Saturday began with a trip to the Egyptian Museum. I was particularly excited because they have probably the best collection of Egyptian artifacts in the world, and I never quite grew out of my mummy phase. Before we saw the museum, however, we had to get there, and this is as good a time as any to describe the utter insanity that is Egyptian driving. I had been under the impression that Budapest’s traffic was bad, but a few days in Cairo quickly dispelled me of that notion. Somewhere along the line it seems that Cairo’s city planners decided that lanes really aren’t essential for the safe operation of motor vehicles. They were wrong. Rather than driving in lines, citizens of Cairo (Cairoers? Cairoites?) seem to move in perpetual traffic jams, weaving in between each other in a bewildering fashion. Traffic lights do exist, but they seem to be universally ignored except at the largest intersections, and even then a police officer usually is around to make sure that tourists get to cross the street every once and a while. Egyptian locals, on the other hand, seem to walk into traffic with reckless abandon, and more than one avoided an accident only by leaping out of the way at the last minute.

In any case, we took our lives into our hands and made our way the few blocks to the museum, tailing locals whenever we had to cross a major thoroughfare. Once we reached the museum, we had to pass through an elaborate security system before being allowed to enter. In order to get onto the museum grounds we had to show our passports at a security checkpoint and then go through an airport style metal detector while a troop of police with exceedingly large guns stood in formation nearby. After buying tickets we had to go through another security checkpoint before entering the museum proper. I am glad to see that the Egyptian government values its history, but the constant presence of so much security was a sobering reminder of the realities in the Middle East.

My experience with the Egyptian museum strikes me as a good metaphor for my experience with Cairo as a whole. It was massive, chaotic, frustrating, completely foreign, and filled with unbelievable treasures. Any one of hundreds of artifacts on display would have been the crown jewel in most museums’ Egyptian collection, but in Cairo they were strewn about with almost no contextual information. A few of the more famous pieces (like Tutankhamen’s mask) were described in Arabic, French, and English, but most of the other artifacts, if they were identified at all, were labeled as “wooden implement” or something equally vague. Don’t get me wrong, the museum was amazing, it was just sad to see so many treasures left unorganized and unexplained. Maybe someday they will find the money and the space to give their massive collection its due.

Once again we ate and napped for a couple of hours before heading out for the evening. Bart had heard about a Sufi dancing performance that was supposed to be worth checking out, so the nine of us squeezed into two cabs and set forth. The thing about being in a taxi with a driver who doesn’t speak much English is that you have absolutely no control over the speed or direction of the vehicle. Despite nearly colliding with several vehicles and a few pedestrians, once I got over my survival instinct it was actually great way to see Cairo. Once again we went from the modern downtown past a dizzying array of slums, mosques, clogged market streets, and ancient monuments before reaching the “Citadel,” where the performance was to take place. The citadel is an old fortress that now houses several museums and perhaps a mosque. All of that was closed by the time we got there, so I don’t know anything else about it. We ended up having to wait over an hour before the performance actually started, but in the end it was well worth it.

It’s a bit difficult to describe the music in any detail because the instruments were all unfamiliar to me, but it was very exiting and percussive. After about thirty minutes of music, a dancer came out and began to spin. He was wearing several skirts made of a very thick material that he was able to twirl expertly in a variety of increasingly intricate patterns around his body and head. I am not quite sure the precise religious significance of such a dance, but I believe that by spinning around the dancer enters a trancelike state and has some sort of religious experience or communication with God. In any case, the physical endurance of the dancer was amazing. He must have been spinning non-stop for 45 minutes, and he was able to stop and walk away without falling over or missing a beat. I expected that to be the end of the performance, but there was another section of music and then three dancers came out and performed simultaneously. I have no idea how authentic the performance was, but it was a wonderful spectacle nevertheless.

Another exciting cab ride through nighttime Cairo and a stop back at the café we discovered on Friday concluded my evening. Some of the others went out to a club with some locals, but I was sick and tired and looking forward to my bed.