Home | Art | Writing | Travel | Shop | Previous Month

May

May 1st, 2004
    Last night on my walk, I noticed a closed kiosk covered in Arabic industrial warning stickers. I returned today to see if I could get a hold of some of them. The kiosk was unfolded, and racks of workboots and safety vests were deployed around it. I stood staring at it for a while, and eventually a super friendly guy named Tarek came up helped me buy a bunch of these stickers. I got some very cool ones with giant graphics of eye and ear protection. Also the classic acid being poured on a hand image. Perhaps the best of all is a huge red sticker with the charming inscription “TO SCAPE DAWON TAKE THE LEFT” boldly proclaimed in large letters. I was pleased how well I could communicate with Tarek in simple Arabic. Its so interesting how some people seem to intuitively understand how to get ideas across to me in a simple way. Others, once I say a few words in Arabic, assume I’m fluent and start in on a stream of incomprehensible jabber. Worst are those who insist on speaking English when they don’t know it at all. Like when I get on a microbus and twelve people start trying to tell me the fare at the same time: “Fife! Hoff! Fifty bound! Fife!” Jeeze, if you’d just say nussaguiney I’d understand.
    Anyways, after buying those stickers, I walked up Klot Bey Street to Ramsis, then turned right down some little streets. These continued comfortably for some time. I saw an alembic shop, and many melon vendors. A large veiled woman squatted on the curb with four tiny lemons on display on a plastic bag, with a tiny sign saying 50 piastres. Suddenly, the old buildings on one side of the road dropped away, replaced by a vast open space filled with rubble and free-range plastic bags. An ancient mosque topped by a crooked crescent stood in the distance. Maybe this was a place where the government had demolished unsafe structures. It certainly felt weird and devastated, and it felt good to reach a main street again, Sharia El Geish.
    I should try to explain how things look old here. Even something you buy new looks old. In fact, a lot of the smells here are familiar to me from old places in the states. The smell of weird unguents from male barber shops, the smell of old books, automotive greases, of musty old chambers and deep layered dust. Anything new-looking soon acquires a grayish tinge. Buildings may start off various colors, but they all end up a universal sandy grey color. Everything has a sort of old-school weathered look. Actually, I get the impression that a lot of things seem to be like the 1940’s. Maybe the 1920’s to 1940’s, but more towards the 40’s. I mean the style of lettering and the phraseology of English signs, the style of linoleum flooring, the radios everywhere, the ads on the sides of buildings, the framed black and white photographs of mustachioed old men hanging high on the bare walls of musty shops, the constant shoe-shining and watchstrap mending, the old-school burly bicycles with a foot brake. There are even a fair number of 1940’s automobiles about, half buried in dust and grime. The matchboxes are decorated with color lithographs look like they came out of a 40’s time warp. Also the entrances to buildings with their worn marble steps, high ceilings and bare light bulb, the elevators of glass and dark wood, the continuous cigarette smoking without restriction, the men dressed in suits, pulling out handkerchiefs. Cairo certainly has a sort of noir aesthetic going on, except without the sipping from flasks. We have tea instead, of course.
    Come to think of it, the 1940’s aura is probably a result of the fact that the British left about that time, along with the large population of Greeks, Jews and other expats. The aesthetics of everything pretty much stopped being updated around then, I guess. I’ve always loved old things, so maybe that’s why I feel so happy walking around Cairo. Perhaps the most striking reminder of the 1940’s is the color scheme of most Cairo interiors. A variety of tans and brown, with possibly some liver colored tiles. Most characteristic is a sort of dull, faded, faux-gold color that absolutely screams 1949.When I visited Baron Empain’s abandoned phantasy palace out in Heliopolis, I looked in through a barred lower window, and observed that the walls were painted in two-tone 1940’s brown and orange. Somehow, it was only when I saw this detail that I realized that people had abruptly stopped living here at that exact point in the past. Of course, many interiors are of later date, and these conform to the gaudy, tacky, Egyptian nouveau riche aesthetic, with pink or mauve walls, and all sorts of gilded rinky-dink doodads and gold baroque furniture. But for miles around where I live, a visitor from the 1940’s might not feel too out of place.

