Egypt- Welcome to the Red Sea, what happened to the mosques?

We all made it down in one piece (a miracle considering it was dark out and we were mountain climbing) and headed to our hotel which was only a five minute drive down the valley. Our rooms were all spread out across the place and they had a weird stone path that made it feel like we hadn’t left the mountain. Dinner was ready for us as usual. And as usual we weren’t hungry at 10 o’clock. Egypt is a culture that enjoys late dinners, this one pushed back even farther by our late night arrival. We headed to our rooms to shower, something that was complicated by the burn I got from the faucet. Adele wanted to take me to the hospital but I thought that was a bit extreme and settled for some simple disinfectant. Our rooms were freezing and we spent the night huddled under our blankets, not just from that, but also trying to escape the mosquitoes that were swarming at the chance for fresh blood.

The next day dawned and we hit the road after some group presentations. Our only stop that morning was St. Catherine’s the third century monastery that had been built around the burning bush and then fortified by Justinian in 557 A.D. Surprisingly, the burning bush wasn’t burning, just spreading so much that it was threatening to take over its corner of the monastery. In addition to that we had to squeeze through crowds of pilgrims to check out a largely boring and ugly church.

 It was here that I had a bit of a moment of annoyance. What is it with people and relics? I mean seriously. What is the point of a finger (what was left there) or a nail clipping, or an olive stone left by Mary? I thought that the Israelites were commanded not to worship false idols? I mean, I know it’s not much different from worshipping a man on a cloud, but who in their right mind, bows and crosses themselves and kisses the box these things are in? It seems to me that people need hobbies. Like baseball or cards or just about anything else.

We left and headed down the road towards Sharm el-Sheikh. The road through the desert looked like it was the set for Dune or some other sci-fi movie and we spent it snapping shots of soaring landscape. We made it to our destination and let me tell you, whew, boy is it ugly. Tourist development never seems to take place in an orderly or aesthetic way. No, like Vegas it happens wherever it can cater to people’s needs. “Needs” being the key word. Who needs to sit in a pool in a desert? And have every amenity you can imagine at unreasonable prices in a totally artificial environment?

 I get annoyed at the lack of planning that goes into these places. It’s a waste of money and water and land. There were some perfectly beautiful views of beaches and deserts before resorts had to plop down all over the place. I’ll admit, I enjoyed the pool, it was refreshing after days in the desert. Our throats were so raw from the dust that we couldn’t talk and I needed a break. But that doesn’t mean that I’m condoning destroying a perfectly wonderful peninsula with lousy resorts that cater to Russians and Italians.

The night arrived and we headed off to one of the touristy events in town, a Bedouin dinner. It’s amazing the targeting that goes on, and the faux culture that can be presented. We sat out under the stars and had a wonderful dinner of lamb and rice and anything else you can imagine. I really enjoyed it and I know everyone else did. But the entertainment was just downright embarrassing for all of us. It wasn’t Bedouin, it was a DJ and African dancers doing different pieces from around the continent.

 I understand that it sells well and makes a living for people, but I think that their own culture would sell as well as anything created for tourists. I was proved right when Yasser asked the people in charge to present some of their own music to us. They were gracious enough to do so and they sat down to several small instruments and their own voices and hands and produced one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. No joke, it was great. So why isn’t that marketed to tourists? Most aren’t like us. They’re chubby middle-aged Brits and younger aged local Egyptian kids who want a night out in the desert.

So we were about to leave when they pulled out all their locally made crafts and I should have looked at them, but I wasn’t in the mood and the crowd was a little out of control. So I went and sat in the desert. Just like that. Not something I can usually do at home so I figured I should take advantage of the opportunity while I could. Deserts are a funny thing. They’re absolutely silent. I had a hum in my ears from the breeze, that’s how calm it was. I could see a glow from the fire and lights where everyone was, but besides that nothing. The stars were bright and the ground warm, it was eleven at night but it still felt like I was in an oven. I lay there looking up until people started moving and then I joined the caravan.

