Greetings from Egypt! Well, not really from Egypt right now, since I'm no longer there, but greetings to you, readers, just the same, as I retell the story of the highlights of my trip through Egypt last fall. Karnak Temple was one of the first stops on our journey, and probably one of my favorites. Though, who am I kidding, I think they were ALL my favorite! So here we go!
Around the time of the emergence of the New Kingdom, circa 1500 BCE, the Karnak Temple was dedicated to the Pharaoh Amun, and was where he and his wife Mut and son Khons would have worshipped. And though it's hard to tell by the pictures, the site itself is enormous, covering 1x2 miles in area. Construction on the temple took place over 1300 years, sponsored by more than 30 different Pharaohs who gave the temple its 25 chapels, various shrines, and the 134 massive columns of the largest hypostyle hall in the world, one of the worlds greatest architectural acheivements.
At one point, these sphinxes lined a road covering the two mile distance from Karnak Temple to the Temple at Luxor.
It's difficult to capture the immensity of this place. Everything is absolutely huge, and even though much of the temple is in ruins, that does not detract from the sheer magnitude of everything which surrounds you. Think about it this way, this temple stood for two millenia as the ancient Egyptian-religious equivalent to the Vatican today. If you've ever been to the Vatican, and you remember how enormous the site is, this is exactly how Karnak makes you feel.
There are 134 of these columns. They measure about 45 feet in diameter, and stand more than 70 feet high. As it was known that this section of the temple, the hypostyle hall was begun by Seti I, and finished by his son Ramses II.
I found myself thinking about the movie the Prince of Egypt when I wandered through the columns:
I imagine that Moses might have walked through these them as well, in their full-color glory! Can't you just picture him among the columns and incense here? You can see that some of the color remains, even after all this time.
This was definitely a great way to start off my trip, and again, Karnak was one of the most impressive parts of it, for its sheer size and historical significance. I was impressed far more by this temple, than by the Pyramids of Giza, which were also fantastic. When planning your trip to Egypt (and you must!), this location is a definite must for your list of things to see.
One of the best nights I had in Cairo was hanging out with my girlfriends in Zamalek. In addition to checking out the antique shop, and various other items in the area, I realized simultaneously that cupcakes are in fashion in Cairo, and I really missed fancy-pants cupcakes while in Iraq. Lo and behold there was Nola! Soft cake, creamy sweet frosting, and overall, delicious!
So one of my roommates went on and on and on about Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street), so we just had to try the Naguib Mahfouz restaurant, Kasr Elshouk.
Having never read this trilogy on life in Cairo during the British Colonial occupation, but one mention of the word food, and I was game! I'm still not sure what the restaurant had to do with the books, but I'm guessing that some of these recipes featured prominently in the story.
In addition to the traditional Egyptian Molokhyia and Khoshary dishes, there was stuffed pigeon (why did I order this?!), as well as a kind of scalloped potato recipe loaded with cheese and fried onions. With the addition of the spicy red sauce, it was fantastic.
One thing I definitely liked was the decor of the place. I love the North African style of low couches and tables, the stone walls, and brass items all over the place.
After dinner, we went for a cruise on the Nile. It was incredibly beautiful and much more peaceful on the water than you'd think Cairo would be.
This was the same day that a series of protests rocked Cairo (and a large part of the Muslim world) because of that awful movie portraying a fictional account of the Prophet Muhammad. As we approached the harbor that night, I caught a horrible whiff of teargas which was lingering in the air around the US Embassy. For some reason, it hit me particularly hard in our group (hello, asthma!), and though diluted, I couldn't stop coughing, crying, and wheezing. It was fantastic. I resorted to covering my face with my silk scarf just to keep the new pockets of gas in the air from getting to me. My flatmates thought it was hilarious. I would hate to be caught in a real cloud of teargas...
It was a lovely trip on the river though, in spite of the tear gas. There were many boats lit up traversing the water alongside us, many of them moving and grooving to loud Egyptian pop music. This one had loads of dazzling lights, and was whirling about in the water in every direction. We were on a sailboat, but for a moment, I kind of wanted to be on that boat, because it looked like they were having a blast!
Another night, we set out to have sushi. I heard about a great new place in Zamalek that serves authentic Japanese food, called Makino. Unfortunately, they were closed for no reason we could figure out. Luckily, my friend has tried every other sushi place in town, and took us to another good one, just within walking distance nearby.
The service was pretty good, but I will always, always pick Egyptian fresh lemonade to drink. It's seriously the best!
