After a restful night at the Ramses Hilton, off I went to breakfast. Charles skipped breakfast because he felt fat from not exercising. The Hilton’s continental breakfast was extensive. It head every cereal you can imagine including, of course, Coco Crisps. In addition to the normal cereals was a real treat: Sugarsmacks. There were sausages, cooked tomatoes, made to order omelets, pancakes, French toast, and a chocolate fountain. What really caught my eyes was something labeled “mini-Burgers.” These turned out to be meatballs in tomato sauce. Around the corner were potatoes with a startling resemblance to tater-tots. After a bowl of Sugarsmacks, the mini-Burgers and tater-tots I was fueled for the day.
We gathered in the lobby awaiting the arrival of our Egyptian guide, Soha. She was thirty minutes late. Wallid, our organizer for the trip, told her the wrong time. Wallid wasn’t very efficient on this trip. Soha should have been with us for the previous days in Alexandria but he had told her the wrong dates and she was in upper Egypt on another expedition.
Soha had been our guide in Cairo during our first trip to Egypt. She had been very knowledgeable, and spoke excellent if softly spoken English. During our last trip she had expressed the same views about Islam as the monk Cedrak had. Certain people were corrupting it with primitive tribal customs not stated in the Koran. On our last trip Cairo had been cold and rainy. During our tour of Sakkara, she had to wear a fur-lined coat. Luckily the unseasonably cold weather had broken and the temperature was comfortably in the seventies. One odd thing I noticed about Soha is that she has no eyebrows. Instead she has tattooed-in eyebrows. Likewise, there are tattooed lines along her lips. I guess it’s permanent makeup.
Away we went on the bus to old Cairo. We passed bread vendors balancing stacks of flat bread balanced on their head. As we left downtown Cairo and headed to old Cairo the streets got narrower and grimier. Vendors, mostly old men sat by the street side selling their wares. It was early yet so most of the tourist shops hadn’t opened.
The ancient city walls define the boundaries of Old Cairo. Three gates still remain. In many European cities the old city walls have been torn down. It’s nice to see these remain.
Our first stop was one of the city gates: Bab Zuwayla. My first impression of the place was how filthy it was. Right next to the gates were piles of garbage being picked at by skinny, sickly cats. The gates had two towers rather resembling a mosque. The gates, left open to allow vehicle traffic from the busy but narrow road, were massive. The construction of the gates resembled that of ancient Egypt. Above the gates were murder holes through which boiling oil would be poured on attackers. In the gate entrance, on the side of the walls are decorations of clamshells. These symbolize rebirth and resurrection going back to Egyptian times.
Just a little past the gate, beside the narrow road was our first mosque of the day. It was one of the oldest and most beautiful mosque. We left our shoes to an attendant before entering the mosque. We were instructed to hold our shoes in our left hand with the tips pointing downward. All the mosques we went to had an attendant to keep track of the shoes. All of them expected tips for their service.
This mosque had a dome and according to Soha that indicates that it contains a tomb. Sure enough under the dome we found the tomb of a king. The locals call these tombs “mostabas” or bench in Arabic. Traditionally Muslim would be buried under ground, but this one is above ground. It mimics the old Egyptian pre-pyramid tombs of a similar shape.
This mosque proved very well suited to Soha’s quiet voice. It was so early we had the whole mosque to ourselves. The mosque is square shaped, along each side are many pillared halls, the ground carpeted. Each carpet had an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca.. The center is open to the air and in the middle of the open air is a fountain where one can wash one’s hands and feet.
Soha had us all sit on a long bench facing where she explained the workings of the mosque. Along one wall is a inset area called a mihrab which indicates the direction of Mecca. Everyone faces Mecca while praying. If one were actually in Mecca everyone would pray in a circle. Women are separated from men by a curtain covering part of one side of the rectangle. Near the mihrab is a lectern called a minbar where the iman stands and reads. Near that is a stairway where a reader shouts out the beginning and end of each prayer. This was necessary prior to the advent of speaker systems. She also spoke of the five pillars of Islam and answered questions about its practice.
