EGYPT TRAVEL LOG-
An October Moment in Cairo
Saba Al Ful – the Morning of the Flowering
Egypt, all of it, resists being slotted to one word or another, but is drawn to a phrase saba al ful - morning of the flowering. Normally one says Saba al xheer – morning of light, but the morning of the flowering embodies this country where 97% of the land is desert, and 3% is arable land, on some of the most tightly congested spots on the globe. A flower growing casually by the side of the road is a rare and precious blessing in a land where water has been the imperative, and the rise and fall of the Nile has defined more civilizations than any ruler. The morning of the flowering, hlewa, the sweetness, the savory and deliciousness.
It is a curious time to be traveling to Egypt and the Middle East in the middle of the US presidential election. I am very conscious of holding US and Irish citizenship. But I am neither, I am an internationalist who holds no allegiance to any one country and believe that an allegiance to a country, to paraphrase Einstein “denies the necessity for the development of the cerebral cortex.” If I could pledge allegiance to something it would be the human race. Not the race of religions, ideology, creeds, theism, or belief, positive or otherwise. This tribalism in the form of nationalism is toxic.
Traveling down the Nile late at night at one of the water locks, an ordinary worker at the dock asked me where I was from. The conversation was in Arabic, but most could understand it quite easily. Upon finding out that I was an American he said, “George Bush I, George Bush II, and John Mc Cain is George Bush III. If Obama is elected there will be peace in the world.” The conversation was quite simple and I wish I had that conversation recorded on a cell phone to put it on U Tube. I don’t think anyone has put such a cogent statement forward
When I first came to the Middle East thirty some odd years ago, it was “America moomtez, America is wonderful” and today, even with a bit of politeness, the reaction to the US is muted at best. On the nightly news are pictures of Palestinian families, with children sitting on pile of rubble that was their home, or pictures of the destruction of Iraq. Though people are thrilled Saddam is gone, they are waiting for the Americans to go home.
Cairo is a city of constants: constant noise, constant people, constant motion, constant engagement, with virtually no down time. Cairo is a dance of modernity and ancient -- bred from thousands of years of conquests, invasions, revolutions, and innovations; a city of extraordinary historical beauty and brutal ugly poverty coexisting as neighbors. A priceless limestone mosque from the 11th century Fatimid period, but against the rear walls, is a warren of mud brick homes crudely built and wedged together. The narrow back alleys enclosed in shadows, cool and comforting away from the sizzling sun, is a blessing in disguise, but the poverty is inescapable, persistent, grinding, wearing away the patience minim by minim, it is the constant backbeat and pulse of the city. It is the high school teacher trying to making a little extra money by hawking tourist souvenirs at night; the blind beggar on the stairs of the mosque; the accountant adding a few precious extra Egyptian pounds driving a nineteen year old fiat cab that is held together by spit, wire, prayers, and little else, one good sideswipe from another car and we will be soon on the other side of paradise; and everyone in the persistent struggle to make ends meet; even a wealthy man I met who had been working from early morning and arrived home exhausted; the stress of survival is omnipresent as the prayer beads in head, in the west we call them “worry beads.” In Cairo, life is made more human and tolerable by the constant cycle of prayer, five times a day from the predawn to bedtime. A city of dubious virtue by some, but the necessity of faith is paramount in a world that is temporal; much like the age of the Pharaoh where this Maya of existence is no more than a fluttering blowing of a window curtain in the breeze. Five times a day throughout the city, without fail comes the call to prayer, Allah Akhabar shouted in the wind.
Walking down the street near Bab Al Zwalaya in the Old City, the tent makers, small shops a few meters wide now filled with souvenir shops, calligraphers and one expression catches my eye, “Knowledge is light.” The street is covered from above by wooden trellises, sun darts through, shadows are heavy, and it is easy to slip back to the 1300’s, when the merchants would be calling out their wares, and news of the recently arrived caravan from the desert is shouted out. Walk through the streets and alleyways, away from the clatter of tourism, and allow old Cairo to speak. Listen closely, you may have stepped back in time without realizing it.