Our next day was completely unrelated to Egypt and Islamic culture, but based on pure fun it was probably the best day of the trip. We went snorkeling. On a boat. In a national park. With rap music and lots of seasickness. Probably about ten of the forty people were puking or feeling a little under the weather, but besides that it was amazing. The Red Sea is known for its reefs and it sure as heck didn’t disappoint. They were more amazing than any others I’ve ever seen. Most reefs you see from snorkeling off the shore are pretty boring. These. Not so much. They looked like anything you’d see on the discovery channel. I’ll never forget those fish and the coral.

 The first place we stopped was a shelf drop off. Being a fish and all I insisted on running over everyone else and was first off the boat right after the guide. I flopped around for awhile as the rest of the group hit the water and then we took off. We swam up towards the shore and all of the sudden there it was out of nowhere. Just a huge wall of coral, it probably dropped off from about 3 feet deep on top, to about 100 feet deep at the bottom. A huge flat wall of coral covered with fish like you’ve never seen. We snorkeled along and it was really something else. I couldn’t believe what we were seeing without having to go diving in deeper water. Then, of all the luck, we look down and there’s a sea turtle. Just cruising along. What kind of country is this??

Here’s my next observation. Americans need to get out of the house. This isn’t a new one by any means, but I can’t stand that Americans travel less than any other nationality that I meet. I know so many people who are happy to just troll around home. I know there’s a lot to see in the states, but there’s a lot to see around the rest of the world too. What I’m getting at, is that people have these perceptions of how the rest of the world is. And they’re so often wrong. Egypt, as it turns out (big surprise), is not just a desert full of camels and headscarfed women being oppressed by savage terrorists. Wow. Who knew? Sense the sarcasm and bitterness? I just get so frustrated with the people who say they’re happy to stay around home. You know what it is. They’re just too afraid to go anywhere else. I’m willing to call them out because maybe they’ll change if I hammer hard enough. Don’t been such weenies. Go somewhere new besides Florida.

Back to the boat. The music was key. Egyptians, like everyone else for some reason, love American rap. Or at least they think that it’s classy and what we want to hear on a boat in the Red Sea. They played so many good things that I can’t even begin to explain how cool it was to be coasting along on the waves while listening to P Diddy and Jay-Z, or whatever we were listening to, my memory is shot from the sun. Welcome to sunburn central. The other joy of the day was everyone toasting to a crisp. But we got home in one piece and packed up for the airport where we caught our flight back to Cairo.

Egypt- Welcome to Moses Land

We left Cairo the next morning, way to early in my opinion, and spent an entire day traveling. It’s a five-hour trip from Cairo to Mt. Sinai but with all of our stops it took about seven. There were, of course, several highlights that you need to know about. First, my roommate, Doug (what a weird coincidence, some of you might know my roommate at school is named Doug), lost his passport. Except that I’m not sure I’d say he lost it, I think I’d choose the word disappear to describe the whole situation. You see, he had it in the room, he never took it out, and when we went through his bags, my bags, and our other roommate Mike’s bags, we found absolutely nothing. As for the hotel, we called and they searched, but there wasn’t a thing left. It just disappeared and there’s nowhere it could have gone.

 So the next few hours ended up being a little bit nerve-wracking. As it turns out, the Sinai Peninsula has lots of checkpoints. The first one was as we hit the Suez Canal, which was a bit of a downer. Everyone hyped the canal and when we got there it was a major letdown. Instead of a bridge or a nice view of the canal you take a two mile tunnel under it. So by the time you end up on the other side it’s completely out of site. We tried to take some other roads to get nearer to it but to no avail, the best view we had was of the top half of some cargo ships passing through.

 We stopped right after that at an oasis along the coast to get some pictures and we ran into a little situation. There were some kids there and they were running around asking us for money. It’s really strange to see that kids can be taught to beg for money at such a young age. It’s almost ingrained into their culture to ask for money because they expect tourists to hand it over. We didn’t of course, and they kept on bothering us until we left.

