Sunrise in Alexandria

My seat mate was another lawyer, who couldn’t speak much English but who tried very hard to communicate…and he did. He said his name was “Annie” and that he was going down to Alexandria to take care of some business and would return by the late afternoon train. Now explaining all that for somebody who can’t speak English is not bad. Furthermore, Annie was a very warm person and was very interested in my enjoying Egypt. His interest in my travels was heartening and while I’ve spun stories about lesser people, the “Annies” of Egypt, or for that matter of any country of the world, are many. It gives you a positive take on being a human being.
The car was filled with a clientele who wore suits and ties…perhaps more lawyers. When the sun did rise, I saw small farms – almost gardens along the side of the track. Not being a farm boy I can’t tell you much about the crops and while Annie tried valiantly to explain, there was a limit to our sign language.
One thing that did catch my eye was a conical structure of about two stories, rising up in villages and near homesteads. They were whitewashed and had holes drilled into the sides with a little perch stick just below the hole. If I were a pigeon, I’d move into such an apartment. Before many days would pass I learned that cats outnumbered dogs in this part of the world and that would make me even more apt to choose a conical apartment. But are the Egyptians such bird lovers that they want to build an elaborate adobe or cob structure for their pets?
I’m writing this weeks later and only this morning asked a lawyer, (no, actually a judge) who speaks English, what the cones were for. Pigeons! OK, why? “Because people are crazy!” Brace yourself, bird lovers, this guy would not vote for Barack Obama because he is black “and you don’t want a Black for president.” The judge paints his world with a very wide brush. I hesitate to tell him that I studied literature while at the university. But how ever confused he becomes I finally found out that somehow you can get inside these coots and snatch a bird for a meal. And the New Yorkers bought chicken for supper tonight!
I asked him about another “pent house” standing on stanchions on tops of high buildings. They look like guard towers at the corners of a prison camp. There are a number of them here in Alexandria. I keep looking for a sniper but there doesn’t seem to be one. Come to find out that this too is a dove coot but the city folks don’t want to haul dirt to the roof and instead build with scrap wood. Imagine eating all the dove you want and out of season! If I ever get an acre of land again, the outhouse goes up (down) first but then I think I’ll look for dove coot designs.
The little homesteads gave way to urban clutter but it was sometime before I realized that this was the south edge of Alexandria. We were nearly there! Alexandria has five million people, I’m told, and is big enough to have two train stations and a nick name, “Alex.” No, not for me. This city had better have more class than an “Alex,” if I were to stay here. On the backburner I had wondered what I would do or where I would go if this blending of East and West turned out to be a place I wanted to avoid. I had no plan “B.” Here’s hoping for plan “A.” After the first station and as I watched the buildings grow taller.
Annie and I said good bye and I made my way out the door of the terminal. I knew the names of some Small Planet hotels that were up by the Eastern Harbor. One of them was the Union. Looking at the sun (a sure way for me to get turned around….well, I never liked the idea of daylight savings time anyway) I, like an Alaskan lemming, made my way toward the sea. Unfortunately Rue el Nabi Daniel takes a dogleg in the last “two hundred meters” and thinking that I was lost when I wasn’t, I took a fellow’s advice and turned around and doubled back almost to the train station to a place called the Rouda Hotel. The “oh” is silent. I think I know how it got its name. Now after a walk like that with pack and brief case (well, lawyers carried them) I was ready to accept just about what was in front of me. I’m going to bring a folding wheelbarrow on my next journey around the world. Although I was one of the earliest of traveling backpackers (nice people carried suitcases in the fifties,) it is time to get with the wheel(s.) So I bought the idea of taking a place here. The room had an unmade bed and an unmade maid to go with it. She hit me up for a tip before she would make the bed. The lady moonlighted as a mud wrestler so I didn’t argue with her. The desk clerk had the personality of Digger O’Dell, an unfriendly undertaker. There were a couple of people who made me think that the hotel was not a Mafia front but I would meet them later. Tip paid, bed made, I went to sleep in the early afternoon. That was my first day in Alexandria.
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