May 2nd, 2004
    This day my morning walk was a search for a passport photo shop. I finally found one and had myself shot there. God willing, these photos will help me get a Syrian visa. Almost all the shops were closed, and the streets largely empty. A delirious cat lay dying in the hot gutter. I poured some water for it, but it was too late. Where was everyone? I concluded that this must be another of those random, unpredictable feast days, probably Muhammad peacebeuponhim’s birthday moulid festival. It’s a strange feeling being in a big city when everyone but you knows it’s a special holiday. Increasing the feeling of anomie was a random daylight savings time change that apparently happened a few days ago. I’m glad I didn’t miss work because of it.  I just noticed a lot of clocks were an hour fast. Maybe there’ll be some sort of celebration tonight. Who knows? On television there was a funny historical drama film about the early Islamic days. The pagan Meccans were shown burying babies in the sand, belly dancing, getting drunk, and performing other characteristic behaviors. I thought the camera lingered with a rather un-Islamic interest on the belly dancer for long but gratifying periods of time. Also, in what was meant to be an almost inconceivable abomination, a woman was compelled to consume a purple fluid.

May 3rd, 2004
    Certainly one of my least favorite questions is “Are you a Muslim?” I can’t really equivocate, and thus answer La’a (No). Often people will say something like “welcome” after a short pause, but sometimes they seem stunned by disbelief, and ask the question several times, as if they’ve never heard of someone blatantly and openly denying Islam. I can really sense that they are hurt and confused.

May 4th, 2004
    This day I went over to the Syrian embassy to try to get a visa. The guy was super reluctant to give me the visa, once he saw my horrific country of origin. He looked really grudgingly, and demanded the outrageous fee of 660 pounds, or about 110 US dollars. This was many times more than the fee for other applicants. It probably represents half of Syria’s GDP right there. I have to go back to pick up my passport there tomorrow. The scene at the embassy was rather interesting. There was a desk blocking a door into an office, with persons of all nationalities crowding around it, brandishing papres at the single embassy employee. Arabs came right up and occupied every decimeter of space in front of you. I am at a disadvantage in such situations, as my sense of personal space simply won’t allow me to stand 2” away from another person, even though I know its expected to do so. There was a group of shaggy Japanese kids in there, looking like rock stars. One of them listed his occupation as “ceramacist.” This caused some confusion among the embassy staff, and I helped to clear it up with my rudimentary Arabic. There was also an interesting young Russian man who spoke good Arabic. All the chaotic waving of forms, passports, and wads of cash was sort of stressful, but eventually I budged in front of some Japanese dudes lost in speculative scrutiny of their Arabic/English paperwork, and handed in my documents. Portraits of Assad were hanging prominently everywhere. I’ve got to admire the Japanese independent travelers. They defy the stereotypical regimented hoards piling out of tour busses, burthened with layers of cumbrous technology. Alone or with their girlfriends, wearing pretty far-out clothes, they fearlessly charge about the city.

May 6th, 2004
    Today is a brutally hot windless day. My flat is like an oven, and I can barely move. I went out to obtain the crucial cheese substance, and was caught in a sudden dust storm. Walls of dust and grit swept up the streets. My eyes and mouth filled with sand, and, and the buildings on the horizon disappeared. I bought some bread. Usually the bread here is actually fairly decent, with a fresh, almost floral aroma. Today it contained an unusually high sand content. What does one do when one’s mouth is filled with a gooey bolus of semi- masticated bread paste and sand? The solution involves water.

May 7th, 2004
    This day, as I was returning from my morning walk in the streets north of Klot Bey, I came across my best Egyptian groundscore yet. On the Northern end of Champollion Street there is a traditional large mound of rotting garbage, broken crates, and plastic trash. Intermixed with this mundane detritus, I noticed a lot of old-looking scraps of paper. I looked closer, then immediately knelt down and started gathering them up, despite the stares of passersby, insensible to the flies and filth, I was overjoyed. These scraps were the torn up pieces of old photographs and postcards from the late 1930’s to the early 50’s. Many of them had writing in Greek. There is a corner of a postcard from Yemen, postmarked 18 June 1938 3:20 PM. I’ll glue the more notable examples into this book. There were more photographs too far under a parked car to reach. I’ll go back tonight to try to get them, but almost certainly they will be gone. Such is the way of things on Cairo streets, I’ve learned.


May 8th, 2004
    Every day more is reveiled about American soldiers and mercenaries torturing Iraqis. I’ve never been so deeply ashamed to be an American. In my opinion, our country can never home to recover its reputation for freedom and justice after these atrocities.