After a one-week tour of Upper Egypt (read: Southern), I met two of my longtime friends in Heliopolis where I was staying near the airport. I discovered that there was an authentic Mexican restaurant in the area that I definitely wanted to try. I explored the menu, and I have to agree, Maria's Mexican located in the Fairmont Hotel, is fantastic.
We opted to share an appetizer and some mains between the four of us, so that we could all have a bit of everything. The tableside guacamole was an excellent choice, and paired perfectly with the fresh, homemade tortilla chips. One of our favorites was the Pollo Estilo Maya, with rice, peppers and grilled pineapple. The service was fantastic, the food excellent, and I highly recommend the fresh juices.
On one particularly beautiful day, my roommates and I headed out for a walk in the area of Cairo around Al-Azhar Mosque. We'd already been into the depths of Khal el-Khalili souk, so we decided to walk around in other directions to see what there was to see. This was one of our last weekends together in Egypt, as one of our number already moved into her student room on the other side of town, I was leaving the next day for my organized tour of Upper Egypt, and the others only had a week left on their studies as well. Here are some highlights from our walkabout that day:
Beautiful Minaret
Kitschy tourist crap that I didn't buy
I think these were spices, though some of them could probably function as natural dyes
Prayer book inside the Hanging Church of Cairo
This boy was with his mother, selling tissues outside the underground walkway
When you look up, you see Cairo's colonial beauty
We covered quite a bit of ground this day, and all of us were marveling at just how beautiful Cairo really was (it is!). Though we'd all had our own negative experiences during our time there, those were no match for the stunning beauty, architecture, and hospitality that we all experienced from most people that we met. I was so lucky to have friends already living in Cairo, so the city actually triply blessed me with good fortune.
Books for sale in the Market outside the mosque
People selling prayer rugs, handcarved boxes, books and other goods outside the mosque
As we continued our walk, we discovered another, hidden neighborhood, and decided to walk through it. I love doing this when I travel, because you never know what kind of gems you're going to find!
Boy selling drinks
It was so hot in Cairo when I was there, and the humidity, compared to Baghdad was nearly unbearable for me. I found a lot of refreshment in the various drinks sold in the juice shops in and around Cairo. The boy in this neighborhood was selling three different drinks to refresh passers by in the narrow passage ways where he'd set up his cart: Tamarhindi (tamarind juice) or Erk Sous (licorice), Sobieh (coconut milk juice), and/or Sugarcane juice. these are so delicious on a hot summer day (yes, even in September it's still summertime!). Though, I prefer, just as a precaution to buy my fresh juices from shops. Not that that always protects you from stomach bugs, but I've got to at least try. I pretty much am guaranteed to get sick eating food from street carts!
This breadmaker invited us into his shop to have a look at his bread. In Egyptian, bread is called, aieesh. There are three kinds - Shammie, which is basically just like any old white flour pita (though not to be underestimated, because YUM!), aieesh balady, or the bread of the people, and aieesh makamar, which is darker and crispy for making Fatta. The word for bread (in the Egyptian dialect), I think even gives a clue to just how important it is for living, because I think, Aieesh is also the word Egyptians use for "life."
When I asked if I could take a picture, he ushered us into his steaming hot bakery to show us how the bread was made. You can't imagine the amazing smell coming out of this shop! In the back were a couple of old men, and some young boys mixing the dough and preparing it for the roller and the ovens.
And now I leave you with a last image from our walk this day. Another stunningly beautiful mosque on the skyline. This one, in particular caught my eye, just because of the blue windows next to it.
I've still got a lot of ground to cover on my five weeks spent in Egypt. So, what next, dear 5 people who read this blog? Shall we head to Upper Egypt, or do you want some more on Cairo first? I promise I'll be more timely about posting these!
Let's see...it's been quite a long time since I started my adventure in Egypt, and it's been a long time since you've heard from me about what I was doing there! After Leaving Iraq, I wanted to work on improving my Arabic language skills, while I still had the time to focus solely on that. I signed up for classes at the Arabeya Language Center in Cairo. They teach in small, semi-private, and private classes. Because of my timing, and most people are already gone for fall classes at their unis, my classes were private.
The first day was hard. Really hard. Like, so hard, that I couldn't even DO the placement test. Oh Rosetta Stone, you've failed me! Seriously, I knew many words in Arabic, I could kind of read, and I also knew how to say many things in the Iraqi dialect. None of these things were apparently helpful for this test. Did I know how to negate? No. Could I conjugate? No. But hey, I knew lots of nouns (not that that was much help)!
