Inhuman Swill

Laura and I had dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants this evening, Hopleaf. It's a Belgian place, with a bar out front specializing in Belgian and Belgian-style beers. It's always packed, and if you don't show up early you can wait an hour and a half for a table.

We showed up early and were rewarded with a quiet, secluded table on the balcony overlooking the main dining room. Laura had a bottle of Chimay Red and I a pint of Bell's Two-Hearted Ale while we perused the menu. Laura was there for the moules frites, Hopleaf's speciality. I ordered the duck reuben. It was amazing.

This is not a story about our wonderful evening, or our wonderful meal. This is the story of the poor rich kids in their twenties (three girls and a boy) who were seated at the table next to ours shortly after we ordered, and how we winced at every loud interaction they had with our rather curt mutual waitress.

"Can I start you off with some drinks?"

"Do you have Michelob Ultra?"

"Uh, no. We have a wide variety of Belgian ales and other fine beers. Can I offer you some suggestions?"

"What do you have that's light?"

"We have several good India pale ales, wheats, and weisses."

"No, I mean light beer."

"What do you like?"

"How about a vanilla vodka?"

"We don't have vanilla vodka."

"Do you have berry vodka?"

"We have six hundred beers. And vodka."

Most of them ended up drinking what looked like Diet Coke. I didn't actually hear them order because I had crawled so far under the table. Unfortunately, I had emerged again by the time one woman's Belgian steak frites arrived and she asked for A1 Sauce.

I'm sure we were all that young and inexperienced at one time, but ouch. I fear the only lesson learned tonight was never to come back to Hopleaf because the beer selection sucks and the steak tastes like steak.

We knew that Friday, May 30, as another long travel day, was going to suck. We just didn't know yet how badly it was going to suck.

Over dinner the evening before, Ra'ed had broken the news to us that there would be yet another change in our travel plans. It seems the tour company had not booked our return tickets on the morning ferry to Taba soon enough, and the earliest ferry with berths still remaining would not be until 7:00 pm. That would get us to Taba far, far too late to make any bus that would reach Cairo at any remotely reasonable hour.

The solution foisted upon us—dreamed up by that same favorite benefactor of ours in Cairo who only days before had failed to get us from Hurghada to Sharm al-Sheikh by boat—was overland travel. It seemed fairly straightforward, if tedious, on the face of it. Ra'ed would drive us back to Aqaba, hand us seventy American dollars, and drop us off at the border crossing to Eilat, Israel. Once in Israel, we would take a cab to the Egyptian border, where a driver would be waiting to spirit us south to Dahab to catch our bus.

It sounds so simple, doesn't it?

As it turned out, the crossing into Israel went just fine. There was only one dicey moment, when a large and scary immigration officer demanded to know the origin of my family name. ("I—I don't know," I said. "We're American or Canadian on both sides going back two hundred years." Now, I do know that my roots stretch back to England, Scotland, and Wales, but who can recall that when confronted by a hulking Israeli who probably thinks your name sounds Aryan? Laura, obviously French in extraction, had no problem.) This, by the way, was the only man among all the border personnel we encountered on our adventure in Israel. The women were generally much more pleasant.

Once we made it through passport control, a border guard hailed a taxi for us, and we were on our way. The cab driver sped us through Eilat, pointing out with pride such consumer temples as Zara and Club Med. He seemed a little offended when I asked him if his accent was French, but I think I managed to smooth it over by saying we knew Israel was like our home in New York City, full of people who've migrated from all over the world. At the Egyptian border, the driver charged us $25 American. I gave him a fifry, and he gave me back 50 shekels in change. (Two shekels to the dollar!)

Our exit visas ended up costing us, much to the amusement of the woman at the exchange desk, 50 shekels plus 20 dollars plus 2 dinars. That meant our transit had cost us, thus far, approximately three dollars more than the travel company had spotted us at the outset. And there was still one more border left to cross.

Leaving Israel was perfectly pleasant. We crossed the long barren stretch of pavement between Israel and Egypt and entered the Taba border station. In all innocence, we strolled right up to the Egyptian passport control officer, handed him our passports ... and were denied entry to Egypt.

Let's back up over a week, to the day we flew into Cairo. The very first person to meet us there was a travel facilitator from our tour company. His job was to provide immigration with a "guarantee" for our stay in Egypt—proof that our travel was all prearranged and would be supervised by the company for the duration of our time in country. This allowed him to purchase our fifteen-dollar entry visas for us. Without such a guarantor, the only way for us to enter the country would have been for us to acquire visas at an Egyptian consulate before leaving the U.S.

