Always look on the bright side

Our last day in Cairo is somewhat a of a blur, so I'll only mention the things which stand out in my mind looking back on it.

1.  The Muhammed Ali Mosque, a jewel of a mosque, built in 1830 in a fortress that was built by Saladin.  It was utterly beautiful.  However, it was also utterly, frustratingly difficult trying to get pictures of it.  Our camera simply refused, with the flash, the ceiling was black, without the flash it was blurry, and no amount of settings or modes would change it's mind.








2. Al-Azhar Mosque (of the famed Al-Azhar University)  What I most remember here is the robe I had to put on to go in.  I didn’t mind that so much, I’ve covered up to go into places before, but what amazed me was the robe itself.  They keep a number of robes for women who have to cover up, and the one they gave me was too long.  I'm a tall woman, at 5'10" I never have a problem with something being too long for me, and this robe was a good foot too long!  Which made me wonder exactly why it was kept for women to use, what were they expecting, yetis??  Anyway, here’s a lovely picture of the Al-Azhar mosque.











3. After that, it was lunch in Khan Khalilee, kabobs dipped in tahini, with layered fruit smoothies of banana, strawberry, and mango to wash it down.  There were also some street cats begging and I couldn’t resist feeding them.  Yes, I know, they could have some awful disease, or bite me, but they were cute and I’m always a softie for animals.  Here’s a good picture of the market just around the corner.  We didn’t linger there though since it was so hot and anyway I’d promised Nada I’d do all my shopping with her so she could bargain for me. ;-)




4.  After that, our wonderful tour guide Nervan (I thought it was spelled Nirvana, but it’s spelled Nervan) ran herself ragged trying to find an Egyptian cookbook in English.  We went to four or five places but she did it!  I can’t wait to try it, I’ll post some of the recipes if they’re good.  I have to stop a moment and say kudos to Nervan.  She was a great guide!  Fun, friendly, incredibly knowledgeable, and able to rise to the many challenges that cropped up.  I hope she had a little bit of fun with us, I know we had a lot of fun with her and if we ever go back to Cairo (which we definitely will) we’ll call her for our guide.

Lastly, I have to say we're not going to go on to Jerusalem.  I know we wanted to, but we're both just so exhausted what we really want is to just be in Amman.  There's still lots we want to do here, and this way we'll be able to relax when we like and get to know Rana's family better.

Hanging In There

Ok, ok, I couldn't resist a bad pun.  Yesterday we visited the Hanging Church, a Coptic Christian church, built over one of the sites that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus hid in while they were in Egypt.  Why hanging?  I'm glad you asked that question.  Underneath the church and beside the church is the Babylon fort, despite the name, no one is exactly sure who built it, there's been a lot of debate.  That's where the Holy family was supposed to have hid.  Part of the fort is a good four stories tall and therefore too tall to build a church over, but part is lower, so they just shoved some palm tree planks over it and started building! You'd never realize this when you're walking up to it, but then they have some places (covered with a plastic plank to prevent falling) where you can see down and you realize you're a good twenty or thirty feet off the ground before the church starts!  It was a lovely structure though, all the decoration, the inlay, the carvings, they were all beautiful, as you can see from the pictures. 

From there we went to a number of churches, but Mike and I agree, the Hanging Church was the best.  As for the others, they all kind of blur together.  Two things I gathered: the Holy Family hid in a lot of places in Egypt, and poor St. George was tortured in a lot of places for a very long time.  Call me heretical, but that's enough for me to take away from that tour.  Oh, and we did see a Synagogue that had been a Coptic Church that they think had been a Synagogue.  Let me explain.  When the Muslims came to Egypt, being incredibly fair-minded for the time (the usual practice at that point was random killing and forced conversions) gave the Coptic Christians three options: convert to Islam, leave the country, or pay a special tax.  Not surprisingly, many preferred to pay the tax, but the tax was steep and if you were poor it would be very difficult to pay.  So, the church sold one of its churches to the Jews for them to use as a Synagogue to help raise money to pay the tax.  However, various scholars have insisted that before it was a Coptic Church it was a Synagogue, so no one really knows who is what in there.  Oh, and they didn't allow any pictures so I can't show you. :( 

After that, our guide Nirvana, knowing that we were up for trying some Egyptian food (upset digestive systems notwithstanding)  too us to get some fresh-pressed sugarcane juice.  And boy was it yummy.  Cool, green, sweet but mellow, quite refreshing.  You can see all three of us there enjoying it.  Then it was on to have a Coptic meal (Nirvana herself is a Copt so she was able to talk to us about it).  I'm trying to remember, I think it was called foloosh.  You can see a picture of it on the left.  It was absolutely delicious.  On top are crispy fried onions, so dark we didn't know what they were at first, so delicious we didn't care once we did.  Underneath were layers of black lentils, different kinds of pasta, and rice.  On top you can put on tomato sauce and hot sauce, I did both and wished I had another sugarcane juice to put out the flames! 

As to whether that contributed later to our continued ill-health I cannot say but If it did I don't care, it was delicious. 

