2W1D (mis)Adventures of Falafel the Camel #2

Walk Play/Smoke like an Egyptian: Falafel's introduction to backgammon and sheesha

2W0D (mis)Adventures of Falafel the Camel #1

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves...Open Sesame!

1W6D The (mis)Adventures of Falafel the Camel

Meet my friend, Falafel the Camel. I picked him up in one of the Bazaars in Dahab looking very lost and frightened. He will be joining me on my trip. :-) Welcome to the adventures of Falafel the Camel.

1W5D “Alexandria, princess and whore. The royal city and the anus mundi.” –Lawrence Durrell

Four days, three middle of the night passport checkpoints , two relaxing days in Alexandria, and one 12 grueling hour bus ride later I am finally in Dahab. More on this later.

Departing from Cairo in the morning on Wednesday, I arrived into Alexandria at around noon and made my way to the Shultz American School successfully bargaining a taxi down from 40 LE to 20 LE. I was greeted by my host who lived in a very plush apartment with high ceilings, large spacious rooms, clean bathrooms, and air conditioning. Even though I had only been in Cairo for a week and a half it was nice to come to a more quiet and relaxed area where everything was just a tiny bit cleaner, a tiny bit less crowded, and a tiny bit less humid.

Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt and the difference from Cairo is quite evident as soon as I started walking around the city. As my guide book describes it, “it turns its back on the rest of Egypt and faces the Mediterranean, as if contemplating its glorious past.” And this is true. The drivers are still crazy here but upon arriving I felt a complete change in atmosphere and surroundings. It is like going from the city of New York to the shores of Santa Cruz. I was hassled less here and the people here were slightly dressed in a more Western way with a little more skin showing (elbows and hands), sometimes shorts, not as many headscarves or traditional wear, and a more relaxing attitude in general.

The city, founded by Alexander the Great, was an important city in the past. His chief architect for the project was Dinocrates. But a few months after it was found, Alexander left the city and never returned. Very little of the ancient city has survived with the submerged Royal Quarters beneath the harbor. As a diver I was really interested to see the ruins of the royal quarters of Cleopatra, but didn’t get a chance to explore the lost underwater city.

My main reason for coming to this city was to see the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. This building was built to remember the Library of Alexandria. What an interesting resurrection of an ancient wonder. Upon approaching from the sea side, there is a huge planetarium that looks like it is embedded into the concrete. Coming up the steps there is a giant discus embedded in the ground at an angle – representing a man made glass, steel and stone rising sun beside the Mediterranean. On the exterior the stone is carved with pictograms, hieroglyphs and letters from every alphabet.

The disk seems to sit in a pool of water which at eye level seems to continue and connect with the ocean. The metal panels on the roof are composed of 9x14 meter modules- with most of them split into two – half being a skylight to allow light into the reading area.

Unfortunately I did not have time to go see the interior but from what I read the library has four levels below and seven above ground. There is a large main reading area with eight terraces, along with other programs that are required for running a library.

Having a circular form creates a strong iconic presence and it seems to symbolically represent a continuous quest or absorption of knowledge. The circular wall is considered the largest in the world with a diameter of 160 meters and a height of 35 meters. I’d be interested to see how they solved the problems of submersing half the building below the ground on a site that is very close to the sea.

The rest of the time spent in Alexandria was relaxing – from meeting some British engineers and eating delicious homemade chili and discussing construction methods in North Africa to playing Frisbee on the American School campus grounds in the middle of the night and discussing life.

Now here I am in Dahab, looking at the ocean, but also an array of unfinished buildings and the occasional mosque set between the calm blue waters and the dry brown layered mountain backdrop. From what I’ve seen in Egypt thus far, the norm of the built environment in developed areas seems to be an endless amount of grayish concrete skeletons with pieces of rebar protruding from them and dusty abandoned buildings covered with broken windows and trash scattered about the site.

1W1D To the Citadel

One week in N. Africa complete, 19 more weeks left. I am sure the time spent here will pass by quickly. Today I am sitting outside at the campus of the AUC doing some more reading. It is surprising chilly right now, enough that I’ve had to put on a warmer long sleeve shirt and a thin hoodie.

