The Cairo that was introduced to me as a reader was not the Cairo of travel posters. The same way that the Istanbul I know is the Istanbul seen through the soul of Orhan Pamuk, the Cairo I know is the Old Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz.
If you’ve read works of both Nobel laureates, you can attest that the constant main characters of their novels are the cities of their birth.
And just as I crossed to the European side of Istanbul to visit Pamuk’s museum, the first thing I did after only a few hours of sleep post-MNL-DIA-CAI flights was to visit the Naguib Mahfouz House Museum and the Naguib Mahfouz Coffee Shop (a coffee house Mahfouz used to frequent so that when he was awarded the Nobel, the owner renamed it in his honor).
On Google Maps, the distance between the two establishments is near. But I turned out to be like an Israelite who fled Egypt and wandered for 40 years traversing a distance that can be done in 9 hours and 5 minutes by car, if you consult Google Maps.
The confused directions came from locals who mistook the coffee shop for the museum and vice versa, and this had me going in circles. It took me a while to finally realize what was going on. But it was as if Mahfouz planned the excursion himself. He did not want me to have it easy. I had to experience his Cairo before arriving there — the Cairo of chaos, of spices, of squawking chickens, of tantalizing fragrances and unpleasant smells, of shouting vendors, dirt, heat, of wonderfully claustrophobic alleys, of uncomfortable stares but also friendly and curious smiles. What I saw today was not the sugarcoated Cairo, and definitely not the whitewashed Cairo. It was the Cairo I came a long way to experience.
The Book-Butterfly 