Our friend Maryclaire’s boyfriend Mostapha arranged a surprise birthday cruise for her this last weekend. I took a break from writing papers and we headed out to see Cairo from a different perspective: from the Nile.
Jose Cuervo + Apple Juice? We always laugh: only in Cairo does it make sense to mix apple juice or mango juice with tequila. 
Some of the sights along the way.
Wow, I took this picture to show the maize fields and agricultural village on an island in the Nile, surrounded by a super urban atmosphere. However, looking at the picture now I can’t get over the visible brown hazy layer over the city compared with the blue sky high above.
Boy with his donkey and ox underneath the Ring Road overpass I take to and from AUC’s new campus.
With Maryclaire, Mostapha and Ian (another ASU Fulbrighter).
It was a fun afternoon/evening! Even if I did have to limit my intake of Jose Cuervo + apple juice in order to write a coherent papers afterwards.
When I was young, I used to collect National Geographic magazines. When my mom and grandmother would go hunting for bargains at garage sales, I would aim straight for the boxes of old magazines, digging for National Geographics.
The best collection of National Geographics were at the Pflugerville Public Library… at the time, it was a nothing but a small old house. I think this might have been my first library card, too. I found it again last summer while we were packing and throwing stuff away before moving to Cairo. It’s yellow cardstock with my name typed in with a typewriter and a metal clasp with a three digit number. The National Geographics in the Pflugerville Public Library took up an entire wall in the small house and I used to dig through them for reference material for papers in my science and social studies classes.
As I collected my own National Geographics, I would sit for hours, reading about different animals, feeding my love of killer whales. The pictures would take me to different places in the world, as I would stare, fascinated at the photos of places and people I had never seen and never expected to see. I would carefully unfold the maps, wishing there was enough room on my walls for all of them, then carefully fold them back up and slide them into their respective magazines.
Recently, while trying to cultivate my refugee students own spirit of inquiry, I pulled out the stack of old National Geographics that the school had on a shelf and I told them to start hunting for interesting science articles. As I thumbed through the magazines myself, however, I came across a familiar sight: saguaro cacti adorning a hillside. The old article on the Sonoran Desert was full of familiar sites: Speedway Boulevard in Tuscon, the dance troupe of old women in Sun City, a saguaro cactus being delivered to a new home in Mesa.
I stood there, not dreaming of a far away land, but instead missing the place I call home.
Where are you from?
Its a pretty common question foreigners get here. From cabbies, from the barber, from the touts. From other expats over a beer at Horreya. From the hoards of school children on field trips to Luxor Temple, more interested in getting photos with the white guy with freckles and the goofy hat than the ancient ruins.
“Ana min Amrika.” I’m from the United States.
Responses after this from Egyptians typically incorporate at least one of the following three items:
- Ah! America! Good people, good people. This is undoubtedly the most common response. Most Americans in Cairo know that our government’s Middle East policies are not appreciated here. Most of those do not agree with U.S. government policies in the Middle East themselves. But most Egyptians recognize the difference between the individual citizens and the people running the country.
- Obama! This started well before the election results were in. There seems to be a pessimistic optimism in the air… a hope that Obama will help make things different in the region, but a certain reluctance to hope. Still, there is so much excitement that things will change.
- Where in America? I have a cousin in Nebraska, in Omaha. This one comes up surprisingly often. Again, I see it as an attempt to connect… to have a common base. The world is a big place and knowing someone who live in someone else’s country is a like a little proxy. I’ve only been to New York twice, but I still ask where in New York people are from and will respond either, “You’re from the city? Yeah, I have a friend who grew up in Queens” or “Upstate, huh? I have a friend who is from Olean”
Whenever someone gets curious and starts asking a lot of questions (Why are you here? Where in Cairo do you live? How long are you going to be here? Do you like Egypt?), I am reminded of the curiousity of my father-in-law. He meets someone new and within 10 minutes knows their life history, what their father does for a living, and can list three names of people he knows from their hometown.
When Lusenda and I were waiting in the train station in Luxor, waiting for the train back to Cairo, I was approached by a shoe-shine guy. He first looked at my shoes, but alas, they were simply worn sneakers not worthy of a shine. Instead of moving on, however, he smiled and started asking questions. Where are you from? Do you like Luxor? I tell him, I’m from America, I live in Cairo, This is my sister.