I take a tea by the Sabil of Nafisa, a building from the 1700’s, dedicated to a white woman who started her life as a slave and married a sultan. In the dim heavy drowsiness and the heat of the afternoon, I catch a glance as I watch her carriage passing by, carried by four servants, a dark wood paneled cabin where she could pass through the city streets, almost anonymous, but I believe I saw her pass by today on the corner of Sugar Street. I will ask if Mahfouz saw her too.
Cairo is persistence in the face of the inevitable and despite the fatalism of Islam that says, “Allah Yishfee,” Cairenes fight that inevitability with a smile and grace, lighting up when a foreigner attempts Arabic; and lighting up more, of course, when they’re willing to shop.
Cairo is smells, fragrances, foods, perfumes, sweat, sewage, and life. Life with a capital L. It is not a city for the faint hearted or faint of senses. Garlic, cumin, coriander, and the smoke of sheesha, the water pipe and scent the night air it self. It is the donkey carts straining with impossible loads and their excrescence lines the roads. Frankincense burning surprises me, it is the fragrance of time, like the taste of honey, with its chambers of expectations, it is the memory of a small pink blossomed plant growing by the side of the road in Yemen, and when I rubbed the plant between my fingers, the thick tuberous texture grudgingly offered an intimation of memory.
Cairo is hundreds of cities put into one. It scoffs at uniformity, though weighed down by impoverished cement block buildings where so much of the city is ensconced, it is a city of the Belle Époque and the grandeur of the European culture that made its home here in the mid 1800’s on, it is the stab at socialist soviet architecture, and of course it is the centuries of the grand Islamic architecture from the earliest Mosques in the 9th century to the 20th century pasha Sultan Ali’s mosque that looks like a baroque church dressed and decorated in Islam.
It is to the old Islamic quarter that I am drawn. Though I am not as fearless as I would be in Venice, I love getting lost in the back alleys of the city, as you move further away from the main paths the unspoken look from locals is “Why are you here?” but a “Sabal Xheer – Good morning,” is always greeted cheerily, and the inevitable question: “Are you lost? Do you need some help?” follows.
The cobblestone main street leads to the claustrophobic inner tangle of the back alleys, like the Arabic word Rabat, “To bind, wrap, or hide.” It is in these alley I start to discover this city, away from the Potmekin village façade of genteel ancient Islamic architecture that is offered to the tourist, the city’s integuments and viscera is exposed: mud brick walls hastily assembled to shore up another house that is falling down; a petrified blackened beam probably taken from a burned house is the archway to another door; a white lintel marble with velvety striations – it could even be from the Roman period or earlier. Every city is built on the bones of the previous one, even if a city claims that there was no other before it, somehow another layer deeper is its antecedent. Cairo’s earliest buildings were made from the stones of the Sphinx and the glory of each empire Pharonic, Ptolemaic, Roman, Copt, and so on are all intimately woven into the integuments of the city.
Above the arch of Bab Al Fotu, the medieval gate is the seal of the Rams head, the astrological symbol for the god Mars, signifying the astrological importance of Mars in the Roman period, but other hieroglyphs suddenly appear out of nowhere. On a rear wall of a mosque is a glyph for the River Nile and the god Horus? Was this a tourists’ graffiti or a chunk of block from the ancient days? In the valley of the King there was a note that some of the blocks that were quarried had the name of the particular gang that mined them, “the Drunkards of…” At least the lads had a sense of humor as they were slogging multi-ton blocks of stone up a hill. In so many niches of the city, if you take your time, you will see markings, etching inscriptions, clues from another era, and maybe one amulet will take you back in time
I travel with the curiosity of a poet, the eye of an artist, and the aesthetic sensibility of a historian as I am always looking at the composition. Where is the coherency? What makes an average building outstanding? Though the eye is always looking to arrange and order a coherent aesthetic, what is more remarkable is how the geometry of time engages in dialectic; the conversation of time and memory as it filters into the soul of a building. By the mosque of that leads to Bab a Zwalaya, the building is beautiful in its own right, but as I am climb through the upper towers and stairs, seeing how many architects, builders and designers shaped this from the beginning. From superficial appearances it looked as if this building was formed as a whole, but it was built generation after generation and each one had its own vision and agenda, a sensibility forged by the time, and this is what gives it a unique voice.
I stopped in front of a grocery store with my history book and note book in hand observing the Al Akhma Mosque (the Moon). The shop owner asked me what was so interesting about the mosque across the street. Fortunately, his English was much better than my Arabic. Though he had a shop in front of this mosque for more than thirty years he said, “I never much really looked it, it’s old.”
