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Last Wednesday we went to Coptic Cairo. I had never been there before and thought it was fascinating.

On the way there we went past Cairo's aqueduct, built in the Middle Ages. We had a guide that day, and as we drove by he told us all about the lively textile district below. Inelegantly, I asked him if it wasn't also Cairo's slaughterhouse district. He seemed a bit embarrassed about this and said that technically that was true but the slaughterhouses were slowly being moved outside the city. A moment later we drove by a dead horse lying by the side of the road. He cleared his throat and said, "Of course, this hasn't happened completely yet."

Since he didn't seem interested in talking about that anymore and instead went on with telling my dad about Salah el-Din and the Mameluks, I took it upon myself to tell K. — who was sitting in the backseat with me — that this area was also famous as a place to buy drugs. Her father and I, I said, had a friend in college who was very wealthy and told people his family had made their money in the Gulf, but really he'd grown up in the slaughterhouse district and had his entire education financed by his uncle, a heroin dealer. He seemed like such a well-mannered boy that you would never guess he'd grown up in such a tough district, but one time he failed a course at AUC and in retaliation blew up his professor's car.

This isn't relevant to Coptic Cairo. I just think of that story whenever I drive through this area and needed to tell someone. K. seemed more interested in that than in Salah el-Din.

The area itself is a gated community. Like, there was an actual gate, with soldiers, that we had to pass through first. Directly inside there were a few gift shops and kiosks, and (once again!) I marveled at how much Eastern Christianity has in common with Islam, since at first glance I mistook these for glass Ramadan lamps.

We began by stopping at the remnants of the fortress of Babylon, a Roman fort that was built in this area before the city became Fustat, before Fustat became Cairo. This thing is old as hell.

From there we went to The Hanging Church, The Church of Saint Barbara, The Ben Ezra Synagogue, and The Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, where legend has it Jesus, Mary, and Joseph found shelter during their escape to Egypt. There is a crypt underneath it that runs all the way to the Nile. We saw the stairs going down to it, but couldn't go inside because they were clearing it of water. (Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures inside any of these places.)

As interesting as all this was (and it was), what I found most fascinating was the architecture around these churches. I'd assumed "Coptic Cairo" was just a district like any other, one that kind of bleeds into other areas. So I was surprised that you have to walk down INTO it, and that it's walled off from the neighborhoods around it. Next to all these historical buildings — like "Islamic Cairo" — you have regular apartments, with people hanging out their laundry and watching television. But the place feels like it's a thousand years old.

I've never been to Jerusalem, but it's what I imagine Jerusalem to look like.

Walking through Coptic Cairo I heard what I thought was someone reciting the Qur'an. That's not unusual here, but we were in the Christian part of the city. It was the Bible! I know it should be obvious that Christianity has been influenced by Islam — even if Christianity came first, it's still an overwhelmingly Muslim country — but even so, it took me by surprise to hear the Bible recited in this very ….Islamic way.

I taped about 45 seconds of it before I got dragged away. Listen.

When my daughter said she didn't want to go with us to Old Cairo on Saturday, because she preferred to sleep, I was fine with that because I was more than happy to go again with her some other day. I love that part of the city.

But on the day we were doing the pyramids? I dragged her out of bed at 8 a.m., because I'm only doing that once.

*I would like it noted that my daughter is not actually taller than me. She must be, um, standing on something. Because I'm the mother. Therefore I am tall. She's a child. Yeah.

The pyramids area is bright, windy, HOT, and full of tourists. Plus there isn't much to DO there, except say "yep, that sure is a pyramid." But of course you can't come to Egypt without seeing them. Oddly enough they really don't look like they do on a postcard, as one might suspect they do. The scale is so overwhelming that by the time you back up far enough to get them all in a single frame you can see why K would describe them as "just a bunch of triangles."

What's more interesting, to me, is the scene on the ground around them, and Egyptians' love-apathy relationship with them.

Okay, this is the great pyramid. It's great. That giant hole over my dad's head, that thing that looks like a vagina, is its official entrance. I went in there 15 years ago and this is what you see: a long claustrophobic tunnel, and then an empty room. There, I've saved you money should you ever decide to come here yourself, since it costs extra to go inside.

