Cairo to Skopje: May 2, 2012

This is our last morning in Zamalek.  Zamalek is such an oasis of calm in Cairo.  It is lovely, tree lined, filled with great restaurants and shops and generally gentrified.  It is just across the river from the turmoil of Tahrir Square but it has remained tranquil.

Our hotel, Hotel Longchamps, was very gracious.  They did not charge us for our first night--the one we were forced to spend in Istanbul.  They did not charge us for the driver's trip to meet our missed flight.  Gabby, the day desk clerk, pursued our lost luggage like a pit bull.  She was as happy to see it delivered as we were.  Their driver took us back to the airport.

It took over an hour to get to the Cairo Airport.  Traffic in Cairo has always been bad, but it is much worse post-revolution.  One cause of today's slow traffic was an altercation in front of the Defense Ministry between protestors and people initially described as "unknown assailants."  According to news reports, many of the protesters were "hardline Salafi Islamists" upset that their presidential candidate was disqualified.  Protestors were also concerned that the military would not bow out after the president was chosen.  By the time we drove past the scene, the fires were dying down but several people had already been reported dead.  We were on an elevated road and we could see spectators lining the adjacent elevated highway watching the scene below.

At the Cairo airport all went well.  We boarded a beautiful, seemingly new Egypt Air airbus, and found that our seats were in the premium coach cabin.  What a luxury to have room for our knees and legs.  After all passengers were on board, the pilot announced that we would need to delay our departure because the air traffic in Istanbul was jammed.  We left 30 minutes late.  Once in the sky over Istanbul, we circled for about 30 minutes because again the airport was too busy to receive us.  Fortunately, we had two hours between connections.  Aboard Turkish Air for our flight to Skopje, the plane left late--of course, it was Turkish Air and we were flying out of Istanbul.  How can they say they are "The best airline in Europe."  Who voted for them?

In Skopje, all our worries and setting in place a Plan B for Kali Cat were unnecessary.  At immigration, the officer asked me how many times I had been to Macedonia.  I answered "twice." Dan said "three times."  We were stamped in.  I guess the computer system isn't so good at catching illegal aliens.  And, our baggage arrived with us on the same plane.

Cairo-4 Mosques: May 1, 2012

Today, found me back at the Citadel visiting the Muhammed Ali Mosque with Rana and her friend Shawza (a young prosecutor).  Rana invited us to join a tour of four mosques organized through Facebook.  A huge group of Egyptians assembled for this tour.  It's rare to see Egyptians touring their monuments.  At each mosque, there was an in depth, scholarly lecture about Egypt's history and the architecture.  The lecture was in Arabic, but there was one young woman, Ayat, who translated for me, a Brit named Alex, and Dan when he joined us. I learned that the crescent and star, both 6 and 8 points, were merely geometric shapes when they were first employed in Islamic architecture.

During the lecture, a maintenance man began cleaning the glass globes on the hundreds of lights in the Muhammed Ali Mosque.  

The Mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad, Mamluk architecture, near the Muhammed Ali Mosque in the Citadel was our second stop on the tour.  The lecturer pointed out that the decoration around the top walls mirrors the void space and the void space connects the sky to the mosque kind of like a puzzle piece.  The multi-leveled arches were built to vent heat from the inside spaces.

Next we took the Saladin Inside Passageway down the hill to the Sultan Hassan Mosque for another tour and lecture.

The dome of the entryway to Sultan Hassan Mosque.

The call to prayer inside the Sultan Hassan Mosque with the open courtyard and fountain in the background.

This man sang a shortened call to prayer inside the tomb room of the Sultan Hassan Mosque.  He also sang the Koranic inscriptions surrounding the ceiling of this room.  He had a beautiful voice.

We lingered in the space for quite awhile.  It is another lovely serene space.  It was a mosque and a school of the four philosophies of Islam.  Sultan Hassan had this mosque/madrassa built during a time of famine.  The structure is immense and it was built that way to make people feel insignificant in it's presence.  Sultan Hassan planned on having his tomb inside the tomb room, but when the third minaret was built it collapsed on an orphanage killing several children.  The Sultan wasn't able to calm his subjects (with the famine and the deaths and the hugely extravagant structure), and he was killed by them about 30 days later.  The whereabouts of his body is still unknown.