May 9th, 2004
    Its been broiling hot recently. Outside, you can feel waves of heat like from an open oven. I took a long walk this morning up around Zamelik Island, past a few pleasant gardens by the Nile. I also noted a new corniche ascetic who likes to wear plastic bags on his head. Today he was sporting a rare and particularly fine red one. Has he too noticed that there is something ethereal, and almost animate about the plastic bags elegantly floating above Cairo’s streets? Out by the pyramids in the desert, there is an unmistakable exaltation in their high trajectories. These aerial coelenterates display manifest joy in their own powers of levitation.

May 10th, 2004
    One national characteristic of Egyptians is a great love for giving medical advice, especially herbal remedies and other traditional treatments. In my English classes, the conversation seems to gravitate towards this subject with astonishing regularity, and once it is reached, even those students less inclined to speak out invariably pursue it with vigor and vehement enthusiasm. The other day, we were learning about summer activities, and I asked why people sunbathe. I was universally assured that sunbathing was to be performed before 8 o’clock AM, in order to strengthen the bones, but that exposure to the sun after this period was treacherous in the extreme. In another class, I was informed that there is a special verb in Egyptian Arabic that means to give invented medical advice so as not to appear ignorant. I wrote this word down, but lost it. I think it was something like “yimby.” My private student Doris regaled me with an intricate description of the Atar, or herbalist’s shop. These shops are some of the coolest looking places in Cairo. One nearby atar occupies a tall, narrow storefront, across which a dark wooden counter is placed. Lining the high walls of the shop are thousands of small wooden drawers for the herbs. It looks something like a very dark and ancient card catalog system. A ladder is provided to reach the higher drawers. In other, slightly less old-school atars, the herbs are displayed in large glass jars. There are jars filled with dried sea horses, various desiccated roots, leaves, seeds, saps and powders. One atar even displays dried bats. I think these cabinets of herbal and mineralogical curiosities are survivals of the old Egyptian alchemical pursuits. The knowledge of herbal cures must have been passed down for centuries. Unless it’s all yimby, that is.