There is another hole, called the Arab entrance (the jokes just write themselves, don't they?) that the Arabs* hollowed out at random when they invaded Egypt in 641 A.D. I don't know what they were expecting to find in there, a hotel or what, but I kind of like that story because it speaks to two things, both still relevant today: 1) human curiosity, and 2) the "jesus, what the hell?!" reaction they must have had — after romping about conquering Mesopotamia with relatively little resistance — upon getting to Egypt and suddenly coming face-to-face with this giant… THING.

Not that it stopped them. Egypt was conquered and the Muslims carried on their merry way all the way to Spain. Still, you have to think this gave them pause.

* "Arabs" in this context means Muslim invaders from what is now the Saudi Arabian peninsula. Most Egyptians are Arabs now because of the events I am describing at this very moment. At the time, however, they were African, Greek, Roman, or some blend of same.**
** Although most Egyptians will describe themselves as Arabs if they are speaking in terms of ethnicity and demographics, colloquially they still use the word "Arabs" in its 641 A.D. sense, to mean Saudis and other citizens of the Arab Gulf region. While it's not exactly a derogatory term, it's almost always used as an expression of annoyance. The other day, for example, my friend Wael complained that a particular cafe had been ruined since "it became full of Arabs." This usage is typical. It means prices have been driven up at (in Egyptians' opinion) the expense of art and culture.***
*** Remind me to write about this in the context of bride prices.

This is the Sphinx. Its nose decayed hundreds of years ago but there's still an ongoing legend that it was shot off by Napoleon. I've heard this story blamed on tourists, but to me it sounds much too clever for tourists to have invented. If I had to guess I'd say it's a joke-slash-conspiracy theory Egyptians made up in 1798 when Napoleon first invaded and have been repeating ever since.

Napoleon wasn't the first to invade Egypt, but he was the first non-Muslim to do so since Islam came into existence in the first place. He stayed for three years and then got bored and went home. (How French.) At that point the British moved in and with their typical British tenacity dug in their heels and oppressed the population for 150 years, until Nasser and his Free Officers got fed up and overthrew them in 1952. This made them heroes not just in Egypt but throughout the Third World. Pretty soon the British were being thrown out of everywhere.

And the Sphinx's nose was still missing.

His bigger problem these days is that he's decaying from the inside, a result of being located so close to Cairo's world-renowned pollution problem. People say he has cancer.

All of the pyramids used to be covered with polished limestone, making them smooth and shiny and more triangular and probably fun to slide down. You can still see some of it there on the tip of the Pyramid of Khafre, above, behind the Sphinx. Most of it, though, eroded over the last few thousand years, making them easier to climb, which you can do if you come after midnight and bribe the guards. You shouldn't do that, though. Not only is it damaging to the last remaining Wonder of the Ancient World, it is illegal and you could get caught and while you, Rich Western Tourist, will probably be forgiven for your fun-loving foreign ways, the guide you bribe will probably be fired and sent back to his village in Aswan.

That said, I do have a Turkish friend who did this, drunk, with his girlfriend, who was wearing high heels. (What?? I know.) They said when you get to the top it's much smoother than it looks at the bottom, so you have to have a guide who will tell you which route to take. They also said it's much taller than it looks, so don't look at the ground. Apparently his girlfriend cried all the way down. She thought they were going to die.

I like it when people I know do things like this so I can tell their stories without having to actually do the thing they're talking about myself.

* Someone in Romania told me that when I hold my bag like this I look like I'm waiting in a railway station. That's not true, is it?

(By the way, at the pyramids, all dogs are beige.

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The thing that's hardest to convey in photography is where the pyramids are situated in relation to Cairo and in relation to the desert. Right up against both, that's where. If you look in one direction you see a city of 20 million people. If you turn around 180 degrees, you see… the Sahara.* Cairo is expanding in every direction, but so far it's yet to expand around the pyramids. What's that Eddie Izzard joke, about how Americans are so impressed with castles, but the British just see them as a pain in the ass to drive around? "Aw, no, another bloody castle"? I'm waiting for the pyramids to become like this, because Cairo really is that close.

