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Mr Tambourine Man played a song for me| | Egypt: The biggest Arab state, a foremost proponent of Pan-Arab unity, and the first to be kicked out of the Arab league (for making peace with Israel in exchange for the return of the Sinai desert and peninsula). Also the juggernaut of Arab culture- movies and most notably music. Also bizarrely, save the few Bedouins in the Sinai desert, Egyptians are not actually Arab, in that they do not hail from the Arabian peninsula, but rather from north African stocks. The facial features are diverse, but notably darker with curlier hair than Arabs, to name a few general characteristics. But a lot of diversity throughout the country.
Cairo is of course one of the world's biggest cities, 15 million, so I was prepared for an all out smog fest in Karachi-style street pandemonium with the legendary horrible traffic and dangerous chicken street crossings. In reality the downtown is filled with designer shops. The air, yes, is ridiculously, eye-bleed polluted, but really only that bad when the dust storms blow in (it's then unbearable- I hope to post some ridiculous pics of this soon). Otherwise, its just cough inducing, probably mush worse in industrial India or China (though I've only seen photos and can't say for those places firsthand). Though the volume of traffic is high, it goes slow and obeys traffic cops so street crossings are way worse in Istanbul, Damascus and Beirut. What makes Cairo special is the constant activity- day and night the place is dense crowded and crawling with Arab street bustle. Such a diversity of people makes people watching almost as good as new york- guys on bikes carrying trays of hundreds of breads on their heads, young couples fashionably dressed walking arm-in-arm, mannequins with dreadlocks, burkha-clad women and bearded old beggars are just some of the crowd.
Alexandria's Cornish is a perfect way to breathe pure Mediterranean air and its European designed buildings offer laid back Euro-atmosphere gourmet meals for happy meal prices. Alexandria, home of parts 1 and 2 of Dalia and Sean's wedding is a gorgeous necklace of buildings along the Mediterranean coast, backed by 4 million strong of urban poverty in unfinished apartment buildings, backed by a Nile delta full of rural poverty, harvesting Egypt's food on the backs of workhorse donkeys.
Egypt is the poorest Arab state I've seen (and I believe possibly the poorest overall). I am seldom shocked by poverty, having seen rural Afghanistan, Guatemala and the Pamirs, amongst other places, but here the urban poverty is sickening. I saw a man's eyes light up when I bought a pack of tissues from him for 20 cents, on which his profit margin couldn't have been more than ten cents. For him to give such gracious blessings for this act is something I still have not internalized.
What Egypt does have is rich music. Dalia hired a group of Nubian dancers and musicians from the south for the henna party (part 2 of her wedding) and their chants and drumming went well into the night during the greatest wedding party celebration I have seen. Part 3 in a posh hotel in Cairo overlooking the Nile, ritzy and classy though it was, didn't even compare to this organic pre-party.
The music in taxis and buses across the entire Middle Eastern region is Egyptian, and much of it is quite good. Still, the greatest musical experience I have had here was a back alley tea/waterpipe cafe, where locals had gathered on the weekend to hear live music. I heard the live music from the market and Liora and I followed it to its source, a quintet of motley but skilled performers led by the most amazing tambourine player I have ever seen. The tambourine is usually an instrument given to the backup singer or perhaps to the groupie who joins the band on stage. But in this case, the keyboards, drums, and even singer, seemed to form around this one charismatic tambourinist. He beat the instrument so hard and so consistently I wondered how his fingers did not bleed, or the skin did not break. His crisp rhythms were only surpassed by his bizarre demeanor- cigarette hanging out of his mouth, alternatively standing and sitting, completely in his own zone like a famous star singer. The whole time he was shaking his head like he had Tourette's, like the music was fueling his nervous system like some sort of powering of high power machinery.
Several times his eye caught me, sitting in the very back of the alley, entranced by his incredible energy-and he'd seem to knowingly continue, realize I was watching his every movement while other chatted or smoked. He'd passionately keep his head ticking like a metal guitarist fully embracing the layers of sound. For an hour we sat, overpowered by the sound and the ambiance. While every other attendee seemed to play cool like a jazz cafe, I sat focused and rhythmically moving my body in sync with the tambourine leader. He seemed to appreciate my appreciation, and even gave me a wave when I looked back down the alley after leaving. I have seen amazing bass players, guitar players, violinists, pianists, that truly deserve fully musical kudos. This is the only such tambourine musician that I have ever seen.
Back to reality, Liora encourages paranoia of the food in Egypt; I have, as I have always done, have thrown food caution to the wind in an effort to fully embrace the street food culture of each country to which I travel. One belly demon did pass through me, causing one extreme night of wrestling and abs-flexings and sweating it out, but really nothing compared to the constant torment of Chinese inspired food-borne illnesses.