Babyface at the Pyramids

Babyface at the Pyramids

Well, it’s official, I have a new nickname.  While at Aqaba, Razan and Nada decided that I had  ‘babyface’ and I figured I could just shrug it off.  Not so.  We hadn’t been with our tour guide Nirvana (who was great) 30 minutes before she said I have a babyface and look like I’m 17.  Since she and I are the same age, 25, I certainly have to disagree but something tells me that if two different sets of people in two different countries have pinned this nickname on me, it’s not something I’ll be able to live down. ;-) 

So yesterday we went to the Egyptian Museum and the Pyramids.  I didn’t have any of the same ethical dilemmas that I did on the river cruise, but I will say one of my predictions have come true: we haven’t talked to a single Egyptian except the hotel staff and our travel guide.  But, after sparing a sigh for that, we had a good time, and our tour guide Nirvana was great, a lot of fun, and extremely knowledgeable.  We did the Egyptian museum first, and it shall always remain in my memory as a blur of hundreds of objects combined with hundreds of facts and the attempt to link the two together.    While going to museums is interesting, reading about someone going to museums is incredibly boring, so I shan’t trifle with you on that score, except to repeat the very uneducated and crass comment I exclaimed on seeing King Tut’s solid gold coffin: “That’s a freakin’ lotta gold!”  What can I say?  Sometimes our true reactions aren’t neat and polished. ;-)

From there we went to the Pyramids.  It was hot.  Really hot.  Dry, pounding heat.  Oh, and there were these huge piles of rock, but they didn’t provide much shade so they didn’t really impact my impression of the place much.  We did go into the second pyramid, and it was not at all what I expected.  I figured it would be cool, dry, maybe a few bugs around.  Boy was I wrong.  It was far worse than outside.  It was humid, hot, and not a living thing in there.  The air was so thick, hot, and moist you could hardly breathe.  You go down this steep tunnel, bent double, using these slats to keep you from falling down the whole way (unfortunately no cameras allowed inside so I can’t show you).  It seems to go on forever, then you finally reach the bottom, but it’s only a tunnel that then goes up!  So now you’re climbing up bent double, until you finally get to the burial chamber and see this huge stone sarcophagus  with the lid off.  Then it’s back down and back up.  Such was the miserable climate inside that going out into 95 degree baking heat felt a huge relief.  I was coated in sweat coming out, and that hot heat felt so cool by comparison.

After that, we saw the Sphinx.  By that point though we were so exhausted from the heat and some indigestion that we went in, saw the Sphinx and were like “Oh. Ok. Looks cool. Let’s go.” And that was about it.  We went back to the hotel and stayed there the rest of the night, much preferring the sight of our bathroom  to anything else.  Still, despite being somewhat indisposed, we had a great time at the pyramids.

Shades of Edward Said

We’re now in Cairo, after a flight of only an hour from Amman (which was only about a $100 roundtrip per person).  Everything has gone incredibly smoothly, we were met at the airport and escorted through and straight to the hotel.  Our hotel is utterly luxurious, 5 star all the way!  Not bad for a little girl from Mississippi, going from a tent in the desert to a 5 star hotel in only two days.  We had mostly a day of rest, we had a wonderful Indian lunch here in the hotel (we were too tired to try to explore at all) and didn’t have to do anything but relax in the room until we went on a river cruise tonight.  It was wonderful to have some time to relax, the last few days have been so hectic. 

It's been an interesting juxtaposition, first the trip to Petra/Wadi Ram/Aqaba then this trip to Cairo.  The trip to Petra was physically taxing, but the pleasures of it were raw, natural, not polished, never artificial.  Here, on the other hand, we are in the lap of luxury but it seems our pleasures have become more artificial as well.  On the Petra trip, one of the funniest moments was when a shopkeeper swindled Mike outrageously, charging him 2 JD (about $2.80) for a bag of pretzels that should only cost .75.  I smelled a rat and told Nada, she was so outraged she went over, found out the real prices and told the shopkeeper that he has cheated her 'foreign uncle' and she wanted his money back, which she got!  It was hilarious!  Whereas here, our travel guides are so efficient I doubt we'll even talk to many Egyptians, let alone have the opportunity to be fleeced by them.  ;-)  The best way I can show the differences is with two videos.  The first comes from Wadi Ram.  A group of young men on the tour decided to do some Jordanian dancing (I'm sorry but I can't recall the name of it), mostly, I think, because they were young men wanting to impress a group of young women in the audience. 

In this second video, it's a dancer on the Nile river cruise we took last night.  It was a wonderful time, and the dancer is very expert, but it nonetheless made me uncomfortable.  The dance itself was devoid of any cultural context, there was nothing before or after to explain the cultural importance of the dance, and it left me feeling that it had been merely an exercise in Orientalism, feeding our taste for the exotic, fetishizing Egyptian life. I still enjoyed the cruise, as I am definitely enjoying my time in Cairo, but in the Petra trip, I felt I could easily trust my instincts and experiences, though physically I was wiped out.  Here, I'm well-rested, fed, safe, happy, but uneasy about what I see.

Tomorrow though is the pyramids and the Egyptian museum, we'll see how that goes.