Kafkaesque Market

[Khan El-Khalili, Cairo, May 2008.]

Khan El-Khalili is the major market area in Cairo. This is a pile of shoe moulds in one of its alleys. 

I wrote this in my diary while in Cairo:

"I sat in the market at 9am this morning and watched a Kafkaesque scene when the stalls opened. Each owner swept their store-front of dirt and rubbish and put it in front of the neighbouring stall, so the rubbish wasn't reduced, just moved around."

I continue in the same entry:

"It feels like I haven't worked for months [actually two weeks]. And yet in many ways I am still working. Work is [or, has become] taking a plane, getting through immigration, getting to my hotel, then seeing all the required sights while taking photos. Work is what I feel I have to do. I feel I have to see the pyramids or go to the Egyptian Museum. Each sight is demanding my attention. It is on a list of things I should do. Not that I won't enjoy them when I am doing them, but I must prioritise these options above others that more suit my character. My character? It is lazy, reluctant to be compelled to do something. So when I do a necessary thing I become stressed -- I lose my character, or, rather, I lose my ability to find my character."

In his beautiful history of the city Cairo: The City VictoriousMax Rodenbeck writes: "There remains a sensible antiquity to the rhythm of the Old City, to the worn texture of every surface and the intimate scale of public space. The narrow lanes away from the main streets may no longer be overhung by the traditional tiered upper floors that closed out the sky and brought welcome shade in the summer, but they are still no wider than the medievally prescribed breadth of two laden camels, and still they are largely pedestrian."

Gustave Flaubertwrote of the old alleys in his notebook for 9th January 1850:

"I keep losing my way in the maze of alleys and running into dead-ends. From time to time I come on an open space with the debris of ruined houses, or rather no houses; hens pecking, cats on walls. Quiet way of life here -- intimate, secluded. Dazzling sun effects when one suddenly emerges from these alleys, so narrow that the roofs of the moucharbiehs [shuttered bay windows] on each side touch each other."

Much more recently, the cantankerous V. S. Naipauldescribes a Cairo market:

"Cairo revealed the meaning of the bazaar: narrow streets encrusted with filth, stinking even on this winter's day; tiny shops full of shoddy goods; crowds; the din, already barely supportable, made worse by the steady blaring of motorcar horns; medieval buildings partly collapsed, others rising on old rubble, with here and there sections of tiles, turquoise and royal blue, hinting at a past of order and beauty, crystal fountains and amorous adventures, as perhaps in the no less disordered past they always had done."

That Awful Mess

[The Pantheon, Rome, May 2008.]

I spent a week (or thereabouts) in Rome. On this particular day I managed to buy and lose a copy of That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana by Carlo Gadda. 

I had traipsed across the Tiber to a little English language bookshop called the Almost Corner Bookshop. As is usual for me when travelling, I had trouble finding it, even though it was exactly where the map said it would be. 

Expectations seem to blind me to reality. I expect a bookshop to look like such and such, and instead it looks more like what I'd expect a haberdashery to look like from the outside.

In any case, that evening I returned to my hostel after reading only a few dozen pages, and left it by mistake in the hostel's bar. Ten minutes later I went back to retrieve it. But one of the drunken Australians or British backpackers had pocketed it. I scrutinised each one of them for the rest of the week, and I couldn't imagine any of them enjoying a modernist novel about a murder in 1930s Rome.

Banker

[Cairo, May 2008.]

This is an Egyptian leaning out of Banque Misr. I took this from the balcony of the hotel I was staying in across the road on the fifth floor. 

A few doors down from the hotel was a mosque and a Coptic church. You can see the mosque reflected in the bank's windows. 

This combination of a bank and a mosque reminds me that Islamic law (Shariah) forbids usury. The Qur'an: "Those who charge riba [usury] are in the same position as those controlled by the devil's influence." Furthermore, Muslim banks must not lend money to individuals or organisations that are contrary to the laws of Islam. 

Instead of charging interest, Muslim banks work with other systems, like profit sharing. The Wikipedia page on Islamic banking lists the methods they use.

Two hundred metres down the street (in the same direction the banker is looking) is the intersection named after the founder of Banque Misr, Mohamed Talaat Pasha Harb. In the middle of Medan Talaat Harb is a statue of the man himself.

[Medan Talaat Harb, Cairo, May 2008.]

Click on this photo to see a cat sitting under the statue. Even from the pavement I could hear it meowing. Occasionally it would try to get across the road, then sit back down in the shade. I presume it had slept there the night before and woke up when the traffic was too busy to escape. I thought about rescuing it, but the stray cats in Cairo were very shy of humans.

Just below my hotel was a take-away kebab shop. The lamb is cooked outside and several stray cats hang around waiting for scraps. One night I came back drunk and asked the man in charge of the rotisserie to sell me some meat for the cats. He took a few pounds from me and went inside for a receipt for the purchase. As I was feeding the cats a guy passed saying, "You are very kind," in broken English.

The Egyptians are very kind to cats. I wondered whether this was part of their ancient history. However, I discovered that it probably has more to do with more recent world history. In the Qur'an it tells of how a cat fell asleep on the Prophet Mohammed's cloak. Instead of waking it up when it was time to move, the Prophet cut a circle in his cloak around the cat.