What does bear attention is the intense tourist tout framework that surrounds the world's number one tourist site (the pyramids) and the surrounding hundreds of lesser sites. Though I mostly flew free from that ( I wasn't in Egypt to see monuments and moreover, I have Liora with me , who lived in Egypt and speaks Arabic), my friends who are attending Dalia's wedding went to all the big sites and have many terrible stories of scams and tourist traps- sometimes hilariously accompanied by a "welcome to Egypt".
I did go to the Pyramids, which are actually now in the Cairo suburbs- the city has almost enveloped them. They are huge, wonderful and have rightly inspired generations to wonder why and how they have been created. The Sphinx, a single piece of stone, is also wonderful, and I actually buy the conspiracy theory here that explains the small head that in it was re-carved in the likeness of a Pharaoh by the pyramid makers from a more ancient monument, built as many as 10,000 years ago. The entire area is surrounded by mystery not unlike Stonehenge- but with a sunny dry climate, bright and wondrous instead of dark, windy and mysterious.
Also interesting is the Coptic population of Cairo- Coptic is the old language of the region and the language embraced by an Orthodox branch of the early Church, still based in Cairo (Their patriarch is equivalent to the pope in the Catholic Church). The ancient rituals of the Coptic Christians (which we witnessed) included taking their shoes off to pray in the sanctuary area, as well as kneeling with forehead to the ground, identical to the method Mohammad later adopted. Also, their ritual include kissing and wiping their forehead on religious icon tapestries that hang in their chapels- which leads to the white robes of the Virgin Mary, for instance, being gray and brown with sweat and dirt from about the knee down...There is also a tiny (40ish families) Jewish community to add to the 5% Coptic Christians here.
I spend Christmas time in the city- the City of Cairo. There I attended mass in Arabic with Italian and Rwandan priests at a French Church that had occasional songs or words inserted in English (for the Benefit of Liora and I). The church has some truly beautiful mosaics but was otherwise virtually empty (according to the priest, all of the Catholics attend Church in the residential area, not downtown). The mass was so empty that I was asked to be a reader (2nd reading!) and we were invited to join the priests for tea after mass (which we accepted).
The Egyptian bureaucracy was put to the test when we went to add a second entry to our visas (you cannot do this at the airport-though it took me 1/2 hour to establish this this from the immigration officers who were willing to (and successfully did ) sell me a worthless second visa). The visa building is 20 stories tall and hundreds of meters long, dominating the central square downtown. Inside its almost complete organized chaos, with refugees, locals, and who knows who else crawling like ants from window to window. It's like a Soviet nightmare, except with people who are friendly and willing to help. It's almost like they would be more comfortable without their dysfunctional system, which requires many ridiculous steps including going to a pay window to buy stamps, which are then affixed to your application (at another window) for the proof that you've payed. Nevertheless, everyone was nice and the process didn't take more than 40 minutes in total, plus several hours to process. We then proceeded with our visas on to the Sinai desert, an extremely rugged peninsula of land where the Israelites ostensibly wandered for 40 years. The land is so mountainous that there would be very few possible spots for a camp of their size...but now there are plenty of military checkpoints, owing to the Israeli presence (Israelis occupied the Sinai as recently as the 70's) and the Palestinian situation (the Sinai borders Gaza). We chose not to climb this time (we climbed mount Sinai in 2003) but instead proceeded to the border crossing.
However, we thought it might be better not to tangle with Israeli border guards and instead go direct to Jordan via boat. While ports are in general slow, we decided to go for it given our seemingly ideal timing. (Arriving 3 hours after the scheduled departure time, we were told if we hurried we could catch the ferry). In reality, the dysfunctional Egyptian port authority took another 6 hours, dashing our chances for a sunset cruise over to Jordan and enraging the Jordanian Palestinian and other passengers who were cooped in the cat and fly-infested terminal waiting room. This truly horrible experience finally led us to board an ancient Baltic cruise ship formerly from the Tallinn-Helsinki route, as evidenced by the posters and signs still hanging. This was the very route I took 18 months ago at the conclusion of my trans-Siberian journey. While the duty free shop was 21st century, the toilet was nauseatingly disgusting, and of course did not supply toilet paper despite our $80 tickets. Welcome to Egypt. Well, really goodbye to Egypt, on back to Jordan, a much more developed country, where tourist touts wait, but at least the visa processing is done in 60 seconds...more on Jordan part II in a bit...
| | | Posted 12/29/2008 10:29 AM - 36 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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