10 minutes later, he is still making the rounds, looking for someone to shine their shoes. He approaches an American guy who has sat down next to me and starts asking him the same: Where are you from? The guy shruggs. You’re an American? Maybe, he says in Arabic.
WTF? How asinine can you be? Are you really such an asshole that you can’t tell the shoe-shine guy what country you are from? And, by your refusal, he infers (correctly) that you are an American. Congratulations, you have successfully reinforced yet another stereotype.
I just don’t get it.
There’s a section of Cairo called Islamic Cairo that’s absolutely fabulous to wander around in. Built over the course of a few hundred years by various rulers, it’s layers upon layers of history, mosques, schools and Amir palaces from over a 1000 years ago.
All subsumed in the current bustling insanity that is Cairo of the present.
We were really excited to crash Tegan’s Islamic Architecture class field trip in order to actually have an idea of what we were looking at. Her teacher kind of has an outrageous amount of knowledge in her head. Here’s the group inside Sultan Hassan mosque – built around 1350s.
And outside the mosque/school:
Tegan’s teacher took on a sort of walking tour…she lead us through alleyways and neighborhoods where we’d suddenly stumble upon (well, it felt like we were stumbling upon them but her Professor knew where we were at all times) a palace, or a mosque, or a school.
Here’s an Amir Palace that is currently surrounded by a pile of trash.
Interestingly, most of the stuff in Cairo that’s really ‘old’ is at least ten feet below current street level. Ancient cities are often referred to as Jebel something or other. Jebel = mountain … and many cities, over the centuries, become buried under the trash of later cities and people in the same place. Sometimes, hills out in the middle of nowhere here in the Middle East are actually buried ancient cities. Anyways, we’d be walking at street level, then go down a story or two of steps to look at some site or other. FASCINATING.
Walking around Islamic Cairo.
The next picture is of a great 18th century water distribution place. It was considered an act of piety, ‘back in the day’ to build a deep well and distribute clean water to the people. There’s an inside joke amongst our friends that is probably too difficult to describe here…but I feel I can’t bring this water distribution place up without mentioning it…So…here’s a go at it. Sakiat al Sawy is named to reflect the same idea…the idea of a religious sense of spreading culture to the masses through music, art and performance just as these older places spread water to the people. And our friend Lillie had explained this concept to me at the Cairo Jazz Festival. But I didn’t really connect it with early Islam…or maybe I just forgot…so when we met up to walk around Islamic Cairo with her (we abandoned the Islamic architecture class midday and struck out as a smaller group with Lillie)…I told her about this place, all excited because I thought it was a cool concept…and she responded like “i TOLD you about this last night!”. Which became the joke. For the whole day. “Hey, did I tell you about these water distribution places…?”
This doesn’t sound really funny at all here. Sorry.
Anyways, here’s the top of the water distribution building.
Lusenda just outside a mosque. She is pretty.
In an alleyway of one of the modern neighborhoods we were walking in…chickens! And a stray cat.
Fresh eggs for sale:
Outside the walls of the mosque we were going to see, in the middle of the modern neighborhood.
By the way, the Islamic architecture students could tell you all about the style of the minaret and what time period that style of minaret was popular in and etc. I’m sorry. I can’t.
This is the Ibn Tulun mosque. An awesome, beautiful, peaceful mosque. Built in 879 AD. Peaceful and quiet because of a surrounding huge wall, especially meant to cut the noise of the city.
Every arch has a different unique design.
I’m so glad Lusenda visited, for many reasons…but partly because it forced us to get out into this great city and explore beautiful mosques from the past!
I think Justin is really cute, too. But in a different way, of course.
Lusenda’s visit coincided with the Cairo Jazz Festival!
And my favorite band, Wust el Balad, was the closing act of the weekend. We attended the opening and closing concerts, although didn’t make any in the between.
I was super happy to get to see our friend Nada at the opening Riff Band concert.
That’s the Nile to our left! Sakia el Sawy, the venue for most of the Jazz Festival, is built using the bridge over the Nile as a rooftop — and the weather was perfect for the concert.