We gathered up our shoes after paying the required baksheesh to the attendant or protected them. We continued along the narrow street. It was still early and the shops still had corrugated steel doors shut.
The street vendors were out in force selling oranges and bread. One vendor smoked a hookah as he waited for his customers. I thought Islam forbade smoking, but it appeared to be everywhere with shops openly selling hookahs. In fact we saw an advertisement with a picture of a child smoking from a hookah.
As we walked along shops started to open. Soha bought some nuts from a recently opened shop. Branching from our street were even narrower, dirtier paths. Ken had said ten years earlier this area would have smelled like an open sewer with waste and trash and clogging the streets. It still retained a bit of its earlier “charm.”
Cats were everywhere. They lined the streets and gathered around the vendors. The invariably looked skinny and some were in poor shape. One young cat dragged behind him a broken useless leg.
We saw a shop owner about to open his shop. Ken pointed out dozens of brown stains in the shape of an open hand on the corrugated steel door. For good luck, the vendors would dip their hands in blood and place these hand stains all over their door. I found that very odd.
We also saw grown men holding hands. In Europe it was common to see women and girls holding hands. It was very odd to see men doing it, even more odd to see security guards holding hands. I’m not sure what it is supposed to signify.
By the time we had walked the length of the street most of the shops had opened. We saw a fez shop even though Soha said nobody wears them anymore. We saw shops with giant fluffy bundles of sheep fur. Towering above the street were the towers of mosques that seemed to be everywhere. Cairo is called the city of a thousand mosques.
We entered the second mosque of the day, the Alhakim Mosque. It had an interesting origin. Apparently the ruler Alhakim was rather brutal and oppressive. His rule became increasingly erratic until one day he declared himself Allah. After being warned by his sister, he decided to take a walk outside without his bodyguard. He was never seen again. He left behind a nice mosque however. It was similar in structure to the prior mosque however along the walls of the mosque were little forms called “paper dolls” as they resemble cut-out figures.
Old Cairo is a bizarre mix of old and new. I saw traditionally dressed men using cell phones. Young kids wearing the latest styles mixed with an older man trailing behind a goat. Horses and donkeys shared the street with motorbikes and small trucks.
We reached the other side of the city walls. Ken attempted to get us into their inner workings of the inner walls. On his last visit that area had smelt like a sewer, since then they had cleaned it up. Unfortunately it was under repair and even the urgings of our security force wouldn’t allow us in. Ken took us through our second city gate. Off to the side was the tomb of a king. Over time the ground level has risen and now the tomb itself was nearly buried. Ken tried to get us near the outside of the outside walls but this too had been blocked off, for no apparent reason. We could vaguely see that some of the pharonic stones had been re-used in building the wall. Hieroglyphics could still be clearly made out.
On the outside of the old City walls was a very busy street. On the other side, past a row of cheap looking restaurants were very poor slums, the worst we had seen so far. They made the poorly constructed brick tenement buildings look bad. On that side of the street laid the City of the Dead.
The City of the Dead is an active graveyard that dates back several hundred years. Up to as recently as fifty years ago it was a custom to spend the weekend at the grave sight of one’s ancestors. To make their stay comfortable they built houses around the graves to live in. The rich had luxurious multi-story complexes; this cemetery had more decidedly modest structures. As the practice of staying over for the weekend started to fade the poor decided to move in.
The population of Cairo is over twenty-five million. It seems odd for the poor to live among the gravestones of the dead. Over the past few years the government decided to evict these squatters and move them into tenement buildings outside the city. As we walked through the City of the Dead we saw ramshackle buildings with padlocks on them, preventing their previous occupants from returning. Viewed from above the vast extent of the City of the Dead can be seen. It looks aptly named, for it is eerily quiet and one does not see tombstones from that vantage point but just empty slum house after empty slum house.
