On my birthday this year, Adham, Karem, Kathleen and I went for a Friday morning walk around the neighborhood of Bulaq in Cairo. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, Bulaq was a small port town on the Nile located about two kilometers from the urban center of Cairo (the Mamluk Sultanate-Ottoman Empire city commonly referred to today as Old Cairo, Islamic Cairo, or that place where Khan el-Khalili is.)

Under Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, Cairo expanded and Bulaq was incorporated into the city proper. As modernization became the word of the day and European-style neighborhoods like Garden City and Zamalek were developed, civic planners increasingly regarded Bulaq as an archaic remnant of pre-modern times, with its narrow streets, unmaintained buildings, and non-elite population.

Throughout the twentieth century, Egypt attempted various industrialization and modernization projects in an effort to ‘revitalize’ Bulaq (which happens to be adjacent to the tourist-riddled downtown area.) However, these attempts have often proceeded with little regard for many inhabitants’ desires to remain in their historic locale and without concerted effort to bolster Bulaq. Under Sadat, over five thousand residents were relocated to al-Zawiya al-Hamra on the outskirts of Cairo but the land they vacated remained unofficial parking lots for fifteen years.

Today Bulaq remains a juxtaposition of structures and customs spanning centuries. Inhabitants congregate on the banks of the Nile and at venerated shrines like dozens of previous generations, then pass by Egypt’s second largest mall, the towering Arkadia, as they return to their homes. Mamluk mosques abut 19th century apartments with lacy ironwork balconies, while shops underneath sell electronics and motorcycles from around the world.

A side note: for those not familiar with the Arabic language, the headline of this post demonstrates the complexity of transliterating Arabic letters into Latin letters. The name of the district in Arabic is بولاق, and a search for Bulaq, Boulaq, Bulak, Boulak, Bulac, and Boulac will all turn up relevant information.

We set off about nine in the morning, and decided to walk from Zamalek to Bulaq. Sidewalks are not strictly enforced in Cairo, and so we could take the quickest route to the bridge:

Friday morning is a beautiful time to be out in the streets of Cairo, there is a warm, lazy, lull that envelops the city and the streams of cars are reduced to mere trickles. Along the Nile you will often see people fishing off the bridge, but on this morning there was only one fisherman:

Large cities often have a body of water nearby, and the Nile is the artery that feeds Cairo. As large as the city is, when you cross a bridge over the Nile the buildings are momentarily dwarfed by the swath of water cutting through its center.

Bulaq has a great mix of architecture. Some of my favorites buildings are the tall, delicate, 19th century structures now used as both apartments and businesses. There are also a number of small, Mamluk and Ottoman era mosques with incredible stonework.

Today, these buildings are towered over by the less-exquisite architecture of the large hotels and office buildings constructed in recent years.

Summer in Cairo means the days are long and hot, so outdoor activities get started early. When we reached the market around ten, things were set up and people milling about. On Fridays, various streets around Cairo will be closed to automobile traffic in the morning as vendors fill the streets with produce and household goods for people to do their weekly shopping.

The vendors with shops on the closed streets set up outside as well as mobile sellers offering wares. The first area we passed through was the clothing section, with stacks of shoes and racks of garments.

This is a tiny mosque tucked in next to a small flat. Mosques are abundant in Cairo, and range from the massive mosques and minarets of Ibn Tulun and Sultan Hassan to single rooms off the street with loudspeakers attached to terraces, like the one next to my old flat in Dokki.

After the clothes came the household goods. Some shops in Cairo can be extremely specialized. When I first arrived and lived in Bab el-Luq, I spent the good part of an afternoon searching for a shop that sold nails. Instead of a general hardware store with everything from nails to car fresheners, the wide variety of goods is dispersed among a number of vendors throughout the neighborhood. After inquiring at numerous tool, metal piping, bracket, and chain specialists, I was finally directed to a small, half-open, dutch door behind which a man sat on a stool with three walls of jelly jars within arm’s reach. All he offered were nails, screws, and hooks, but in every imaginable style and size. At his shop, I found exactly what I was looking for. This style of shopping can initially be confusing to one who isn’t familiar with the terrain, but I find it is much more enjoyable to meander around a neighborhood running errands than to spend the day in a mall or Carrefour.