Yesterday was quite an interesting and long day as I started with an errand in the north part of Cairo and ending with dinner on the southern outskirts of Cairo. The bookstore at the AUC did not have a book I wanted so I had to go to the AUC downtown branch which is located in Zamalek. This is a manmade island in Cairo located on the Nile River…think Manhattan, NY for Egyptians. Maad’di, where I went to dinner at a French couple’s house is also very expensive. When I say expensive, I mean expensive for Egyptians to live there as it is for Americans to live in NYC.

I wanted to find out the average salary of a Cairene (a Cairo inhabitant) but found that this is quite difficult. The gap between the rich and the poor is huge. The rich are extravagantly rich – spending more than the average American, flaunting their Mercedes and BMWs through the narrow and congested streets of Cairo (why drive a nice car through Cairo, I have no idea – it’s like a Mercedes competing in bumper cars with 18 wheeler Monster trucks).

There is not much to Zamalek but some foreign companies and embassies amongst private residential quarters. And TREES. It was so great to see trees and cleaner streets and just a little less car horn and congestion than downtown Cairo.

Our first stop after this detour to Zamalek was returning to another area of Islamic Cairo, to Bab Zwayla – which was the city’s main southern gate during Fatimid times. We climbed the minaret, which was quite scary because it was completely dark going up the steep narrow steps, and upon reaching the the 3^rd level you are climbing up some very flimsy and wobbly metal “stairs.” For some reason I felt safer and less scared when I went bungee jumping in Korea which was much higher up than I did climbing up these metal “stairs.”

But the climb was worth it when we were greeted with view of Islamic Cairo, along with the Citadel in the distance, the al-Muyyad Mosque and Salih Tala’I mosque in the foreground, with minarets lining the smoggy skies, layers of dust, trash and cracked concrete lining the disheveled rooftops, and pedestrian, animal and vehicular traffic lining the unkempt narrow streets.

We planned our route to the Citadel in the distance and walked an hour in the hot sun. By this time I’ve gotten used to the breathing in the hot thick air and scorching heat (I can only imagine what it would be like in the dead of summer.) The complex was begun by Salah al-Din, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and his nephew, Al-Kamil, developed the Citadal as a royal residence. The Mohammed Ali Mosque within the grounds is interesting with a variety of styles – with an ornate clock given by French king Louis Phillppe, an interior that is of Ottoman style, array of domes decorated in an elaborate enamel and jewel ornamentation, and a spiral of light globes and chandeliers illuminating the space.

After a relaxing stroll throughout the citadel grounds, we went to go find the Southern cemetery also known as one of the Cities of the Dead, where over half a million Cairenes live amid mausoleums and family plots. It was quite eerie to be walking through these mausoleums with squatters living around these tombs and after awhile I felt uncomfortable if only because it was quite a poor area with conditions I was not used to seeing and it did not help that it was getting darker. So Phil and I left to head to Maad’di for a small dinner party.

Of course, we wanted an adventure and so we decided to attempt to take a bus from where we were to Maad’di. We had no idea where to catch the bus or what bus number to take. And to add to that, neither of us reads Arabic fast enough to be able to see what cities the buses were going to so after asking about 10 people in a time period of 15 minutes, we figure out it was the number 54 bus. But the Arabic numerals are written and read quite differently than what we were used to. We eventually figured it out about an hour later but I cannot even begin to describe the process we used…luckily we got on the right bus heading towards Maad’di but had no idea which stop to get off at. So naturally we missed the stop but were able to hop off and find a subway station to where we needed to go.

Maad’di is a residential area popular with expats. With its quiet residential streets, the sound of silence filling the air instead of loud honking car horns and fresh clean air and boulevards lined with trees, I can see why it is a popular place to live; of course it is very expensive for a place like Egypt. The apartment cost 4500 Egyptian pounds a month which works out to be about $800USD. I was the only non-French speaker at dinner but they kindly spoke English for me. It was interesting to hear their perspectives on my research, especially since one of them was studying architectural history and the other was working in renewable energies at a company in downtown Cairo. But best of all, after not eating all day and wandering somewhat aimlessly throughout the streets of Cairo, I appreciated a good meal amongst good company.