* "Sahara", by the way, is Arabic for "desert." So if you say "the Sahara desert," you are technically being redundant. You can just imagine how this came to be, can't you? Some English guy got to North Africa and raised a sweeping hand across the landscape and asked "what do you call this?" and his Arab guide said "the desert, you fool."

Most of your energy at the site itself is used not gasping in awe at the history before you, but rather in avoiding people who are trying to sell you something.

People (including me) complain about this, but as with the Khan, it's likely nothing new. You can't tell me that when Napoleon came here in the 18th century there weren't kiosks lined up selling trinkets and overpriced water. It was probably even true when the Arabs came here in 641.

What I do think is interesting about this, though, is that Pharaonic art and history violate about 6,432 tenets of Islamic law, starting with the depiction of the human form and ending, super hugely, with their polytheism.

And does anyone care? No. They're perfectly happy to sell you King Tut's head on a chain.

I'm being flippant about this, but it's actually kind of a big deal, especially after Afghanistan made news a few years ago blowing up their Buddhist statues. Egyptians, for the most part, not only coexist with their heretic past, they get really really into it. The American University in Cairo teaches Coptic and hieroglyphics as foreign languages. They have an Egyptology program separate from any other department. The chemistry department offers a minor in carbon dating.

Tourism is one of the biggest industries in Egypt, which means the field of Egyptology employs a lot of people. Tourism is also Egypt's foremost source of foreign currency, which is what it uses to pay back its foreign debt, which it's dependent on for development, which Mubarak needs to stay in power.

This brings me to one of Egypt's strangest phenomena: THE TOURISM POLICE. If you're a foreigner in Egypt you'll be told to report anyone harassing you to the tourism police. At first I thought that was a joke, but it's not. They are a branch of the government whose _only job_ is to protect white privilege. I've been stopped before, when walking with Egyptian friends, and asked if they are "official" guides, meaning licensed by the government. No, I'd say, they're just friends. They'd be asked to show their identification. I'd be asked if they were bothering me.

The whole thing is humiliating, and part of the reason I don't have a lot of sympathy for white people who say they know what it's like to be a minority because they were a minority in a foreign country that one time. I have more privilege here than I do at home, and it's not only a class thing.

But I do think the term "tourism police" is funny. It's like the fashion police or the grammar police, only real.

Besides buying items, you can also buy your photograph on a camel or a donkey. The two animals seem to serve similar purposes here, but they have entirely different connotations. In Arabic you can be as strong as a camel, but you're pretty much always dumb as a donkey. X used to have a game he'd play to get K. to go to sleep called "Who's the Donkey?" The donkey was whoever talked first. I've used it at work once or twice.

My dad, having grown up on a farm in 1842 or whenever it was, was probably more amused than most by donkey lore.

He kept asking people about agricultural practices here, and I kept having to tell people he came from fellaheen. I told him that means "farmers." It really means "peasants." There was never a good time to explain to him that in Egypt people who've gotten OUT of the village don't go back. They don't move onto their family acreage and live there happily with their dogs and consider it quiet and peaceful and nostalgic the way he does. I've been asked before if we had running water in my "village" in America.

So when my father kept asking city people why they plant dates next to bamboo or whatever (I wasn't really listening), and they didn't know, it was actually a sign of them being educated, despite his wish that everyone keep such information at their fingertips. At which point I would tell them he was a fellah and they would go "ahh" and nod knowingly.

After the great pyramids we went to the step pyramid area at Saqqara. This is less famous but reportedly more interesting. I wouldn't know, because I find all pre-Islamic Egyptian history equally uninteresting. (I warned you this was going to be a lackluster and half-hearted guide.)

My main association with the Saqqara pyramid is the road to it, which is this little two-lane highway next to a canal, very beautiful, where X and I used to make out when we were teenagers. It's one of the only places in Cairo that has few people and dim lighting. We referred to it as "our" road and, to this day, even though we've been married and divorced and remarried and our daughter is only five years younger than we were back then, it still bothers me when other people drive on it or refer to it as though it is public space that just anyone can use.

Once we got to it it took everything I had not to bounce up and down and tell my father and my poor daughter exactly why I remembered it so well.