This shop specializes in metal kitchenware. Containers, trays, lunch tins, and teapots will all be found here, but not silverware or plates. Notice the wooden structure above the shop which houses hamam, or pigeon. I also like the shop sign with the motorcycle and the baby.

Next up is the food area. Both prepared foods and staples are for sale. This photo is of a fuul vendor and his charming son, Ahmed. The large, round, metal vat is called an idra and contains the fuul, which is made of fava beans, onions, garlic, and spices simmered overnight. The fuul is served up in a variety of ways; one can add lemon, chili or garlic sauce, tomatoes, fried egg, cumin, and many other trimmings to complement the beans, which often come with a side of salad and bread. A big, tasty, filling meal generally runs between two and five Egyptian pounds. Pocket sandwiches to go will set you back twenty five to fifty piastres. Yum!

A little further down the road we came upon a man with only a small basket of tiny, colored chicks at his feet. Dyed pink, blue and orange, these little fuzzballs were ridiculously soft and delicate. I never did figure out why they were dyed, but we had a fun time playing with the chicks and the young kids clustered around the miniature fowl.

The specialization of the vendors continues into the food section, where farmers with small plots of land or a single commodity can set up a stand and attract customers. It is very much like a farmer’s market, as we would call it in San Francisco, but without a premium for the novelty. The diversity of items offered can be greater at the Friday markets, rather than local grocery stands, with items like fresh spinach, dill, and artichokes making special appearances. In general, it’s much better to get produce at outdoor markets and stands, as the quality and variety is usually much better than that offered at corporatized supermarkets like Metro and Alfa. Plus, you might get to shop at a mobile grape stand!

Prices are always listed per kilo on small signs, like the red and white one below, but always in Arabic. It’s easy to learn the digits 0-9 in Arabic, and knowing them really makes any shopping experience more pleasant (plus you don’t look like a donkey for asking the price when it’s clearly listed!) These grapes are 3.50 guineas for a kilo, a pretty sweet deal as that’s less than 0.50 usd and in a supermarket they can run up to 8 or 9 guinea per kilo.

Fresh meat is available both prepared and *really* fresh. Live fowl, rabbits, and sometimes sheep surround shops where customers can inspect and purchase them. As I have not done this myself, I don’t know if the animals are taken home alive or if the shop is also for butchering.

Towards the end of the street, the market tapered off and we came to an industrial section of Bulaq. In this area, one finds lumber, metal sheeting, and tools, both at shops and with mobile vendors. In the cart below, shovels, hoes, rope twine, and other building supplies are offered. The umbrella attachment is an important addition when one is sitting in the sun all day, and if you look closely you can see the vendor sitting behind his cart.

At the end of the market street there was a little roundabout, something that will always remind me of New Delhi. Both cities have a history of British construction eras, although the novelty was exported with varying success. In New Delhi the roundabouts are a free-for-all and you must go with the flow, weaving across constantly moving lanes of traffic. In Cairo, the large roundabouts (most notably Midan Tahrir and Talaat Harb) are regulated by traffic police, which does create traffic jams but I’m certain avoids potential massive blockage due to accidents and the accompanying shouting matches.

I especially liked the architecture of this brown building. Stacked in front of it are piles of lumber painted blue on the ends, but I have no idea what the building was originally constructed for. Building regulations do not seem to be very strictly enforced, and so there is a lot more variety in Cairene buildings than those in San Francisco, where it can take years to obtain a permit to alter a structure.

While wandering the old streets of Bulaq with their low buildings, the sight of massive towers and office complexes are never far away.

