To Helwan and Back

Peter, Matt, and me in front of the Pyramid of Djoser. Our camels are named (from left to right) Ramses, Whiskey, and Banana.

Hello again. So here we are, on the cusp of another ridiculous trip. Tonight at 11:30, we head out to catch a bus to the airport for our 2:45 AM flight to Athens. It's pretty crazy. We're of course incredibly excited. We'll get into Athens around 6 AM and spend the whole day there. Athens is way too diverse and

Green water pouring out of a canal pump "on the way" to the camel market.

interesting a city to be seen in a day, but we're gonna try our best. At mid- night that night, we'll catch a train to make the five-hour journey to Thessalo- niki, Greece's second largest city, where we'll see Peter's roommate Ka- sia for a few days. On Saturday night, we'll hop on a sleeper to Istanbul, which should get us in around 8 AM the next morning. I've never taken a sleeper before, and we'll be taking three during this trip. Awesome! We'll do Istanbul until Tuesday morning, at which point we'll board a ferry to cross the Sea of Marmara. When we hit land, we'll grab another train that will take us to Izmir, Turkey's third largest city. Allegedly it's pretty boring, so we won't stay there long before taking a bus to Kusadasi, a little town on the Aegean Sea that is really cute, if a little touristy. The next morning, it's off to Ephesus to see some sweet Roman ruins, and then that night we go back to Izmir to catch our second sleeper, this one to Ankara, Turkey's capital. We'll do Ankara for the day and then that night head for Goreme, our new destination in the Cappadocia region (in lieu of Kaysari), where we'll stay in a cave for two nights! Then, on Saturday morning, it's off to the Syrian border, which should take up the greater part of that day. Hopefully we'll make Aleppo by midnight or so, find a hostel, and get a little rest before trying to see that city in one day. At

Birqesh Camel Market.

midnight, our third sleeper train leaves for Damascus, getting us there at 6:30 AM. We'll stay in Damascus until 7 AM the next day, which once again isn't enough time to do the city justice, but oh well. After that, we'll head to Amman, where we'll try to meet up with Prunie Brox from Oberlin. The next morning we take an early bus to Petra, another place we won't spend enough time in, apparently. That same night, we'll try to make it into Israel at the southern border. We probably won't be able to get to Jerusalem that day, so we'll get a hostel in Eilat, an Israeli resort town. There's a bus to Jerusalem at 7 AM the next morning (we're now at Tuesday, May 1), which should take about four hours. Then it's just hanging in Israel for three days with Sari Gardner from Oberlin, her boyfriend Casey, and my mom, who will be flying in the day after we get there. On Sunday we'll take a bus to the Israeli border, cross it on foot, and grab another bus to Cairo. Et voila... our krazy trip will be at an end. I really can't even begin to believe such a thing is about to happen.

Ross and Sam and the others look angry while Stoo argues with cab drivers.

Nor can I believe that, once we get back, we've got less than a month left in Cairo! Our time here has flown by. I've tried to pack the last few weekends with places around Cairo I haven't seen yet, since there's so much of the rest of Egypt I still need to check out, and I'm going to be using every weekend in May to do so. The strangest thing about it is how detached I feel from the me that came to Cairo in late January. I don't think I've actually changed that much, but I just feel like something big happened between now and then, something that took a long time and that makes the beginning of my time here feel different. It's hard to explain.

But anyway, two weekends ago, we didn't do quite as much as I would have liked. In truth, we did almost nothing. We tried to do something, but had very little luck. Early Friday morning, we got up and headed for the Birqesh Camel Market. This is where the majority of the camels in the Cairo area are purchased after being led up through the desert all the way from the Sudan. Apparently it's supposed to be

Peter, Martha, and Matt in front of the Pyramid of Djoser.

crazy and fascinating, in a fairly grotesque way. The camels are herded around and beaten for incentive, peo- ple are yelling, and there's so much activity that there's barely room to move. Unfortu- nately, our cab drivers had no idea where it was and got lost for an hour or so. Once we finally showed up, we'd all but missed it, and they still wanted to overcharge us to get in. We decided it wasn't even worth it anymore, and so we demanded to pay less than what the cabbies wanted to charge us (which was way too much anyway). A long argument ensued between Stoo and the drivers, impressively all in Arabic, and he managed to get us rides back for half the price. On the bright side, we did get to see some camels, and the taxi drivers' crackpot route home took us by the Pyramids of Giza, which is always fun.

Martha rides off into the desert.