It is not enough to see that one building was built in a given year is to understand the confluence, the conversation that the artists had. In this one mosque it was the early period of the Fatimid rulers, their first bold steps to state who they were and their beliefs, what was their aesthetic. It is confluence, I explained to the puzzled shop owner, the blending of ideas that makes architecture interesting. Then he started to read the inscriptions above the doorway and explaining to me where the scripture is from in the Koran, and the kind of script it was. Now it was a conversation, between this mosque, him, and me. It is the conversations that I value the most.
There is the city that one sees as a tourist, the other one sees as a resident, and there is this completely different world. It is as if you have a set of eye glasses that says, “Cairo native born and living in the city, and then there is tourist.” The tourist one is easy to capture, it is in the 30 second camera shot as someone swoops by a mosque with little understanding why they’re taking it.
It is a city of contradictions and resolutions, affirmations and denials, polar contrasts by the score at each minute; a beggar woman wrapped in a dirty black robe, her eyes thick with cataracts, her parchment brown aged hands open to the sky, and mutters a blessing as a coin is placed in her hand; a lustrous polished black Mercedes with blackened windows speeds past; and evening prayer call Sault I Maghreb, the prayer call to the faithful is the omnipresent web that binds and joins this city and the land.
Sailing Down the Nile
We orient ourselves by our limbic system, the way that water smells along the Nile from morning till night, fresh water rippling through the swamps and estuaries, fish darting among the reeds, white heron appearing to stand on water plucking out a dinner with each beak full, but as it is spreads its wings another being is carried forward to the next life. As a child appears gliding down the river, the white heron soars above, the blessing (Baracka) is the boat that guides a life from one to the next.
On the Nile this past week, I saw the vulture sailing overhead in the sun, it looked benign in flight, beatific as it blocked out the sun, sensuous in its caress of the wind and valiantly in its dreaming flight, but when it paused lower and circle around the felucca we were sailing on, I felt the dread and terror, till it merely perched on the prow, its ugly battled scarred head that sucked out the marrow from all kinds of carrion was looking at me. I didn’t fear the vulture, merely acknowledging it role as an intercessor.
Traveling up the Nile, swimming against the inevitable, crocodiles lie on the estuary edge, complacent logs, Sobek Crocodile god revered by the ancients, the intercessor between life and death. How can I hold on to such a fragile thing as life or is it the awareness that the fragility of life is even more precious than we imagine. Gods of war, Death, Intercessions, Voyage, and even something as tender and innocuous as water itself is mirrored in the black darkness.
Our boat motors up the Nile, vile belching of diesel polluting the night sky, the acrid smell of hydrocarbons washed away in the wind, moon comes up on the port side and it is as luminous and ripe as young love itself. Yah, moon god births herself as the clouds lie back and part, the river of light floods across the waters, midnight gives way and the boat glides down the river. I play my guitar sotto voce, as a mendicant offering love and sacrifice, gators seem to imperceptibly move along the river bank, wind blowing back the date palms as it silhouettes against the moon. A hundred thousand years ago, man and women taking the first tentative steps out of Africa and each generation maybe boldly claim a few meters of progress. As long as there was fish, some grains, and clean water this was heaven. I can see life through the hundreds of thousands of years, millennium disappearing as the diesels is simmering low, and we follow the river to the headwaters of the Nile.
Casually, someone asked me when I was here last and I said to him in Egyptian, “About 2,500 years ago.” He thought I had misspoken or misunderstood his question, and when I repeated it again, he nodded his head. Did he know or was he being merely polite?