The passport officer at Taba pointed to the visas in our passports, which had been closed out when we left Egypt for Jordan two days earlier. "If you don't have a company here to purchase your visas," he rather impatiently explained, "then you can go back to Eilat and apply for visas at the consulate there."

Of course, it was a Friday, and in that region of the world the weekend is Friday and Saturday. The consulate in Eilat would not be open until Sunday.

"We were probably in a rush, and missed our tour guide," I said. "We'll go back and find him. Sorry."

It turns out that in our hurry to reach passport control we had strolled right past a small group of tour guides inside the border station. We went back to them and asked which of them was from our company.

Ahem. None was.

The tour guides were as helpful to us as they could be, though. They got on the phone to our accursed travel agent in Cairo, who, when the cell phone was passed to me, seemed utterly mystified that we hadn't been able to waltz through the border like Fred and Ginger. "You don't need another visa," he said.

"Um, yes, we do. Now, where's the guy who can get it for us?"

I won't detail the further phone calls and mounting anger and frustration we experienced over the next couple of hours, stymied at the border as we were. A driver was waiting for us on the far side of the crossing, but he wasn't authorized to make the kind of guarantee required by Immigration. A helpful and friendly tour guide explained to us apologetically that there were guides who could be bribed to provide such a guarantee, but that his was a reputable company which could not assist us in that regard.

Eventually our nimrod in Cairo called with a brainstorm. "Do you have e-tickets for your flight out of Cairo?"

"Yes."

"You have your flight itinerary handy?"

"Yes." I had taken to a certain measure of curtness in my dealings with him.

"Take it to the passport control officer. Explain that you've been in Egypt already, and you need to enter again in order to leave."

Next to the currency exchange, there was an office marked "Immigration." The door was open. I shrugged, and Laura and I walked over to peek through the door. Inside was a tall, stern-looking man in an immaculate white uniform seated behind a desk. His hair was steel-gray and receding, and his nose was a thin curving blade. I sat down, laid the itinerary before him, and explained the situation—adding that our travel agent in Cairo was an obvious loser with a camel and a donkey for parents. (Okay, maybe I only said I didn't know why their man wasn't there.)

The immigration officer said, carefully, "I am only immigration officer. I am sorry, I can do nothing. But perhaps I have possible solve for you."

He went on to explain, as the reputable tour guide had, that certain companies would provide guarantees to tourists for a fee of $35 American. He pressed a button and went to the door. After a moment a fellow appeared in the doorway. The immigration officer raised his hands, palms forward. "I am only immigration officer. I know nothing of these things."

To truncate a long story, the man at the door wrote out a travel guarantee for us, purchased two visas from the bank, walked us through passport control where the same officer who had denied us entry stamped our visas with a cynical smirk, and walked us outside to the parking lot beyond. That's where I forked over 380 Egyptian pounds, the equivalent of 70 bucks—30 for the visas, 40 for the grease.

And that's what it took. We were back in Egypt.

And hopping mad.

We met our driver and set off south in his van. It was now 1:00 pm. We had missed our 12:30 bus from Dahab. The next bus would leave Dahab at 2:30. It was a two-hour drive from Taba to Dahab. By now we were impervious to terror on tortuous, twisting desert highways. Our driver got us there in ninety minutes. We barely had time to pee, and then our bus was off and rolling.

It was a large, comfortable coach-style bus, but with no restroom on board. We tried not to drink much water for the duration of the ride. We'd been told the trip would take six hours. Actually, it took eight. Having traveled south down the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, we then drove west across the Sinai Peninsula, back north up the coast of the Gulf of Suez, and then through the tunnel back underneath the Suez Canal. There was one rest stop in the middle of all this, but it was only a quickie so the men on the bus (Laura was the only woman) could have a smoke and pee in the sand. I held it, in solidarity with Laura.

Here, Laura interviews me on the bus:


We reached Cairo at 10:30 pm. Our guide Shiko was there at the bus station—had been, for a couple of hours—with a van driver. Our dear friend the travel agent was waiting to meet us at the hotel. Believe me, when you haven't peed for eight hours, the man who put you in that situation is is the last person you want to find standing between you and the nearest plumbing.

The idiot didn't even realize that we had another full day in Cairo ahead of us. He tried to tell us that our van would be there at five in the morning to take us to the airport.

Okay, let's fast-forward past the discussion that followed. It was past midnight by the time we managed to get rid of the tour people and get settled in our room. That's when Laura and I set out in search of food. All we had eaten since breakfast seventeen hours earlier in Jordan was a banana apiece and some of those crumbly chocolate-creme sandwich cookies that come in a tube. I had spotted a sidewalk cafe a couple of blocks away on the way to the hotel that looked inviting, and it wasn't difficult for us to walk there. Our waiter was funny and nice, and I ended up eating a dish called koshary, sort of a kitchen-sink affair built from lentils, chickpeas, tomato sauce, rice, pasta, chunked meat, and assorted other ingredients. It damn well hit the spot. Laura had chicken shawarma, and we took turns feeding bits of meat on the sly to the two stray cats that prowled up to our table from beneath a parked car.