On Friday mornings many shops are closed. As the day heads towards afternoon, people slowly filter into the streets, both for work and leisure. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference, as shopkeepers will often sit outside their shop with a glass of tea and a cigarette, chatting with the neighbors as they observe the street and wait for customers.

Bulaq is not a highly tourist-traversed neighborhood, and so the four of us made an unusual sight walking around snapping photos. Mot people were friendly and unobtrusive, although there were a few negative comments. There were also a number of people who did not want their photo taken, so do be sure to always ask permission before photographing people. One young girl set up behind a cart of bright watermelons made a lovely scene, but when I asked permission to photograph her I was admonished with a wagging finger and a smile as she loudly proclaimed “no photo, no photo” a few times.

In a city where many apartments do not have gas lines and there is a thriving sidewalk food-and-tea stand industry, many people use portable tanks of gas for cooking. The large trucks like the one below bring the gas to a distribution center, where vendors with bicycles will strap a few tanks to their bike and ride through neighborhoods dispensing the canisters to customers. You can always tell when the gas tank man is coming around, because they make a very distinctive clank-clank-clank sound as they tap the canisters with a metal too to announce their arrival. The person requiring gas would then shout from the window to the vendor or run quickly down to the street to make their purchase.

Lo and behold, here is a photo of the gas tank in action. This is a little street-side tea and coffee vendor, with a shop that folds up like a cabinet when not in use. Paper to-go cups are only used in more expensive coffee shops like Costa and Cilantro; local setups like this cater to people within walking distance and use glass cups which they wash and reuse. You find the same thing at juice stands, where they offer juices by the glass or you can bring in an empty water bottle to fill up and take away. Given the high volume of tea drunk on the streets, this really saves a lot of wasted garbage and cuts overhead costs for the vendor. The marking on the doors is, as far as I can tell, a register of tabs for different individuals.

The young boy preparing the tea is probably part of the family that owns or runs this stand, and it is quite common to see young children helping out in a family business. There are undoubtedly more dangerous and destabilizing examples of child labor that take place in Egypt (research children working in brick factories, cotton fields or selling items at intersections to see how pervasive and disturbing this trend is), but for the most part the tea stand seem to be the domain of adults where children help out occasionally.

Here is the giant mall in Bulaq, the Arkadia. I don’t have any photos of the inside (although Karem took some great ones), mostly because I felt like we had entered a wormhole and been transported to an alternate plane of dark, stuffy, consumerism. Or maybe, it was just the first time I’ve been inside a mall in two years. Anyways, the absolute lack of customers anywhere inside the mall was in stark contrast to the bustling market outside, and indicates the incongruent position of the mall within the neighborhood it resides. Really, there was nobody shopping in Arkadia, only the employees hanging around looking bored.

Perhaps the mall gets busier on a weekday, when people working in the nearby office buildings are in the area. Construction is still going on in Bulaq, although the insane frenzy of building outside of Cairo proper may slow this trend in the future.

On a side note, I like the photo below because it shows how within a single group of people, women can wear anything from full niqab to hijab to uncovered hair. As we were walking away from the mall, this group discharged from two taxis and proceeded to walk towards one of the skyscrapers. The woman talking to the man in the blue shirt actually removed her niqab face covering and put on large sunglasses. If you ever live in a Muslim country, you will quickly discover that the issue of women’s garments is far more nuanced and personal that an outsider might think.

The Nile, as seen from Bulaq today.

A common sight along the banks of the Nile is a small nursery garden with pots and pots of plants and flowers of all sizes for sale. You can purchase anything from a jasmine seedling to a full fledged palm tree along the Nile, and sometimes I see delivery men with plants strapped to the backs of their bicycles pedaling to a customer’s residence. I always though that running a river-side nursery in Cairo would be an agreeable job; one well suited to avoiding the boredom and monotony of an office building.