In late evening, a fisherman wearing a loin cloth was repairing a net with his son, then standing in knee high water he cast it out a few meters into the Nile, the pulse of time from millennium ago resonated as the net sunk and when they dragged it back in it was a slow, almost sensuous, harvesting. In casting the net it was like offering a prayer and extended out, in drawing it back it was bringing the harvest home to heart. This is the rhythm along the Nile, though the course of the river has changed, banks flooded, empires come and gone, deities born and venerated, it is the Nile itself, the mother god who remains immutable. The passage of humans to these shores that have tried to shape, manipulate and forge its destiny has been, at best, incidental. In time, even the mighty Aswan will crumble, and the river will forge its way again to the sea. It is an immutable fact; the Nile will always seek its own ontological destiny, gravity, the imperative to run to the sea. When the Nile finally opens wide, releasing the millions of cubic tons of water, swelling in a tsunami of unrequited love now fulfilled, will devour the temple of the river gods, those of Sobek and the protective falcon guide Horus, the mistress of madness Isis, and all the works and days at hand, and engulfs Cairo as wide as Memphis covering to Heliopolis and the ancient cities, returning Alexandria to the sea, and the seaward looking villas of Venice will look at the voluptuous sunset as the drowning surrendering epiphany.
The Fragile Concordance
The river is about now, this moment. It is a vibrant Now, as the river teaches us, now we glide homewards to the mouth of the river. I stay awake through the night watching the river. It is vibrant and immensely alive, as we had gotten past the small industrial cities, down through the locks that raise and lower the boats, further towards the headwater of the Nile. Kids are paddling out to the boat on pieces of insulation foam, their hands are paddles effortlessly traversing the waters, more fluid and fearless than a kayaker, undaunted by the effluence pouring from the river town, their immune systems are probably immune to Hepatitis, and the possibility of Bilharzias, a common river parasite seems as if it is only a footnote in some foreign medical text.
As the cities disappear, the broad fertile fields of the river bank emerge, the same scene for millennium. Though there may be some motors, but the work is still manual and grinding, though the crops are largely beet sugar for export, some broad leafy fields of millet, and the omnipresent dates in the palm trees. In one field is the water wheel, with the donkey lashed to the turning, making its round, the Shaduff, but most of these fields are irrigated by open irrigation ditches, a crude system that seems to offer several harvests per year. While the green belt stretches for more than a thousand kilometers along the Nile, the desert with its undulating sand dunes hovers constantly near.
Though I’ve lived on the edge on the edge of the Western Sahara, it is in coming to face again with the towering sand dunes by Aswan, perhaps there is a few hundred meters of fertile green fields, some estuaries, redolent of life, but above it like some ominous spirit the desert looms ready to devour each shred of green.
The interaction of the desert with the shores of the Nile has been the constant conversation since the first sniveling trickle of water appeared from the heart of Uganda, made its way through the Sudan, past the cataracts and falls, and the inevitable voyage to the sea. As I look up to the cliffs and the narrow pass that leads to the desert. “A twenty day ride on a camel caravan to the first oasis if you would like?” asked a guide. I had seen a group of obese tourists on camels earlier; it had the comic equivalent of the rotund King Farouk in a mini-skirt doing a belly dance,
Moonlight on the Nile overlooking Aswan
There on the lower Nile down by the first cataract our boat sails down to the mouth of the Nile. Palm trees on either side of the river, heron’s white and blue wade in the muddy river banks, the reeds and tangle of the underbrush. Wishing I had recording it while watching
I may not know much about the history, the rise and fall of the Nile, the thousands of years of civilization, but it is the moon and seasons that have measured the course of the planet and human history. Tonight I sat on top deck of our boat and watched the moon rise over the waters, so simple and graceful, how the moon has always inspired such dreaming, allowed the reveries to sink deep into out soul.
The night prayers give way to moonlight and dreaming here on the Nile. Palm trees silhouetted by the moon.
Evening Sunset on the Nile
Feluccas plying the waterways, dozens of sailboats with their patched sails skimming across the water, like birds in flight, there among the granite boulders, plying their wares of tourists.
It struck me how that despite the thousands of years of history, the same patterns emerge. Sailing on the riverbank, sun falling, oxen and donkeys by the rivers, boys and girls playing by the side of the waters.
In the Nubian village, a traditional Arabic village gaily painted in blues, and pinks. Hugging close to the banks of the river. Tourists are bouncing on top of camels, mounds of pink flesh of Italian, French, and German hue rocking on top of these swaying beasts and looking as if they will fall off at any minute. Young boys swatting the camels for up and down. Why any one would find glamour in riding one is a bit of a mystery, but then I see one of the boys leap on top of the camel and their ride is effortless and fluent. Can I get this on You Tube, fat pink tourists, several weighing at least at 250 pounds are on top of the camel precariously holding on and looking as if they will fall off. I am sure that the memories of this are priceless and hysterical for the local Nubian
In the Nubian village the people are a mix of Arab and African, women in black robes, and men in the long djellabas. Streets are alive, the tourists in town and the shops are filled with the tchchkas and fabrics, artifacts of the trip, tourists tripping down the street snapping photos, and myself capturing images with my pen.
