Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Propositioned in Cairo

Today was the fourth day of my third Cairo visit. Getting a visa to come here was an adventure worthy of a post in and of its own, but I'm going to begin with a story from today and fill in the gaps later on.

As I've done every morning since Monday, I went downstairs to Corniche el-Nil to hail a cab to the old campus of the American University in Cairo, from which a bus would take me to the new campus. It's about a ten-minute ride from the hotel to AUC.

Normally, there's some chit-chat. The driver either asks me whether I'm from Lebanon or just compliments me on my Arabic, and by the time it's over we've reached our destination. Every now and then, the fact that I'm from Israel comes up, but usually doesn't lead to much more than a smile and an "ahlan u-sahlan."

Today, the conversation went something like this (I'm recalling from memory and translating from Arabic):

Cabby: Where are you from?
Uri: Tel Aviv.
C: Israel?
U: Yes.
C: I hear there are boys there who like boys.
U: Sure, why not?
C: You know how many?
U: Maybe 10%, maybe 20%.
C: Do you like boys?
U: Yes. Well, maybe men, not boys (laugh).
C: Well, I like girls. And boys!
U: Nice.
C: You're handsome.
U: [being polite:] You're handsomer. 
C: When do you get back to your hotel?
U: Around 7:30-8 pm.
C: We should meet outside. Do you have a cell phone?
U: Yes.

And so on and so forth. Things got a little more explicit, and he gave me his number (which I had and have no intention to call). He said something about my liking my chest (not sure whether he liked the hair or the pecs or what...), asked me what I liked to do. The word "behind" came up, for example.

Later, after the conference was over, my colleague Hope and I had dinner downtown and on our way to hail cabs to our respective hotels we saw a good number of pairs of young men walking arm in arm. Hope said something about wishing some of them were straight. I commented that they probably were. She responded, "yeah, like your cab driver." 

In the cab I too back up the Corniche, the radio was playing Farid al-Atrash singing "ya Habiibi..."

5 comments:

  1. Wow, Uri - lots of action in Cairo. When I was working there years ago our driver (a long term taxi driver) talked to me about all kinds of inappropriate stuff and when he and his wife invited us to dinner at their house we got into a huge, nasty and very upsetting debate about female circumcision, which both he and his wife were all for :-0

    When will we see you?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, Uri - lots going on in Cairo. When I was working there years ago, our driver (long term - taxi driver) was always talking to me about totally inappropriate sexual stuff. When he and his wife invited us to dinner at their place, it ended up being a nasty and and upsetting debate about female circumcision, which they both were all for. Good luck!

    When will we see you?

    Candce

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you look carefully, you should be able to see me on Monday. I'm scheduled to arrive Saturday night.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ha ha ha! See, I can never witness these things since everyone always thinks we are married when we are together :-/

    ReplyDelete

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