Sphinxed and Confused: How'd I go from Costco to Cairo?

Fake Wife and I awoke the next day in our colossal bed, the sort you could lose a small child or a medium-sized dog in. The morning sun peeked through the curtains, casting a golden hue that begged us to keep exploring, but we decided against it, opting to relax instead. Earlier, we had discussed taking a trip to Alexandria to see the remnants of the once-great library and soak in the Mediterranean vibes, but after the chaotic escapades of the past 48 hours, we decided against it. Adventure fatigue is real, and our wallets were starting to show signs of strain.

Instead, we lounged in bed, scrolling through the limited selection of apps the Egyptian government deemed appropriate. With coffee in hand, I marveled at the absurdity of it all. “I can’t believe this is my life,” I mused to Fake Wife, who was busy sipping her tea-brewing.

Assuming I was referring to our recent series of misadventures, she nodded. “It has been wild, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that. For a decade, my life was Costco on Saturdays and grout-scrubbing on Sundays. Then I walked in on my ex with someone else, and everything exploded. Was this somehow my fault?”

In true best friend fashion, Fake Wife launched into a list of all the ways my ex had been a jerk, reminding me that this wasn’t his first indiscretion and that I had tolerated a lot. It’s strange to understand that nothing happens in a silo and feel partially responsible for something, but not know what exactly to take responsibility for.

We eventually dragged ourselves to the gym, where I prayed that the water from the dispenser wouldn’t result in a bout of traveler’s illness. After our workout, we took the elevator back to our room and encountered a male housekeeper who greeted us with a warm smile.

When we opened our door, we encountered something completely unexpected. There it was... a giant heart made of towels and pink flowers and petals awaiting us as if we were honeymooners, replacing the sphinx/bird creature from the day before. Fake Wife and I were stunned into an awkward silence.

“Well,” I said, snapping a photo, “we might as well enjoy this. Who knows if we’ll ever have something like this happen again?” The defeated tone in my voice spoke volumes about our collective romantic failures. I also thought that whatever woman is married to the male housekeeper that did this is very lucky if he does this kind of work at home.

After showering, we headed to lunch at a restaurant by the pool, deciding to bask in the sun before facing London’s inevitable rain. The pool setup was a cultural experience in itself. On one end, more conservatively Muslim women in observation rooms watched their kids while their husbands pretended to supervise. On the other, more progressive women donned surfing-style wetsuits that covered everything but their faces. And then there was us—two conspicuously non-Middle Easterners. Fake Wife wore her usual swimsuit, and I flaunted my pasty white skin of Eastern European descent, practically begging for a sunburn.

Some sort of solicitation we encountered during lunch.

Fake Wife eventually retreated to the air-conditioned room, leaving me by the pool with a book. Initially, I tried occupying my name by trying to take an attractive selfie, still with the hope of figuring out what it meant to be single in this new world, but the photos turned out to be anything but that. Eventually I gave up and turned to my book. Amazon, in its infinite algorithmic wisdom, had suggested a book by Andrew Sean Greer about a writer escaping his ex’s wedding by traveling the world. It was eerily apropos. As I read about friends riding camels, the words seemed to echo our recent exploits.

I snapped a photo of a paragraph about friends riding a camel. "Shut the fuck up! Enjoy the fucking sunset on your fucking camels," one of the lines read.

The book continued:

It is, after all, almost a miracle they are here. Not because they've survived the booze, the hashish, the migraines. Not that at all. It's that they survived everything in life, humiliations and disappointments and heartaches and missed opportunities, bad dads and bad jobs and bad sex and bad drugs, all the trips and mistakes and face-plants of life...

Sunset at the Hilton Ramses pool.

I couldn’t help but see myself in this narrative, sitting by a pool in Cairo, surrounded by practicing Muslims in varying degrees of modest swimwear with excruciatingly sore inner legs that occasionally shook from my runaway camel-riding experience on Oscar. Life’s coincidences can be oddly poetic. The Universe definitely has a sense of humor.

Fake Wife and I packed for our departure to London via Athens. We spent our final evening on the balcony, watching party boats blare music too loudly as they sailed the Nile. We reflected on our brief but intense Cairo experience. Three days felt like an eternity, and yet, it was enough. We called it a night because of our early morning flights.

The next morning after blaring alarms and a breakfast in the Hilton Executive Lounge that was fit for royalty, we tackled the airport. Our Uber miraculously avoided an accident this time, but the chaos was far from over. At the airport entrance, military guards demanded to see tickets. We didn't have tickets given that the ticket counters were inside of the airport, so we became one with the crowd amoeba entering the airport in order to get past the guards. Everything was fine, so we thought we were good to go.

Upon entering the main lobby of the airport that was too small for the number of people it contained, we realized that we were going to have to split up. For some reason there were security stations positioned before the ticketing counters. I had used miles to book myself a first-class ticket and Fake Wife had purchased a ticket in economy. This required going in separate directions to different security stations.

Navigating the airport was a masterclass in frustration. I proceeded to the business class side and started to go through security when two guys who worked at the airport refused to allow me to place my luggage through the x-ray machine without tipping them. Having tipped enough during the prior three days to last a lifetime, I reluctantly handed them some small Egyptian pound bills and they picked up my luggage and put it through the x-ray. However, the security agent managing the area (who allowed the tipping scheme to happen), asked for a ticket. I tried to explain that I did not, in fact, have a ticket given that the ticketing counter was on the other side of their screening. He didn't care, forced me to walk to the other side of the x-ray machine that I had just "tipped" to have my luggage scanned through, and pick it up and go back to the front of the airport.

