CAIRO – That magical moment – right out of The English Patient - when I saw the shadow of our Qatar Airline’s flight floating across the sand dunes leading to Cairo International Airport is quickly forgotten as our Soviet-era Lada taxi comes to a full stop on the traffic-clogged streets of Egypt’s chaotic capital.

Nothing can prepare you for the mean streets of Cairo.

The noise, the choking smog, the rotting garbage, the slums, the annoying sales pitch of the souvenir sellers, the sea of humanity …

Cairo is a full-frontal assault on your senses and sensitivities.

“Welcome to my world,” says Heba Mounir, the Egyptologist we’ve hired the guide us through this wonderful insanity.

“Give yourself a few days and all this will start to make sense – you will learn to love Cairo, trust me, it’s a very vibrant place,” says Heba, who lives in a fashionable part of town called Hiliopoulis and has agreed to be our “Egyptian mommy” during our stay.

The most enduring thing about Egypt is its people. The easy-going children of the Nile make you feel so welcome and quickly make you forget about all the problems facing this ancient capital where Africa and Arabia intersect. Egyptians are also fiercely proud and are quick to correct those who consider them Arabs. “We are Egyptians, not Arabs. They, the Arabs, arrived 1,000 years ago but our history as a people goes back 7,000 years,” boasts Heba. “We were here long before them.”

As we slowly make our way to Old Cairo to see the synagogue where Moses prayed and the grotto where the Holy Family hid during their stay in Egypt, one cannot but wonder where it all went wrong for this once dominate nation which gave the world such wonders as the great pyramids and Sphinx, but today can’t complete row-after-row of much-needed apartment buildings that are simply left half finished and abandoned by delinquent builders.

“The Under-20 World Cup football (soccer) tournament is being played in Cairo this week (late September, 2009) so the traffic is much worse,” says Heba, who adds, “but even without the football, traffic is always a problem in Cairo. We tell visitors ‘it will take 10 minutes to walk to your destination, or 20 minutes to drive there.’

“This is what happens when you cram nine million people into a city centre designed to hold only two million (there’s 22 million people living in Greater Cairo which includes neighbouring Giza),” groans the charming guide, who points to an ancient aqueduct, signalling we are about to enter Old Cairo, which actually sits several levels below the present city.

Above: Mohammad Ali's alabaster mosque is an imposing sight.

“Many Nile (river) floods and development over the centuries covered up the old city,” says Heba as we pay the cabbie – Cairo’s entire taxi fleet, by the way, is “Cash for Clunkers” worthy – and head down some steps into the ancient worlds of the pharaohs and of Moses and Jesus.

Three main religions recognize this small corner of Old Cairo as a significant landmark – Jews, Catholics and Egypt’s Coptic Church, a breakaway sect from Rome which has its own pope and whose members trace their bloodline back to the earliest Egyptians.

The tiny Coptic Church, which sits another level below the ancient streets, is filled with worshipers as we enter and a cloud of incense hangs over the tiny room. Heba whispers that the animosity between the Roman Catholics and Coptic faith runs so deep that when the late Pope John Paul II visited Cairo and wanted to say mass at the Abu Serga Catholic Church, which sits over the crypt where the Holy Family lived, the Coptic pope, who holds authority over all the churches in the area, denied his request.

As we leave the Coptic mass, an old man whom Heba identifies as a past curator of this historic area, greets us and asks where we come from?

“Ah, Canada Dry (most Egyptians jokingly greet Canadians in this manner),” says the man, who tells us that Canada’s Bronfman family has donated over $20 million for the restoration of the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest Jewish place of worship in Egypt.

The synagogue is important to the Jewish faith because it’s where Moses played as a child and where he was educated while sitting at the feet of Jewish scholars and rabbis.

Abu Serga is no less important to the Catholics. The crypt where Jesus lived with Mary and Joseph sits yet another layer below Old Cairo but, for security reasons, has been sealed off to the public. Still, the faithful gather at the roped-off stairway entrance and peer into the simple apartment where, according to Heba, historians say the Holy Family lived between three and 12 years.

“Scholars always debate how long Jesus and his parents stayed in Cairo (they were told to flee to Egypt by the Archangel Gabriel to escape King Herod’s persecution) but it's known he lived here most of his youth, so it’s probably closer to 12 years. Many Catholics come here to pray to the Mother Mary, as do Muslims, who recognize Jesus as a prophet and accept the Immaculate Conception as fact,” says Heba, herself a Muslim.

Before leaving the area Heba insists we visit another Coptic shrine, the 4th century Hanging Church, which is built on the bastions of the city’s ancient Roman wall and hangs suspended over the River Nile. Large portraits of former Coptic popes line the wall of the Hanging Church’s entrance and Heba says the small religion still holds important power in Egypt, a fact well documented on the opposite wall in photographs of Coptic popes meeting every Egyptian president, dating back to Nasser in the early 1950s.

We hail another taxi – Cairo has an excellent subway system built by the French, which handles four million commuters a day, but Heba insists we keep taking the inexpensive cabs even though they are very slow – and head off to the Citadel, the city’s ancient fortress built in the 12th century to fend off the Crusaders.

Above: Not much has changed in Cairo's main market over the centuries.