Here is the owner of this particular nursery, dozing in the warm shade of a summer afternoon.

Our walk finished here; with the day quickly getting into the mid 30s/upper 90s it was time to retreat from the sunshine. Before we jumped into a taxi to return to the island, however, I did come across a lovely little patch of Nile-side grass which will be a perfect spot for my next picnic.

And that, dear readers, is just a little taste of Bulaq (Boulaq, Bulak, Boulak, Bulac, Boulac)!

A few weeks ago, Adham, his good friend Amr, and I spent a few days at a villa in a town called Fayid (or Fayed) on the Great Bitter Lake. The Great Bitter Lake, besides having a fantastic name, is a little spot of tranquility just under one hour outside of Cairo. It is a saltwater lake, hence the moniker ‘Bitter’, formed by the Suez Canal and it serves as a waiting area for tankers and ships as they travel along one of the most incredible achievements of the nineteenth century. Fayed is a small town on the lake, and in the photo below it is on the southwestern side of the lake. The body of water at the top of the photo is the Mediterranean Sea, and the water at the bottom of the photo is the Gulf of Suez, which leads into the Red Sea.

(you can click on any of the photos I took to see them in higher resolution)

Fayid is close to number of military barracks, and when the town was first built the military offered veterans excellent deals on housing. Many Cairenes, if they can afford to, take a flat in Cairo and a flat somewhere near the water, mainly along the North Coast or the Gulf of Suez, which is used to escape the oppressive summer heat in the city. In the 1970s and 1980s Fayid was a very popular day excursion or weekend destination for Cairenes, but today, due to increased building and marketing in other vacation spots, Fayid is not as popular as it once was.

Amr has a friend whose family owns a villa on the lake. When this friend was young the villa was in regular use, but since then the villa has been left in the hands of caretakers. The pool was drained, and much of the furniture removed. Nevertheless, as you will see, it is still an amazing complex!

We left Cairo on a Tuesday afternoon, and as you can see from the photo below we were definitely heading in the right direction. The traffic in and around Cairo from 2pm until 6pm comes to a standstil in many places.

Once you leave Cairo and the surrounding environs, the forests of buildings quickly turn to vast expanses of desert. It is in these areas that developers are starting to build suburban-style complexes, business mega-centers, schools, and factories. The Egyptian government owns most of the land, and you will often see military facilities as well. The new campus for the American University in Cairo is located in an area like this, named New Cairo, nearly an hour outside of downtown Cairo. As these areas often have limited public transport accessibility, it can create great difficulties and exacerbate the difference between elite Egyptians who have easy access to cars and benzene, and poorer Cairenes who rely on the bus and metro.

The Mugama, one of my favorite and one of the most convoluted (architecturally and bureaucratically) buildings in downtown Cairo, will eventually move to the outskirts of Cairo as well. The Mugama houses the bulk of the Ministry of Interior’s departments, and truly deserves a full post of its own (forthcoming). Most Egyptians and foreigners I have met have had business at the Mugama, and on any given day between the hours of 8am and 2pm there is a constant stream of Egyptians, bewildered tourists extending visas, and foreign residents and refugees applying for or renewing residency visas. I cannot imagine that taking this fundamental institution out of the center of Cairo (and away from the metro that runs practically beneath it) will be anything but a major fiasco. Many people simply cannot afford the taxi fare to reach the outskirts of Cairo, especially when one typically has to return to the Mugama two or three (or ten) times to complete a single process.

Even the outskirts give way eventually to the desert, which covers 96 percent (yes 96) of Egypt. I love the desert here because it give me the same sense of peace that I feel when looking out across the Pacific Ocean. Tranquility. Quiet. Clean air. Vast expanses of monotony. The biggest sky you’ve ever seen in your live. The most fantastic sunsets and sunrises you’ve ever seen in your life. The way something that never changes can look so different from day to day.

