cairo, my love

APRIL 2: PARIS TO HURGHADA TO CAIRO

first impressions:
-egyptian men are quick to fall in love! i was proposed to twice before i even left the airport.
-no one in the world, including the egyptians, knows where the barbados is. our friend orien is from the barbados and we were stopped for two hours at immigration because they didn't believe it was a country. as if someone (with bad intentions, or not) would make up a passport with a fake country?!
-eyptians are a loud people - they shout at one another across rooms and down halls, they laugh heartily and they are generally very expressive
-the landscape is bright - the desert, the mud and brick houses, the constant sunshine
-the red sea is one of the most beautiful bodies of water i have ever seen and it is a stark contrast to the dirt-dry landscape it borders
-men dominate public spaces. very few women were in coffee shops or on the shopping streets and even fewer were working
-egyptian muslims are a very religious people. in a very pious and respectable and endearing way.
-the streets are very littered in some places, other places are very clean
-i was surprised to see wind turbines - a whole lot of them - along the red sea
-EVERYTHING is under construction. i imagine this is because there isn't a lot of money in the country so they have to start working with what they have and build on to it as they have the money. but i don't really understand...
-egyptian music makes me smile!
-i love falafel!!
-i also love sheesha!!
-roads seems like more of a suggestion than a requirement - there are paths everywhere through the desert

APRIL 3: SAQQARA, MEMPHIS, GIZA

WOW are egyptian people friendly!

our guide and our driver picked us up from the hotel lobby and walked us to our van. on our drive to saqqara (which is a farming community) we saw donkeys pulling 'trailers' and people walking with carts. it was such a simple, sustainable way of life. i felt a bit envious, and i wondered how we can make that simplicity available to people in the states again. on the other hand, the traffic is terrifying!!! imagine a herd of bulls all trying to get into a pen at the same time. got it?! that is what the traffic is like in egypt! except that the cars never touch, of course. there are no lines on the road, there is no pre-determined number of lanes, and i am sure everyone drives with one hand on the wheel and the other hand on the horn. or maybe one hand on the gear shift and the other on the horn! i have a video of us making our way down the street and i'm sure you will not believe your eyes. donkeys, bicycles, trucks... everyone edging their way forward and people walking across the street between them. and i only saw two accidents the whole time i was there. if you would believe it, they were both in places where there weren't many cars at all!

egypt is dry. dry, dry, dry. bet you wouldn't have guessed that! my hair dried in about ten minutes (it usually takes a few hours) and no matter how much water i drank i only had to use the bathroom once per day. yes, mom, i was drinking plenty of h2o. ;)

anyway, saqqara was a wonderful first site to visit. it is an ancient burial ground -- the site of the first step pyramid along with 16 other pyramids. here we learned why the first pyramid was built, an interesting evolution. kings used to be buried in deep shafts. above this shaft there used to be a "bench" of stones to mark the tomb. kings hired people to dig the shafts, decorate the shafts and build the benchmarks, if you will, while they were ruling. well, king djoser (2667-2648 BC) wanted his people to be able to see his "bench" from the town -- it had to be tall so he asked imhotep to design a series of benches, one on top of the other, in descending size. thus, the step pyramid was born. neat, huh?!

next, we visited memphis, the ancient capital of lower egypt. we visited the open air museum and then went for lunch. on our way to giza, we stopped by a papyrus shop. perhaps i am ignorant, but i had no idea how amazing papyrus is... in case you are in the same boat i will explain the plant and its paper because i was blown away. at the end of the day, it is still one of my favorite things i saw in egypt. first of all, papyrus is a marsh plant (a sedge if you want to know), a triangular stalk at the top of which there is a green willow-like flower blossom. when you peel the thin green rind off you are left with a white pith, a foam-like material. in order to release the starch (which will be useful later) you use a mallet and a rolling pin to pound and roll the strips. these flattened strips are then left to soak in water for 6 days, changing the water as frequently as you like - the less often you change it the darker the papyrus paper will appear. when you take the strips out of the water you lay them out one-by-one, on top of each other, in a weaving pattern. the starch that was pounded out of the plant now acts as a natural glue to hold the paper together. this woven sheet is put under a press to dry for the next 6 days. after six days, it is left in the sun for an hour. now you have papyrus paper!