Nada’s friend, Ryen (I don’t have a pic) who was also at the concert, happens to be an intern in the famous head office of Egyptian Antiquities. Upon finding out Lusenda is really interested in Egyptology, he offered to show her the mummies in the Egyptian museum. And he followed up on that promise a few days later! Needless to say, Lusenda thought he was probably the coolest person she’s met.
A little bit of dancing went down.
Oh, that’s Ryen’s back between us.
A quite a bit of silliness.
Closing night:
We followed up the concert with some delicious feteer at a local cafe with friends. A great night out in Cairo with Lusenda!
Justin and I joined a Fulbright group trip to Siwa Oasis a few weekends ago. It was WONDERFUL. Siwa is one of my favorite places in Egypt, I think. It’s extremely isolated – a paved road was only added in the early 1980s and before then it was a 524km (326 miles) dirt road for vehicles to bump along to the nearest town – or an 8 day camel caravan ride before then. Siwa is only 50km (31 miles) from the Libyan border, with the Great Sand Sea starting just west of Siwa and leading into Libya.
The people in Siwa speak Siwi until they enter school at age 6, a berber tongue. According to some Siwans we chit chatted with, they all speak Siwi at home and amongst each other, but Arabic in schools and for trade. They call themselves Bedouin when speaking in English but I’m not sure exactly what that means.
Siwa is very much an Oasis, with ground water just a few feet under the surfact, and lage lakes. It’s amazing to see the line between lush olive and date trees, then the Great Sand Sea — desert with NOTHING growing in it.
Siwa, despite it’s isolation, was dragged into World War II when the Europeans decided to fight their war in the North African desert. The Siwans were forced, by this war that had NOTHING to do with them, to abandon their homes and move into Ptolemy era tombs for shelter -kicking the mummies out and moving their families in.
This area of North Africa is known to still be littered with mines. As is the Libyan border. Justin was reading about the Dakar rally, a multiple day Paris to Dakar race through the desert which went through Egypt in 2003. Although the path for the race was supposedly cleared of mines, one team still hit one. The north coast of Egypt is filled with resorts for rich Cairenes to escape to when the summer months are at their most terrible in Cairo – and each build requires demining before-hand.
Our entire trip was VERY COLD…way colder than we were expecting.
On our way, just two hours into our 9 hour drive to Siwa, we stopped by the El Alamein military museum within sight of the Medditteranean devoted to WWII era artifacts near the cemeteries of Europeans who died there. It was a pretty lame/hysterical museum with horrible translations and wierd manequins acting out scenes of the war. There’s a German, British and Italian cemetery. Here’s a picture just outside the museum.
You can see a few tanks in there. British, Italian and German tanks/military trucks.
Here’s a picture, from a distance, of one of the El Alamein cemeteries.
We then headed through the desert to a cove near Mersa Matrouh, on the Meditteranean, where a tour guide the Fulbright office always hires, and his crew, cooked us lunch on Coleman stoves. A pasta dish, fried chicken, and tomatoe/cucumber salad.
Representing ASU!
There were some strange military bunkers off in the distance past the coves.
You can see storm clouds in the distance. Yes, STORM clouds. It rained ALL the way between Mersa Matrouh and Siwa. A hard, long rain. We found out, it’s the kind of rain they only get once every 60 years or so. It was the wierdest thing to drive through some of the deadest desert I’ve ever seen, with rain pouring down. This is coming from a girl who grew up in the American Southwestern Sonora desert. The Sonora desert is a lush rainforest compared to this desert. Actually, the Sonora desert is a fascinatingly diverse desert with plant and animal species — I miss it! This dead desert here in North African freaks me out sometimes.
The rain continued, lightly, on a desert safari we took into the Great Sand Sea. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. The four-wheel-drive truck drivers are super skilled, and more than once we were catching air and having our stomachs drop as we flew up and down sand dunes.
The rain slowed down as the day warmed up.
All of these deserts were under water millions of years ago.
Justin did a little sandboarding.
I did a little sand sledding
The wind was blowing stinging sand all day long -Ended up with sand in our ears, noses, eyes, mouth…
Here’s sunset with a sandstorm blowing in.
Justin trying to walk with the wind blowing crazily.
The day ended with dips in a natural hotspring amidst blowing sand. The view from the hostspring with the desert in the distance.
Back in Siwa – it’s a very cool town.