This last week- end I felt pretty good about how much we got done, even if it was slightly less than I'd planned. On Friday, Peter, Matt, Martha, and I got up early to go see the Saqqara Pyramids. A lot of people don't realize that there are many more pyramids in Egypt than just the famous trio at Giza. Right near Cairo, there are two entire other complexes: Saqqara and Dahshur (which we'd also hoped to see, but we ran out of time). Saqqara is famous for its step pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser. This was the first major pyramid completed and was also the first major stone construction ever built in the world. When it was created almost five thousand years ago, it was the world's tallest building, a title it didn't hold for long, as its creation ushered in the greatest wave of pyramid building in Egyptian history. The complex is located about ten miles south by southwest of the city center. We had hoped to take the metro as far south as we could to Helwan, picking up Martha along the way in Maadi. At Helwan, we planned to grab a taxi, which would

More cameling.

take us across the river to Saqqara. However, it seemed that the con- ception of the Pyramids at Giza as the only Pyramids does- n't just exist in the West, as that is pre- cisely where our driver took us, backtrack- ing all the way to Cairo and then going over to Giza, all in spite of the fact that I repeatedly told him in Arabic that I wanted the Pyramids in Saqqara, not the ones in Giza. It was a terrible parallel to our camel market experience from the week prior, especially when we finally got to Saqqara an hour later than we should have and I proceeded to argue with the driver in Arabic, at which I am much worse than Stoo. He was demanding twice the acceptable price, so finally I just threw the money on the passenger seat and walked away, a very effective method for dealing with someone who is trying to rip you off.

St. George's Monastery in Coptic Cairo.

After that unpleasantness, Saqqara was very fun and wicked cool. We checked out the Im- hotep Museum, which is filled with neat artifacts and even a mum- my! Imhotep was the architect of the Pyramid of Djoser, as well as a bunch of other stuff, I think. After the museum, we continued along to the pyramids. The step pyramid was the only really impressive one. The others looked more like heaps of stone and sand than like pyramids, but they were neat in a run-down, prototypical kinda way. After walking around for a little while, we decided to ride camels, except for Martha, who opted for a horse. It was really fun, though our guides were a little too in our face about asking for more money and trying to provide us with prostitutes and hashish on the side. But they were still very friendly. We never

Ross and Sam are captivated by the Coptic God.

went faster than a slow trot, which was okay by me. Those things are freakin' tall! Our friend Adam fell off one at Giza, and even though you're falling on to sand, I wouldn't want that to happen to me. After the camels, we wandered around the ruins, which are poorly guarded. This was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing in that it allowed us total freedom to explore and touch hieroglyphics and look in little temples and caves and whatnot, a curse in that it also meant that there was copious graffiti, which was also something of a blessing and a curse in and of itself. These temples have been poorly guarded since their creation, which means that while, yes, there is stupid American graffiti, there is also Greek and Roman and Arabic graffiti. Pretty neat, actually. All in all, it was a very fun trip. The pyramids weren't quite as cool as those at Giza, but they are definitely a must-see.

The ruins of Fustat, the third city to be established near modern Cairo and the first that was Islamic.

The next day we decided to stay a little closer to home, and so we went to Coptic Cairo. For those of you not fa- miliar with them, the Coptic Chris- tians have been in Egypt longer than the Mus- lims, dating back to the first few centuries after Christ's death, which also makes them some of the oldest Christians. They are neither Orthodox, Protestant, nor Catholic, though they are probably closest to the last one. They have their own pope, who was only recently recognized by the Catholic Church, which means that they've finally stopped badgering the Copts after a couple millenia. The root of the word "Copt" is the same as that of the word "Egypt," which shows how closely intertwined their histories are. Also, I read that since Copts are far more strict than Muslims about not marrying outside of their religion, consequently they are more closely related to the ancient Egyptians, which is kind of neat, if somewhat pointless. Anyway, Copts make up almost all the Christians in Egypt, who comprise about five percent of the total population. Most of them live in Cairo or Alexandria, where their pope is. Coptic Cairo is one of the oldest parts of the city. It is at the site of Babylon-in-Egypt, which was founded by the Romans and was the second city

The Mosque of Amr, technically the oldest mosque in Africa, though as you can see it's been extensively renovated.

created in the basic area where Cairo is (after Mem- phis). Alleged- ly, this is where the Holy Family lived while in Egypt. It was a pretty cute area, and consequently it didn't feel much like Cai- ro. We wander- ed around through churches and monasteries and cemeter- ies, and then we headed away from Coptic Cairo to see some other nearby sites, including Fustat, the next city after Babylon-in-Egypt and the first Muslim city. It was inhabited from the seventh century until the twelfth. By that time, it was mostly abandoned anyway, and as the crusades neared the new city which had sprung up to its north, Al-Qahirah (Cairo), they decided to burn Fustat to keep it from being used as a base from which the crusaders might attack. It burned for more than fifty days, which means that unfortunately the ruins nowadays are pretty much nonexistent. It's just a bunch of bricks and rubble in the middle of a large open field. But it was still pretty neat to see what something that huge can turn into.