 To get back on track, though, we had several checkpoints to go through and Doug was passport-less. We weren’t sure if he was going to make it but we got lucky at the first one, they just waived us through. The second one was what we were worried about. Right before St. Catherine’s there’s a checkpoint that it very thorough about going through the bus and checking everyone’s passports. Our plan was to put Doug in the back and have him pretend to be asleep. We were pretty nervous, though, and had a feeling he was going to be told to turn back, something that would have been interesting considering we were in the middle of a desert.

 We didn’t have a clue what we’d have to do but someone would have had to turn back with him. We pulled up at the checkpoint and stopped for the officers to board. And they never did. We pulled right through. Turns out that our guide Adele, who we are sure is the godfather of Egypt, was friends with the officers so we got waived through without a check. Talk about a lucky moment.

 Before I forget I’d like to talk about the landscape. The land east of Cairo and the Sinai is interesting because of how it is used. On the mainland, still in Africa, it’s weird because the land isn’t developed from one place to another in a linear fashion. Instead, it develops in fits and starts. In one place there are a bunch of buildings, then there’s a dry desert field, and then there’s another bunch of apartment buildings and high-rises. It develops with big patchy holes in it. Really strange and hard to explain. As for the Sinai, there are lots of developments along the coast. They’re all concrete buildings and look like they should be resorts, but they’re completely empty, we could drive for miles past ten of them and not see a single person or car. In the distance we could eventually see the Gulf of Suez which was really beautiful because the mountains rose on the other side of it.

 We eventually made it to St. Catherine’s and were all adrenalined up to climb the mountain. We poured out of the bus after seven hours of being cooped up and lathered ourselves up with sunscreen, packed our water, took a bathroom break, and hit the mountain. A group was taking camels up but the rest of us wanted to be able to say we’d hiked the mountain. It’s a surprisingly short distance, only about three miles, from start to finish. But it takes forever. I was the fourth person to make it up to the top and I did it in just under two hours. The path twists and turns through a probably thirty or forty switchbacks as it loops around the mountain up until the point where it stops at the base of the stairs. There are 770 of them and let me tell you my legs were burning by the end of those. The whole walk up is really nice with great views out over the valleys and mountains. All along the way the Bedouin try to get you to take a camel up and to buy some water but we did our best to ignore them and made it up in one piece.

 I can honestly say that it was one of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen. You could see for miles and miles over one of the roughest landscapes on the planet. The top has a small church and mosque on it, and had about thirty or so other people up there with us. Some were camping out for sunrise but we had come for sunset and so we staked out spots on the walls and rocks surrounding the peak. It was impossible to describe and pictures don’t even do it justice. I’m going to post some of course, but there’s a real feeling of being at the top of the world. No wonder Moses came here for some inspiration. Sunset came and went in a blur of clouds but it was still worth it and we took enough pictures to prove it.

 The hike down was a doozy, and after starting at the back with our professor’s husband, I gave up and booked it down the mountain. At first I was a bit worried about everyone getting down safely but when I found out that a lot of the professors and adults were farther down waiting to do the same I took off on my own. It was getting dark soon and I had a feeling that I needed to focus on self-preservation, especially getting down the stairs. I practically ran down them because I wanted to be on the path by the time it got dark. I helped a couple people out with that part because they were having trouble seeing but when we hit the bottom I took off and passed the entire group. One of my friends had just had surgery and her stitches were opening up so I wanted to keep an eye on her too. I caught up to her and the other girl I’d hiked up with and the three of us booked it down the mountain.

The moon started coming out and it got easier to see the path than it had been at first. After about an hour or so we came around a corner and you could see the monastery all lit up in the distance down in the valley. I didn’t really feel like sitting there or on the bus when I made it down so I said goodbye to them and stopped on a big rock. It had been carved out over the centuries so I had a perfect seat on which to sit and watch the stars.