Amr’s friend was kind enough to drive us (plus Marley, Adham’s rottweiler) out to the villa where he was going to spend the day and then return to Cairo. Marley did not enjoy the ride very much, as the car was compact and the temperature outside in the mid-30s. I think in this photo he is reproaching me for pulling him away from the air conditioner, but a big dog drooling on the driver is not exactly an ideal driving scenario.

This photo was actually taken as we were leaving the villa, but it shows the street in front. The tall building after the stone wall was our home for three relaxing days. Fayid is a small town that caters to both the surrounding military and vacationers, and as you drive down the main road there are numerous food and dry-good shops with brightly colored water toys and flip-flops (ship-ship in Arabic) strung about.

This is the entryway alongside the villa. We were all happy to get out and stretch, and when a fooball was produced, Marley happily forgot the trauma of the drive and proceeded to chase and batter the ball for the next hour or so. By the end of the trip, the poor ball was a sadly deflated, tooth-impaled version of its former, glorious self. Thow a stick and Marley will look the other way, but throw a ball and he goes hyperactive.

This is an overview of the villa, taken from the third floor balcony. To the right of the pool is an attached building inside which are a large spa, a sauna, changing rooms, showers, and steps leading into the pool. Oh, how i wished the pool had been filled with lovely clear water, but alas it has been out of use for years. Similarly, everything inside the spa building was out of order. Past the palm trees at the far end are steps leading down to a terrace along the lake with steps into the water and a little launch for boats and jetskis. Fun!

Although the villa is not in frequent use, there is a caretaker and his son in residence and they beautifully maintain the elaborately landscaped grounds.

The spa building has a wide terrace on the roof which is accessible from the second floor, and the little stone structure to the left is an outdoor barbecue grill. Someone could really throw a fantastic summer party here, especially as the house can sleep more than twenty people very comfortably, and probably close to eighty with sleeping bags or mattresses on the roof and the grounds.

The gazebo on the right is made of beautifully carved wood in (what looked to me like) a Thai style, with out-of-use, heavy wooden picnic tables and benches stacked underneath. Behind the gazebo is a two story structure. On top is a single room, used by the father as an office, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the lake, and underneath is a garage directly off the launch for storing those water toys.

The spa building is decorated with colorful windows depicting cranes and they look absolutely beautiful from inside with the light filtering through.

This is the entrance from the first floor out to the pool and patio area. When Amr’s friend and his family use the villa they stay on this floor, so it is the most elegantly furnished part of the building. The second and third floors are furnished in a more utilitarian manner, and they are rented to people who come to the lake for day use or for a few nights. The roof (which we didn’t go to) has shelters set up to protect from the sun, making the square footage for the house unbelieveable. Each floor is self-sufficient with bathrooms, a kitchen, two giant bedrooms, a huge reception, and a lovely, wide terrace.

Yep, we pretty much camped out right here for three days.

The villa’s flora was expertly planned and executed, and I spent a few hours ogling the diverse plants and flowers. The berries above are a kind I’ve never seen, but they grow in a most interesting fashion on branches that radiate outward like a sunburst. I did not taste them.

This is a tree that is quite common in Egypt. They cover Cairo and lend welcome shade during the summer, and the flowers that bloom from them in the spring and summer are brilliant reds, oranges, pinks and yellows.

Bougainvellia, one of my favorite plants, flourishes in the extended summer sunlight.

Small, delicate, and very pretty.

I have no idea what this plant is, but it has some serious character.

Playing football while the ball was still inflated. Marley’s pretty good at trying to steal the ball!

This gate leads down to the terrace and lake. Notice the promenade of ships in the background… more to come.

The lake is vast, and to the left you can see a small sandbar island. The horizon is dotted with ships far in the distance.

Marley was hesitant to get in the water by himself but, since his fur is thick and he gets hot in the summer, we tossed him in to cool down. When he is in Sinai he regularly runs into the sea to cool off, but for some reason he was not as eager to go down the stairs or the launch. Nevertheless, he stayed like this for a good five minutes before getting out. He was the only one to go in the lake.