I thought to myself, alright, I'll find someone from Aegean Airlines with whom I was flying and try to get a ticket given that I had actually purchased my ticket through United Airlines who did not have an office in Cairo.

Great logic. No dice. Aegean did not have a counter with anyone to speak to.

I was having an internal panic attack as I wondered to myself how to proceed so that I could get out of what I dubbed a godforsaken country at that point without missing my flight. I couldn't get to the ticketing counter without having a ticket, which I couldn't get until I was at the ticketing counter.

I looked around the front of the airport and saw a kiosk for Turkish Airlines - partners with United and Aegean. I approached the one employee at the Turkish counter and did my best to explain what was happening to someone who didn't quite grasp English. He basically saved my life. He asked for my United confirmation, I showed him the receipt that I had received via email. He typed in the confirmation numbers and printed out the same confirmation that I had in my email.

"This isn't a ticket. Is it sufficient to get through security?"

He nodded yes, which meant that what the Egyptian authorities were asking for wasn't actually a ticket. Just proof that I was flying. I could have just shown them my United receipt on my phone if they didn't actually need a receipt. All of the bad words in my vocabulary ran through my head.

I looked around wondering what had happened to Fake Wife given she was in the same situation but didn't see her. I wondered if she was having better luck given that I had just learned that we didn't actually need a receipt.

I headed back to security and the guys tried to get another tip out of me, at which I frustratingly told them no and picked up my luggage myself and placed it on the security conveyor belt. They backed off, and then I showed my new printed out confirmation courtesy of Turkish Airlines to the main security cop, which was sufficient to get me through security and to the ticket counter area.

I then walked to the ticket counter and saw Fake Wife in line. I asked how she got through, and she told me the harrowing story of having her passport taken by an official who then returned, handed her the passport, and waved her through security. A very different experience than I had.

We parted ways once again when I went to the business class line at the ticket counter, got my tickets, and learned that we had to go through yet another security line.

I made my way to second security (or third if you count the security guard at the airport doors that we somehow bypassed) and went through the process only to learn that there was paperwork that needed to be completed. I took the paperwork to a counter where an elderly British couple lent me a pencil to fill out paperwork, and we commiserated about the bottlenecks caused by bureaucratic inefficiencies. “Don’t hold this against the Egyptian people. They are really quite lovely. It's the government that's the problem. They don't think about anything on the user side of things, just what they need which causes a lot of bottlenecks."

"Whatever. Get me out of here," was my thought.

Finally, through security, immigration, and customs, I encountered yet another checkpoint where I realized I didn't need to be. I made a U-turn when a camouflaged guard with a semi-automatic weapon jumped out of a hidden door, demanding my passport. The whole scene felt surreal. He barked orders, pointed the gun at me, and eventually threw my passport back at me after realizing I was American and not Israeli (a long story for a separate time). My passport hit the floor as he went back into his hidden magnetically secured door.

I'm really surprised I didn't piss my pants on the spot.

I walked back to what I believe was the main international terminal to try to find the lounge, when I spotted Fake Wife in a gift shop. I walked into the store in disbelief that she was going about her day normally while I was being held up by a guy in the Egyptian military. She started to ask me which shot glass she should buy for her sister when she noticed something was wrong based on my facial expression.

"What? What's the matter?" I'll never forget her asking.

I proceeded to tell her what had just happened, and she was shocked given her experience, though stressful and included a brief passport-less moment, hadn’t involved any firearms.

I left Fake Wife to her shot glass shopping and headed to the lounge, managed by Egyptian Airlines. I wanted a drink after a stressful travel moment unlike any I had ever experienced, but low and behold, we were in a dry airport. I settled for lukewarm coffee and some sort of disgustingly dry bread. When it was nearing time to board, I found Fake Wife, and we bought bottles of water on our way to our gate. We were thirsty thanks to the heat and morning's turn of events.

As it turned out, the Universe still had more planned for us. We had to go through yet another security checkpoint to fly into the European Union. Our water wasn't allowed, so we chugged what we could and left the rest behind. This security was much more organized, but there was nothing to eat or drink on the other side. No TVs. Nada. Wishing we had stayed outside of the EU security checkpoint longer, we kept each other company, first because we had an hour to kill, then because our flight was late.

Never did I think my savior would come in the form of an Aegean Airlines flight from Cairo to Athens. We couldn't wait to get out of there.

As we stood to get in our prospective boarding lines on our flight to Athens, Fake Wife and I couldn't help but reflect on the past few days.

Fake Wife and my luggage awaiting departure without access to food or water because we were flying to the EU.

"Well," I mused, "at least we have stories to tell."

Fake Wife grimaced and laughed, a mix of exhaustion and relief on her face. "And what stories they are."

Despite the challenges, we had navigated our way through unexpected adventures, awkward encounters, and moments of introspection. The journey had been wild, unpredictable, and at times, overwhelming, but it was also a reminder of the resilience and camaraderie we shared.

As I walked down the jet bridge to my seat, grateful that the chaotic whirlwind of Cairo was fading into the background, I found solace in the familiar routine of boarding an international flight, even with its quirks and frustrations.

Rescue in the form of an Aegean Airlines flight

As the plane ascended, I looked out the window, the sprawling city of Cairo shrinking below us. In that moment, I felt a strange mix of gratitude and anticipation. We had faced the chaos head-on, and now we were ready for the next chapter.

And with that, I settled into my seat, the promise of new experiences and old friends in London on the horizon, and the comforting knowledge that, together, we could face anything life throws our way.