May 11th, 2004
    The sandstorm has finally passed away, and the sky is clear again, although it is very hot. This day on my morning walk, I resisted the temptation to buy an African Grey parrot. I walked past a pet store on 26 July Street in Zamelik and saw maybe eight of these parrots jammed in a few tiny cages. They were making really weird, loud whistling and clucking noises. They definitely seemed to be talking about something, unlike the other little birdies on display, which were just making noise.
    Here in Cairo, any sort of flagrant readjustment of external genitalia is widely condoned. Likewise, blowing horrific globs fluorescent yellow snot onto the sidewalk is de rigueur. Indiscriminate freestyle upright urination is also widespread, and is unattended with shame or embarrassment. I’ve seen people pissing on parked cars from a crowded sidewalk. Any sort of nook in a wall or electrical box is fair game. Walking under a bridge, I almost collapse from the reek of urine. The 6th October Bridge seems to be especially favored by these saffron effusions. In one location, these effluvia collect into a basin exposed to the sun, and slowly evaporate, leaving very curious white mineral deposits that would probably be of no little scientific interest, if any researcher were bold enough to collect a sample. In another spot under this bridge, constant unabating streams of urine anoint a primordial mound of mineralogical agluteriminations, which in this case is stained black from concentrated automobile exhaust. A massive portrait of The President Hosni Mubarak presides over this unique geological feature. Actually, all of the cities electrical utility boxes and dark corners are graced with these mounds. A narrow byway near Midan Opera seems to be a collection point for deposits of a less liquid nature.
    I’m beginning to feel sort of trapped here in Cairo. There’s just no way to get out, nowhere to go that isn’t crammed with people or cars. I can sit around in my flat reading books, or doing yoga, or watching Egyptian TV, or else I can go outside and walk. There are basically three different sorts of area I can walk in. First, there is the area around my neighborhood, which has buildings from the 1860’s to the 1920’s. This area extends for miles on the east bank of the Nile. The buildings here went up after dams began to control the flood of the Nile.  Beyond this to the East is the old medieval part of Cairo, which has endless miles of narrow, twisty alleys. Crumbling ancient mosques and madrassas are here surrounded with ramshackle rickety handmade buildings. Surrounding these two areas for about 20 miles on all sides is a vast growth of tall apartment buildings from the 60’s to the present. In all three areas, there is a never-ending flow or gridlock of cars. If you stand on any roadside of Cairo, the traffic just never stops. I feel like I know all these areas pretty well by now, having walked through them all many times. If I want to get out of the city, I can take a microbus out to the pyramids. If you go far enough into the desert, the parasitic camel touts may perhaps give you five minutes of peace. Basically though, wherever you go, there’s some sort of hassle or petrotoxicity. I’m definitely looking forward to getting out of hear in the near future.
    A few notes on the weirdness of Egyptian television. One very popular thing to do is to show The President Hosni Mubarak touring factories with an entourage of acolytes in sharp suits. They’re pretty proud of their factories here. The President Hosni Mubarak will idly pick up a book, or whatever the factory is making, inspect it with total disinterest and approval, then amble on. A lot of times they just show the factories without The President Hosni Mubarak. Another very popular type of show is a sort of chat show with a super-cute zaftig Egyptian woman. All you ever see is this woman standing there holding a microphone. People call in and talk to her over the phone. This type of show probably accounts for 50% of all television broadcasts. In a variant, the woman is out on the streets interviewing people. Next we have the music shows, which feature the famous crooners warbling with a full orchestra. Its all about the habeebs. Zabeebs, or forehead stains got from praying, appear on the Islamic chat shows. Perhaps strangest of all are the educational programs, which unfortunately show Egyptian ideas of education at their very worst. The shows are basically cramming for exam sessions. Even when they’re talking about something really cool, like flower sex, they seldom even show any pictures, just the terms to be memorized. Ungrammatical English sentences will appear one word at a time on a blue screen. Often the letters will be rainbow colored. This focus on the words for things, or even on the letters of the words, is weirdly characteristic of Egyptian learning. At the end of the show, there is always a multiple-choice exam. This reminds me of how my students are overwhelmingly concerned with grades and exams, even though these can have no possible effect on them. The best part of Egyptian TV is undoubtedly the religious programs. These show beautiful photography of nature interspliced with images of mosques and the kabba.
    Ho hum. Just after I was complaining about knowing all the parts of Cairo, I found a major new area to the South of the Saida Zeinab metro stop. My walk tonight was a search for matchbox groundscores. I pasted them in at the end of this book. My wanderings led me to a weird area characterized by aqueous pits and mounds of rubble surrounded by fruit vendors. There was also a huge used book market. It was mostly closed, so I’ll have to go back to explore it more thoroughly. The book market looked similar to the one by Midan Ataba where I buy my magazines for the collages in this book-lots and lots of little individual cabins stuffed with books. If anything, this new market looked even more crammed. I saw one cabin entirely stuffed full of books and magazines. Who knows what fossils may be buried at the very back?

May 13th, 2004
    Lately I’ve been taking very long walks at night, often along the corniche, down to the University bridge, or even the Giza bridge. Thursday night is like the Egyptian Friday night, and the sidewalks were busy. People had parked their cars alongside the bridges, and were having picnics there. Vendors of corn and beans also colonized the bridges, as well as lots of loungers like myself watching the boats pass underneath. Egyptians are indomitable in their will to picnic. I’ve many times observed large families picnicking on narrow concrete medians between the lanes of roaring traffic. I’ve also noticed that all the fishermen on the bridge sit right close together and chat. I remember how in England how they sat alone, and as far apart from each other as possible.
    I have always had a deep appreciation of matchboxes, dating back to my early youth. There is something very satisfying inhow their little drawers slide in and out. This interest was recently revived, when I received a matchbox in my change, in lieu of 15 piastres. I instantly detected something numinous about the box design, and the title: THE SCISSORS SAFTY MATCH (made in Pakistan). The box bore a bold engraving of an open pair of scissors. There was something fascinating about this graphic, something of the same dumb numinosity found on the back of Tintin books, or in weird alchemical engravings. I started to look for other matchboxes in the gutters, and even went on long walks across the city for this specific porpoise. So far I have collected 14 different types, and glued them into this book. Most common is the Nile Match Company Egyptian flag design. There is something almost despairing about this matchboxes total lack of aesthetic design. Also common is the dim green horse matchbox, while the ludicrously named tasty is less so. PARROT brand and another bird design are represented by unique specimens. Tonight I found a weird variant of THE SCISSORS  called SCISSORS SAFTY MATCHES , which feature two pair of matches and a yellow background. Sometimes I have semi-waking visions of undescribed matchboxes. The matchboxes of Cairo’s gutters are a sort of mirror of the universe. Some types are common, some unique, but the entirety can never be predicted or described. Even this most minute and obscure pursuit, the collection of a certain type of small rubbish, is fraught with infinity.


