Saqqara

We took advantage of the long Thanksgiving weekend to do a little exploring and went to visit the pyramids at Dahshur and Saqqara. 

The City That Never Sleeps

The nights had grown cooler. It was difficult to see when we first arrived, but winter would come to Egypt. We haven’t lived in a place where the days get shorter, the nights stretch longer, and shadows lenghten in the afternoons in many years. I stood behind the hotel waiting for the first bus to arrive from the border, my hands shoved deep in the pockets of a dark navy suit I'd have to send to the dry cleaners before the night was out. Egyptian colleagues sat on the steps nearby, smoking, ashing into a decorative marble urn. Porters in ill-fitting dark brown jackets shuffled from foot to foot, staring at their phones, the light from the screens illuminating their faces. 

The reception center inside was a hive of nervous energy. My office had taken over the hotel's Indian restaurant, planted flags, erected billboards with Instagram handles and hashtags, arranged donated diapers, formula, sanitary napkins, Caprisun pouches, and protein bars in neat rows on the bar. People I work with -- some friends, some colleagues -- tapped at laptops or thumbed cell phones. It seemed as though everyone in the crowded room was communicating with someone not in the room. Back at the office, maybe. Or at the border, in Rafah. A white-haired man in a sport jacket talked to a reporter under the eviscerating glare of a camera's flood light. 

I preferred the fresh air. I'd be inside soon enough, and there was something about seeing that first coaster bus pull up I didn’t want to miss. The on or off-ramp to a highway looped right behind a high fence directly behind the hotel. Headlights swept by interminably, though it was already late. The traffic never stops in Cairo. 

For that reason it was hard to tell the difference between those headlights entering or exiting the freeway and the headlights on the coaster bus driving around the hotel. One of our Egyptian staff was stationed at the hotel's service gate. He wore a flourescent orange traffic vest and toted a handheld radio. He'd been in contact with the driver since he left the border, receiving frequent updates, "We've reached the tunnel," "We're on the outskirts of Cairo," "We're 15 minutes out." 

The call "The bus is here!" started around the corner of the hotel, made its way up the drive, through the hotel's rear entrance, down the hall, and into the Indian restaurant, passed from one person the next, then made its way around the interior of the reception center like ripples in a puddle. The already vibrating reception center hit an even more frenetic pitch.

Then, an enormous tour bus, like a heaving, beached whale chuffed up the drive, hissed to a stop, and disgorged two dozen French tourists. False alarm. By this time, I had prepositioned next to the metal detector and x-ray machine, so I watched them scurry around, chirping to one another in high-pitched French as they had their luggage scanned. 

The French eventually filtered out from in front of the Indian restaurant, disappearing into the busy lobby, their French drowned in a sea of Arabic, English, Spanish, Korean, and Italian. It grew quiet again. Smokers went back to smoking. Porters went back to their phones. A trepidatious calm settled once more.

"The bus is here!"

"For real, this time!"

The coaster bus pulled in, luggage strapped to the top with bungee cords. The door to the coaster bus slid open.

I didn’t know what to expect. I don't think anyone did. Many were prepared -- based on what we had seen on TV -- to see a desperate wave of humanity. But the reality was much different. Was there desperation? Oh, most certainly. But what most surprised me was the broad swath of humanity, from the most desperate to the least. 

There were families with matching sets of Gucci luggage, the women in full and impeccable makeup all the way down to families with nothing but what they could carry in a single plastic shopping bag, covered in debris and dust. The first woman I saw exit the van wore a sweatshirt, the inscription "I Have No Time For You" emblazoned across the front as though her own private pièce de résistance. She sported giant sunglasses at night and a Michael Kors baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. 

I guided her through the metal detector and helped her with her one very large and very awkward piece of luggage; it refused to stand upright regardless of which side we sat it on, then followed her into the restaurant. She took coffee, black. Then, sat in a corner of the restaurant by herself, on the phone.

The reception center quickly filled as more vans pulled up. Kids sipped on juice boxes. Some colored. Kids on iPads asked for the password to the hotel wifi. Kids my height -- 14 and 15-year olds -- with heads of curly hair held the hands of little brothers and sisters. My god. They looked just like Sam. 

Over the course of the next few weeks the Indian restaurant would fill with tragic stories. A boy told me there was no future for him in Gaza. A family of five -- one daughter in a Brown University sweatshirt -- huddled in a booth didn't qualify for a room at the hotel. "Then, why did you bring us here!" The older sister protested. "Why did you start this war!" The mother accused. 

Many families were split at the border. Often times, depending on who was on a list and authorized to cross the border posted to Facebook by authorities. Young men -- not surprisingly -- were frequently not on the list. Families without mothers or fathers would pass through, wondering aloud what would happen to those left behind. 

A 14-year old from Pennsylvania was visiting relatives when the war started. She headed south, along with everyone else, with her mother and older sister when the bus they were on was hit by rocket fire. She lost the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. They walked three miles to the hospital, covered in blood, where she underwent surgery. When they were notified they'd been approved to cross, they emerged from shelter and made their way along empty streets, exposed, all the while fearing another rocket might come. She eventually arrived in Cairo cradling her injured hand, wrapped in two-day old gauze. 

The woman in the Michael Kors cap asked where she could smoke a cigarette. Outside, on the back steps where the buses pulled up. She borrowed a phone from one of the volunteers. Later, I would see her wiping away tears. That volunteer told me she'd left her entire family behind and now regretted it. She didn't want to go back but she didn't want to go forward either. She didn't know where she would go. Many people didn't. Not all of them had a clear path or even a destination. Where would they go? They hadn't even thought about it. All they cared about was getting out, making sure their kids were safe. Only now, squeezed into a booth in a hollowed out Indian restaurant in Cairo, did reality slowly start to sink in, did they begin to thaw.

As families checked into their hotel rooms, the reception center slowly started to empty. Until the next van arrived and the cycle repeated itself. The buses arrived in the middle of the night. If the gaps between vans was long enough, we would dim the lights in the restaurant and try to get some rest. I stretched out in a booth under a blanket and tried to sleep. 

Some nights I left the hotel and returned home in the middle of the night. Others, the buses would keep coming the morning of the following day. But on those nights we would finish early, at two or three in the morning, I would hail an Uber and make the long drive home, through the glistening city, a thousand different colors on the boats cruising the Nile, at all hours of the day or night alive. Truly, the city that never slept.