The imposing fort and the elaborate mosque Mohammed Ali built during the 18th century inside the fort's walls, sits next to the quarry where ancient Egyptians cut out limestone that was used as the smooth facing on the great pyramids.

It’s almost noon and the streets are jammed packed. Lunch goers dart between cars - street crossings exist but are totally ignored by drivers and pedestrians alike – and Heba fills our parked time telling us about Ali and the revered place he holds among Egyptians.

“Mohammed Ali is the father of modern Egypt,” says Heba. “Although a Turk, he came to power when he knocked out his Ottoman rivals in Cairo and then declared himself king of Egypt and later had this stunning alabaster mosque built inside the Citadel.

“He improved the lifestyle of Egyptians at the time, introducing such things as compulsory education, and he recruited the first army made up of only Egyptians,” says Heba, who adds sarcastically, “a decision he probably regretted because it was the army that deposed Ali’s direct heir, King Farouk, Egypt’s last monarch.”

Ali’s elaborate tomb, which he designed and planned during his life, lies inside a crypt near the entrance of the impressive mosque, which features elegant Turkish designs. It took 15 years to build the mosque that can hold up to 5,000 worshipers. It’s open every day but closed for two hours every Friday so Muslims can pray without being bothered by tourists.

The Egyptian Museum was our next stop – one of the world’s great storehouses of history which, regrettably, looks like an old storehouse. The building’s tired, dingy interior and the hap-hazard way in which the riches of history are assembled and displayed under inadequate lighting does not do justice to these ancient relics. Most of the building is not even air conditioned and it’s not unusual to see someone faint from the heat.

The museum is divided into three parts, representing Egypt’s Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. The first floor is devoted to the earliest finds of the Old Kingdom, dating back over 5,000 years, while the most fascinating treasures are housed on the second floor - a collection made up of loot taken from the tomb of Tutankhamen, an Egyptian monarch who still captivates the modern world.

Over 6,000 pieces recovered from the young king’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor – he died when he was just 18 - are displayed in the museum. Many other treasures were taken by grave robbers and early archeologists and never recovered.

The most elaborate of Tutankhamen’s burial collection is housed in a well-guarded air conditioned glass room – the only other room in the museum that has air con is the one where mummies are displayed – and consists of the king’s priceless golden treasures. Also on display are the three golden boxes in which Tutankhamen’s coffin was found along with his burial mask.

“Tutankhamen was a Barrack Obama look-alike,” says Heba, who leads us to a statue of the young king whose head is rising from a lotus plant. “When the U.S. president visited the museum (2009) and saw this statue which emphasis Tutankhamen’s rather large ears, Obama told his guide, ‘hey look, that’s me.’ ”

The room of mummies contains the remains of many pharaohs and queens, the most amazing of which is Ramses II, one of the longest living Egyptian kings who ruled over his land for over 60 years and left a legacy of many great temples before dying at the age of 96. Wisps of grey and red hair are still visible sticking out from his well preserved skull of the king who fathered over 100 children.

The embalming ceremony, where the body was prepared for mummification, is also explained in gruesome detail. Some of the instruments used to remove a pharaoh’s vital organs – the liver and kidneys were always buried separately – were also unearthed during archeological digs and are now displayed at the museum, which attracts about 4,500 people a day. The most disturbing instrument is the one used to “scramble the brains,” says Heba, who goes on to say “the embalmer, wearing a jackal’s mask – the god of death – would then remove the liquefied brain tissue through the navel cavity.”

Another slow cab ride takes us to the main market in Old Cairo, known as Khan el Khailily, which dates back to the 14th century, when only a hotel stood on the site. Before entering the labyrinth of streets that make up the vibrant market, Heba points to a majestic mosque sitting on the opposite side of a charming park and identifies it as the Hussein Mosque, one of the most important to Muslims.

“Legend has it that the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed lies beneath the mosque but no one can say for sure,” says Heba. “However, every year pilgrims come here and they close the streets for a few days so people can celebrate the grandson.”

The market is one of the cleanest we’ve toured in the Middle East and the shopkeepers are less aggressive than most in these parts. However, if you’re looking for authentic Egyptian souvenirs, Egyptian markets are the last place you should look, according to our guide.

“They (the shopkeepers) tell you they are authentic but trust me I’ve seen them remove the ‘Made in China’ stickers. Authentic Egyptian antiques would cost 100 times what the vendors here charge,” she says.

On our way to our final stop, the historic Khan el Khalili restaurant located deep inside the market, Heba tells us Cairo is the hottest city in the Middle East. And she wasn’t talking about the heat. Only Beirut’s nightlife can compete with Cairo’s, whose River Nile cornishe (waterfront) is lined with fixed cruise ships that have been turned into restaurants and casinos – the latter only open to foreigners. Cairo is also home to the world famous Buddha Bar, a trendy, high-end restaurant/club with the Middle Eastern flavour.

Over a coffee at the Khan el Khalili restaurant, named in honour of Egypt’s Nobel Laureate who frequented the tastefully decorated establishment whose private dining rooms are among the most sought after in the city, Heba now sees my excitement for Cairo and reminds me: “See, I told you would learn to love it. And it only took a few hours. You are a quick learner.”