I sit in a shadowy corner, as invisible as a white foreigner can be in these circumstances, watching the evening parade of vendors, kids playing in the dirt, a few traditional shops selling spices, dyes like indigo in blue mounds, and the wonderful aromatic frankincense. I feel as if I’m a voyeur, leaping into their world for a few minutes, but inevitably I would always be a stranger here, even if I spoke their language fluently.
In traveling I ask – How does traveling inform me? What insights do I take away from this trip? As a poet, it has given me new words for moonlight; it has given me the words for surrender, words for the tenderness of the night.
But it has opened a door that I didn’t know existed here. It is marked with an exit sign. Last night I was walking on the deck of the ship past midnight and I had the compelling desire to leap off the boat and float away with the tide. Then later that night, I was playing the guitar it was about 1 am, and had the vision that though I would hear the music from the other side, I could not feel it, it would be an alluring memory.
14 October 2008
My birthday on the Nile at 54 it has felt like such a long journey and yet it has only been a moment in time. I came back to our cabin and it was festooned with ribbons and banners for a birthday, the cabin crew singing “Happy Birthday.” I was in the dining room later that evening and it was an Egyptian style birthday, horns and singing, and they made me get up and dance. Damn, if I wasn’t such a ham, I would have been embarrassed. The birthday wishes were well received.
What a marvelous way to launch the New Year.
ABU SIMBAL
We awoke up at 3 am and whisked away in the comfort of a private taxi to Abu SIMBAL, one of the Seven Wonders of the World I’ve seen. As a child I read of the heroic effort to disassemble this entire 4,500 year old sand stone structure and move it inland to escape the flooding of the Nile. When the Aswan dam was built they didn’t quite anticipate the extent of the flooding and Abu SIMBAL the temple of Ramses II was soon to be inundated
I am grateful for being able to travel here. For hours, the bleak and desolate desert, flat desert, unremitting easily over 40 (over a 100F) degrees in the morning, the road shimmering in the intense heat, barren without any redeeming color or virtue. Three hours to Abu Simbal, dozing awake and peering out the window for some glimmer of this great temple. A narrow strand of buildings, military complexes, and the reluctant flowers of purple and white, the hardiest of flowers. Arriving at the temple, on the southern side of the mountain, walking around to the front is THE TEMPLE.
There are very few temples in the world that scream out their presence the way the temple of Ramses II calls out. From every post card and picture of Egypt and the world’s great historical sites, this massive temple evokes the serenity of Ramses II with his wife. The Pharos with their hands on their laps, bearded, and looking southwards. Originally, if you had been approaching from the south you could see them from some 40 kilometers away.
The immensity of the project dwarfs the imagination when one realizes how enormous was the project to move hundreds of thousands of tons of stone to this site and reconstruct it.
Prayer Call is Aswan
Now at 4 am is the first call to the faithful, morning prayers, in the dark rising before dawn, calls to the prophet Mohammed. Prayer calls amazingingly beautiful Morning prayers,
Settling down today. Finding that rhythm for writing. Here on the banks of the Nile. Tremendous well of old bitter anger. Tremendous well. Finding the peacefulness.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
CAIRO AS THE GEOMETRY OF TIME:
The City of Perpetual Metaphor
Awake at 6:30 the sterile hotel all the way out in Heliopolis, though I admit to loving the cool clean comfort of this hotel, it is the old city that compels me to write. Yesterday, and the day before, soaking up the old Islamic quarter into every pore of my being, I was the dried lifeless sponge, living the life of a genteel country poet in Vermont, surrounded in cocoon of familiarity, but Cairo appears as the antithesis of everything I like and need…Crowded, dirty, noisy, polluted… but my goodness…what a marvelous city! It is like making loving to a grand damme, she may be plump and far past her prime; but she will know the way to appeal to all your senses and push you to the boundaries of what desire is.
