There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

—Nelson Mandela

The interweaving of the ancient and the contemporary lends spark and mystery to my experience here. Although Cairo was the main metro area only later in Egyptian history, around the entry of the Romans in the first century (some 3000 years of Egyptian culture already existent), the city is old, and looks and feels it. Joy is in the air, and ease, and happiness. How deeply this goes I cannot tell. The secular government squelches most political expression. Tensions exist between Islamic fundamentalists and more moderate people. Women have begun to cover their heads. Relations with Israel are relatively peaceful (after decades of severe animosity and some major fighting). The US has some presence here, thru corporations and governmental institutions. But generally, the city is safe, a delight to stroll in, even late at night, and in most neighborhoods.

David G, my host, and his partner, Alyce, have been most gracious. I stay with D, eat with them both, and hear tales that only such as they—from the west, here for awhile, she with family from the region, both fluent in Arabic—can tell. David’s home is on Zamalek Island, an easy walk to downtown, in a large, four story, gleaming white, fairly new building, the neighborhood patrolled by benevolent looking police in white summer uniforms. His apartment has 4 rooms including a kitchen and a very spacious living dining area. He offers email access which pleases me, a hound for email and web research.

Among the sites I’ve visited, probably Islamic Cairo and Coptic Cairo stand out. Partly because they demonstrate the possibility of sharing space, two different strands of human endeavor, linked but separate, living in the same region, mostly peaceably. I understand Coptics feel oppressed and are slowly emigrating. This follows the Jews leaving, mostly after Israel was established in 1947. A refrain I’ve been hearing from hosts and reading in guidebooks is that the population is growing more homogenous. The spice of so many different traditions is eroding.

I’ve oriented as much as possible to the Nile River, since historically this is the coagulation point for the entire Egyptian civilization. The pyramid builders used the river to float blocks of rock and bodies to be interred. Now however, I’ve seen little river activity, aside from the skiffs and motorboats and faux riverboats offering expensive food fare. Tho I tried a few days ago to take a river bus to Coptic Cairo, I couldn’t find the dock listed in the guidebook, and when I did find a dock, the ticket man said (I believe he said, since we did not interchange verbally in a deep way) no boat to Coptic Cairo. (Later, trying to return, I did find a boat that went downtown, but the next one was an hour away, too long for me to wait, and I was not sure it would go where I was heading. One of the joys of such travel—the uncertainty.)

I should add the pyramids to my highlighted visited sites, not the nearby and largest pyramids of Giza, but the further away and earlier pyramids of Dahshur. Driving there with D was sheer delight, well paved roads, past large abundant farms well watered and nourished by Nile floods, corn being harvested, and cabbages and tomatoes. We actually climbed down into burial chambers. This involved crouching, going thru dark areas, traversing a narrow passageway that did not allow for standing. I’d estimate it was about 2 by 2 meters and about 8 kilometers long. 3 chambers, each with high corbelled roofs, perhaps predating arches. I doubt contemporary discoverers found much of value in these vaults—grave robbery was a flourishing business millennia ago, until the pharaohs wised up and carved their tombs in solid rock with the passageways cleverly hidden. This is the Valley of the Kings, the burial place of King Tut. (I did view the display about his burial site at the Egyptian museum in Cairo.)

One very personal note: discovering kushuri, a food peculiar to Egypt, that I loved. It consists of various sorts of pasta and rice, mixed with caramelized onions and black lentils, tomato sauce poured over. D introduced me to this inexpensive treat at one of the many fast food kushuri places in Cairo, Abu Tarik. A few days later, on my own and hungry, I came by for seconds. Who knows, it might have been at Abu Tarik that my system was infected with the junk that is causing my diarrhea.

But let’s end on a more positive note, photography. I’ve done lots, not the usual touristic photos I hope, but more earthly homey stuff like people crazily crossing traffic jammed streets, D’s apt in a panoramic, lovers at night along the Nile, our big meal at the Blue Nile river restaurant (a treat by Alyce’s dad), the pyramids (especially inside, tho here I had accidentally set my camera for low resolution and will have tiny photos, perhaps useful only for email and website), portraits of people in the bazaar, mosques and minarets, tombs, city gates (here I veer into the touristic), crushed roofs unrepaired from the 1992 earthquake, and various other images that come to my lens as I wonder the streets and river.

And now I close, a brief wrap up of my nearly one week in Cairo, this writing a gift of my mistake in not confirming my flight to Amman Jordan—and the Holy Land.

—Journal, Cairo, Sept 14, 2004