A misadventure teaches us about the kindness of strangers.
I decided to go to Cairo this weekend so visit some American friends who have been living and working there. I am currently on a break from University and have just been cooling my heels a bit in Alexandria and getting some work done on my thesis and another paper that I have to finish up. It was time for some excitement and I wanted to buy books that I can’t seem to find in Alexandria.
Coincidentally, my friend Mamoon had to attend a wedding in Cairo. We decided to make the trip together as he had never been to Cairo before. However, I miscalculated the ease with which we would get a train. I had forgotten that the weekend was starting and the trains would therefore be considerably busier. We had to take a train that was about three hours later than the one that we had wanted to take. No problem.
So, we arrive at Sidi Geber train station early and wait for our 7:30 train. Our train rolls up promptly on time and we get on. Everyone is still sorting out their seats and baggage as the train pulls away and when we get to our seats, we are confronted with to other passengers who want the same seats. Curious.
Assuming that we are simply on the wrong car, we make our way to the next car, only to find that it is unlit. Some of the cars on certain trains are not lit. These are the equivalent of commuter trains. The porter looks at our tickets and mumbles something at us. Another guy then takes the ticket and looks at it, and then about ten other people look at it and yell things to to each other. In the mean time, I am picking out about half of what is being said and not really able to piece the situation together. After some minutes of their inexplicable discussion of French and Spanish trains, the guy looks at me and says, “You are on the wrong train.”
I glance out the window and can still see Sidi Geber as it moves away from us very slowly, thinking: We can just jump out. We won’t die. Apparently, all the trains are running late and though this one arrived at the time specified on my ticket, it is not the right one. I usually can catch announcements about late things or changes with no problem, but there had been no announcement.
The guy tells me that this train is going to Tanta. I know where Tanta is, that is a good start. He suggests that it might be possible for us to get off of this train in Tanta and catch the train that we are actually supposed to be riding there, because it will also stop in Tanta before continuing on to Cairo.
Perfect.
We see two seats open on the unlit car, somehow, and sit down in them. After a few minutes the porter comes and tells us that he has some other seats that we can sit in. We go and sit in them. I give him way too much baqsheesh, but he is helpful, so I don’t care.
We are sitting peacefully and the ticket-checking guy comes around and we show him our tickets. Our new friend pops up and tells him that we made a mistake and got on the wrong train. The guy looks at me and says, “Seven and a half guinea.” I look at him like I don’t know what he is talking about. Our new friend starts explaining the situation in more detail, telling him that we are foreigners, we don’t know what is going on, we don’t understand Arabic, we don’t probably even know where we are most of the time.
He tells our friend, who I later learn is named Muhammad, that he doesn’t care what country we are from, if we are on this train, then we have to pay 7.5 guinea. Then more people get in on the action and start yelling at the guy. Some of them are the people who helped us figure out that we were on the wrong train. A guy in front of us stands in front of him in the aisle and explains that our tickets said 7:30 and the train was in the station at exactly 7:30, so it was an easy mistake to make, especially if you don’t know anything.
Mamoon and I keep glancing over at each other while these guys are trying to explain how this was such a simple mistake for two stupid foreigners, completely understanding everything that they are saying, and trying not to laugh. Though slightly demoralizing, it was a good angle to take: the lost, stupid foreigners.
Eventually, there was a mini-revolution and the people won out. It was a beautiful metaphor for the civil society here. The big difference is that in the wider world, those people’s cries for justice and understanding rather than bureaucracy and silly rules would fall on deaf ears. In this situation, they won, and we won because they won. Everyone felt good in the end.
If I had tried to work the situation out, we probably would have just ended up paying the guy straight-away, because that is what I assumed that we would have to do anyway. Instead, the people around us came together and fought on our behalf. I regularly rely on the kindness of strangers to help me through weird situations. This was the best example that I have yet seen of the kindness of strangers helping someone out.
I am sad to say that most foreigners here have no such experience of this country and its people. They typically live here in one of two starkly different bubbles. They come here and have a completely sanitized experience and view Egypt from behind the glass of a bus window, only leaving the safety of the air-conditioned bubble to move into expensive restaurants or museums, complaining of the heat when they do. These people remark to their friends when they return home about the lack of two-ply toilet paper and the scarcity of their favorite brand of scotch. These people come here thinking that it is dangerous to be here and that you will be pickpocketed and that everyone is out to get you.
The second bubble is, if possible, worse. These people come to Egypt and think that they know the ropes and that they have this place all in the bag. They come here on business, or for school, they go to the same expensive restaurants as the tourists, all-the-while looking down their nose at the fanny-pack wearing rubes around them. Then they retire into private clubs that don’t allow Egyptians and then talk about how great and smart they are and how stupid everyone else is. They typically have no idea where they are because they take taxis everywhere or hire drivers.
Neither of these approaches will provide a person with a clear picture of what this place is like. To be able to live here for years and not be able to speak any Arabic at all is reprehensible. To conceive of and treat Egyptians as either thieves or servants is just disgusting and cruel. The worst thing is that these people believe that because you are foreign as well that you understand their plight and agree whole-heartedly with their rude, racist, neo-imperialist behavior.
There is a third type of person who comes to Egypt. They are often young, sometimes not. They can never give you a reason why they are here, specifically: there is always a long story. They see and recognize the problems with this place, but they realize that people are just doing the best that they can with what they have to work with. They love this place. The love the people that they meet here. They feel gratitude for everything that happens to them, whether it be a near-disaster or triumph: they learn either way. The biggest thing that sets these folks apart from the others is that all of the people whom they meet here like them, probably even love them. Not because they are willing to pay more money for things, or because they are foreign, but because they treat people here like people. They define their own humanity by recognizing the humanity of others.
If we could all strive to be more like this in our everyday lives, whether we are living in Cairo, Paris, Chicago or London, the world would be a starkly different place. This place would be like a new world if the foreigners looked into the people around them rather than at them. The opposite has caused years and years of strife and acceptance of corruption and station as the perpetual concierges to the tourists of the world. It takes a toll.
In the end, we arrived safely in Cairo, a little late, but on the correct train. We had to run full tilt through the station in Tanta and barely made it onto the train, but we did. However, we never would have been able to do it without people we didn’t know who cared about us just because they could.