May 14th, 2004
    This day I noticed that “they” had taken out all the benches and places to sit in the square by Ramsis mosque, and replaced them with chains and iron spikes. This kind of cryptofascist urban design happens in the states too. Nitpicking turdmeisters in control cant stand it when people are sitting around in public. Apparently, this is a global phenomenon. Why aren’t they shopping, those loungers? Anything except working, shopping, watching TV or sleeping is inherently subversive to the social order.
    I’ve noticed a tantalizing peculiarity about Cairene road potholes. In most places I’ve been, potholes are merely declavities of various depths and dimensions, but here they are literally holes into some vast subterranean blackness. The ground just opens up into nothingness.

May 15th, 2004
    This day was a rather subdued and sad one here, for Egypt lost its bid to host the 2010 world cup to South Africa. I walked up to Ramsis and bought a used Biology textbook to read, then down to Saida Zeinab to look at my favorite ruined building in Cairo. It is a bilaterally symmetrical art nouveau palace in total glorious dilapidation. The external walls are plastered with faded surrealist election posters and the yard filled with plastic trash and rubble. The inside seems to be filled with crap too. Next door is a still-inhabited Mansard turret building with intricate roof squatter shacks.

May 16th, 2004
    Lately I’ve been taking walks across the 6th October Bridge. Its probably the nicest place to walk in Cairo. True, there’s a twelve lane highway roaring by on one side, but on the other you can look out over an empty nadi or outdoor club on Zamelik Island. Its dark there. But best of all is that the whole way, maybe a half mile, is gloriously devoid of naked apes.
    I think I’ve been here so long that all of Cairo’s 9,999, 873 bootblacks now have gotten to know me, and have leaned that I do not want my shoes polished. Indeed from day one, my hiking boots have been a source of continual amazement and even slack-jawed stupefaction to the locals. I often hear remarks in Arabic like “Whoa! Look at that guy’s shoes!” You’d think I was wearing a colander on my head, for all the attention my boots attract. I am questioned repeatedly and in detail as to their cost and country of manufacture. Apparently, boots are unheard of here outside of a police/army context. Of course, those police boots are always shined up to a stellar magnitude of -26. Some construction workers wear boots, but most prefer shibshib (flipflops). Perhaps like many Americans, I’ve always had a deep aversion to ‘having things done,’ whether its my hair cut, shoes shined, or anything else. Bug off, I’ll do it myself if I want. To me there’s something almost obscene about standing there in public being serviced by another man bent over you. Furthermore, by a sort of inverted vanity, I am proud of the dirt on my shoes. It shows that I walk long distances, and that I reject the effete aesthetics of the enslaved masses. To the local Egyptians, having your shoes shined is a sort of symbiotic charity-you end up looking sharp, and the desperately poor bootblack ends up making a little cash. But I can’t get past my ingrained (sub) cultural prejudice that sees both parties degraded in this transaction, one by greed and the other by vanity. Nevertheless, I may indeed get my boots shined before I leave Cairo, just for the perverse hell of it. I definitely ascribe to the policy that if there’s anything you really hate, you should go ahead and do it, eat it, or visit it just once, just for the sake of maxing out all the gages. It wouldn’t be far wrong to see something of this policy in my decision to come live here in Cairo, one of the most toxic, crowded, and insane places on the planet.

May 17th, 2004
    This day I taught my final Berlitz class. I just have to go back and give the exam on the 19th. I’ve enjoyed teaching, and gotten much more comfortable about it. I can think of examples off the top of my head much more quickly now too. Some of my students, like Atef Zaki, are just really sweet. Others like Injee and Sally apparently mask their feelings behind broad smiles. Many, like Rasha, Ronda, and Shaheenez are intensely motivated to learn. I enjoy getting to know the students little by little -they are all so unique and interesting. Although there is something inherently boring and repressive about all classrooms, there is also something innately humorous there too, and the best moments are when everyone is laughing. For example, when level 1 was learning “always” and “never” someone said “I always eat, and never take a shower,” provoking massive hilarity. Also, the multiple times I broke the handle off of the door attempting to fan the room out. Nevertheless, I can’t say I’m all that sorry to be leaving the Arcadia Mall behind, with its slow elevators and clouds of perfume and tobacco smoke.

