صور من القاهرة

Vignettes from Cairo (Actually the subject line says “Pictures from Cairo.” I don’t know how to say “vignettes” in Arabic. I’ll work on that) :

So, I continue to believe that I can’t really explain what Cairo is like, but I am hoping I can explain what some parts are like with a few of the images and tidbits of information and general stories from Cairo.

The University campus is not near the dorms. In fact, it’s anywhere from fifty minutes to two hours away, depending on the traffic. So it’s a long bus ride. Personally, I’m really coming to like it because I do one of three things; either I chat with the people around me, producing invariably interesting conversations that will, one day be in Arabic, inshallah, or I read and do homework, or I zone out and stare out the window. For our purposes, this last one is the point of discussion, because one can see many an interesting thing in an hour on a bus in Cairo.

As far as the city itself, at first glance, it looks like it’s all made out of nasty old concrete with seventies-era satellite dishes and air conditioners (two things that everyone has) sprouting of every surface like barnacles on the side of a boat. But after a while it starts to be natural; the buildings, new and old, are all the same color because of the sand and dust. Since there is no rain to wash them off, the spring sandstorms color all the walls a sort of reddish beige. Once you get a feel for it, it seems almost more like the buildings have always been here, maybe just buried under a sand dune until the wind could dust away the sand, leaving the buildings like pillars of sculpted stone. 

But not everything is dusty high rises. There are other scenes. One of my favorites is an island in the Nile that we cross over each day on the way home from school. The entire thing is emerald green dotted with little grass or wood huts. It looks like something out of a documentary on agriculture in ancient Egypt. I asked about it, and apparently the island, and others like it, are protected by the government because the land is so fertile from silt that, even in the human pressure cooker that is Cairo, it’s actually more productive as a farm than it would be even as housing. And housing can be found other places. Another view very different from the high-rises and apartment complexes is the cemeteries. Most Muslims bury their dead above ground, in crypts or waist-high stone fixtures. These, and the fact that cemeteries aren’t nearly so grim in Arab culture as they are in ours, make it an ideal place for what we would politely call ‘informal housing.’ But it’s not a squatters’ camp either. In fact, they tend to be bustling residential centers, just with a different look to them. Understanding this explains a lot of the constant hum that can be heard within miles of the “Cities of the Dead,” the prodigious expanses of crypts, coffins, and communities at the foot of the Citadel of Salah Ad-Din and Al-Azhar park.

As you’d guess, you can see some rather odd things running between these backgrounds. Just yesterday, we were motoring along to campus around 9am or so, so the streets were full of people heading out to work, or to the store, or what have you. And amidst this urban bustle, I glanced between two buildings only to find a woman with a flock of sheep ringing her, staring at her intently. My hand to God- apartments, taxis, policemen directing traffic, and an alley full of furry little sheep butts staring back at me. I have no explanation for this, but I can explain a significantly more common sight: cars with their wipers set up off the window. Now, coming from Colorado, the only reason I know of to do this is to prevent the wiper blades freezing to the windshield if you have a little snowmelt followed by a hard freeze. So I was originally a bit confounded at this one. I asked around, and apparently it’s how you know if your car has been cleaned. Lower class men around the neighborhood will progress up and down the street dusting off and washing off the more expensive-looking cars, and setting up the wipers to indicate the service. When their owner returns, the man makes an appearance and receives a pound or two for his troubles. If you don’t pay him, next time your car won’t get washed, and if you pay him a lot, your car will get washed well, rather than simply dusted off. Go figure.

Another common sight that had to be explained to me was the darker spot of skin that many men have in the center of their forehead. In Islam, one prays on their knees with their head bowed to the ground. So this spot, apparently, is a callus obtained over years of regular prayer. I’ve only ever seen it on men, but that may be because the more traditionally pious women have most of their forehead and hair covered by a scarf (that, as an aside, is either a demure black, or matches the outfit in a stunning display of color coordination that still has me in awe). 

Some of the most traditional women wear the niqab, the full black head-to-toe veil, which, in most Egyptian incarnations involves a slit across the eyes to see, which is usually connected by a short black thread that runs up the bridge of the nose just between they eyes to prevent the lower half of the veil from sagging and revealing more of the face (the picture at left, shamelessly jacked from BBC, doesn't have that part). Also, it tends to display some really stunning skill at eye-makeup, ironically. Personally, what caught my eye was seeing women wear them and glasses at the same time. I mean, there’s something you wouldn’t think of. We’ve all heard about the burkahs and the niqabs and whatnot, but there’s a question I never asked myself: how do you wear that and glasses. Well there you go. The glasses go outside of the veil, and the earpieces run behind the veil at the very corners of the slit. The nosepieces fit neatly on either side of the black thread connecting the top to the bottom.

My other whodathunkit-style question, prior to leaving the US, largely from a practical standpoint, was where and how do they sell underwear in Egypt. In a country where it is immodest to wear a low-necked T-shirt, how on earth do they advertise underwear? I mean, you would hardly expect them to have a mannequin scantily clad in silk and lace in the storefront window, right? Well, shocker. That’s what they do. There’s a mix; you’d see bras and panties displayed in a street bazaar too, if you looked in the right places, and there are also the same sorts of department stores that you’d see in the States that sell your standard collection without any fanfare or display. But Maddie and I were at City Stars, the colossal mall that far outshines anything I’ve ever entered before now (Exhibit a:

), and they definitely have scantily clad, dolled up mannequins in the underwear store windows. It bears mentioning that it is a decidedly westernized place in a relatively westernized city, but nonetheless, there you have it. Lace.

And on that note, I’m going to call it a night. Tomorrow I’m tagging along with a Cairene woman to pray at the mosque and break fast with her and her friends. Should be interesting! Stay tuned for more travel-related revelations from Cairo.