The nightmarish Atlantic crossing and plane swapping from Houston to Cairo in coach class, passed in a sort of blur for me. I have no memory at all of my short layover in Frankfurt. I finally arrived in the Cairo airport at some time in the evening of the next day, only to meet with a ridiculous problem that had me screaming at an airport security man.
When you fly into Cairo International, as a foreigner, you have to buy a visa stamp for $15 US and then go through a customs line where an official attaches the visa stamp to your passport. There are several “banks” in this section of the airport that claim to give current exchange rates for currency and pretend to be international. There is one ATM. I hadn’t thought to get US dollars, because I don’t use them. I had $800 Mexican pesos, and I went to one of the banks to buy my visa stamp, only to be told that they don’t take pesos.
I went to the one ATM, to find that it was out of order.
I got a little scared then, and almost cried.
I asked a man at the bank, who told me to ask a policeman. The policeman took my passport as security and pointed me through a side-gate, bypassing the customs lines, and told me to go quickly to another ATM and get cash. I did, but the ATMs in the next section were out of order too, so I knew I would have to go out into the waiting lobby. I had to pass the final customs inspection lines to do this. I stopped the guard at the line and told him in broken Arabic and sign language, that I was going out for money and would be coming right back. He said “ok.” But he didn’t really look at me or listen to me.
Sayed was waiting outside in the lobby for me and he had somehow broken inside the gated area so he was standing alone. I was overjoyed to see him! Really. I was home again!
But, the emotional reunion was ruined by my frantic need to get US dollars and go back into the bureaucratic mess of the airport. I did find a machine that worked, got my dollars, and left Sayed in the lobby with my (uninspected) backpack and carry-on bags. I headed back through the last inspection point, only to be told by a complete jerk of a guard, that I couldn’t go through.
The guard asked for my passport and I said it was inside. He said, “No, everybody has to have a passport.”
I said, “Yes, I have a passport, but it’s inside where the guard is waiting for me to get my visa.”
He said, “Nobody comes in without a visa.”
I said, “Yes, I know. The guard inside has my passport and I am going back in to buy my visa.”
He said, “No, you can’t go through here. Nobody can go through here. Where is your passport?”
This sort of exchange went on for some time, with me repeating in English and Arabic that the police had my passport and I needed to get back to get it. We were getting nowhere, and other guards came over. I was getting louder and louder and starting to shake out of exhaustion and fear and the whole ridiculousness of the situation. At one point I tried to just walk on back, but two men stepped in front of me. They wanted to take me to another place and I flat refused. I will not be taken to any out-of-the-way offices by any Egyptian security men. Ever.
Finally, after we reached a point where we were all yelling at each other, another man came and said we could walk back through a different door. I went with him and was finally able to get back into the back, get the visa stamp, and go back out to the waiting arms of my happy husband. All’s well that ends well.
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