May 18th, 2004
    You’ve really got to be careful walking around Cairo, and not only because of the psychotic drivers. Workmen toiling on upper levels will indiscriminately toss bricks and rubble onto the sidewalks below. I narrowly escaped impalement on a rusted piece of rebar. You’ve just got to look out for patches of dust or rubble on the street. Live electrical wires protrude from lampposts and abraded conduits embedded in the sidewalk. The curbs are often like two feet high, and have steps, so if you were to fall off, you would certainly be run over. Just as there are no controls on vehicle emissions, there doesn’t seem to be anything like restaurant health inspection either. You quickly learn to trust no one and drop all expectations of public works regularity. Just because it looks like a sidewalk doesn’t mean that there aren’t random rusty poles and rebar sticking up everywhere. There is one such rusty pole on my walk to work, and people are constantly bashing their frail shins against it. That’s not to say that Egyptians aren’t competent engineers. They seen to put up buildings and lay concrete more quickly and with less fuss than Americans. There’s just a sort of cavalier attitude towards safety, something like a frontier enthusiasm for rapid construction. If something bad happens, it’s the will of Allah.

May 19th, 2004
    Today was a particularly brutal day in the Gaza strip. In the Raffa refugee camp, the Israelis attacked a Palestinian demonstration with tanks and helicopters, killing at least ten and wounding many more. I saw video on TV of terrified Palestinians fleeing through clouds of smoke, carrying horrifically wounded civilians. People with bullet wounds to their torso, head, and groin were being carried one after the other by two or three bearers. God damn those Israelis. The only thing comparable to the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, in terms of heroism, was probably the Jewish ghetto rebellion in Warsaw during WW2. Both featured an outdoor jail, lots of secret tunnels, and no ambiguity as to right or wrong. When is a man’s duty more clear than when he is driven off his land by foreigners, when he is crammed into a ghetto surrounded by razor wire, shot at from observation towers and prevented from returning home?

May 21st, 2004
    This day I went out to the Souq Al Gomaa or Friday market. This stupendous occurrence occurs beside a cemetery near the Southern edge of town. Its basically a humungous outdoor market for clothes, birds, junk, antiques, bicycles, farm animals, electronics and plastic rubbish. People from the countryside bring their animals here to sell. Anyone can come and lay out their spread. I walked for a long time down the market, past the places for clothes, cell phones, poultry and rugs, into the electronic rubble section, which went on for hundreds of meters, past mounds of cracked telephones, busted planetariums, circuit boards, cathode ray tubes, bike junk, scales, tools, bolts, archaic infomercial cuisine gadgets all heaped up into frightening mounds. As I went on, the quality of the junk deteriorated, until it insensibly lapsed into genuine trash, discarded shards layered with plastic bags, broken koshari containers and plastic spoons, mixed with shit and urine. At the very end were some camels with one foreleg tied back, and a dusty pickup truck with two severed cow’s heads in the back. I turned back and explored other parts of the market along some abandoned railroad tracks. This place was the Cairo bins.
    Part of the market was devoted to reptiles. I saw glass tanks half full of mixed snakes and toads. Also sad chameleons and the ubiquitous yellow tortoises, some of whom were very cute. Others were dead. Ladies from the countryside had brought boxes of all sorts of rabbits, ducks, geese, chickens and turkeys of every age and description. Greasy guys waved serpents aloft, and boys yelled into echoing sound systems. Men sold old coins and bills. In certain places, the smell of this certain kind of preserved fish was so intense I almost vomited. After a while, it became so crowded hardly anyone could move. I was jammed into a sea of oily heads and people started putting their hands on me. When I at last escaped from the crush, I couldn’t stand the idea of piling into a crowded microbus, so I decided to walk home, although it was about 4 miles.
    Along the way, I observed a particularly beautiful ruined mosque-fortress built halfway up into the side of the Muqattam cliff face. I also noticed strange tombs and caverns carved up there. The cemeteries here are really miniature cities of the dead, with streets, houses and courtyards. It’s odd to look down these long empty lanes totally devoid of people. I’m curious if these cities of the dead are unique to Egypt, or if the dead are buried like this in other Islamic countries as well. Once I got back into living Cairo, things were very peaceful there too, as it was Friday morning before prayers. Only a few old men in galabiyas basked in the ahwas. Again I marveled at how silent and peaceful the streets are here when no cars are blowing by.

