Egytian skies

[View of Cairo from the minaret of Ibn Tulun mosque.]

It is quite surprising how distinctive a destination's sky can be. It is as distinctive as a person's hair style.

The sky may not always be grey in England, but even a blue summer sky over Hyde Park does more to prove the sovereignty of grey than diminish it. When it returns, the English Grey stalks you like a melancholic just above you. 

In comparison, the sky is big in Australia because the clouds often hang so high.

Gerard de Nerval, the man famous for walking his pet lobster, Thibault, wrote of Cairo's sky in 1842, and I found the same sky in 2008 (above). It is a large grey, as opposed to the small grey of England.

"The turbid dust that clogs the horizon never breaks up into fresh clouds, as our European mists do; even at zenith the sun only manages to pierce a course through the cinereous atmosphere in the form of a fiery red disk that might well have emerged from the Libyan forges of the god Phta. At this prospect you understand the melancholia of ancient Egypt, preoccupied, as it so often was, by sorrow and tombs, that profound melancholia which is also transmitted to us through the extant monuments."

Gerard de Nerval, Journey to the Orient

Intolerable Presence

[Another view from the hotel balcony in Cairo, May 2008.]

I am going to Vietnam in a month. Yesterday I began reading Norman Lewis' travelogue through South-East Asia in 1950, A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and found this quote:

"It was all very entertaining to a stranger completely fresh from the West, but from the experiences of these few hours I had learned one disturbing thing. This was that as a European I had been invisible. My eyes never met those of a Vietnamese. There was no curious staring, no gesture or half-smile of recognition. I was ignored even by the children. The Vietnamese people, described by early travellers as gay, sociable and showing a lively curiosity where strangers were concerned, have now withdrawn into themselves. [...] It is as if a general agreement has been reached among them that this is the best way of dealing with an intolerable presence."

Although the situation in occupied Indochina during the fifties is a completely different kettle of fish, this discription captures for me the same sense I sometimes get walking in a foreign city. I felt it occasionally while walking around Cairo as a "Westerner". To describe it as hostility is too strong a word. And indifference is too weak a word. It is better described as feeling unwelcome. It has more to do with my own unease in being a "Westerner" than any actual unwelcomeness on the Cairenes' part. 

Other related blogs:

Cairo

Taxi Drivers, Immigration Officers, and Jetlag

As we were leaving the airport, the taxi driver asked me if I liked India. I said I've only been here ten minutes. That was a lie. Firstly because I'd waited half an hour for another taxi driver to find him. He was in a restaurant or something. I'd paid in advance in the terminal so I couldn't jump in another taxi. Then, secondly, earlier I'd had an immigration officer who only reluctantly took my passport. She even went to pick up her newspaper again before resigning to the fact of my existence (and her job). When she did look at my passport she said "Broadhead" then laughed, and the smile didn't leave her face for the full two minutes I was in front of her. I made her day complete when she repeated the refrain "Broadhead [laughter]" as she stamped my entry date. I wanted to ask her what her surname was, but I didn't want to get back on the next plane to Cairo.

A week earlier the immigration officer at Cairo airport (actually both of them -- inbound and outbound) thought it amusing to question my intelligence. I bought a Egyptian tourist visa for 80 pounds at a strategically placed stall in the terminal. When I handed it to the immigration officer with my passport, he said "Why didn't you stick it in your passport?" As if I knew I was supposed to do so because I come here every day. He continued by demonstrating how to do it by peeling off its waxed back ... "Look, magic". 

[The photo is of a Mumbai taxi or two, taken from a Mumbai taxi (though not on the day of my arrival). Taken with my Nikon D80 and fitted with a Sigma 10-20mm. May 2008.]

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."

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.