I arrived in Cairo, just after the Eid holiday weekend. The decorations were still up, and people were happy again following a month of fasting during daytime hours. The streets were incredibly busy, and the school's director met me at the airport. We dropped my bags off at our apartment (which was a HUGE disappointment), and we took off to find some food, a sim card for my phone, and so that I'd know the neighborhood a bit better.
He took me to the mostly tourist area of the Mohandisseen neighborhood, so at first I thought that it couldn't possibly be so bad. there was a shwarma place nearby (too bad it tasted awful!), and anything that I might need (or so I thought!). But even before the light of the next morning, what I saw what quite a bit different. As we walked back to the flat, I felt someone on a motorbike getting really close to me, in that moment, I gripped my purse, and shifted it to the other side, just as I felt someone trying to knock it out of my hands! Lucky for me, I maintained constant control of my belongings, and I won that round, and was so lucky, since the wallet I had contained ALL of my cash, IDs, and credit cards, yikes. Welcome to Cairo!
This was NOT our kitchen, btw
The kitchen was woefully inadequate. Even by student standards. It was a mismash of things cobbled together over the years - leftover eggs (how old were they?), pasta, rice, dairy products, and a giant pile of plastic shopping bags. Mind you, this was student housing, with no desks - only a big table surrounded by broken couches where 2-3 people might be able to uncomfortably sit. First day's task: get a chair...and a table to study.
Every day basically began the same. One of those cars down there would start around 6 or 6:30 in the morning. Well...sort of. They would TRY to start it for about 10 minutes before it would actually turn over. This was every single day. Even Friday (the equivalent to our Sunday, when people are supposed to be off)
The view of our street
The kiosk just 10 meters from our flat
To say the least, it took some time to get settled. We got the school housekeeper to come and clean the carpets (never cleaned); someone to fix the washing machine(broken); bring a couple of chairs and tables for adequate study(we didn't have any!); and we started to find our way around the neighborhood. What we found was something far different from what was advertised to us. This was not the western shopping district that we expected to see. Rather, it was a VERY conservative neighborhood. I wasn't expecting to be the only woman on the street not covered. I found it to be surprisingly unnerving. It was hot and the streets were filthy in our neighborhood, and I'd just discovered that I really couldn't communicate in Arabic at this point. At least, my fus'ha standard Arabic mixed with some Iraqi dialect was NOT working with the Egyptian dialect. Awesome. Okay, pointing and hand gestures it is! Hurray!
Apparently, caveat emptor was at play when it came to the housing service I was buying from the school. Then again, buyer beware is ALWAYS at play when traveling, actually. I needed to remind myself that I MUST stay sensible about this, and enjoy the opportunity while I had it! I don't want to give only a negative impression to the neighborhood, because what my roommates and I found were some really beautiful opportunities, and some fantastic neighborhood gems! We learned that our neighborhood, Imbaba/Agouza, used to be the final destination for the Sudanese camels to be sold at the market in Cairo. We even managed to find the place where the market used to be (it has since been moved) in the depths of the souk of our neighborhood. We took one Friday to get totally lost together, and buy local produce. It was a brilliant weekly practice. We got to know our neighborhood as well as our neighbors.
Our Local Fruit and snack kiosk
We also found the corner kiosk and fruit stand. One of the streets behind our apartment was loaded down with stands bursting with fresh grapes, figs, oranges, apples, bananas, limes, pomegranates, mangoes of all sorts, snacks, drinks, and more that I can't even remember! I think this is where my red grape addiction began. These were likely the sweetest, juiciest grapes on the face of the planet. I was going through more than a kilo a week by myself, plus bananas, oranges, and fresh lemons! Also imagine that there are fresh juice stands, too! Fresh mango juice is definitely my favorite. Though, sobiyeh also comes in at a nailbiting second place.
One of the kiosk owner's children or grandchildren. He was biting all of the mangoes.
The more we got to know our neighborhood, the more I started to feel like, if I'd been allowed to experience life in Baghdad, this is what some of the neighborhoods might have felt like - a confluence of old and new, but completely and totally alive and bustling with cars, donkeys, carts, chickens, rabbits, dogs, cats, tuk-tuks, trucks, mopeds, bikes, and pedestrians. Here's a quick video of our walk home one of the last nights.
One our neighbors, an older Libyan gentleman went out of his way to make friends with us. After the 9/11 protests in Cairo, I definitely appreciated this. As a group, we'd stumbled on (crashed?) a couple of weekend wedding celebrations around our area (not on purpose!), but our neighbor across the street made sure that we came to his party one Friday night. I don't think it was a wedding (we never saw a bride or groom), but the music was loud, and people were dancing and having fun. It was nice to cut loose with our neighbors!