 The crickets were out, and in between different groups passing it was completely silent. I’d picked a great spot about ten to fifteen feet up in the pitch dark so no one even noticed I was there and most people went right by leaving me in peace. Talk about another moment to savor. It was one of those nights that drops all around you like a blanket. It muffles out everything around and you feel alone. The moon had an orb and the stars were really clear, perfect night for sitting out on a mountain in the desert.

Egypt- No clue what day

It’s been a few days since I’ve written and I’d like to explain why. I’ve been too busy. The one day we were gone from sunup to sundown. We didn’t get home until almost 11 at night. We spent the entire day touring mosques around Cairo followed by a show of whirling dervishes. Not true, in between there were some other things. For instance we spent quite a bit of time in Khan el-Kalili, which is the market area in Islamic Cairo. We spent a good deal of time looking at things in the area but then we had some free time to go out and shop.

 Now this may not have been my first time haggling with shopkeepers, but it was still tiring and I wasn’t really into it. I had enough after about half an hour but Doug and Dani and Kayla were still looking for a few things so we kept on at it. There were some really amazing stores I will say. Especially antiques. Old cameras like you’ve never seen. Antique furniture, I almost bought a really nice table and shipped it home. Scarves and shirts and stamps and watches. You name it they had it. I was surprised though at the quality.

Most of it wasn’t really that great. It’s a really touristy area and so the things they sell aren’t the best, they do have some that are nice, but they’re out of my price range. It’s really interesting to watch them try to sell stuff. They’ll try absolutely everything, my favorite line of the day was, “how can I take your money?” They’re just so persistent and in your face. I was looking at old stamps halfheartedly and the guy was just so intent on selling them, even when I decided I didn’t really want them. I can’t be out spending money on everything I’d like to have. So that was that. He was so disappointed.

But after that the four of us went to a café whose name I can’t remember. What I can remember is that it is very famous as the haven of Naguib Mahfouz.

He was, of course, the most famous literary figure of 20th century Egypt, winning the only Nobel Prize in literature ever awarded to an Arab writer. Quite the guy. He used to spend all his time in this café, which wasn’t even that great up until that point. Now, though, whew, you can’t even believe. Very nice, look at the pictures later. Looks like a 1920s bar in Egypt. Great food and drinks too, I had a Strawberry Orangeana, fresh orange juice with strawberries and bananas cut up into it. The ice cream was pretty amazing too I must admit. The sad part, though, was that we were in a hurry because we had to meet the group at 6 and our stuff took forever to come so we had to down it in about three minutes before we ran out the door. It’s okay, we’re going to try to go back.

 After that we went to Al-Azhar Mosque (I’m skipping the other ten or fifteen we’d already seen), which is possibly the most important in Egypt. It is actually not just a center of religion, but also of learning. The university part has over 150,000 students at nine separate campuses. It has medical schools, law schools, religious schools, charities, you name it. The mosque is still used for everything and fills up regularly, while we were there a prestigious local imam scholar was giving a lecture that was being broadcast live on TV. So we watched for a while and walked around before heading out and down to the whirling dervish show.

 This isn’t really an Egyptian thing, but whirling dervishes were introduced to the country during the times of the Ottoman Empire. They tradition comes from Sufism which uses them to achieve a trancelike state to connect with God. That’s one way to go about it I guess. I just think I’d get dizzy. I have to admit, though, it was really amazing.
But to skip ahead, because I really need to catch up, the next day we had half a day more of Islamic Cairo during which we tried to recover from the day before. We finished a little early, though, and headed back to the hotel to recover for the next morning. We packed and got our stuff ready before having a final dinner on the rooftop of the hotel.