Is this too much information? Anyway. This is Saqqara. It's a pyramid that looks like steps. That's probably why they call it the step pyramid. Or maybe there's a more esoteric reason. I used to think hamburgers were burgers made of ham (isn't it obvious?) until my German tutor explained they were sandwiches invented in Hamburg. So don't trust me with stuff like this.

To get to them you have to go through some pillar thingies. They probably have a history, too.

What gets me is that they are STILL excavating this area! Like at what seems like a really rudimentary level! They've had five or six thousand years, you know? You'd think they would have worked this stuff out by now.

So far they've uncovered an Escher painting.

We also went to Memphis, the capital of this region in Pharaonic times. Cairo didn't exist until the tenth century, which makes it a regular whipper-snapper by Egyptian standards.

Memphis has, um, trees and statues.

Some of the statues are big. Like this one of Ramses. In the United States, he is a condom. Which makes no sense whatsoever, because the guy had over a hundred kids.

Other statues are small. Like this Tolkien-ish one, which is apparently the god of happiness. I like it that the god of happiness is short and fat, like the Venus of Willendorf, or Norm on Cheers.

As you may have noticed, I'm not really up on my ancient Egyptian history. But this area does have one of my favorite sites ever, in any country: PYRAMID FAIL. On the left is the step pyramid. On the right is a pile of rocks they couldn't make work, so they gave up and started over.

There are actually many of these dotting the desert, but I like this one because it sits so obviously, and sadly, next to the Saqqara pyramid. It's like there's someone yelling why can't you be more like your brother?

Anyway, I love this loser pyramid because it reminds me that effort inevitably includes failure, and that this reality is thousands of years old.

I think when I get home I'm going to print this out and hang it over my computer. I find it strangely optimistic. After all, the Egyptians did get a lot of things right. Just not all the time.

So that's how we spent last Monday. We got home late in the afternoon hot and tired with sand in our hair. Like I said, I'm not doing this again.

But it is something it's nice to see once, in person.

Not necessarily more than that. But once is worth it.

Even if it is just a bunch of triangles.

Al-Azhar is the oldest still-functioning university in the world. It was built in 971 A.D. and has existed in one form or another for the last thousand years. On Saturday my dad and I visited its mosque.

My dad waited for me in the courtyard while I went into the women's area. The invited him in with me but he declined, which I thought was cool. When I came back outside a few guys had gathered around him and were reciting the Qur'an. Not to him, exactly, but within earshot (see above), which I thought was interesting because it's an older style of instruction and I'm glad he got to see that. I don't know how the university operates now, but historically Islamic universities didn't have "classes" in the sense that we think of them now. Back then the senior clerics would lean against the walls in the courtyard and give lectures, while the younger students milled about and listened to the ones they chose to hear. They progressed individually, on no fixed timetable, by proving their mastery of the religion to senior sheikhs. (Kind of like unschooling.)

Inside the women's area a few women were praying, and several more were sleeping. I've always liked that about mosques, that sleeping is allowed and common. You have to feel either very safe or very desperate to sleep in public. Mosques accommodate both.

This is the main prayer hall. We got there just in time to watch midday prayer (no pictures of that, though).

Part of the original madrassa:

A cat naps next to freshly baked bread off to the side of the madrassa:

The outer courtyard:

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After Al-Azhar we went to the Al-Ghouri complex, built in 1503 in what used to be Cairo's charcoal market. It's set apart from the street a bit, behind a gate, to the point where I had to walk around the building and back again asking "bab? bab?" until I found the door.

Even after visiting it, I can't tell you exactly what it IS. A mausoleum, a school, a palace, a mosque, a cistern, a theater — and further down the street, a hotel — but I think what makes it notable isn't its architecture (although that's impressive) or the functions it served (although they were too) but that it's an early example of a _public_ building. It wasn't just built for the glory of a sultan, or even the glory of God, but for the people, ordinary Cairenes, to use.

Which is not to say Al-Ghouri himself was a great guy. By all accounts he seems like a bit of a dick. But he was a dick who apparently believed in giving people gardens.

View of the main courtyard from below and from above. This was a Sufi hostel. There is a stage because they still hold performances here, and during Ramadan people will sleep here:

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On the left is the main hall, if you can call it that, of the mausoleum. Al-Ghouri himself isn't buried here, but his wife and children and concubine are. They died of the plague.