The Shali Fortress is in the center of town. Starting in 1200AD the Siwans all lived in this fortress, each family to a room – farming the lands outside of the fortress during the day but locking the gates at night. The fortress is made from the salty mud of the area. Salty because the water evaporates so quickly leaving most of the lakes highly salinized. In the 1950s large rains hit and the fortress, already large with too many stories and worn down, began to ‘melt’ and could no longer house the city.
Standing in the Shali Fortress – having climbed up the ‘melted’ ruins.
The lower edges of the Shali Fortress, where Siwans still live.
Donkey carts are THE way to get around in Siwa. It was so strange for me to see little boys, no more than five or six, poking the donkey with the stick while his Mom or much older sister sat behind him all bundled up in the Siwa woman style of dress which covers their entire body and face. We guessed pretty early on that gender roles strictly required only men to drive the donkey carts. Even if that ‘man’ is a five year old boy.
I didn’t take any photos of the women, Siwans are particularly touchy about it, I don’t blame them. There are hardly women around in public anyways.
Just around the central part of Siwa town.
I love this doorway: I should ask someone or look it up all the words but I’m not in the mood so someone may need to comment on this post to correct me. At a glance, this writing says along the lines of, a section of the Koran “In the name of God, the Kind, the Merciful…” and then below it starts with “A thousand congratulations…”
Another spring Justin swam in (it was cold and I would’ve only felt comfortable wearing a shirt on top of my bathing suit so I just dipped my feet in)
We took a drive out to the abandoned village of Zaytoun.The village was abandoned in the 1950s, due to water shortage problems I think (although we were also told it was a plague?). The village was built around an Ancient Egyptian temple, which was used as a kitchen. There was great stuff still lying around the village and many of the roofs were just beginning to cave in.
I like bones. It’s true. Ever since my summer archaeology internship in Boston which I spent analyzing animal bones — teeth specifically — yep. I might be just a tad wierd. There is more than one picture of me like the below in different places with different bones.
The mosque – soo cool!
The olive grinding area to make olive oil. Hence the name given the village: Zaytoun which means olive. The mechanism would’ve been pulled by donkeys.
We took donkey carts out to watch the sunset by the lake. Our donkey cart driver was 15 year old Mohamed (I didn’t get a picture of him) who enjoyed practicing English that he learns at school. He informed us that the fish in the lakes are crazy looking with big eyes – and that the government doesn’t let them fish. And he also told us how the schools in Siwa are gender-seperated. And we also compared Siwi words to Arabic words to English words. He still goes to school but drives the tourists around in the evenings with the donkey cart. He was beating the crap out of his donkey to make it go — kind of hard to watch — but we didn’t say anything. Here we are on the donkey cart.
The boys/men driving the carts had brought drums along and sat in a circle singing and dancing and drumming to pass the time. A few other young guys from town had ridden bikes out to the area by the lake where we were just to hang out and pass the time – so it seems they were all enjoying themselves while we tourists sat around and gaped at the lake and sunset in the middle of the desert.
Magnoun is growing so fast, it’s incredible to us. I’ve only ever really watched one other creature, day-to-day, growing from infancy to adulthood — Sadie my familie’s basset hound. I swear, though, that Magnoun is growing faster than she did. Either that or I just didn’t appreciate how fast Sadie was growing since I was like 11 or 12 at the time.
Here’s what Magnoun looked like when we first brought him home.
And here’s what he looks like today, one month later.
Same food dish, one month later.
I caught him mid-blink during that second shot. It’s only one month difference between those pictures! Don’t mind the dirty dish – he just finished some wet food this morning. We’ve a bit of a conundrum trying to a raise a healthy kitten – the cat food here is ridiculously expensive because it’s imported. And most of it’s really crappy stuff. As in, it creates a lot of literal crap (sorry). From him. Because it’s such poor quality food. But the soft foods are higher quality therefore more expensive…so we’re supplementing his diet with a tablespoon of soft food morning and night. Also, the rag is under his water dish due to the fact that his recent obsession is to play with his water – smacking it with his huge paws and watching it fly. I hope he grows out of this stage soon. And the string and toilet paper roll are toys — hey, we’re budget oriented around here.