There were still people living there however. Those who remain are the guards. It was odd to see children playing, chickens being raised, and even a glass blowing shop among the Islamic gravestones. We did see one famous grave, that of a Swiss traveler. He spoke Arabic so well he was able to slip into the holy city of Mecca. He traveled all over Egypt and is most famous for having discovered the massive monuments along the Southern Nile.
We were led out of the City of the Dead through a passage behind the glass blowing shop. It was in sharp contrast to the City of the Dead. There was people everywhere, children followed after us shouting “Hallo, hallo!”
We gathered up on the bus and headed out for lunch. Much to our despair it turned out to be the most expensive meal of the trip. We were led to the tourist trap called “Soiree.” They served a passable lunch buffet but charged $25 for the privilege. If we had known how much it would have cost ahead of time we would have skipped lunch entirely.
Off we went to the Citadel of Saladin. The traffic in Cairo is slow. It’s so slow that vendors prowl the thin concrete median between lanes, selling bread, air fresheners, oranges and various other sundries. The Citadel of Saladin with its many led covered domes and high spires is impressive. It seems inspired by the great church of Constantinople the Hagia Sophia. It lies on top of an outcrop of rock and surrounded by great walls.
The Citadel itself was closed that day but we were able to enter the Well of Saint Joseph. The Well of Saint Joseph was created to provide water for the Citadel. It is extremely deep and the water itself comes from an aqueduct that snakes through the city. Great wheels powered by donkeys at the top and bottom of the well drew water up to the Citadel. I had just recently seen a special on the History Channel about the well and was excited to get to see it in person.
The Egyptian government only recently opened the Well. On his last trip, as a birthday present some friends took Ken to the well. Unfortunately it was still closed. We tried to enter the well but found the door locked. Ken was devastated. Our Egyptian appointed security guide wouldn’t take “No” for an answer. After much discussion the local curator with two young comely attendants in toe came to open the well for us.
We descended into the darkness. There was a staircase that spiraled down the central well. The well itself was twenty or thirty feet across. At intervals there were windows in the walls of the path that let in natural light from the open top well. Only a handful of us had brought flashlights. There were only a few electric lights provided. Many stopped halfway. Dust was everywhere and it made the footing uneasy. After fifteen minutes or so we reached the end of the staircase. At the bottom was the wooden wheel that was turned to draw the water up. The water itself was several hundred feet further down. We threw in a stone and counted the seconds till it splashed. I could dimly see the glint of water down below. After much celebration we made the rather more arduous climb up and saw the corresponding wheel at the top of the well.
On we went to two more mosques. One had a broken clock given to Egypt by the French. The Egyptians claimed the clock never worked and seemed rather teed off about it. The second and more impressive mosque was the Mosque of Mohammed Ali. It was inspired by the cathedrals of Europe and is very ornate with many lead covered domes. There were many chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Many had broken lights that hung at angles. All were covered with dust and dirt. I found it odd that the rest of the building seemed clean but the chandeliers were filthy.
Leaving the mosque we could see the whole city from our high vantage point. It was quiet atop the Citadel but as we approached within a few dozen feet of the outer walls we could hear the incessant honking of cars and all the sounds of the busy city intrude upon the silence.
As we headed back to the hotel we followed a road that paralleled the old aqueduct. Much of it was completely intact. Some of the breaks were for trains tracks and roads. The arches of the aqueduct rose higher and higher as we went. Through the arches could be seen shops, slums, dirt, parked cars and debris.
For dinner we went to the Felfela restaurant, which should be distinguished from the Felfela Café. It was a much higher-class joint than the cafe. I had forgotten the name of the restaurant but remembered the stereotyped statue of a plump Egyptian smoking a hookah. I had a concoction of rice with four chunks of lamb; the center was some white creamy substance. I didn’t find it appetizing.
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