I was surprised and happy to capture this photo of a square sail boat, because most of the boats I have seen in the Red Sea or on the Nile are feluccas which have triangular lateen sails. This square sail is an ancient design which was first used by Pharonic Egyptians, and it is rather uncommon today. The square sail was ideal for the Nile, as (before the building of the Aswan Dam) the strong current drove north and the prevailing winds blew south. Ancient Egyptians could lower the sail to head north, and raise the sail when heading south. A square sail must always have the wind behind it, unlike a triangular sail which allows the boat to move both downwind and windward. Since the dam slows the current significantly, the lateen sail has become more popular. Unfortunately, the weaker current also reduces the flow of fresh Nile water into the Mediterranean and this has allowed the sea’s saltwater to encroach into the delta, causing major problems for Egypt’s most fertile region.

The contrast between the huge, oceangoing ships and the local fishing boats is quite stark.

The parade of ships and tankers through the canal is a steady and extremely profitable one.

This cargo ship reminded me of the docks in Oakland and the giant steel dinasours used to unload the containers.

The constant presence of large ships renders the water somewhat murky and brownish when seen close-up, although people still regularly swim in the lake. Fish and shrimp from the lake are plentiful and one night we had a delicious dinner of fried shrimp sandwiches, but I prefer swimming in the aquamarine waters of the Red Sea to the industrialized Great Bitter Lake.

To our left you can see residences dotting the shoreline. There is a Coptic Christian retreat complex a couple houses over, and Copts can spend a vacation with room and board free of charge. When we were there it was bustling with families swimming and laughing, and the waiting list is apparently quite long.

To the immediate right is another out-of-use villa, and a factory in the distance. Since Fayid is not a major international tourist destination like Sharm el Sheik, Hurgada or Dahab, I don’t think there is so much pressure on the government to beautify the surroundings, and the area is a combination of vacation and function.

A nice close-up of the factory. I’ll bet those gazebos were more enjoyable before it was built.

Fayid is a one-horse town, because most of the residences along the lake are vacation homes and often unoccupied. However, it is one of the few places in Egypt I have seen tuk-tuks. It is very interesting to see the different manifestations of the tuk- tuk in Delhi, Bangkok, and now, Fayid. Wherever they are, they’re one of my favorite modes of transportation!

This was an unexpectedly lucky shot (although next time I’ll have to remember to roll the window down before taking photos.) I was going for a shot of the train tracks when this little tuk-tuk just plowed across and, if you can see, the man is looking directly at the camera. One day, I am going to try my hand at driving a tuk-tuk.

I call this one “The Rough Pyramid”, or “Excellence in Space Efficiency.”

If you can see the white lettering in the rear window of this taxi:

سارة

it spells my name, Sarah, in Arabic! I can’t express to you how fun it has been to answer the question “ismik eh?” or, “what’s your name?” because when I reply “Sarah” literally ninety percent of the time the question-asker’s eyes light up, I get a big smile, and he or she asks me if I know that Sarah is an Arabic name. Quite a contrast to the response my old roommate Meredith would receive; the “th” sound doesn’t exist in Egyptian Arabic and her name was near impossible for people to pronounce or remember. It’s funny how something as simple as a name, one that I’ve taken for granted all my life, can create instant familiarity and friendliness with complete strangers. Thanks mom and dad!

Well that wraps up this trip to Fayid. One thing that does not come across in photos is the absolute dearth of traffic noise. The single road the passed the house was rarely used, and I didn’t hear a single horn honk the entire time. Also, the area all around the lake is very lush and green. It was a lovely, quick, break from the hustle and bustle (and heat!) of Cairo.