Finally, we all met up in Caroline’s room where I was keeping the watermelon I’d bought a couple days earlier. I’d heard before the trip that Egyptian fruit was amazing and we weren’t disappointed. It was one of the best watermelon’s I’d ever had, perfectly ripe and dark red. So we took it up on the roof to get some eating done and it was there we had an interesting night. You see, Egyptians have this thing for making money. So as soon as we sat down the manager told us there was a cover charge. Which there wasn’t. We had already gone through this a couple of nights before so Chris went downstairs to find Pappa Yasser. Meanwhile we argued a little bit and finally got them to let us order a few things. After about ten minutes our prof showed up and charged in the door like a bulldog and lit into them for giving us trouble.

 He talked for quite awhile and eventually came over to tell us it was all worked out and he was talking to the next boss up. This guy shows up about five minutes later and they start another round of arguing. Finally, it ends and he comes back to explain there’s a special birthday party starting in about forty-five minutes so we just have to be out by then. No problem, we can do that. It was just funny how they insisted it was a 25 pound cover, and then a 75 one, and then dropped back to 35 for him before finally giving up and letting us stay. Egypt has got to be one of the most capitalist countries on the planet, everyone is trying to make a buck somehow. Never know how, but they are.

Last Days in Islamic Cairo

A man walking in

A prominent scholar giving a lecture

A whirling dervish

Egypt-Day 5-The Citadel, Sultan Hassan, Rifai, and Ibn Tuluun

Today was the highlight of the trip so far in my opinion. It was the day I’d been waiting for since before the trip even began. We got to see almost all of the mosques that I most wanted to see as well as the Citadel. We started off driving to the Citadel, which is the main fortress protecting Cairo. It was built by Salah al-Din (more commonly known as Saladin) in 1176 and added on to by his brother following his death. He was, as you might know, the Arab commander who fought against Richard the Lionheart. Fun fact of the day, though, despite being enemies the two had a great fondness for each other. They corresponded by letter, never meeting except in battle. Once when Richard’s horse died, Saladin sent him two new ones, and another time, when Richard fell ill, Saladin offered the services of his own personal physician.

Mosque Muhammed Ali

His being my favorite conqueror aside, we checked out the citadel and stopped first at the Mohammed Ali Mosque. Wow. What a place. It was strange because it wasn’t decorated like a mosque, it was decorated more like a cathedral. It was so ornate with nineteen types of marble, gold leaf, chandeliers, everything you can imagine. In Islam, there is a stress placed upon the idea of focusing. Ornate buildings distract from the true purpose of being in a mosque, worship. So if a mosque is overdone, it makes it harder to focus on prayer, and more likely that worshippers will become distracted. So in that sense it is a poor example. At the same time, it was amazing. And anyone who says differently wasn’t paying attention. We left after awhile and stopped at the former king’s residence next door. Surprisingly not too impressive. Not much to say about it.

 The ceiling of Muhammed Ali

Our next stop was at Sultan Hassan Mosque. This is one of the older mosques in the city and is the only one that President Obama visited during his trip to Egypt last year. Inside it was somewhat spartan, this goes back to what I said above. It was quite impressive, though, and made all the better by one of the men working there closing us into one of the chambers and going through some chants. Wait till I get that video online, it’s as impressive as you can imagine. Our next stop was across the street, the Rifai Mosque where several rulers of Egypt are buried along with the Shah of Iran. This was my favorite. It was somewhat in between over the top and bare. It was beautifully designed and yet not over the top, no crystal, no gold, just marble and wood and iron. I can’t really explain any of these of course so you’ll have to look at the pictures when I get them posted.

 Lighting in Muhammed Ali

It was a great place, though, and I spent a lot of time wandering on my own taking it in and snapping all the pictures I could. While we were there I wandered into a tomb and was in the process of walking around it when I came upon another man who was doing the same thing. He introduced himself in broken English so I did the same in Arabic. It was one of those things you remember from your trip. We couldn’t particularly understand each other, but we spoke for a minute or two and he explained that the tomb was that of a prominent scholar who the king had wanted to honor. I keep finding, especially on this type of group trip, that the best moments are often the ones where you are in a smaller group and have the chance to meet Egyptians.