Cairo is a city of a thousand metaphors created each day, it is the old and familiar sites of medieval schools, hospitals, mosques, and houses clustered and crammed together at impossible angles, leaning against and supporting each other like old drunks on the way home from a late night binge: Cairo is like two chaste lovers walking down the dimly lit street in the early hours of the morning towards the city gates. The girl is wearing a pink hjab, jeans, and sandals, and the boy in a clean white djellabas. They are the ghosts of Laylla and Mejnoon, lovers of time immemorial.
The theme and the pulse of the city is the Nile of traffic. As eternal as the river is it is now in the constant tumult and turn of traffic, it never ceases, driving can be described as an organic experience or Cairo’s version of Contact sport. I was trying to explain to the driver the other day: This should be the new Olympic Sport – Driving in Cairo.
Cairo is about being hot, dirty, polluted, crowded, can’t breathe, suffocating from crowds and then realizing it is part of the glorious squalor of being human. In the west we wrap ourselves in the cocoon of certainty, propriety, uniformity, and exactness; after all
aren’t these the hallmarks of modernity?
The language of each quarter and of each block could fill an entire volume. Each street of the gold smith, tin workers, tent maker, bookbinder, garlic and cumin sellers, glazier, fabric dyers, and the hundreds more have their own distinct patois. I do not pretend to understand all the nuance and flavors of languages, as a foreigner with rudimentary of Arabic, at best, I am a voyeur. As a voyeur you become accustomed the rhythms and texture of language, how it changes from the gold souk to metal smith workers on the street west of Bab Zwayla, for generations
There is none of the romance of sailing down the Nile on a Felucca like we had down by the upper cataracts, gazing idly at the moon, fondly dreaming, playing guitar and listening to the almost innocent murmuring of the wind through the palm streets.
This city is in your face, literally and figuratively.
It is impossible to write in the streets. I have tried to take notes here and there, noticing the smile of a three year old child with hunk of bread, dusty brown curly hair, a dirty face, well cared for, but a child of the cotton vendor, who was quite happy nibbling on his bread, sitting on the wall surrounding a sabilla, a water fountain from the early 1800’s.
In the brief time, I know there are street children in Cairo, neglect, but the outward signs of cruelty I haven’t seen. In the US people seem quite liberal in smacking their children in public and abusing them, but I have seen the parents firm, and caring.
Street Life
Last night, I sat with my new friend C as we had dinner on the square Midan Hussein. Watching the sun set over Al Azhar University, the three minarets looming to our left. In the front was the square of Midan Hussein, palm trees surrounding the park, and with a surprising degree of cleanliness. This is one of the things that I so value in Switzerland, the place is tidy, but this city is one of squalor, chaos, and disorder, but apparently because of the necessity of appealing to the Western tourist trade these downtown centers are quite spiffy, and disorientingly so too. The street traffic flows in front and in the hour of sitting and eating our falafel, fuul, salad (yes, you can eat the salad in places that cater to tourists, but still do not drink the water. I have to get the water purification kit as I dislike the glut of plastic water bottle, but I am paranoid of gut issues.) Food is almost always delicious, except when you’re at the Western Hotels, it is not quite European and not Egyptian, the taste is off. Though my stomach cannot take it often, give me the soul of Egyptian food, fuul, garlic bean soup, a cup of tea and I am content.
I am very content writing in the square, protected by my affluence, a bit of money coming in from business, and the freedom to sit here and write. Though I am person of modest means, I know I am profoundly privileged to have this freedom. In one poem asked: Whom do I write for? I write for the thousands of people who yearned to sit and write, maybe someone in prison, in solitary confinement with a shard of rock writing on the prison wall, or a child in a schoolyard with a piece of chalk. This essential uniquely human instinct to say, “Ï have lived and dreamed, and I am.” It is this quest for immortality
Observer
I am an observer and a looker. Though now I am sitting ensconced in my bedroom in the hotel, as Wordsworth said, poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility. I need this quiet time to settle down, to think, to write, to gather my thoughts. My thoughts, senses and awareness are shooting around at a hundred miles a minute.