May 22nd, 2004
    Having had quite enough of “the great overturned ashtray,” the miasmic megalopolis Cairo, I decided to go out into the desert for a few days. I bought a bus ticket to Bahariya, a “2000sq. kilometer depression” in the Western desert. That’s to say, an oasis. I’m here now. It’s one of those wonderfully quiet places where you can her a fly buzzing a long way off. I arose at an appalling hour in the morning and walked to the Turgoman garage. I’ve always though that there’s something ghastly and wrong about being awake at dawn. It’s the best time for sleeping, as all cats know. The Turgoman garage is bizarrely located within the darkest, most goat and donkey-ridden backwaters of Bulaq, so our bus crawled towering through narrow streets and between crumbling shacks before hitting the open road. We went out past the pyramids, and out into a vast grey desert, flat and almost totally featureless. About half way to the oasis, a few mesas and eroded gullies started to appear. At last the bus crested a hill, and we saw a wide green space. I found a nice hotel called Alpenblick, at which I am the sole guest. After checking in here, I set off to explore the oasis.
    Away from the main drag, the streets had an odd haunted feeling. The sun bore straight down on the empty, sandy streets, lined with windowless mud brick houses. I noticed an occasional faded picture of the Kabba, commemorating a haj. Once or twice I was a woman in niqab, the total black veil, pass far at the end of a deserted street. After the crest of a small hill, I came across a beautiful view of a vast forest of palm trees. A strange hot sulpherous spring bubbled up there. I stepped down into the palm forest and felt very happy. This was the first time I’d been in a forest for a very long while. Walking down the slope, I noticed that the waters had been carefully diverted into a series of small channels among the palm and citrus trees. Suddenly four tiny children appeared out of the undergrowth and came running towards me. The eldest, a girl, gave me a large amount of mishmash, or apricots, which she had gathered up in her dress. I distributed coins. The children led me on a series of minute and magical adventures. We rambled down the terraced slopes and felt the temperature of the various streams. We spent a protracted period playing with tadpoles and froglets. The girl taught me their name-something like Bagghoor, but the younger kids were content to call them samek, or fish. I think my Arabic was about on par with that of the youngest kids. After the tadpoles, we went further into the forest, eating mishmash along the way. We came to a special tree covered in sap, which, at the girl’s instigation we began to eat. They called it marubba, or jam. We played with more froglets, and the kids caught as many of them as they could and put them in my hands. The girl crushed a crawling grub, and I said goodbye, to the grub, but apparently the byby was taken as universal. They led me back up out of the forest. We felt the temperature of more hot streams along the way, and at last I bid the little alchemists adieu and walked back through the village. Its been so many years since I played with kids, but I found I could get right into it, just like playing with the neighborhood kids when I was young.
    After that adventure, I decided to try to walk to this mountain I’d noticed that seemed to have a ruined fort at the top. I headed off through the town, then through small deserted lanes until I came out into the desert. The sky was dead blue and the ground a pale yellow, covered with grayish gravel and sedimentary flakes. I walked out there for about an hour, and at last climbed up the hill to the crumbling fort. The place was a mountain in the center of an oasis, which I now saw to be a series of green patches in a vast low area stretching from one horizon to the other. I could see several distinct villages, as well as the main town and its surrounding palm groves. A conical mountain stood away in the North. The fort had apparently been built by the British during WW1 to monitor tribesmen. The mountain was thus called Gebel Ingleezee. I stayed up there all afternoon, where I finished re-reading the novel Vanity Fair. I was in probably the most deserted and un-vain place where anyone had ever finished reading that particular book. It was pretty weird to read that most jaded and sarcastic society novel on the peak of a desert mountain in the center of a vast oasis. When the sun started to go down, I walked back, easily following my own footprints the whole way back.
    Back in the village, the streets were no longer empty. People had come out to chat on doorsteps and alongside walls. Many children asked for pens. At last I made it pack to my personal hotel, where I had a delicious shower, the first in months. The shower in my flat is broken, so I have to take cat-baths in a tub. Bleh. I ate my dinner during evening prayer, and now I will go to bed, as I am very tired.