okay, doesn't sound that fantastic?! at this point we were asked to wash a piece of papyrus like we were hand-washing a t-shirt. we submerged and scrubbed the paper and took it out and rung it dry. it was totally unmarred. after another hour in the sun it would be good as new! next, we each wrote our name on a dry piece of papyrus. he took one finger, dipped it into the water bucket and used his wet finger like an eraser! so if a transcriber or artist makes a mistake they can undo it quickly. a third piece of paper was brought out and he showed us that it is water proof - this is why they could make papyrus boats, because water can't penetrate it! finally, he took hold of a strip and started to tear it away from the sheet. he did this several times, and then showed us that if you use a little water you can repair the papyrus because of the starch. what an amazing plant?! who do you think was the first guy to think, "huh, maybe that plant could be a new kind of canvas." unreal.

finally, we went to the pyramids of giza and the sphinx. very impressive, to say the least, although the sphinx was significantly smaller than i imagined. it was amazing to see the great pyramid - the only remaining monument of the seven wonders of the ancient world! i was astounded to see how close it was to the city, though. it is on a cliff, and just at the bottom of the cliff is the city. not at all how i imagined it. it was interesting to see how the site is dealing with tourism; there are policemen on camelback and guards in traditional clothing but there are also tour guides in western clothing and young men selling postcards and statues.

when we got back from our full-day excursion we were starving. we asked the hotel owner to point us toward an egyptian-style restaurant. we went to GAD. we had three sandwhiches each (one with babaganoush, one with falafel and one with refried beans) and we shared a pickled vegetable appetizer. all of this cost 2 euros. total. 50 centimes for a big dinner. i love egypt! because it was a type of free-for all restaurant, we were struggling to figure out who wanted to take our order while we were being oogled by plenty of men. fortunately, we met a man who spoke perfect english so he helped us order and then took us to a cafe next door to eat our food and order drinks. unfortunately, he invited himself to sit with us and ordered himself an apple sheesha. he was a bit awkward, but he was teaching us a lot about egyptian culture and he ordered us two different egyptian drinks (which we continued to order for the following two weeks) hibiscus tea and sahlab, a coconut drink. in the end, he was a wanker (i live with a brit!) because he sneakily made us pay for our drinks, his sheesha and a significant tip. it only cost us four euros, in the end, but we were not taken advantage of again after that.

on the walk home we figured out what we had been hearing. five times per day the muslim people pray. the mosques have men praying into loudspeakers and we could hear it wherever we went.

APRIL 4: CAIRO

because we were on vacation, we took the opportunity to sleep in! after we got up, bathed, and enjoyed a 12th-story, balcony breakfast, we headed out to explore the city on our own. we were headed for the nile, but had a young egyptian man tailing us almost immediately. we lost him by stepping into a carpet shop and walking out a door on the opposite street. we were getting closer to the nile when we stopped at a tourist agency to read an advertisement board about a sailboat ride on the river. two of the agents came out to greet us and we refused to speak to them. eventually, we started chatting because we wanted to bargain with them. but in the end we spent about two hours with them drinking tea, sharing jokes and magic tricks, and talking about the meaning of life. great guys. sabry and aladdin. we booked a dinner cruise with their company, made plans to meet after the cruise, and they got us a taxi to the markets. we went to khan el-khalili, the most amazing bazaar i have ever been to. there is so much CRAP there, but the atmosphere is amazing. young men are pushing HEAVY carts through the crowd and somehow everyone manages to get out of the way before of being run over. waiters are walking through the streets with trays of tea but there are no cafes to be seen. i have no idea where they came from! young boys are auctioning goods, standing on piles of the things they are trying to sell. nothing has a price - everything is up for bargaining. they sell food, clothing, statues, lotion, tools, toys, etc. and people are trying their best to sell you things you certainly don't want. or at least to sell you themselves. some of the things we heard:
"today everything is 99% off"
"shakira!"
"if you come back today, you don't pay"
"spice girls!!"
"i don't know what you want, but i have what you need"
"help me take your money"
"you dropped something.... my heart"
"i have discount for beautiful girl"
and my all-time favorite:
"for you, i kill my wife"