On the right is a fountain. After you're dead, it's said, there is little that can help you; your life as you've lived it is the only thing that matters on Judgment Day. One of the exceptions to this is if you've built a public good that will continue to serve people after you're gone. A fountain is the traditional example. Here you can see where the water was poured; passersby could come and drink from it without having to enter the building itself. There was one of these on each of three walls.

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They've turned one room into a theater and apparently still hold concerts here, too, every weekend:

The domed ceiling over the theater:

Below the mausoleum was a cistern I wanted to see. The guide was open to that, but he seemed kind of embarrassed and warned me that, um, the steps were small. Oh, that's no problem! I reassured him. Until I saw them. They weren't so much "stairs" as a choppy ramp. They were tiny and sloped sharply downwards. I tried 5 or 6 times but ultimately chickened out.

My dad was braver, though:

I took this one from the balcony of the old kuttab, a school traditionally attached to a mosque where poor children were taught to read and write from the Qur'an. Mosques and other religious institutions were the main vehicle of education right up until the late Ottoman period in the early 20th century — which is probably also why people (Westerners) misuse the word "madrasa," which on its own has no religious connotations; the word just means "school":

Here, by the way, is a 19th century painting of the same scene.

Street life below:

(Later I bought two tops down there, from a 14-year-old girl named Aisha. I was ten pounds short of her final asking price and was unsure whether to try to haggle harder or just give them back when she said, very shyly, "I like your bracelets." I took them off and we made a trade. Barter seemed appropriate to the setting.)

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The mashrabeya (latticework) over the windows allowed women to see out without letting others see in. Windows aren't made like that anymore, of course, but they're still a common sight in this area.

Finally we went to the roof, where there was a beautiful view of Islamic Cairo's skyline:

I love this part of the city so, so much.

People sometimes write off Khan el-Khalili, Egypt's grand bazaar, as a tourist trap, and it's easy to see why. All the vendors know some English (and some French, and Russian, and Italian, and German….) and they all but assault you trying to get you to come into their shops. Usually it's something as simple as "want silver?" or "best perfume!", but sometimes their pitches are more creative ("This is the best place to spend all your money!" "If you have any money left, I will take it for you, no broblem!"). A good portion of what's sold is kitschy souvenirs, and the prices for things like tea and soda can be double or triple what they are in normal parts of the city.

But to leave it at that misses the history, I think. The Khan goes back to the 1300s, and has been Egypt's major souq for hundreds of years. (It may have been indirectly responsible for the discovery of the Americas, since it was the site of Egypt's spice market, which Europe sought to bypass by finding a new route to India.) So as aggressive as the vendors are, I can't imagine they're much different than the vendors of the 1500s or the 1700s, who would have likewise been catering to international travelers. International trade is hardly a post-globalization development.

It's also just a popular shopping spot, for Cairenes, especially its western edge, Al-Muski Street, which is still the best place in Cairo to get bargain prices on linens, dishes, underwear, and other less romantic household items. There are also several still-functioning mosques in this district, as well as residences. So while the concentration of tourists is high, it's not an experience that's been manufactured for their benefit.

I was surprised, when I went to the bazaar in Istanbul, that it was all indoors and felt like a mall. The Khan is less a defined "space" than a city "district." Some of the streets are covered by a combination of plants, bamboo trellises, and balconies that they feel indoors-y, but most of the streets are open. How anyone could live here with all the noise I have no idea, but you can see there are apartments on the upper levels.

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The famous Fishawy's coffeeshop, reportedly open 24/7, uninterrupted, for the last 200 years:

The front of Al-Husayn Mosque, Egypt's holiest mosque (so much so that non-Muslims are not allowed to enter it):

The minaret of the Shaykh Mutahhar Mosque. See the loudspeaker? Most mosques now automate the call to prayer, rather than using a muezzin:

Randomly:

My dad finds a friend:

These two look much better big, so you should click on them!

Coming soon when I have time: Al-Azhar and the Al-Ghouri complex.

5,000 years of history in 90 seconds

(requires flash)