This is the first post in a series entitled, "All About Cairo". I will be describing my life as an expat in Egypt. I won't be painting a pretty picture. This will be a bitter-sweet tale. We'll start here.
A day trip to Mokattam Mountain in Cairo seemed like a nice thing to do with my wife today. We arrived just as the sun was setting. I really can't say exactly how high Mokattam is or how long it has been settled. By the looks of it must have been very large mountain or range in the distant past. Now it about half of its original height.
Its summit over looks old Cairo and some of its cemeteries which also today serve as homes for many thousands of hopelessly poor people. Yes, living people live in the cemeteries.
The view of the landscape would have been an painters dream. Except, for the smog. I have seem many smoggy skylines but never anything like this. I know what you are thinking. We have all seen smog before. So I will endeavor to describe the smog of Cairo as seen from Mokattam.
Imagine...Long ago at the formation of the primordial muck from which life emerged, or a stagnant swamp with its stench.
This is just the beginning. Overlay on top of that primordial muck an acrid cloud of whatever bubbles over from a black cauldron rolling down over the city. More like an alien invasion of Loki from the underworld. The darkness is everywhere. The sun was now just setting but looked as if it didn't belong there. It was eerie. I had heard stories of the smog helping to make for some beautiful sunsets. This is not it.
I couldn't make out the pyramids in the distance, but my wife said that she could. Our cat, Boogie, was just plain scared. The sun looked as if it was trying to get out of town before sundown.
But, it was a day trip so I sat sipping my Mango juice, which was very good by the way, looking at what I have been living in for a long time. I could only imagine Cairo's thirty million inhabitants wandering in this cesspool. Disease, mental retardation, and decreased life expectancy is their inheritance.
I have seen pictures of smog in LA, and I lived in Philly smog. Cairo on the other other hand is new category of smog. I could have taken few pictures. However, I feel in this case that a thousand words is better to describe what I saw than a single picture. This smog was more like the smoke that would be produced from burning buildings except there was no fire.
Well, the sun has high-tailed it out of town. I am out of here too. It like what someone once told me about North Philadelphia. "When the sun goes you go."