Lebanon has a pretty famous reputation for shiny female pop singers. Elizabeth knows what I’m talking about! Here are a couple of my (our) favorite videos. If you like bling, pink rollerblades, bubble guns, fast cars, windblown hair, purple spandex, gorgeous tabla drumming, and bound men hanging upside-down in water tanks, then you are in for a world of awesomeness. Enjoy!

(it may take a couple minutes for the videos to fully load… wait for it… it’s worth it)

Nesrin Zreik - Khallini Ma3ak

Myriam Fares – Wa7eshni

The issue of the hijab is always an interesting one to people, both inside and outside of Muslim countries. I think that one can only understand the complexity of this issue by spending an extended period of time in a place like Cairo, and seeing firsthand the multitude of ways in which both men and women interpret and exhibit ideas of modesty and religion.

That being said, there has been a flurry of media going around Cairo lately about harassment and the veil. Harassment on the street in Cairo is extensive, and both foreign and Egyptian women experience it. Typically it is through spoken words or gestures, but I known a few women who were touched or groped. The most aggressive harassments I have heard or read about were against Arab Muslim women. There have been two extreme incidents since I arrived in Cairo, and both involved a large group of men harassing women. This is especially scary because in a situation where there are a number of aggressors, sympathetic observers are unlikely to go up against a mob and things quickly get out of control. In both cases muhijaba and muniqaba women were victims, and in one case the Ministry of Interior denies the event ever happened.

While some people assume that harassment is primarily against non-Arab and non-Muslim women because they show their hair or wear the wrong clothes or send the wrong body language, in fact it is quite the opposite. Egyptian women are subject to the same street milieu as foreigners, and the harassment touches nearly all women. In my experience knowing Egpyptian muhijabas, the hijab rarely proves to be an impediment against harassment on the streets of Cairo. One young woman who is veiled told me, “if you get it 90% on the street, I get it 80%.”

Nevertheless, there is a new campaign underway which encourages Muslim women to wear the hijab to avoid harassment.  The motto in the first photo below is: “A veil to protect or eyes will molest” and underneath the candy is a Qur’anic verse which says God wants you to walk on the right path but evil people want you to deviate from it. The lower ad reads “you can’t stop them but you can protect yourself.”

I find these images problematic, because while they reinforce the idea that a muhijaba is clean, whole, and untouched, they make it very clear that an unveiled woman is spoiled, trash. Will this justify men’s harassment of unveiled women, and perhaps intensify it?

The first advertisment is also interesting in the three women depicted. The woman on the right is wearing a hijab in what I would categorize the more religious/conservative style. In my last post on the Suq al-’Ala, the woman in the first photo sitting under the umbrella and the two women looking at children’s toys exemplify what I think of when I see the woman on the right in the top photo. Plain, long hijab with a loose robe over the clothes. However, a good portion of the young women in Cairo wear quite a different style of clothing:

The pink woman on the far left in the first advertisment could be modeled after the women in these photos- muhijaba but wearing pants and/or fitted clothing. So perhaps is it no longer enough to simply cover one’s hair, one must adopt loose, conservative clothing too.

This Washington Post article (see note below on the AP photo this article uses) reports that 98% of foreign women and 83% of Egyptian women have been sexually harassed in Egypt, figures which include non-physical harassment. These numbers are alarmingly high, but in fact I have been verbally harassed in every major city I have lived in around the globe, and quite a few that I have visited. The difference in Cairo is the frequency with which the harassment occurs. It truly is a daily (sometimes hourly) occurence. Yet read the article from the Washington Post and pay particular attention to the quotes from men who harass women:

“It makes a woman happy when I call to her. It makes her know she’s attractive”, “The woman herself is the one who makes men harass her”, “If she’s walking, swinging as she goes, of course it will happen.”

It’s the same, standard excuses for harassment we see all over the world.

