Egypt - Crime & Me

Our latest adventure...

Mary and I thought it would be nice to rent an apartment for the month that we were in Cairo. We found a real estate agent on line and he was on several different listing websites. We arranged to rent an apartment from him and wired him a little money to secure the reservation. He was very professional, picked us up at the airport, brought us to the apartment, showed us around, we signed a lease, gave him the months rent and he gave us the key. He tried to get us to pay an insurance deposit, but since we didnt agree to this ahead of time I say no.
We think we are all set an the agent leaves.

About 30 minutes later a 60s something man shows up with his large friend, who was not there to translate. They dont introduce themselves and walk into the apartment. He then tells me that he is the landlord and that he is waiting for Baher to come back. He starts playing with the phone and the tv, smoking cigarettes- making himself at home. Due to the language barrier it takes a while to find out that he wants the rent money. I tell him that the agent has the money and we signed the lease with him. We both try calling the agent, who does not pick up his phone, but it is late at this point, so I figure he turned his phone off to go to bed. After a long discussion,and the landlord telling us to go sleep somewhere else, I agree to pay the security deposit, so that we can stay there and sort it all out in the morning.

The next day I get ahold of the agent and he tells me that he gave the money to the landlord and the landlord is crazy... The landlord comes by again later that day, I call the agent and try to hand the phone to the landlord, but the agent hangs up the phone... and doesnt pick up subsequent calls... The landlord's daughter in law comes by to translate and she states that the way apartment rentals work in Cairo, is that it is not uncommon for the owner and the agent to not know each other, and that the initial contact is over the phone and the owner tells the guard to let the agent in. Our problem was that the guard gave us the key and watched us pay the agent- and never said a word. In the states, possession, is 9/10ths of the law, but when the landlord brings his large friend over, I see little chance of squatting.....

So we go to the tourist police- they are very friendly- they offer us coffee, food (our first real Egyptian meal is with the cops)...We tell our story several different times with the help of a translator and the landlord comes down and corroborates our story. The cops try calling the agent and he repeats that he gave the money to the lanlord, they ask him to come down and straighten it all out- what a surprise, he doesnt show up. After 6 hours we head back to our apartment exhausted.

The next day our luggae finally arrives (another story- it was left in Yemen- a scenic land where we spent 36 hours, because they cancelled our flight- we felt really at home with pictures of Sadaam Hussein all over the places..)...With our suggestion,the cops advise us to set up another email account and do a new apartment request (no internet access at the police station....) We pretend to be George Smith from the UK and the agent takes the bait. We give the cops the flight time and tell the agent to have a sign that says George Smith and have his name (Baher) on the sign as well. The cops take Mary and I in a sedan with two other cops to the airport, accompanied by a sort of pick up truck converted paddy wagon with about 8 cops, and on the way we link up with another paddy wagon. The cops fan out at the airport and then after a bit, they ask Mary and I to try and walk around and ID Baher (as if he wouldnt recognize us and run away???) After awhile we see someone that looks really close, but is not him. The cops ask me to call him, but I remind that he knows my number and will not pick up. So I buy a phone card and use the pay phone to call him, I try my best for a British accent and Baher tells me that he sent an assistant from his office to pick us up. The next minute the cops have a man in handcuffs with the sign just as we had asked- it was even in the same font as Baher used in his emails.

It is quick movement from there to the paddy wagon. I try to get to the one cop who speaks a bit of English, but he is handcuffed to the prisoner and surrounded. I try to suggest that the assistant should tell Baher that he picked up George Smith and they should meet at the apartment- but no luck. We then drive to the Sheraton hotel at the airport, where there is a police office. We sit for hours as they question the "assistant" and fill out their report. I think he tells Baher on the phone that he had an accident or something- we are getting very little info at this point. We then go to a police station for a bit, wait,then go to a court- the scariest, abandonded looking building I have ever seen and are told that we will see the judge and we should speak "small small English", we wait for awhile, never see the judge and then go back to the police station where I think the assistant went to jail. After 10 hours we head home.

A little disappoointed that they didnt get our man we leave 2 days later for our Nile Cruise. 3 days into it, I get a call that the cops arrested our man Baher. After we get back to Cairo, we go back to the police station to ID his picture (not sure which jail he is in, if at all...) So essentially where we are now, is trying to go through the legal system to get our money back. We went to the US Embassy to see if they could put some pressure on the court system to speed up our case. It was remarkable that the police even captured Baher so at this point it's not crazy to think that we could get our money back before we leave next week. We found a law professor who agreed to take our case pro bono because our story "touched him" much liked it "touched" our investigating officer so both men will follow the case on our behalf. Since Baher has done this before he has several charges against him. We have to wait until the criminal case is settled before we can go after our damages in a civil case.

Hanging out for many hours at the police station was priceless, the coffee, the endless food, seeing the interactions of the cops- lots of yelling, lackeys who just wait around to deliver coffee and food, the excitement when just about the whole police station went on the sting with us- giving them advise on how to get Baher to come to the airport, them not having internet...What was also amazing was that they actually had a file on Baher from other people who got ripped off like us, but he is still using the same phone number, website, and bank account. It is amazing that they havent shut him down! Our lawyer is another character in this ever evolving tale. In his cordoroy jacket he would sit at his huge maghony desk relighting his wood pipe while taking his reading glasses off and on jotting down notes regarding our case. The most heartwarming thing about his whole experience is how geniune the cops and the lawyer have been about how sorry they are that we got cheated out of money. They say to us, "this man is not Egypt." Out of this bad experience we've learned more about the greatness of Egyptians than a visit to the pyramids of temples could have ever taught us. We've seen more of Cairo criss crossing the city on our visits the tourist police, the embassy and the lawyer. It's not the way we expected to see Cairo but it has been rewarding to say the least.

The policeman told me that we should write a book- Crime and Me...I think it is kind of a catchy title...Will keep you all posted.