My parents left yesterday after a lovely week and a half and another special guest is arriving imminently. Also, today I am twenty years old! Goodbye teenagehood and its intrinsic glories, helllllo world of the elderly!
I’ve been keeping busy these past weeks and my pirated internet has been playing games with my e-heart. I’m pretty behind in updates but I will post an elaborate adventure-sodden retelling soon if only to keep those Gilman lags on their toes. For now I have but one story for you dear readership:
Moms Go For a Swim at the Aquatic Grotto
Yesterday I decided to treat my mothers to an early afternoon Last-Day-in-Cairo-Picnic. I chose the intriguing Aquatic Grotto on the island of Zamalek for the venue. We packed some bread and cheese, paid the 1LE entrance fee, and feasted on a low green bench. The park was pleasant but a tad unremarkable. I wondered when it had earned its title of “Aquatic Grotto” – it seemed undeserved. Presently a bent man in a filthy brown uniform beckoned us towards him, muttering the English and Arabic words for ‘fish’. “This sounds like a great idea!” I said to myself and followed this small man into a dark cavern I hadn’t noticed before.
It was like when Simba foolishly follows those nasty hyenas into one of the places the light never touches. Only, instead of being full of terrifying cartoon characters, this cave was teeming with Romancing Egyptians. Seriously, men were wooing hijabi-ed women in every knobbly corner of this artificial underground lair. Mom was getting a little nervous: toothless fish-whisperers are one thing, but couples?!
We gritted our teeth and bore it. Eventually our ‘guide’ brought us to our destination – a grimy glass terrarium. He lectured in fast, ominous Arabic that I couldn’t quite understand. I put my face up to the glass. Suspended just in front of me in three rows of formaldehyde-heavy jars were several mummified fish and what might have been a previous guest’s appendix.
Cairo is a city of hidden treats: some just like the Aquatic Grotto (or, as it is regularly called, the Fish Garden). I hope to continue finding those that are nothing like the Fish Garden, although to be fair admission was cheap and there was an incredible soft-shell turtle with a pig snout. Seriously.
I don’t want it to seem that I treated my parents poorly – we spent several days of their visit down south in the part of Egypt that really feels like Africa, wandering some of the most incredible ancient monuments in Luxor and Thebes, feasting, and riding in a 1920’sesque sleeper car replete with fold-out bunk beds and in-car sink. I think they went home satisfied – is that true, Mom?
The end of this semester is shaping up really well. This week is going to be fantastic, and I’m thinking of going to Istanbul soon.
Nineteen was a really good time. Here’s to twenty!
Definitely a good trip, my sweet daughter. The Fish Garden was sort of a highlight in a weird way, though. It was kind of shocking to read the linked article that said it had been all redone. Egypt impressed me with the warmth of its people, its glorious past, and its clearly difficult present.