Alexandria--Part 3--The end

The last day in Alexandria will be what we will remember the most. When we moved to the Middle East we were warned about certain behaviors toward Americans by the people there . We've somehow managed to escape most of those behaviors--until that last day in Alex.

We were planning on heading back to Cairo that day but wanted to see a couple of sites first. It was the first day of Eid. Going out to a tourist location during Eid was our first mistake.

We went to a place called the Qait Bey Fortress. This 15th century fortress stands on the site where the Great Lighthouse (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) once stood.

There were crowds of people when we arrived. We unloaded from the van and Todd made his way to the ticket window. Middle Easterners have no concept of lines. It is in all aspects of their culture whether waiting to get your fruits and veggies weighed in the produce section, waiting to check out at the store, waiting in traffic, or waiting to get tickets at the fortress. Nobody actually stands in a line and waits their turn. If you see an opening, you push your way into that opening until you become the one at the front. There's a term I learned playing basketball called "boxing out." Egyptians would be great at rebounding basketballs because they've perfected boxing out. We've tried to keep our dignity and not push our way to the front but we, too, have improved on the technique of boxing out. We don't push ahead of someone else but we're pretty adept at keeping the latecomers behind us.

Todd finally got the attention of the ticket seller and Todd told him the number of adults and children. Then the guy wanted to see all of the children. Yes. He wanted Todd to leave the mass of people, get the children, then somehow get 9 people back through the mass so the seller could see how big the children are to determine the cost of the tickets. Todd asked if he could just tell him the ages because that would be so much simpler. Simple isn't a concept they have here. After a couple minutes of haggling, they agreed on a price and Todd walked away with the tickets without having to subject the rest of us to the ticket-selling nightmare.

The next step was to find the entrance which was just behind the ticket window but we didn't find that out soon enough. As we wandered around looking for the entrance I was carrying T on my hip. He had one foot in front of me and one foot behind me. As we walked he started kicking the foot that was behind me. Or so I thought. I also thought it was odd because he'd never done that before. As we walked more I started to think someone behind me was grabbing T's foot and then letting it go so his foot would hit me. It takes me a while but I finally realized it wasn't T's foot at all. Someone was grabbing me (lightly--hence the thought of it being T's foot) but grabbing me nonetheless. When I realized what was happening I immediately turned around and much to my surprise it was two boys about 12 years old. I started yelling at them to "stop" and "it ends now" and "don't do it again." Even though they probably didn't understand the actual words I'm pretty sure they understood what I meant but they just giggled. I mean really. Here I am a 40 year old walking with my 7 kids and husband and they have the audacity to do that! Todd nor the kids knew what had been happening. They only knew that from out of nowhere I turned around and started yelling at two little stranger children.

We found the entrance and again had to box out to get in. When we arrived at the ticket taker he said we hadn't bought enough tickets for all of us and wanted Todd to go back and buy more tickets. Todd firmly asserted that the ticket seller told him that would be enough. Here's where Todd's charm comes in. Todd knows when to pull it out when needed. He spoke to the ticket taker in Arabic. Todd saves that for just the right moment. The guy was charmed that the American with the big family spoke Arabic so not only did he let us in, he let us go around him so we could avoid the back up the other people had to get through as they had to go through a security check.

As soon as we were through the entrance we were being inundated with people--mostly young men--wanting to take our picture. The first group we met were kind and asked permission. They were probably in their early twenties. They took their pictures, thanked us, and were done with it. As they walked off they started singing together and clapping their hands. They were having a fun day. You'd never see twenty-something males in the States walking around and singing for fun--unless their in some sort of choir or something. But this was different.

Anyway, on we walked and the requests for pictures didn't stop. The problem was though that with the younger teenage crowd, they'd take the pictures then follow us around. They wanted more pictures. They wanted to tell us where to go next. The crowd following us grew and they were becoming more obnoxious. We were trying to just enjoy the view of the sea and take pictures of each other but they would jump in the way of the camera. This is the only picture we got that day. Look at how happy we all are (especially Petey) after being harassed by teenage boys.



Soon after this picture was taken we were again walking along and the boys started pushing each other for fun. Remember, it was a crowded place that day. The pushing wasn't a problem until they started pushing each other into us. We were being tripped up and such. So then Todd lost all his charm. He turned around and used his Arabic but not in the charming way. The display emboldened Petey and she started yelling in Arabic to leave us alone. Instead of leaving us alone though, they just apologized for the behavior of the others. Nobody took responsibility for their own obnoxious behavior and they just kept following us but this time without the pushing.

Within about 2 minutes of the yelling episode we were approached by a security/police officer asking about the problem. Todd told him what was happening and that we just wanted to be left alone to enjoy the fortress. So what did the security guy do? He pulled out his baton, blew on his whistle, and cleared the way for us to get through the crowds to anywhere we wanted to go. That isn't exactly what we had in mind either as that drew even more attention to us. But the rest of the tour we had our own personal security guard who cleared the way and kept the gawkers at bay. Now we were the annoying ones because everyone else had to make their own way through the crowds but if they didn't move out of our way they risked being swatted with the big baton.

We wandered for a bit longer with our security detail but decided to leave before we saw all of the fortress. We'd seen enough.

We headed back to Cairo and decided to stop at McDonalds on the way. McDonalds can always make us feel better. Until this day. Even the McDonalds was crowded on this first day of Eid. We found a couple of tables though and were enjoying our food. Cricket went to the restroom and when she came back out her hair was kind of slicked down with water. Her hair looked fine before she went into the restroom so I wondered why she thought she needed to slick her hair down with water. So I said "Cricket, what's up with your hair?" She then told us that while she was in the restroom she was washing her hands when another girl about her age started smearing the liquid soap into Cricket's hair. For no reason. A complete stranger. How odd. And a bad day for that little girl to do that to my little girl.

We looked around the crowds of people and Cricket pointed out the culprit. I went over and asked if her mother or father was there. She didn't speak English. Rats! It's probably a good thing I don't speak Arabic because she was about to get a good tongue-lashing. Todd was over on the other side of the restaurant so he was no help at the moment. After several attempts at trying to get her to understand what I wanted, we saw a McDonalds worker standing nearby and the little girl got his attention. He translated what I was asking and of course her parents weren't there. She was there with only a friend. I pointed to Cricket and told her she shouldn't put soap in people's hair. Again, I'm sure she didn't understand the words but I hope she understood what I meant. The McDonalds man apologized and I felt bad for him because he's not the one who put soap in Cricket's hair. A very strange episode.

We made it back to Cairo without any further incident. Fun times. Fun times.