Anyways, he’s getting big. His face no longer looks like a kitten fact. And his legs are a mile long. And his markings change daily. I swear, EVERY morning when I wake up, he looks different.
Here are some more pictures!
He has no shame
Noticed I was taking photos, and only woke up enough to STRETCH
And then fall asleep again
We were having dinner with some friends last night when Tim called to share the news, “Did you hear? A bomb went off in the Khan.”
By “the Khan” he was referring to Khan al-Khalili, the touristy/historic market. Its one of the places you “have to go” when you visit Cairo. The narrow streets are filled with kitchy souvenirs, while shopkeepers and touts call to you in twelve different languages.
A few weeks ago, I went with my friends Lillie and Jon to a performance behind Hussein mosque. Lillie took us because she had been to this cafe years ago. Every Thursday night, the cafe is packed while a group of musicians plays traditional Egyptian religious songs. To get to the area by taxi, you can say “Khan al-Khalili” but then they will know you are a tourist and will ask for tourist rates. But tell the taxi driver “Mazgid al-Hussein, insha’allah” and they will take you to the exact same place, but for a fair price. There is a plaza in front of the mosque, usually crowded with tourists gawking and Egyptians visiting the mosque. Cafes line one side of the plaza. Touts try getting any foreigners to sit at their cafe or visit their shop.
It was around 11pm and we hurried past the cafes, but I noted how much more beautiful this plaza was at night. There was an energy in their air with all of the people bustling about. We weaved our way down Hussein Street, which runs along the west wall of the mosque, with the Khan on our left. We hung a right past the mosque, down a street that few tourists see. The small cafe was an authentic ahwa, Egyptian style, not like the Westernized cafes on the square. It was packed and we were hustled in by the proprietor, so excited to have foreigners that he insisted we sit at the front. Lillie wanted to come here because this is her passion. She is an ethnomusicologist, studying Arabic violin. The notes and in Arab music are different from the Western tradition, and the unique scales (modes, maqamat) are bound to particular styles of playing and melodic lines. I get it, in theory, but I can’t follow it. I can’t identify or classify the different modes, but Lillie can. She had been here three years prior and her research mentor knew the main singer personally and had written volumes on this particular cafe.
Between songs, the audience members would hand bills to the singer, but this was not the “stuff it in the hat” kind of tip that an American might expect. Instead, the singer paused with every 10LE note he received and carefully added it to the stack of folded bills in his hand, while launching into an oration of blessings and gratitiude wished upon the benefactor. Further, he knew each person by name and so each blessing was personalized. I would not have known this if not for Lillie and Jon, as my Arabic is nowhere near being able to decipher such things. And so, for a few minutes, bill after bill would make its way into his hand and he would take time after each one to wish for blessings upon its prior owner, while the audience clapped and the drummer played a riff. The singer did not hesitate to make the protocol clear to us, telling us that we needed to give him money. But this was not until after he had already procured our names and where we were from so that, we too, could have a personalized blessing (mentioning Obama, of course). Lillie recognized some of the men from the last time she was there, citing this as being an Egyptian “Cheers,” where each Thursday night these men come together for good music and good company. We left late, at nearly 2am, walking past the cafes and the touts in the square, and grabbed a taxi back downtown.
When Tim called about the bombing, we quickly turned on the television and started opening websites. Reports were (and still are) vague. They have varied from a grenade being lobbed from a hotel balcony to an explosive placed under a bench to a bomb lobbed from a motorcycle. They’ve cited between 1 and 19 deaths. BBC made it sound like it was targeted toward tourists, while the Al Jazeera article sounded like the mosque was targeted. We passed the computers around to let everyone email family to inform of our safety.
Today, Facebook statuses of friends here convey the range of feelings of both expats and Egyptians:
- Crystal is fine, for those who heard about the al Hussien bombings.
- Carl is safe.
- Nada cannot believe what happened at Khan el Khalili!!!!!!!! Why?!
- Brandy is safe, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the bombing in Khan al-Khalili.
- Lillie is safe and thinking about those who were not.
- Mido is Hate the fuckers who tried to bomb EGYPT… Whatever u’ll do Egypt will be always safe & strong!!!
- George is safe and sound, though he was just in Hussein Square two days ago, which is kind of surreal. But Cairo is still very, very safe.
