The view from the Lotus Hotel
The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Cairo was the dust. Like the world’s vacuums had backfired, spewing everything out in a fine, ethereal vomit. There was dust on the guardrails of the highway, dust on the bodies of the cars, dust on the sign posts and embedded in the walls of the buildings. Brown made browner. It was March 2016 and this is where I was moving, into the heart of this giant humming dust globe.
The taxi inched along in what I would soon learn was called “Zahma”, essentially plugged up streams of traffic – cars, minibuses and motorbikes smooshed together, horns tooting, exhaust spitting out evidently having pledged allegiance to the army of malfunctioning vacuums. People were on everything, coexisting with the cars.
A breeze burst through the open taxi windows, warm air taunting my face, and cajoling my hair into flips and twirls. We crossed the Nile, big and broad, forcing the sides of the city apart like a giant wedge, lined by towering hotels with gold tipped roofs. In the evenings neon lit boats circle in the current, loud and repetitive music blending into the existing cacophony of the city’s sound. Could there ever be silence in a place like this, I remember wondering.
It was my second international move in less than a year. Uprooted from my comfortable life in Geneva, I’d moved to Berlin eight months before, and now Cairo, spurred by some desire for adventure, some need to cut out the old and force myself into freedom.
Like many expats (i.e. wealthy foreigners), I moved to the island of Zamalek, the “bougie” part of town, although there’s still dust, garbage, mangy cats, and sidewalks that end abruptly, forcing pedestrians to walk in the streets, cars and people dodging each other in a slow-moving narrow river. Zamalek is the embassy heartland, ornate 19th Century buildings shaded from the sun by large leafy trees, the products of decades of patient ascent. The trees flower in the summer, bright red and orange dotting the netted green.
Nestled in the middle of the river, the Nile cuts between Zamalek and the rest of Cairo like a grand moat, ensconcing the island from the reaching arms of the city proper. Cairo is like a hungry beast, devouring the desert, lurching off track, concrete skeletons of uninhabited buildings clamouring at the margins of the city. The downtown a museum of faded glory, ornate windows, cracked and chipped, grand hotels turned seedy one night stops. Torrents of people filling a labyrinth of buildings, off setting the brown. Brown dirt, brown walls, brown horizons. Without the people in it, Cairo would be like a post apocalyptic remnant of death after life, the cracked scale of a snake.
The Lotus Hotel is in the centre of Downtown. On the 9th floor is a little bar, and an ugly restaurant. I don’t think anyone eats there, only French fries. The bar has quite the charm, though. There’s a fridge of Stellas, the local beer, and behind the bar a dusty mirror with some ancient bottles lined up along it – green Stellas which look like the beer turned to cough syrup 10 years ago, and a couple of some indistinguishable brown liquids. Dark wood paneling, neon pink lighting and chairs from the 60s lined up along the single wall. What Berlin tries to be, I always think when I go there. From the tiny balcony you can see Cairo – family homes constructed on rooftops, gardens of satellite dishes, cracked windows and ornate facades wasted under grime, an orange sky, and the sounds of the unrelenting traffic below.
I’d been in Cairo just a few weeks when I went to Lotus, back when everything was new and unusual and there were no memories or emotions attached to anyone or anything. Back when everyone I met was two dimensional and so was I. And slowly, slowly, meeting after meeting, people began to colour and become real and I found myself again here, living in Cairo.
tararachael 