Hey mister – wanna ride a camel?

By Greg Rodgers

I thought to myself, “I knew this was a bad idea”.

I was officially stuck on top of a camel. Even after two weeks in this scandalous country, I had managed to fall into another obvious scam. A young boy had approached me at the base of one of the pyramids in Giza and had sweet-talked me into climbing onto his camel for a picture. It seemed harmless enough, camels are pretty docile and I was not obligated to pay for a ride, just a quick snapshot and I would hop down, right? Wrong. As soon as I positioned my bottom in the cloth saddle, the boy had issued a command to the camel in a secret language that only the two speak, and the blasted thing stood up. My feet dangled on each of its hairy sides, a desperate 4 feet from the ground. There was no graceful way to dismount or jump off, and we all three knew that. So there I sat, with the boy standing on the ground a few feet away from me, holding my camera, and showing me his yellow teeth like a before picture in an electric toothbrush commercial.

Ten minutes later, and I was still on top of the infernal beast. Both of us were having a sweat marathon in the Egyptian sun, but there was no doubt his hump would win out over my beer-gut for hydration reserves. The boy refused to let me down until I committed to an expensive ride or offered the equivalent in a bribe, known all over Egypt as “baksheesh”. I asked him to at least take my picture like he had promised, and he agreed. So I held the reins with as much dignity as I could muster and turned my head sideways to look at the camera. I did my best to hide my rising blood pressure for the picture and to look like I was having fun. I mean, after all, I was at the base of the Great Pyramid, on top of a camel in Egypt!

Prisoner, on top of a camel, that is. The waiting game continued for another several minutes until finally the kid saw a look in my eyes that indicated an emanate explosion was about to occur. It was true, I was about to go into survival mode which included letting out my combat howl and snapping necks. I threw some coins at him after he let me down, and wandered off to a safe distance where I could curse his mother properly without being distracted by someone else wanting to sell me something.

And so, having spent one month in Egypt, I would dig myself out of one predicament only to step into another one carefully laid within eyesight of the first. I always considered myself a savvy adventure traveler. I had managed to blunder all over Southeast Asia without getting myself killed or maimed, even surviving run-ins with reef sharks, bamboo vipers, and Kiwi backpackers that had not washed their hair since the bungee operation had dipped them.

Egypt was different though. Egypt was tough. There were hordes of low paid police officers walking around here fully equip with machine guns, black berets, and a standard facial expression that shows all the enlightenment of a cow. They all had thick black mustaches, I am convinced that Saddam Hussein is actually living in Cairo as a police officer now, I saw him at least ten times.

I learned early not to ask one of these guys for help. First, they spoke no English. Second, within minutes of his radio call, I was outnumbered ten to one, and they had way more guns than I did. Third, not only did they speak no English, but somehow my request for simple directions to the bus station had been misinterpreted as something hostile. Was I that bad at charades - I ask for a bus and instead start a coup?

Oops.

I don't smoke but happened to have a package of Marlboro Red cigarettes in my day bag, another savvy traveler had told me that they come in very handy here. I had given him a look as if to say, “This is Egypt – not a federal prison”, but invested the money in a pack anyway. I was glad that I did. I didn't have to ask if anyone smoked, I could see lips quivering on the officers circled around me as I pulled the pack out. I passed them around and instantly peace was made for whatever infraction I had committed earlier. They were so happy, at this point I probably could have gotten away with doing something insane and harsh, like suggesting that women should receive a proper education!

Walking home from the museum that day I passed a street cart that had 3 goat sized heads in it, the tops sawed cleanly off, and the Bedouin man doing the serving was using a dirty ladle to scoop generous portions of gray brains into a wok of frying oil next to the cart. I paused for a moment, the itching for a new food adventure and story almost got the better of me, but there was just something about it that kept me from pulling the trigger. The teeth maybe? All three heads had the lips pulled back to display a nice row of yellow teeth and a sort of sunken-eyed panic expression, probably the same facial expression that the animal had when they collected it for this gruesome task. One of the men in line for the brain snack, saw me hesitate and then recoil in disgust. He grinned and left his place in the queue which obligated me to stand and talk to him.

“Come” he said, “lets go smoke shishah”.

I am an addicted, idiot backpacker. My head would pop off if I turned down any new opportunity to do something cultural with a local. I would have set myself on fire for the guy if he told me it was a way to experience Muslim culture first-hand. And so we went to a little side street coffee shop nearby with plastic tables and folding chairs nestled outside right in the best street filth that Cairo could provide.