May 24th, 2004
    Yesterday I visited a few fairly unimpressive archeological sights, then came out to Bir Ghaba, a remote hot spring in a distant section of the oasis. The first sight I visited was a museum housing ten or so Greco-Roman mummies. I also descended into two Greco-Roman tombs that were painted with bright cartoonish Egyptian gods and goddesses. It’s weird to think of the ancients in this remote place. I’ve been out here a few days and have already totally lost track of time. There are broken clay models of camels in the sand that might be Neolithic, or have been made ten years ago. Men make mud bricks in the evening light. Actually, the men seem to lie around a lot, while the women cook and prepare their men’s hookahs, preparatory to the smokage of massive amounts of hashish. My host out here at Bir Ghaba took me to visit some of his relatives today. We started walking along the deserted sandy road. Along one side a conduit conducted red hot spring water to the fields. We hitched a ride on a donkey cart part of the way there. There’s something about donkeys that I really like-they’re so compact, hardy and durable. We entered the mud brick house of some of my host Sayeed’s relatives, and sat down to share their lunch. I sat with four other men in a circle around a huge platter of bread, cheese, eggplant and pickled spicy carrots, and we ate our fill. Outside this elite circle, the women and children waited, preparing tea and hookahs. The children watched me like I was a television. A truly stupendous amount of flies were present, as well as cats and chickens. After eating we drank incredibly sweet tea from little cups, and one old man smoked up about a zee of hash.
    Next we visited further relatives in a special parlor with fancy gilt chairs, which appeared magnificent and incongruous in the mud brick house with palm frond roof. Numbers of urchins cavorted amongst these padded chairs. It was with some of these that we walked back to the camp, where again I am the sole guest.
    Yesterday I climbed a great conical mountain named Gebel Dist. It was pretty awesome up there. I saw a cool gecko near the peak. When I was half way up, a passing camel herder started shouting at me to wait. He then left his camels and actually climbed half way up the mountain to harass me for money. We met on a promontory, and I was tempted to kick his predatory ass off the cliff, as he would just not leave me alone. Eventually after a lot of arguing, I paid him five pounds to leave. The encounter kind of soured my climb. Almost every time I encounter another human being, my mental state is degraded. I often lose my purpose and direction afterwards.
    The geology of this desert is highly anomalous. There are weird bubbled black plates and tubes of brittle, thin rock, like the armor of a space battleship shot down in stratospheric nuclear combat. In other places, the rock is layered in minute alternating bands of red and white, thin as pages of a phonebook. All the rocks here are brittle and crumbly. The iron-rich hot springs dye everything red. A unique place indeed.

May 27th, 2004
    I came back to Cairo yesterday. The bus ride back was enhanced by loudspeaker broadcasting the Koran at 29 million decibels 3mm from the top of my head. Eventually, Allah was merciful and it stopped. My sister is coming to visit next Tuesday. It’ll be really fun to show her around. Meanwhile, I’m feeling a pervasive and overwhelming need to exit this megalopolis permanently and at the earliest opportunity. Thus I’ve been cleaning up my flat.

May 29th, 2004
    This day I went out to have a look around the pyramids again. I explored the funeral temples of Kufu and Khephren, which I had not noticed before. Tjese were characterized by a large number of very deep vertical shafts carved square into the rock of the plateau. At the bottom was a detritus of plastic water bottles. Were these literal tourist traps? I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen the desiccated husk of a tourist at the bottom, next to a fanny pack and digital camera. Also, the enormous blocks of the temples were amazing, both for their size and the precision with which they were fitted together. I also found quite a few smaller tombs flanked by hieroglyphic carvings, to which the ubiquitous Ahmad had added his sordid name. I crawled into some of these and let my eyes adjust to the darkness, until I could perceive the contents- eroded statues and plastic water bottles covered in a layer of bat guano. Indeed the bats were numerous in these smaller tombs, for I could hear them cheeping and swooping as I disturbed their sleep. Apparently the early explorers of the pyramids had to deal with suffocating mountains of bat guano. It was weird to see these ancient tombs filled with plastic trash and modern graffiti.The vast miasmic sprawl of Giza lay just a few decimeters away. I also entered the valley temple of Chephren, which featured excellent cyclopean masonry, and a beautiful floor of polished agate and alabaster. Apparently the Nile passed right by here 4,500 years ago. Since then, it’s moved many miles to the East. I also visited Menkaure’s funeral temple, which is my favorite place on the Giza plateau. I like to observe the vast fitted blocks there, and the preserved red casing stones at the base of the pyramid. In particular, I like to see these weird black blocks that are stacked up in one corridor of the temple. They are carved from a strange black rock, and many of them have a curious ridge around the edge. The horse and camel touts were especially vicious today. In particular one boy and his beasts just would not leave me alone until I picked up a rock. They should all be thoroughly lashed.



June Journal


Home | Art | Writing | Travel | Shop