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Twilight Zone / First Night in Cairo By Gideon Levy Tags: peace treaty, egypt  At first light, I pushed aside the curtain in my room. It was one of the most moving moments I have known in my professional career. Through the morning fog peered splendid blocks of frightening gray stone, wonders of the universe almost at touching distance. The pyramids of Giza. It can happen once, perhaps twice, in a journalistic career: I had arrived at the back of beyond. Several weeks earlier - I remember precisely where, on Dizengoff Street, between Frischman and Gordon, on the east side of the street - I was walking with a German journalist who was visiting Israel. I only recall that he was a tall, thin man, somewhat stooped. He told me that he had just returned from Damascus and Cairo. I told him: A stranger won't understand this, but we, the Israelis, have places that are really the back of beyond for us, we will never be able to go there: the pyramids in Egypt, for example. I have long since forgotten the German journalist, but not that moment. I thought about him when I pushed aside the curtain at first light, a few weeks later, in the Mena House Hotel in the Giza neighborhood of Cairo. The impossible had become possible. That was in mid-December, 1977. Two weeks earlier, the head of Army Radio, where I was doing my military service, called and told me that I was being sent to Egypt. I traveled clandestinely, because of a work conflict that was then tearing the station apart, regarding who would travel to Egypt. There is at least one graduate of the station, a highly regarded television producer, who to this day doesn't speak to me, after almost 32 years, because I went - and he didn't. We all thought then that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, one that would never be repeated. In effect, that's what it was. Advertisement The next day I found myself in Athens, waiting an entire day for the night flight to Cairo. That was after 30 years of war and brainwashing; only a few years earlier we were still burning the effigy of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, the "Egyptian tyrant," at Lag b'Omer bonfires. Even if I land tomorrow in Damascus, Tehran or Benghazi, inshallah, nothing will ever compare to the first time, to the landing in Cairo, my first Arab capital. In the late evening, after I had wandered the streets of Athens for hours, full of fears, the Olympic flight to Cairo took off. I was of course the only Israeli on the flight. At the Cairo international airport, my anxiety reached a peak. I was covered in a cold sweat, an Israeli in Egypt. Although the Israeli journalists who had left two days earlier with the Israeli delegation to the first peace talks, headed by the director general of the Prime Minister's Office, Eliyahu Ben Elissar, were already waiting, I arrived alone. We were the first Israelis in Cairo since the time of Joseph and his coat of many colors. That was less than a month after Egyptian president Anwar Sadat landed in Israel. An Egyptian policeman took my passport, and I thought I would die of fear. Afterward they put me into a car, escorted by another security car, and late at night we hurtled through the Egyptian night on a wild trip to Giza. I remember that I couldn't see a thing. Everything became confused in my mind in a vertigo of the senses that is hard for me to recall now. I arrived at the hotel, entered my room and fell asleep immediately, exhausted from the anxiety and the tribulations of the journey. Only at first light did I begin to understand where I was. Mena House is a luxurious hotel, an isolated and spacious compound at the foot of the pyramids. The interior design is Damascene and the administration is Indian. The official delegations stayed in the stylish and gloomy main building, and we in the cabins surrounding it. The pyramids were completely closed to visitors during those days of peace talks, as was the road leading to them and to the hotel, whose name the Egyptians had changed to "Peace Road." A few hours after I landed, I was already climbing the pyramids on my own - something else that could never happen to me again at this tourist site, which is always teeming with people. I remember thinking at the time that the pyramids were even more impressive than in photographs. We were imprisoned in Mena House because of the Egyptian security guards. One night we managed to trick them and sneak out, a group of Israeli journalists - I think that Arabists Ehud Yaari and the late Victor Nahmias were the guides on our nocturnal tour. I remember a bustling city, a luxurious casino and sweets during the wee hours of the morning. Mahmoud Darwish once commented on his first visit to Cairo: How surprised he was to see a city where all the signs were in Arabic. I am now looking at the photos that have yellowed since then: Here I am, a young man in a beige suit at the entrance to Mena House, surrounded by smiling Egyptian security guards. And here I am accompanied by the Egyptian prime minister, Mamdouh Salem - I'm wearing a corduroy suit in the fashion of those days, and sporting a tie as gloomy as his personal bodyguard. When Moshe Dayan arrived in Ismailiya with Menachem Begin a few days later, I tried to interview Dayan, in the type of interview we at Army Radio used to call "a prostitute in the back yard," carrying a mountain of heavy, clumsy communications equipment on my back, with an antenna pointing skyward. Dayan the braggart told me at the time, while I was panting from the heavy burden, on a live broadcast on Army Radio: "When I have something to tell you, I'll call you," and my humiliation knew no bounds. And that has also been etched in my mind forever. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed on March 26, 1979. Since my first visit, I have returned many times to my beloved Cairo. I never visit the city without going to Mena House for a gin and tonic at the bar, in memory of days that will not return. Mena House is as beautiful as it used to be, the waiters are as polite as they used to be, the pyramids can still be seen from the window, but the taste of the cool clear drink will never be as heady as it was then, in December 1977, when I sipped my first Arab gin and tonic in a toast to peace. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Iran presidential vote Ahmadinejad slams rivals for wanting 'detente' with the West. Demographic threat Study finds one in four Israelis would consider leaving country if Iran gets nukes.   1.   Hotel was owned by Jews / Mosseri family. Also King David 00:06  |  EgyptJewRefugee 29/03/09   2.   I believe? I believe not? 03:11  |  Historian 29/03/09   3.   Mr Levy, please pack your bags again ... 03:52  |  Morris Valentine 29/03/09   4.   don`t come again 04:07  |  egyptian 29/03/09   5.   Gideon levy, please stay in Egypt forever and write for them 05:55  |  John Doe 29/03/09   6.   Gideon levy, please stay in Egypt forever and write for them 05:56  |  John Doe 29/03/09   7.   Israel-hating Gideon Levy misses his `beloved Cairo` 05:58  |  John Doe 29/03/09   8.   Hey Gideon 07:40  |  Miriam 29/03/09   9.   Back of the Beyond 12:19  |  Kevin 29/03/09   10.   Memories of Cairo 13:44  |  Dorian Haqmoun 29/03/09   11.   Stay in SF, John Doe 20:30  |  Another Egyptian 29/03/09   12.   Response to #2 20:36  |  Another Egyptian 29/03/09

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