributes the Seeshas (water pipers) came over and asked me in mime to take his picture. He is handsome so I said I would take his picture today. He found me today and asked for his picture but was particular that it should be a full head shot. Given his face, I had no problems so I took several pictures and we looked at them on the LCD display and he approved the pix he liked. Pushy, pushy, pushy. Small stuff but fun in its way.

Ultimately, some non-corporate personal attention. I have met the locals and find them charming.

*** Thursday, 14Sep06 ***
Went to CityStars Mall for lunch. It is huge and so Westernized, it could have been plucked from any bland suburb in America and dropped here in Cairo. It has six floors of every over-priced store there is along with the Egyptian equivalents. I had a hamburger at Fudruckkers that turned out to be mediocre which meant it was the best I have eaten in Egypt. Oddly, they didn't charge a tip on the bill so I was careful to include one.

My offending picture. Imagine all the top secret information it contains.

At the Radio Shack store I found CD sleeves I have been looking for for months. I took a picture of the bushes against the wall across from the entrance we use. Someone at the gate wiged out and called security who called the General in charge of security who called the front desk who don't speak English very well so they called our translator, Mohamed, who came down stairs to tell me that there was a kerfuffle underway so I showed the desk staff my picture of the bushes. They knew that I was not a terrorist so now they could tell the General.

*** Friday, 15Sep06 ***
Sheena and Marcia joined me at the pool. Sheena announced that we could move to the Four Seasons Hotel -- finally. But it is the weekend and I want to have everything verified by the main office so I have to wait a day or two. But I do want to move. Anything to get out of this place after five months! I feel like I have been living in a hotel run by Dracula.

I tried to take two Egyptian friends to dinner but I didn't succeed at the level I wanted to. One ordered only an appetizer (stuffed grape leaves) and then made me eat part of it. The other at least ate a meal. Neither ate the hummus I ordered as an appetizer. Both seemed very impressed by the veils and other decorations on the walls. Still, not the kind of enjoyment I had hoped for.

*** Saturday, 16Sep06 ***
Per agreement with Sherif, he met me at the Giza Metro stop. We drove down Al Ahram Street and stopped at a McDonalds and he insisted on paying for both of us. There was a two meter tall picture of a McD's strawberry ice cream on the wall behind Sherif that made for an incredible backdrop so I took a picture of him with the gigantic -- and lurid -- desert dominating the image. Context is everything and the picture proves it.

Sherif in front of the Sphynx and a payramid.

Sherif drove to the pyramids and parked in the stable area beneath the entrance. Some of the camel drivers complained that he should have parked at home (doubtlessly because a Westerner accompanied him so they could not take advantage of me).

We walked up the road to the entrance to the pyramids. I paid 2 Egyptian pounds for Sherif and forty for myself. Many countries have a two-tier policy for access to national heritage sites and I support that. I was just pleased that Sherif let me pay for both of us.

We walked around the grounds, between the pyramids and over to the Sphinx and Sherif dealt with all the touts who wanted me/us to ride a camel or a horse or a carriage. The conversation was all in Egyptian and I didn't understand a word but I did understand the effect. They were irritated at him for cutting off their would-be business with me. For me it was a hassle-free heaven.

It was exactly that protection from the local "business men" that I had lacked previously and that had led me to decline to go to see the pyramids. My memories from 28 years ago were still vidid in my mind and I preferred to not see the pyramids rather than to put up with the importuning, the harassment, the offensive pressing that I found so obnoxious. But Sherif solved all those problems for me. He made visiting the pyramids more than acceptable, he made it a pleasure.

The one thing that was a significant change from my earlier journey was the presence of the Sun Ship Museum. A few years after my first visit archeologists had discovered a boat in a crypt near the largest pyramid. It was carefully excavated and reassembled and displayed in an oddly shaped museum that has the most fabulous air conditioning!

The Sun Ship.

The Sun Ship museum cost 30 Egyptian pounds for me and 4 pounds for Sherif but the aircon was worth every pound and every minute. The display was unusually good because you could see the boat from below, beside and above. It was a fascinating structure over 30 meters long and beautifully designed. Another gift from the past to our present.

We drove to the hotel and picked up Regab who had arranged for a short day at the pool. At my suggestion, we stopped at my favorite -- or at least my most convenient -- beer disbursement emporium and I picked up a case of Heineken half-liter cans.

Then, to my surprise, we took a long drive to a home Sherif's father built about an hour's drive north of the city center. It had a large and private garden filled with fruit trees (orange, olive, banana, etc.). In the garden Sherif and Regab barbecued beef kofta, a minced meat concoction made by Sherif's mother. My love of kofta dates back to the days when I discovered it in a Lebanese restaurant in Massachusetts.

I was able to contribute to the dinner by teaching Sherif how to use newspaper and cardboard to set alight charcoal for heating the outstanding kofta! Regab pretended to be drunk on one Heineken. I wish I could have eaten twice as much. We ate some fruit for desert and drove back to the city.

Driving in Cairo is completely unlike driving in the US and a lot more like the dodgems of entertainment park remembrance.

*** Monday, 19Sep06 ***
I went to the pool and met the staff. I didn't tell them that I was moving to the Four Seasons tomorrow. Sherif and Regab will object but I want to do it.

The management of the Semiramis had invited "long-term guests" to a cocktail party. (In discussions with others it seems that "long-term" means anyone staying over a week.) I arrived shortly after the prescribed time and found about forty people already there.
There seemed to be more staff chatting up the attendees than glasses of wine in circulation. And the glasses of wine were distinctly small, irritatingly small -- the cheap bastards.

It seems that the management was trying to calm long-term clients over the coming renovations. Sheena tells me that they are going rebuild the lobby starting in a week and that it would go on for a year. Another reason to move.