Women traveling alone in a place like Cairo will undoubtedly be viewed by the overabundance of unemployed and underemployed males as a good target. I did not go anywhere on my own without a guy turning up to say "welcome" and to add that they had a cousin in Minneapolis as I walked downtown or made my way through a museum and an adjacent historic mosque. The economy is in shambles and the cityscape reflects it with grand buildings and dwelling crumbling from neglect. The constant harassment of a guy trying to steer you into his shop, or trying to elicit a tip for pointing you towards the door of a monument where admission is otherwise free is non-stop. I don't know why I didn't break into Spanish and pretend I spoke no English. I guess living in the Arabian Gulf for almost a year where I don't use my native tongue caused me to forget I had it in the toolbox.
This was the view from the plane of the western Saudi coast meeting the Red Sea, just south of the Egyptian peninsula resort of Sharm El Sheikh.
I arrived on a Tuesday for a conference and upon checking in, made arrangements to be taken to the pyramids at Giza at 4am for a dawn viewing. It was an adventure since the access to the immediate perimeter was closed to the public until 8am. I nonetheless saw the sun come up over the three pyramids with the aid of an official guide who required 120 Egyptian pounds to point me in the correct direction. This fee was inclusive of a camel or horse ride to the photo op spot outside the fence. I passed on the use of the desert taxi and instead had him run with me the 4km to the spot. Poor thing was a smoker and probably not expecting such a grueling start to the day.
I bought this postcard at The Orientaliste, a rare bookshop established in 1936 in downtown Cairo (Soliman Pasha Square). There is no longer any water leading to the Giza pyramids; it would have been a much more picturesque pre-dawn 4km run to the photo spot with the hustler guide but alas, I ran through impoverished dwellings, unbelievable heaps of rubbish, and groups of underfed and dirty camels and horses, waiting for the rush of tourists to be dragged into taxi service. On the way back I took more careful note of an Islamic cemetery and of the burial area for the deceased horses...I was dismayed by the absence of any public health policy on the disposal of these poor animals. I had no interest in actually touring the pyramids when the surrounds to these ancient wonders were a testament to a broken government. Disappointing, to say the least.
On my last day I went to a museum house where a British Major, R.G. Gayer-Anderson, was granted special permission to live there from 1935-1942. It was originally built in the seventeenth century on the walls of the adjacent Ibn Tulun Mosque and is the only dwelling spared when most were demolished in 1928 in a campaign to preserve Arab monuments. Walking through the house with views to the adjacent mosque was splendid. The Berber screens and their use on the upper floors of the house where the ladies gathered, out of view of the men but able to look down on the activities throughout the house, is most fascinating. This space is called the Harim. Here are some photos:
View from the harim:
The mosque next door was built in the late 9th century in the Samarran style, typical of Abbassid construction. I climbed the minaret and took a few snaps of the adjacent slums, mosques and in the far distance, one of the pyramids at Giza is discernible (to the left of the tallest building in the middle).
I went twice to the Khan el-Khalili, the largest souq in Cairo and a 14th century caravanserai also called the "Turkish bazaar" during Ottoman rule. A caravanserai is a caravan resthouse consisting of storage rooms around a courtyard for the animals and bedrooms upstairs for the merchants. This one established Cairo as a center of trade and may have inspired the Europeans to sail west looking for new trade routes and commodities to bypass the spice monopoly controlled by the Mamluks. It's a bustling labyrinth of cobblestone streets, mosques and madrassas converted to museums, and many shopkeepers, merchants, bakers, butchers,...I went both times in the evening and it was crowded and teeming with energy. This is a baker's assistant moving bread across the market:
Stay tuned....Sri Lanka or Oman for my bday in a few weeks...flipping a coin this week.
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