Our last stop was the Mosque of Al Rifai right next door to the Sultan Hassan Mosque.  This is the day that Sufi Sultan Al Rifai was born and a big celebration of his birthday was beginning.  There was lots of chanting and wailing at his tomb.  The surrounding wooden lattice screen smells of fragrances because his followers rub scented oils into the wood.

There are several tombs inside this structure.  King Farouk and the Shah of Iran are both buried here.

Central Dome in the Mosque of Al Rifai

Me and Dan with Rana

Back outside on the street, many of the pilgrims were waiting in tents for the evening celebration of Sufi Al Rifai's birthday to begin.  There was even a small children's carnival being assembled.

After the tour, we walked back toward the Citadel and met Gamal at his shop.  We were joined by Zizi and their other son, Mohanad, who brought Egyptian pizza to share with us for dinner.  Dan helped Mohanad practice English by drilling him in his normal prosecutorial style.  

Gamal showed us some of his new creations.  He draws the scene and someone who works for him does the actual applique and stitching.  Many of his best pieces are sold in a shop in Coptic Cairo.

With tourism dollars limited, his family has had to be innovative in finding work.  Zizi and Basel are washing towels for a gym.  Every day Basel picks up a load of dirty towels and delivers his load of freshly laundered towels.  This is the reason for the car.  The towels are washed in a machine in their home and hung out to dry on their balcony.  Once dry, the towels are neatly folded and placed in a plastic wrapper.  While this would not have been work they would have sought pre-revolution, they are not too proud to do a job that brings in badly needed income.  

We said goodbye again to our friends, and went back to the hotel to pack.

Cairo-Our First Day: April 28, 2012

Dan and I had made arrangements to visit many of our Egyptian friends.  Today, we were scheduled to visit with our friends Gamal and Zizi and their boys.  Since we were meeting Gamal at his shop near the Citadel we visited the Citadel first.

The above photo is of the dome of the Muhammad Ali Mosque.  It's architecture is Ottoman and inside it always feels so peaceful and cool.  Visitors come just to sit and enjoy the space.

The Fountain at Muhammed Ali Mosque

The Citadel didn't have many foreign visitors today, but there were some Egyptian visitors.  An Egyptian man asked me to take a photo of his children and the beautiful young women in these photos wanted to take photos of me with them.  After that they posed for us.  The Egyptians we met at the Citadel were friendly and welcoming.  Several asked where we were from and thanked us for coming to Egypt.  It reminded us of how we were welcomed by Egyptians in November 1990 during Operation Desert Shield.  

We met up with Gamal at his shop and then we all went to his home in his son Basel's car. Basel, a new driver, has had his car for 3 months--that's about how long he has been driving, too.

At Gamal's house, Dan and Gamal played chess.  This time Gamal won.  Basel said that during the revolution when there was no work, he and his father would play chess for hours each day.  It shows.  Zizi and Gamal fixed an Egyptian feast of grilled chicken, kofte, salad, tahina, rice and baladi bread.  We ate too much although Zizi wasn't satisfied insisting that we keep eating, and eating, and eating.  Their other son, Mohanad, was in classes at Cairo University so we missed him.

Gamal, Dan, Basel, Zizi, and Ragi

One of the consequences since the revolution is that the police have virtually disappeared. The police force still has not returned to its pre-revolution presence.  On August 30, 2011, Ragi was caught in the middle of a fight between two gangs.  People were running away but he was not able to run fast enough. His hand and wrist were injured after he put is left arm up to shield his head from the beating.  A few months ago he had surgery to repair the nerve damage, and it seems that his hand will recover normal movement.

After dinner, Basel drove us to Zamalek in his red Ford.

After eating that large meal, we met Ghada and her husband Gamal for yet another meal. This time we had a little bit more control over what went into our mouths.