Smoking shishah is the national pastime in Egypt. The Muslims don't drink much, so instead they sit around and smoke themselves to oblivion through huge, decorated pipes. The smoke is flavored, and has a sweet pleasant smell. Only the men are allowed to smoke in public, but the women smoke every bit as much in the privacy of their homes.

I am convinced that the man I was with was a walking, talking shishah pipe. He had smoked so much that his teeth were gone, his lips were black, and every now and then as he talked, a wisp of smoke would pop out of his nose like a dragon – even when he wasn't smoking. Luckily, he spoke good English so I had a great chat about the Egyptian people and culture. He ordered up our pipes with a twinkle in his eye, and when the waiter brought the tall, water-filled beauties, he insisted on paying.

“My treat” he said proudly and with a hiss of smoke, “Welcome to Egypt”.

I thanked him many times and took a long drag from one of the pipes. I think my primary and my backup lung both decided to mutiny at that point, because I nearly coughed them out of my body. I had been expecting the usual tourist pansy flavors like vanilla or strawberry, but instead had received a mouthful of old burning tire flavor. I should have known that this guy would have graduated up from strawberry shishah, a long time ago. Probably when he was 8 years old.

“Its delicious” I lied, trying to preserve our fragile new friendship. “What is it?”

I could feel my teeth start to loosen in my gums already. I can't remember what his answer was, but he said that it was his favorite and that it was very strong tobacco. No joke.

Somehow I finished the bowl and thanked my host between coughing spasms for the cultural experience. I decided that I had had enough of Cairo and made my way to the train station to purchase a ticket for Luxor, an archeologist's dream way down the Nile in the south of Egypt.

A day later and I was standing in the famous Valley of the Kings in Luxor and I was still tasting the shishah pipe from earlier. In fact, every now and then a cough or a sneeze would result in the escape of more smoke from somewhere deep inside my chest. I had been transformed into a shishah breathing dragon like the rest of them.

Valley of the Kings was an awesome experience. In fact, I enjoyed it much more than the pyramids, maybe because there were no touts or ill-tempered camels walking around. I stayed on par for my visit and managed to get myself into trouble once again. I became friends with two Swedish guys and we were exploring the tomb of Seti I together. Posted all over the outside were signs that read “no cameras”. The logic was that the paint in the hieroglyphics had not been exposed to light in thousands of years, and idiot tourists would never remember to turn the flash off on their cameras. The Swedish guys had a nice SLR camera and had no intentions of leaving it in the hands of a stranger, and so we kept our cameras as we went down the stone steps inside.

Every inch of the walls were covered in colorful hieroglyphics, and told a fascinating story. Call me the world's worst backpacker, but there was no way I was bringing a camera in here without getting a picture. I made sure that my flash was off, and I started snapping sneaky shots of everything that I could. My buddy had the same idea with his SLR, and within minutes we had an angry Egyptian official standing in front of us and demanding our cameras.

Hmmmm. I did not have any more cigarettes to offer the guy so this might get tricky. I decided to take a gamble based on everything that I had learned in this country and said just one word.

“Baksheesh?” I said it in the form of a question and it worked. Baksheesh is a type of formal tip/bribe and regardless of the social standing of the recipient, it does the trick in Egypt. His scowl was replaced with a smile as we traded a few dirty Egyptian bills for our precious cameras. Baksheesh is not treated as something corrupt, it is more or less just a daily business transaction for these guys.

Then the guy caught me off guard. I had assumed that we would have to leave the tomb immediately and that we were officially on thin ice. Not quite.

“Anything else you want picture?” he asked me in broken English. He pointed around the tomb at various places of interest, and then it hit me. He wanted to make sure we got all the pictures we wanted! Now that is service. I chuckled a little under my breath and another wisp of smoke escaped my nostril. Dammit.

I decided that if there was ever a time to press my luck in Egypt, it was now. I pointed to the official that had confiscated our cameras. He gave me a flabbergasted look, but now I know that it was a look of flattery and not disgust. He smiled, threw his arms around my two Swedish friends, and posed for the ultimate picture which I proudly took. Who else can say they have a picture inside a tomb, surrounded by ancient Egyptian art, and standing next to the guy that gets paid to make sure no pictures are taken of that same art?

So, after one month of wandering around Egypt in and out of trouble, I learned to survive. Always keep cigarettes, a pocketful of baksheesh money, beware of camels and mysterious shishah, and keep your cool. People are people all over the world and a smile is the ancient secret to getting out of any predicament.