Once, while walking through the slums of Cairo, my wife and I were slightly…
We got lost. The thing is, we were walking and navigating (there was no GPS or mobile internet at the time) using a map and “landmarks,” which are very common in Muslim cities—minarets. However, while trying to reach one of these landmarks, we entered a neighborhood where the streets were narrow, and the buildings were three stories high, with the upper floors overhanging the lower ones so much that we could barely see the sky. This was made worse by the chaotic and non-parallel layout of the streets, and we simply lost our sense of direction.
From the map, we understood where we were (a five by five kilometer square), but we didn’t know exactly where we were or where to go. We couldn’t see enough of the sky to figure out where the sun was (to determine by the shadows).
It was around noon and the shadows were short.
In such a situation, you can only determine the direction south by seeing the sun. We also didn’t see any landmarks like minarets, the Citadel—a large hill in Cairo, or television towers, etc. As you can understand, moss doesn’t grow in the corners in this climate zone, and there were no satellite dishes on the roofs in these neighborhoods. There weren’t even any windows, and it seemed there was no electricity. There was no asphalt either (obviously)—instead, there was real cultural…
a layer about half a meter high (judging by the softness of the bedding), made up of trash, scraps of paper, sand, bags, bottles, and so on. It turned out that we had wandered into city of garbage collectors Right now, it’s more or less organized, and adventurous tourists occasionally stop by. But back then, everything was different.
For some time, we walked from street to street, choosing the ones with the most foot traffic, hoping to find some way out of these blocks. We figured that the wider the street, the sooner it would lead us to the light of day. There were no cars there. This was made worse by the fact that the locals greeted us and watched us with very attentive and wary looks.
So, by moving this way, we ended up in some serious situation.
the intersection where there were still no cars, but
- tourists started to appear,
- the flow of people was significant
- We couldn’t choose a busier street between the two to continue our way.
At the same time, we were finally able to see the sun and spot the markers.
It turned out that we had strayed quite far from our original goal, but nearby there should be another really cool spot—the largest (or most important) Islamic university in the world. Now we just need to figure out the quickest way to get there.
And here, in this dense crowd, about 100 meters away from me,
Through the bustling crowd of Arabs, I spotted a man about 170 cm tall, around 40 years old, with…
A man with a tote bag, dressed in a gray summer suit, a blond with a hint of gray, was walking straight towards us, his face downcast, lost in thought. I said to my wife, “I’m going to ask him how to get there.” She replied, “What for? No one here speaks English, and besides, after 9/11, it’s dangerous to be chatting in English in a situation like this!” While she was expressing her concerns, the man had already approached us, and I asked him in Russian, “Excuse me, how do I get to…?” He instantly snapped out of his thoughts and looked at me in horror. I repeated, “You speak Russian, right?” He stammered, “Y-yes…” His gaze darted between me and my wife, and for about a second, he seemed to be deciding whether to run away or find out what was going on and how we knew him. My wife was also staring at me in disbelief, unable to comprehend how a Russian passerby could appear in a crowd of Arabs, especially at the moment when, in her opinion, I was choosing a “random person” for my interview.
In general, those who have read “Aquarium” by Suvorov will understand that this gray little man is not some correspondent living here on a contract (as he later claimed), but a typical resident working for the GRU. He truly was a nondescript Soviet individual, blending in with the crowd as he should. The problem was that the crowd was all dressed in long Arab robes, while he was dressed as if he lived in St. Petersburg. In short, it was like the joke, “But you’re a black man, son.”
I started chatting with a man, and it turned out we were headed in the same direction, so we spent another ten minutes sharing our impressions of this country. He was on his way to the market,
for vegetables.