aud’acious

This post is part of my Middle Eastern Cities series.  See previous posts in the series: Damascus, Poll

The second place finisher in the Middle Eastern cities poll after Damascus was Cairo.  I decided to divide the posts for Cairo up into 4 parts since I’ve been there a couple times and have more stories.

Part I “Pre-Cairo: My Aunty”

Part II “Cairo for the First Time with an Argentine Flair”

Part III “Cairo as an Arabic Student: Mosques and Trains”

Part IV “Cairo Reconciliation”

It was the first imprint of Cairo in my memory.

Sitting in a tire swing outside of our house in Utah, I watched my aunt come by one day not long before she left to go on a CASA program to study intensive Arabic for a year in Cairo.  She was confident and fun and as I recall liked the color green.  I would have been 10 or 11 at the time.  We just moved to the United States from Okinawa.  I was struggling with the culture shock having no real memory of the US except for a couple visits to family.  She was one of my anchors mentoring me through a turbulent time while I was learning slang and how to get along with all American kids.  The stories I heard while she was there left an imprint on me.  She came home, got married, now has two kids and still speaks both Arabic and Hebrew.  The particular stories didn’t stick with me as much as the idea that learning Arabic seems like a good idea.  Oh, and you gotta push if you wanna get on the metro.

What I take from this: Cairo is a city you can get used to.