CONFLUENCE:
The word for the trip is confluence. The intermingling of ideas
Ultimate Fantasy:
My long term fantasy would be to do a one to two year journey starting in Poiter France working my way south through the Pyrrenes, heading down to Granada, then to Morocco, across to Algierie, Libya, Egypt, Israel/ Palestine, Jerusalem, Lebanon down the Red Sea to Hodeida into Sanna, down to Aden, across to Oman, through the Emirates, into Iran, down into Moghul India, Indonesia, and then finally a Falafel shop in San Francisco run by a Yemeni.
I need to get my life into the suitcase that I travel so easily with. A guitar, tennis racquet, passport, computer. a high flying gypsy. I really have only wanted to one thing in life and that is write, and it is remarkable how many twists, turns, evolutions, detours, false starts I have taken so far away and still so close to writing.
Winter of Dreams: Old Cairo
Dec., Jan., Feb to spend in the old city of Cairo. A writer’s journal.
The Journey from 10 October to 25 October Cairo Egypt
Notes above, glorious. Fifteen days where the experience of this voyage infuses into every pore of my cell. Back in the US after two weeks away. I felt like I was pararchuted intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually into another world. All my usual orientations, projects, ideas, writings, jazz writings, and songs have been held in abeyance.
The challenge is how to harness the creative lion. How to harness this great creative energy? How to harness this sensuous creative instinct?
Today I will struggle with staying awake. Back here, though I love my Vermont home, I love the coffee in the morning while sitting on Blue Heron Pond. I love the anticipation of morning. I love the familiarity of home. I love the routine of waking up and writing. And I am ready to be back on the road, I’ like to spend the time between now and January in Yemen.
The Very Best of the Trip
Out of seeing some of the most amazing places like Abu Simbal, the temples along the niles, the mosques in the old city, the most wonderful aspect of the trip was talking to people.
My first thought is evening talking to the young men on the sidewalk of Cairo. There was a group of 8 young university student near Taffiyka Square in the downtown. One said hello and one thing lead to another. They invited us to sit down and join them for a talk. The fellows were ravenous to talk to Americans and practice their sometimes halting English and one of the persistent question was, “Why do Americans think Arabs are bad people?” We tried to dissuade them of this and explain that it is a minority and a president and his staff who are “mejnoon” (insane/ crazy). It was difficult to argue the point as the popular media is keen to portray all Arabs as terrorists. This group of young men who were accountants, engineers, teachers and a cross section of the next generation and from their perspective the future looked bleak as the economic opportunities were slender and jobs were very difficult to come by. What happens when your next generation is peering into the future and staring back at them is a lack of hope? In the joviality of the moment, we ordered a water pipe, and enjoyed a nice smoke on the city side walk. Though they were poor students, they paid for our water and our sheesha.
One of the things I wanted to do is a website that people can sign in on and say,
www.Sadikatee- Friends.com. I am not a terrorists, my name is Jameela or Mohammed.
On another day I was sitting in front of the Mosque Al Hakim by the Bab Al Fotu and quietly reading my book, when a girl Sara about fifteen looked at me with a shy smile, and I invited her to sit with me if she would like. Even a modest bit of Arabic goes a long way here, and she wanted the opportunity to practice her English. Strange, a man several yards away from her asked her why she was talking to me. I looked at him and explained that she was merely a young student. Was it okay that I spoke with her? We walked a few blocks and though it was too short of a time, I was thrilled with the opportunity to open a door for a young student. Unfortunately, she had to go to class.
The other amazingly fun opportunity was to have dinner with W., S,, and their children, and her sister. Though there was a greater opportunity for this well to do family to interact with foreigners it was again a delight to be able to engage with people one on one. I even did a bit of an impromptu rap on a Mubarak the president. I may have a future as a performer here
Though my Arabic is rusty, the most compelling moments of the trip was the opportunity to sit and talk with people, to listen to their stories and aspirations. At every corner of this all together too brief trip, I was constantly and pleasantly surprised by the cordiality and the welcoming nature of so many people. In the Nubian museum, one Nubian guard was delighted to have a foreigner visit, and interested in his people’s history.
I profoundly miss the international bazaar of languages and cultures and though I could go to New York, which probably has the greatest diversity of languages anywhere, there is something to be said for this melting pot called Egypt. On the way back we stopped in Paris and again being surround by languages, having them as a daily part of the stew is inspiring.
Though it is wildly ambitious I am getting the inspiration again to do a length article, Islam as the Foundation for the European Renaissance