From Fustat, we went on to the Mosque of Amr, which was built around the same time as Fustat and is thus the oldest mosque in Africa. However, it has been rebuilt and revamped extensively since then, which is why Ibn Tulun often gets that distinction. I was much more impressed by Ibn Tulun overall anyway, though Amr was very peaceful. On our way back to the metro, we hit the Ben Ezra Synagogue, which is the only truly functioning synagogue in Egypt, though there are others. There are apparently only around two hundred native Jews left in Egypt. There were more here a hundred years ago, but in the period leading up to and immediately following the creation of Israel, most left. Anyway, the ones still around are stingy about pictures, apparently. I tried to snap one (without a flash) inside the synagogue and got kicked out as a result. Whatever.

Other than that, we've been doing a lot of work mostly, catching up from our Eurotrip. Peter has been especially hard hit recently. As much as I get on his case about not writing blog entries, he has some pretty good excuses. First of all, unlike just about everyone else studying abroad, his grades transfer, which means he

Ross, Stoo, and me... dayumn...

has a slightly less "relaxed" time here than the rest of us. Second of all, the engineering department happens to be one of the only departments at AUC that is comparably difficult to a university in America, so he has a signi- ficant amount of work to do in general. Lastly, he has charitably volunteered his time to build a website for STAR, the organization with which we are teaching refugees English. They have fundraising issues, and they've decided putting a cyberface on the group could help them get some support. Peter's never actually made a website before, though he is familiar with HTML coding. Still, he had to do a lot of research and spend a lot of time trying things out and working out the kinks before he got it right. Additionally, STAR is absurdly disorganized, which means he keeps getting told to do one thing which then gets negated and so he's told to redo the website in this way and that way. Fortunately, after about a month of fairly regular work on the site, it looks like he's just about done. So yeah, I guess that stuff is a little more important than the blog... I guess. He does plan on writing, though, I think. Hopefully before we leave in June.

The last big presence in my life during the last few weeks has been Naguib Mahfouz. You probably don't know him, since he's criminally underrated, but he's the only Arab ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died a few years ago, but for most of his incredibly long life, he wrote prolifically and excellently. In the last few weeks, I've read two of his books and am working on a third. Miramar was the first, and so far definitely my favorite. It's about a bunch of people living in a pension in Alexandria in the 1960s, just after a major revolution in Egyptian politics and life. They all appear okay on the surface, but underneath, each are unhappy, and thus they serve as an allegory for the nation itself. It's really great. The next was Mirrors, which is a very strange concept. It's a series of about thirty-five short (two to four pages each) descriptions of all the important people in the narrator's life. Through each one, you learn more about the other characters as well as about the narrator himself. There wasn't much of a plot, and at times it got a little boring, but it was a very interesting style and parts of it were really well done. Now I'm reading Midaq Alley, which is one of his most popular. It takes place on a real alley in Khan El-Khalili (see a previous entry) and, like Miramar, discusses a group of people who serve as a microcosm of all of Egypt, or even all the world in this case. It's good, though not as good as Miramar, which I highly suggest to everyone, regardless of their interest or lack thereof in Arab culture. It's a great book. One of the best things about Mahfouz is the degree to which he has informed me about recent Egyptian history, which is really fascinating, especially considering how close I am to the spots where so much of it happened. Just down the street at Midan Tahrir, Egyptians protested the British presence in the 50s, and they were answered by British tanks which rolled in from across the Nile and shot into the crowds. I read about that in a novel describing it happening while sitting in the middle of Midan Tahrir. Very crazy.

Anyway, I have to get all ready to head out in a few hours. I'll try to update here and there along the journey, but since we'll be very busy traveling and afterwards entertaining my mom, it might be a little while until another significant entry. Have a good April!

One last picture of the Step Pyramid. I suppose the world's oldest major stone construction deserves it.