Leaving Egypt Part VIII: An Egyptian Send-Off

Relief flooded our weary bodies, and we would have cried with joy had there been any spare fluids in our dehydrated body-sacks. Our flights had been re-booked for the following day – now only 12 hours away! – and we could leave Egypt at last.

We loved Egypt. But we loved home more.

Just for kicks, I called our program coordinator who had spent the last two months with us in Alexandria. I didn’t really know why – I didn’t know what I expected her to say or do. But I wanted to let her know SOMEHOW that the advice she gave us was faulty. It had NOT been a piece of cake reissuing those lost paper tickets. The three of us should have traveled from Alexandria to Cairo a day early to work with our excellent Lufthansa agent to reissue our tickets BEFORE we missed the flight. At the least, our coordinator should have given us (all) some last-minute emergency advice. Perhaps: “I’ll be waiting here in the terminal until your flight leaves. If for some reason you don’t make your flight or there’s a problem, find me here!” Some thoughtful saint made sure to provide us with all the important numbers we (and our parents) might need over the summer. And some thoughtless person (me) had not thoughtlessly tossed away this sheet along with my ticket at some unknown point in the summer. So, using Lufthansa’s loaned phone, I called her.

She answered trepidatiously, undoubtedly because the number I was calling from was unknown to her phone book.

“Hi, it’s Liz,” I started. “The three of us didn’t make the flight, because we didn’t have our tickets. We’re still in Cairo. We’ve been here all day getting our tickets rebooked.”

I didn’t say: It's been hell. We stayed up longer than we thought humanly possible (except maybe the marine). For a couple hours, we didn’t know how or if we would be able to get out of Egypt. We all, at one point, faced the possibility of shelling out $1500 each for a new ticket. We’re famished. We’re dehydrated. We’re incoherent. We don’t know what to do with the coming 12 hours we face free but homeless. Wish you had given us some better advice. I didn’t say this, but oh, I thought it.

“We finally rebooked our tickets,” I added, in real-speak. “We leave in 12 hours.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding weary. After all, she delivered us to the airport awfully late last night. I bet I caught her sleeping. I wish I could be sleeping right now. “I’m so glad that everything worked out.”

Right. Me too. I’m glad we kept our wits and danced around silly but nearly insurmountable barriers like having no phone with which to contact the appropriate people, a lack of appropriate language proficiency (from now on, if I’m asked on self-assessment surveys “Can you adequately navigate yourself through airport incompetence using the Egyptian colloquial dialect?” I guess I can answer “Been there”), and nearly incapacitating exhaustion.

I hung up. So much for that.

Flashing credit cards, one by one we paid our rebooking fees. These were no insignificant fees. But compared to the cost of buying an entirely new ticket it was a drop in the bucket of student loans.

Rebooked, we were facing 12 hours completely open and relatively worry-free. I had one more trick up my sleeve. Or rather, one more friend to call.

Using the loaned computer to scour my Facebook messages for the one out of hundreds in which my classmate at the University of Minnesota, who was on a similar scholarship in Cairo, sent me her mobile number, I finally got ahold of Jamie. And like Nagham, she got it. I didn’t even have to say much – she JUST GOT IT. We're in Cairo. Without phones. Without a place to stay, or eat. Help. HELP. And she did.

So we hauled on our battered baggage and took a cab to Zamalek, the Nile island home to many expatriates and AUC (American University of Cairo) students. Our cab driver was furious for only paying him 30 Le. Because we were tired and our defenses were low, we shelled out another 10 and walked off. He got out of his car to yell at us – wallahi, he proclaimed, this is absolutely offensive! It costs fifty to come from the airport!

Here's what we thought (Parental Advisory: Material may be inappropriate for children): Look f*ckwad, we’re three very pissed-off foreigners with enough Arabic to get ourselves AND YOU in trouble, and this guy right here - see him? - he was a marine. Every one of us would like to gnaw open your tires right now, and then start on your face. F*ck off before we f*cking f*ck your sh*t up, f*ckface.

Here's what we said: Look, we’ve lived in Egypt all summer. We know the deal. We’re not paying you any more, so deal.

We waited in the parking lot of a Misr (=Egypt) gas station until my beautiful, angelic friend Jamie met us, and we followed her like lost lemmings to the hotel that our Cairo counterparts spent their summer in. Lest we forget the incompetence and difficulties we had surmounted and become lulled by impending comfort, my suitcase rolling along the at-times cobbled street was clipped by a car. Luckily my muhajjaba dolls came away unscathed.



Jamie is great. I love Jamie. Hop on pop. Jamie let us store our suitcases in her already-stuffed hotel room filled with towering stacks of Arabic books just like ours. She brought us next door to a European restaurant where we ordered copious amounts of food and ATE IT ALL (or rather, ate until some of us [me] felt sick to our stomachs), then returned to her hotel for a nap. A glorious, succulent, couple-hour nap. We compared our view at the hotel we had stayed at for the summer:



With her view:



Less ocean, more smoldering Cairo echoing with the call to prayer.

Most importantly: We played with the CUTEST KITTY IN THE WHOLE WORLD which Jamie and some fellow conspirators were scheming to adopt into the U.S. I mean, ZOMG:






I woke at 1 a.m. and shared a sedated chat with Jamie over stolen internet and the view of western Cairo over Zamalek. At 1:45 a.m. I woke my classmates. We grabbed a cab for the return trip to the airport. Our tickets got us past the blue-eyelined b*tch who denied us passage 24 hours earlier, and through sleep-sick eyes we watched the clock tick down the minutes until we left.

Though really, what would our final, actual departure from Egypt be without one more plastic spork to the kidneys? Briefly: We had two hours to kill once we passed security, having arrived three hours early for this flight. Resting at a coffee shop, we stared blearily at one another over tepid drinks and indulged in rampant program-related gossip that, until that point, we had respectfully withheld. I wanted nothing more than a steaming, creamy hot chocolate as big as a convenience store soda, and ordered accordingly. “Do you want that made with milk?” asked the less-than-impressive barista. “Uhh, yes?” “That’ll cost extra, then.” “Uhh, no?” Six unnecessary minutes later I was handed room-temperature water flavored like chocolate. Really? I mean, really? My kidney throbbed just a little from the last-ditch spork attack, and I checked the time once more.


We boarded that big-ass plane and dreamed of Germany once again. CAI-->FRA-->IAD.

This time, we made it.



Thank you all for staying tuned for these eight harrowing chapters. Check in soon for a stateside update, including my final thoughts on Egypt and what I’ve done in the month since returning. It’s been one hell of a summer. Thank you all for reading, commenting, encouraging and tolerating my slow but steady decline into vulgarity. Sarcasm is the best coping mechanism, as Zeke, Basha, Goldy (Shevsky) and I have learned.