It was a good way to close out an interesting but ultimately shitty day.

Going home to New York City is as comfortable as slipping on an old shoe. I flew there Tuesday afternoon with just a backpack and the parka on my back, and I was immediately at ease and confident in a way I don't yet feel in Chicago. The only bad part was that I was alone, since Laura was on a concurrent business trip to Rochester.

But I wasn't solitary for long. I took a cab from Laguardia to my borrowed apartment in Astoria, Queens, dumped off most of the contents of my pack, and headed into the city. After a quick stop at my old office, I met John Klima, in from Iowa way, at the Tor offices in the Flatiron Building. I acquired an advance copy of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, I chatted with Patrick Nielsen Hayden for a minute or two, and John and I hauled his bags back to Astoria on the subway.

We had a full evening ahead, but before I tell you about it I have to back up several months and remind you of the segment of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" that Laura and I caught back in July:



Kabab Cafe is our favorite restaurant on earth, and Ali El Sayed our good friend. John had eaten Ali's appetizers once before at a party at our place, but despite our best efforts we had never managed to get Shai and him out to the restaurant itself for a real meal. What's more, John had seen the above segment on "No Reservations." Since he and I were staying right there in the neighborhood, how could we not head over for dinner? I promised him, though, that we'd have fare other than sweetbreads and testicles.

My promise turned out to be half hasty.

( Bill and John take Queens! )

When last we checked in with Ali El Sayed at Kabab Cafe in Astoria, he was papering the doors and getting ready to light out for Egypt. We're pleased to hear, via rajankhanna and the New York Times, that he's back in town and back in form, rumors of plans to join his brother's place down the street notwithstanding:

Pita with a Generous Helping of Quirkiness

Go keep him company for us.

Last night was the end of an era. It was by only the most fortuitous of chances that we were there for it.

Laura and I had taken curmudgeon to the incomparable Kabab Cafe before, to be entertained, charmed, and provoked by our friend Ali El Sayed's patter and transported by his food. With Laura and me moving soon, doing it again while Curmudgeon was in town was critical.

Turns out it was more critical than we knew. Ali told us, "I'm glad you are here tonight. Tomorrow I will be closed. I leave for 25 days in Egypt." He went on to explain that on his return, he will begin renovating Kabab Cafe—again. He will change the menu, begin serving breakfast in addition to lunch and dinner, and train chefs to take over for him. He will then take his menu over to his brother Moustafa's excellent nearby restaurant Mombar, where he will sometimes cook and sometimes help oversee operations of both restaurants. He will use his trip to Egypt to work out plans for the new venture.

The changes are exciting, since Ali finally won't be tied to his tiny kitchen. But it was also a poignant evening—the last night of the Kabab Cafe we've known all these years. There were only two other diners there when we arrived, but even with the pick of tables in the place, Ali suggested we sit in the niche near the door so he could talk to us over the counter of his kitchen. We drank too much Argentine Malbec while we enjoyed mixed appetizers of hummus, babaganouj, falafel, fried Swiss chard, apples, pears, and more; a more than appetizer portion of pumpkin dumplings in a spicy sauce; goat chops; beef short ribs; and an amazing dish of sand shark tail. I broke out a bottle of Balvenie Portwood 21yo I'd brought for us—Ali included—to enjoy along with dessert, which was a plate of selected Mediterranean pastries from the bakery down the street, together with yogurt and various fruits. I had thick coffee too.

And all the time, we talked food and travel and politics and sex and age with Ali, who is the most charming and flirtatious rogue on the planet. I forget exactly how the phrase "waxing one's camel" first came up—it was something to do with Ali's plan to spirit my wife away with him to Egypt—but it became the watchphrase of the evening. Well, that and "sharking," which Ali had been told that day means biting someone on the ass. (Urban Dictionary tells a somewhat different story.)

Later on, a young man named Alex dropped in for dinner, and after he had eaten Ali put him to work taping paper over the front windows. (Alex had never heard of sharking either.) When the windows were papered, Ali broke out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, and he and Alex and I all drank a toast. The women wisely abstained.

And that was it. Godspeed, Ali, and long may your camel stay waxed.

Man, I love the Shake Shack, but I hate those lines! Nothing like a nice 11:00 a.m. breakfast of champions.

Apparently I'm not the only one.

I haven't managed to get out to the Shack yet this season, but when I do you can be sure I'll be in that early, early crowd.