 Sultan Hassan & Rifai Mosques

Not always, such as the other day in a restaurant where there was a moment of bonhomie, one of the girls asked someone who worked in the store if she could show her how to put on her headscarf. Within a couple of minutes it had cascaded and every woman in the store was upstairs helping everyone in our group put them on. It was just really interesting to see everyone together, smiling despite the language barrier, as these Egyptian women showed us all a small part of their culture. By the time we left they were all up there smiling and laughing with us as we headed out.
To get back on track, though, we left there and headed out to lunch. This turned out to be a similar experience as we pulled up at a restaurant nearby and hopped out of the bus. The place was somewhat small but within three minutes it had added about twenty seats. So as we filled up the place we started feeling a little awkward. Sort of like the aliens who land and get watched by everyone.

 Ceiling of Sultan Hassan

The rich Americans show up and take over the shop. But as we ate the young men in the store watched us and enjoyed our politeness, and eventually started taking pictures of us. They were looking out the windows behind us, asking if they could get pictures of the whole table, you name it. By the end it snowballed into them getting pictures with some of us, notably Amy and Megan who they are obsessed with and think are the most beautiful women ever, and Chris, whose smile they like as well as the fact that he’s possibly the biggest man they’ve ever seen.

 Tomb of the Shah of Iran

Our next stop was Mosque Ibn Tuluun, just down a couple of streets from there. Following Amr al-Aas, the mosque we had seen the day before, this was the second oldest mosque in the city. Built in the 860s, it was meant to hold the garrison that defended the city. To demonstrate how big it was, imagine us about two or three miles away on the citadel walls. We could still see it from there, not just the large square, but the individual arches inside of it. Covering about six acres of land and walking around in our little green booties (they tie them on over your shoes when you walk in instead of ditching your shoes like most places) we felt about as small as ants on a kitchen table. It was gorgeous, as the pictures will attest, and we thought we couldn’t get any luckier until we found out we had permission to climb the minaret.
Talk about luck. Many Muslim countries don’t even let non-Muslims into their mosques, but as for Minarets? Not many that you can hike up. We headed out of the mosque and around the corner through the outer defensive wall to the tower and started climbing. The bottom was about four or five stories tall and square. At that point it became circular and you ascended on a stairway outside of it rather than inside. This gave it a nice spiral and a great view out over the surrounding quarter. We made it to the top, amazingly considering how bad our legs burned, and had to drag Paul back from the edge so that he didn’t swan dive off of it. The view was pretty amazing and we spent some time taking pictures of the mosque, ourselves, and anything that moved, before we felt it was about time to head back down so that others could get up, the problem being that the top chamber where the muezzin calls Muslims to prayer was about the size of a bathroom.

The last thing that I’d like to note about the day was the whole security situation. As we left we had to get back on the bus so that we could go around the corner away from the police checkpoint, otherwise we wouldn’t be allowed to walk. So after our forty-five second drive, we all got out and started walking up Sharia Saliba (street of the cross) towards Rifai and Sultan Hassan, the two mosques we had been at earlier. This is our primary area of research, in old Islamic Cairo, and it had a different feel to it from the other areas. I personally loved it, and felt quite comfortable. What made me uncomfortable was that we were traveling in a group of thirty-nine and were being led by security. Yes, we do have a submachine gun toting guard. It’s always someone different, but they always wear a suit and shades and generally nix whatever plans we like to make. In addition, wherever we stop, if there are police within view, they get added to our escort and end up setting up cones around the bus, or just stalk around keeping an eye on things. Generally they’re very friendly and layed back, which begs the question, why do we even need them? I understand this isn’t exactly New York, but there have been terrorist attacks there and I don’t think the change of city changes the situation. What makes me uncomfortable is the overwhelming assurance that we are in constant danger. Our professor’s brother came with us today as well and he agreed with his brother, that it was a little excessive. But because of liability issues that is the story of our lives. It just seems to me to create an added barrier to our experience of the local culture.