Cairo bazaars with friends

March 1, 2008


Yes, thank you all, I am well. I like my job and I like my students. My teacher coordinator is a kind and patient woman. I have a great apartment in a great part of the city—on the island of Zamalek! in the middle of the Nile! Cairo is many things: exciting, irritating, polluted, noisy, ancient and interesting. The traffic is crazy, the honking is endless and the government blames many of the traffic accidents on the pedestrians, who, God bless them, just want to cross the street. I would say that Cairo is an interesting mix of the old and the new, but truth is, there is not a lot of NEW in Cairo. Oh, there are nice western hotels along the Nile, and you can see one or two newish government buildings but the razing of the old to put up the new is absent here. There is no center of glitter and glamour. The heart, hearts might be more accurate, is the Midan Tahrir—Tahrir Square. The ‘squares’ are actually circles with thousands of cars entering, exiting and changing lanes—and occasionally drivers stopping to make a phone call, or check the oil, or have an argument. And the other chief ‘organs’ are the bazaars where the average person shops. I have attached a folder of photographs from the Bazaar of the Tentmakers. This was, and is, truly the place where people ordered their tents. One photo shows miniature and model tents that you base your order on.

I was at this bazaar last week with my friends from America, Mike and Jonathan, and my friend Jill who lives and works in Cairo. She led us on a tour of the Citadel then down into the two most famous bazaars of Cairo—the Khan al Kahlili and the Tentmakers. The Khan is an enormous tourist trap though it still has useful shops—just don’t go on Saturday or Thursday evening. When I learned Mike and Jonathan were coming, I began thinking of places to go and that is when it struck me that there is no sparkling downtown here. The view of the skyline from the Citadel will show you that Cairo is a hundred shades of tan and grey
and you won’t see a single “mirrored” building. The city has millions and millions of people, about 20 million in fact, but many of these people are poor. They would not be shopping in shiny skyscrapers. They are selling carrots and apples off of carts pulled by donkeys.

I rarely get out of the city and when I do, it is fantastic. My earlier letter described the trip to the Coptic monasteries of the Red Sea. Two weeks ago we went on a field trip to the Step Pyramid at Saqqara with an archaeologist who is conducting a dig at the site and who has found the only mummified lion that has been found in Egypt. Today we went to the Wadi Degla. A wadi is a dry canyon, and this beautiful place is just south of the city. It is lovely...except for the thousands of plastic bags that are caught in the bushes. Coming up in two weeks, over a four day weekend, I will make a trip to the Siwa Oasis, a beautiful region in the Western Desert near the border of Libya. On the way there we will stop in the WWII cemetery at El Alamein.

I was very happy to learn that one of my students from Yemen is going to medical school at Cairo University. I met him, Ahmed, yesterday for lunch and got to hear about his brother’s recent wedding in Aden.

It was a beautiful day. We ate lunch, and afterward walked up on the 15th May Bridge. We were watching the water and Ahmed said, "Teacher, I saw you drinking water from a bottle and I read about the bacteria in the bottle water.” He said, "I didn't want to worry you but I am worried about you." And then we looked at the Nile and Ahmed said "bilharzia.” “Yes,” I said. I had read about bilharzia. Guide books say don't get into the Nile water ever. We watched three boats of fishermen. Two were oared and one had oars and a motor though it was using oars. The latter one had an entire family -- fishing family, not fun family outing. There were the parents and 4 kids--say about 4, 7, 9, and 11. The mother, father and two boys were fishing. The oldest looking was a girl and she bent over the edge of the boat and splashed water on her face, washing her face, then she RINSED HER MOUTH with the Nile water. I saw her taking the water in then spitting it out. I told Ahmed, “My gosh, she is putting that water into her mouth.” He watch for a moment then said, “Teacher, let us go because I know what bilharzia does and I can not watch this." So we left.

And that just about sums things up for the moment. I am not taking time to proofread, edit, polish or anything else this letter. I am just sending it. I must get it sent!