- Reham has a conspiracy theory to explain the bombing!
- Jamie is safe and sound.
- Joshua is ok.
At this point, no group has claimed responsibility, so it is hard to judge a motive. Though the Western media has implied that the attack was targeted at foreigners (this would be hard to deny), in the past such violence toward tourists has been used for domestic political means. Attacks on tourist sites during the 1990s were largely an attempt pressure the Egyptian government, since tourism is such a huge revenue source for Egypt. For the past 40 years, Egypt has been in a perpetual “state of emergency” and there is a bill in parliament to scale that back next month, leaving suspicion that this attack was timed to influence that decision. Some say that this is about Gaza. At this point, it is all rumors, so I don’t know.
This I’m pretty sure of, though: Thursday night, at that little cafe behind Hussein mosque, a group of old friends will come together for tea, shisha, and music.
First off, we’re all a bit shaken – Cairo is shaken – by the bomb explosion at Khan el Khalili earlier tonight. A woman was killed, several were injured. Anyone who has visited Cairo has been to Khan el Khalili, it’s one of my favorite places in Cairo, particularly the back areas leading into Islamic Cairo. The market (next to a mosque built in 1154) has been around for hundreds of years and only recently (last hundred years maybe?) the front area morphed into a tourist trap. Many of the sales stalls have been in families for multiple generations. The market is where all of us expats go to buy gifts for people back home. I have favorite stalls that I’ve frequented and where I know to get good prices – my favorite silver shop, my favorite scarf shop (where my Dad has shared tea with the shop owners while my Mom, sister and I browsed scarves for HOURS), shops where I purchased hookahs and shishas for friends, a fabulous glass-works shop with beautiful Christmas-tree ornaments which I’ve taken more than three different visiting groups into…
I had intended to write this post before the bombing, and feel it’s especially appropriate now. Whenever violence like this happens, it clouds a persons perspectives of a place. Below, I’ll try to share just a little bit of my day…my Cairo…
Tonight, Justin and I had a few friends over for a spring-break planning session — we’re going to Kenya with six others. We were going to cook the crew lentil soup and green beans, and Justin needed some onions and we needed bread, so I ran to the food/market/fruit/vegetable street. There’s a street near our flat, lined with vendors selling all sorts of vegetables, fruit and bread. Some are established with prices per kilo posted. Some are just donkey/horse drawn carts that come and go daily, with a scale and unmarked prices. I’ve heard some people call the street Suleman…I don’t know why, that’s not the actual name of the street so maybe I’ve heard wrong.
Rarely do I take photos on the street, we’re always trying to belong in our neighborhood, and taking pictures of ‘normal’ everyday things sort of makes one the outsider. Anyways, Justin took this picture last weekend as we were walking to grab some Yemeni food (delicious!) with a few friends. Since we were already a group of three foreigners (joke runs that more than one foreigner creates a ‘thing’) pulling out our cameras couldn’t do any harm. I’d like to get some more photos, this one doesn’t quite do the street justice.
A few of the vendors remembered me from last week so commenced a discussion of the fact that I’m from the state of Arizona. And when I reminded him I’m married to the man who told him last week we were from Arizona his friends proceeded to guffaw and pound him teasingly on the back. Sigh. A five minute conversation with a man selling me garlic is considered of enough romantic interest that it’s worth his friends teasing him when they find out I’m married. Double sigh. But still, friendly people with beautiful vegetables and fruit…I can ignore the annoying sexual overtones my foreign female face produce today.
Get this, the only garlic I could find is imported from CHINA. Weird. 2LE so $0.36.
Onions were 3.50LE for a kilo so $0.63.
A stack of Egyptian flat bread, baladi bread. 2LE so $0.36.
A kilo of baladi bananas, my favorite bananas in the whole wide world 2.50LE or $0.45.
Total of 10LE for todays shopping, or $1.79.
What I didn’t get pictures of was the kilo of bright red tomatoes that cost 1.00LE for all six tomatoes or $0.18 and the green beans. But I didn’t buy those today so they weren’t included in my hasty photography before Justin began slicing and dicing.
So, here’s just a little piece of my Cairo on this beautiful sunny day.
And here’s a random additional photo – self-portrait cuddled up watching John Adams (the HBO miniseries we’re currently obsessed with).
