I’m in Cairo for a second time in less than six months. And it is still as mad as it was the first time. =) I am just amazed at how this city sustains itself. Traffic is horrendous, the city is completely over-populated, it is hot, dirty and so so polluted – yet somehow, it works. The chaos is a magical formula that enables people to survive. Humans are so adaptable. Even in the harshest of conditions, the body and spirit will find a way to not only survive, but also thrive. Thrive! In a place so full of hardship and chaos, there is beauty everywhere.
Beauty in the way that poor families spend their Thursday evenings on the bridges of the Nile, taking in the view, their time together already a leisure and a treat. Beauty in the sincere servitude that everyone has offered to me during my time here. Beauty in the perseverance that I witness each and every day – where young boys and men haul their donkeys and carts along the roads in the harshest heat in order to make a living. There is beauty in the modest veils that Muslim women wear. Beauty in the ancient mosques that line the muggy Cairo skyline. And beauty in smiles – so many of them, from everywhere; even in our cars, deadlocked in traffic, there is always room for a smile.
In the week and a half that I’ve been here, I have seen how the wealthy live and can only assume how the poorest of the poor survive. Hard working donkeys and mules join the deadlocked traffic, black tanned children roam the streets and an orange-brown lining of sand and dust covers everything. The material chaos of this place hits you as hard as the sticky humidity in the air. And yet, the beauty of the human spirit becomes even more recognizable, stripped bare to the bone, when there are minimal material things to adorn with or covet.
A few days ago, after a 4.5 hour drive back to Cairo from Alexandria, we passed a car with a newly married couple in the back. Their car was adorned in ribbons and flowers. The driver saw me in the passenger seat, smiled, honked and yelled “Welcome to Cairo!!!”. Amazing! They were so happy. In that rickety car, the hope of a new life, new happiness, a new family, beamed in their smiles. It was just one of the many blessings I was witness to here.
It has been a spiritual visit. The personal isolation that I’ve felt over the last few days, in a city of 18 million bustling people, has been hard. But it has also been a blessing. It makes me happy to be alive, and happy to have lived the way that I have so far.