after the market we went home to clean up for our dinner cruise. we were picked up at the hotel again and taken to the pier. we had another buffet dinner (practically every meal was a buffet. ah, the death of me!) after dinner there was a live band which player for a a belly dancer and then a sufi dancer. the sufi dancer was awesome!! he turned for about 25 minutes! at the end of his show he took me up to the stage and i got to try it. thank mom, for the ballet lessons. i did alright!! perhaps the best part of the cruise though, was getting off the boat. we had stalled on the top deck long enough that we were the last ones off the boat and the next group to get on was a wedding party! so we go to see a beautiful egyptian wedding, women dressed in their most beautiful scarves and men in suits, all moving to the live music and watching the dancers.

back at the car, the driver took us from the cruise boat to a bar where sabry and aladdin were waiting for us. we had some beer and appetizers before we headed to a club, a very nice club, mind you, until 4:30am. in egypt they bargain their taxi fares before they get in the cab, so sabry determined our fare would be 15 egyptian pounds back to our hotel. unfortunately, when we got home he demanded 30. we all got out of the car and started walking away. he got out of the car and walked after us, yelling and waving his hands, saying in broken english that he would call the police. i decided to deal with this man. i stopped and said in broken arabic that we should call the police. well, as fate would have it, there was a police officer on the street. but, as fate would also have it, he didn't speak english and had no interest in our dispute. soon we were surrounded by seven other egyptian men, all telling me i owed the taxi driver more money. i argued in my best arabic. imagine! did i mention that i also hate bargaining. being a privileged white woman i hate to pay people less than the value of the service or good. in the end, i paid 5 more pounds, for a total of 20. he threw the money on the ground and i walked away. eesh.

APRIL 5: CAIRO, CITY TOUR

a few hours later we woke up for our guided city tour. we reserved this tour with the same guys and they gave us one of their favorite guides, hebah. turns out, she was my favorite too! she was a doll. she met us at the hotel in the morning and we went straight to the cairo egyptian museum. founded in just 1835, it houses over 120,000 objects from the pre-historic era to the greco-roman period. so it is like the louvre, too rich to see everything in one visit. so we saw the highlights. first, we saw the tutankhamun (1333-1323BC) section -- he was a boy-king who ruled in the eighteenth dynasty of egypt. so he lived a while ago. and his tomb was just discovered in 1922, exceptionally well-preserved. an amazing exhibit. the second half of the museum tour was a whirlwind of history including names of pharaohs, kings, queens, gods, goddesses, stones, and hieroglyphics translated to arabic and then to english. hebah was one of our best teachers of the egyptian arabic language!

lunch was yet another buffet. but this one was on a docked boat on the nile. i felt like a spoiled queen. too good to be true!

after lunch we went to the citadel, a beautiful monument in the city. inside is the muhammad ali mosque the mosque of al-nasir muhammad and the gawhara palace. we were humbled to take our shoes off and walk into the muhammad ali mosque. here, hebah really shared a lot of her personal story and taught us a lot about the importance of religion to her as a muslim woman and to egyptians as a muslim nation.

at some point during the day, hebah and i made a real connection - we walked everywhere together talking about culture, travel, religion, traditions, education, language, everything.

after the citadel we went to old cairo. here we saw the hanging church (built on ruins of the babylon fortress), ben ezra synagogue and st sergious church (where the virgin mary and the baby jesus are said to have taken refuge at the end of their journey to egypt). at the end of this holy street we got back in our modern van and drove back to reality. hebah had a surprise for us! she took us back to khan el-khalili (markets) to look meet the artist of her necklace which we had complimented all day. we spent almost six hours with this man and we all had a life-changing experience, if i can be so bold to speak for all four of us. i will have to write more about this on a fresh note...

we spent our last night in cairo exploring... looking for fruit, really. unfortunately, we went home with a bottle of lotion and some peanuts. we discovered a new part of town and, in turn, that young men who are selling goods illegally on the streets are a riot to watch when the police arrive. they must think the police don't know what is happening when two men take ahold of each side of a long board and start running down the street, shouting for people to watch out. other men try to thrown a cover over their display tables and walk down an alley, carefully so as not to disturb the layout. the smartest ones are selling out of their cars, but then they must be the richest ones as well.