Tourists come to wander beneath the shadows of the pyramids and cruise down the Nile, spell bounded by the ancient wonders. I, on the other hand, am under the Egyptian charm for an entirely different reason.

Demetri and I wanted to avoid the typical beaches of Cancun and Acapulco. So we hit up the Mediterranean and decided to spend our spring break in Egypt. One of our friends back in New York had strongly recommended we get a driver. He gave us the email of a man named Wageih, who he insisted had been “the best tour guide ever.” A few quick email exchanges in broken English and we were set. With a guidebook in hand, a local guide and a Nikon digital camera ready to snap away at the pyramids of Giza, we were ready to take on the Egyptian hagglers.

“I have surprise for you, if you like,” Wageih said to me, an hour into our friendship, as he drove us from the airport. “Friday we have wedding party for my friend.” Thrilled, I scoured my Lonely Planet guide searching for the bold headline that would tell me what to expect, but to no avail. As Friday night in Cairo arrived, I was unprepared, knowing nothing of Egyptian wedding parties. I assumed there would be belly dancing, music and exotic décor, and maybe some type of throne. I might dance in the richly decorated room, devour some good food and listen to loud Egyptians celebrating in every corner. But I was in for a surprise; no paragraph in the Lonely Planet book could have prepared me for the celebration we were about to experience.

We drove along the Nile and then finally turned down a dark, narrow, alley. We were in a small cluster of homes next to the Abusir pyramids. Clothes that had been hung out to dry decorated the bare mud-brick walls. The car trembled on the bumpy dirt road as we made our way deep into the maze of Egyptian homes. Wageih spotted a small opening barely large enough for our vehicle. He squeezed between two cars, scratching the side door, but he did not seem remotely concerned. We stepped out of the car and headed towards the roaring music.

In was not a fancy venue, not a dance hall or a ballroom, just an open space. Multi-colored strips of cloth were hung in endless succession across the open pavilion with bright lights strung from end to end. The place was packed. Clumps of people sat around rectangular tables smoking and enjoying the music, but they currently seemed to be occupied with something else.

All eyes were on me. I was spotlighted by what seemed to be an infinite sea of stares. I smiled. In return they waved, some smiled. Frantically I searched the mass of people, but it was official – I
was the only woman.

“Welcome, welcome,” several of the men said to me, shaking my hand. We were seated next to the best man who was dressed in a white robe. Most of the guests wore long dark robes and sandals, their feet exposed to the sand floor. The stares subsided as we settled down and began introducing ourselves to the table. “We are from New York,” we said. They had friends on 42nd street they assured.

“The people here work with tourists,” Wageih explained to me, “they are farmer people.”

Old men walked around selling peanuts and cigarettes to fundraise for the groom. They seemed uninterested in our business; they did not cajole us into buying their products or contributing monetary funds for the groom. While little kids, rubbing their fingers together, hovered around us saying one of the few English words they knew, “money.” The adults kept brushing them away, yelling at them for lingering around the guests. But their innocent smiles were irresistible. I befriended a curly head boy named Islah. We became inseparable after I caught him throwing rocks at me. He spent the night entertaining me with his attempted belly dancing moves as I taught him how to high five and “pound it.”

When I was not playing with my new friend, I was busy observing the company around my table. In front of me a boy of 16 or 17 rolled joints the entire night, handing them around the table to his elders. It looked like art – the way he unraveled cigarettes and combined the tobacco with hashish. The final product looked like a cigarette conglomeration: a normal cigarette with a large stuffed funnel at the end.

To my right sat a beady-eyed skinny man whose sole purpose that night seemed to be to get me to smoke hashish and chug beer. He kept placing cigarettes in front of me and handing me Egyptian Stela beer, motioning me to take it down. Demetri, on the other hand, took everything he was given, for a total of 4 hashish, 2 cigarettes, and one beer. “He fly,” Beady said to me with a huge smile, raising his arms to the sky.

Conversations were minimal. Most men sat around smoking and listening to the fifteen-member band that was making enough noise for the entirety of Cairo. Beer bottles remained half full or unopened – alcohol was no match for hashish and sheesha.

Two seats down to my left was Abdullah. He had been my guide at the pyramids of Giza but was currently intensely involved with sheesha, Egyptian hookah. His lips did not leave the mouth of the sheesha for a second, as he amorously inhaled the tobacco.

I asked Abdullah where the bride and groom were, partly in genuine intrigue, partly in desperation to locate a fellow female. “They are having happy time,” he said, “at the flat.” Oh, I replied. He explained the man could not touch his fiancé until marriage. Hesitant but determined, I asked where the women where. He casually responded the vows had been exchanged earlier at the mosque. This was the first of several celebrations to come; the next party would be both men and women.

I was a female American student in the middle of an entirely Egyptian male wedding party. What would my mom say? I had crossed the line of mere foreign tourist and become a truly culturally immersed traveler.

“This is Abusir,” Wageih told us on the car ride back, “write it so you will always remember this night.” “Thank you for your surprise Wageih,” I replied. “You welcome, my friend,” said Wageih, his gapped toothed smile reflecting in the rearview mirror. And that was it – I had fallen under the enchantment of the Egyptian people.