Hardly any women report sexual harassment in Cairo. For an Egyptian woman, it is often assumed (even by the police) that she brought it upon herself. Tourists rarely make the effort, since they will be leaving and the police process is long and complicated, and expats who live here know that there can be severe repercussions for any Egyptian who is brought before the Tourist Police. Egypt takes the tourist industry very seriously and does not look kindly upon those accused of anything by a foreigner. (Note: The WP article claims that the majority of foreign women are harassed by policemen or security officials, something I personally found surprising as my few interactions with policemen and officials have been fine.) The problem is not in the amount of flesh women expose but in the manner in which young men think it is acceptable to talk to strange women. For these men, there are no repercussions, therefore why stop?

I have heard talk of a proposed anti-harassment law in Egypt. That’s great, but if you can’t get anyone to point a finger, how will you prosecute? If this law goes into effect, I hope there will be corresponding movements to de-criminalize the reporting of harassment.

And finally, I will point out that the oriental dancers and prostitutes in lower class areas wear hijab as they go to and from work. The hijab does not necessarily indicate a particular stance towards religion. There are a hundred different reasons women wear hijab, but avoiding harassment is apparently not one of them.

Regarding the WP article: I have to mention, in this Washington Post article the photo of the four muniqaba women caught me by surprise; my initial reaction was that they were Saudi or Gulf women in Cairo for the summer. The photo was taken along the Nile in June 2007, and it not especially common to see a group of women in full niqab like this in the downtown area. Certainly, a busy neighborhood like downtown draws women from all over Cairo to do business and shopping, and it is quite possible these women photographed are Egyptian muniqaba. However, during the summer the four- and five-star hotels along the Nile fill up with families from Saudi and the Gulf vacationing in Egypt, and the niqab is seen downtown with much greater frequency during the summer months. I live next to a fancy hotel in Zamalek and during the summer I would see anywhere from one to twenty women in niqab on any given day, walking along the street, shopping in the markets, just doing their normal daily routines. Now that the summer is over, I have seen less than five muniqabas in the last month and a half. In other parts of Cairo, for example al-Haram Street, the niqab is more prevalent, and when I was walking along al-Haram a couple weeks ago it was a common sight. However I still have not been to many parts of Cairo and the surrounding area, and here are a couple articles that may better reflect the reality than my incomplete observations:

Al-Ahram: The niqab in Helwan University Hostel 2006

Al-Ahram: The niqab as an improvised uniform among nurses 2007

NYT: Great article on the spectrum of hijab in Cairo 2007

I am going to assume that the Associated Press photographer who took the photo spoke to the women pictured and they are Egyptian as credited; it would be disappointing if the photographer simply snapped the photo and applied an arbitrary label without fact checking.

And finally, I just want to remind people who are unfamiliar with the niqab that the cloth covering a woman’s face does not mean that she is not a lovely, personable, individual. I am a non-Muslim American who wears jeans and t-shirts, and I have had many friendly exchanges with women wearing niqab: from joking while waiting in line at the market to questions about directions, from laughing about the antics of the chimpanzees at the zoo to meeting potential landladies. Don’t make assumptions about people who dress different from you and just be polite and normal, regardless of what you both choose to cover  your bodies with.

For our first trip around Cairo, we’re going to the Friday Market near the Citadel. In Arabic, suq means (open) market and ‘ala means castle. Adham took me early one morning, and I wore fairly loose clothes and a hijab (headscarf to cover my hair). It is not really a tourist attraction, and on the day we went I saw no tourists (other than myself!) and it was just people going about their Friday morning routine.

The suq reminded me of the old flea market in Sausalito, as well as Porta Portese in Rome. Anything your heart desires can be found in this market, from baby carriages to rottweilers.

couple selling wares under umbrella

This couple was the first shop as we entered the suq. Notice the sheesha (hookah) to the man’s right, and the radio he is fixing.

young girl watching the wares

Children in Cairo are often treated more like adults than in the States. Young boys run around the streets delivering tea and sheesha, and it gives me eternal amusement to watch them perfectly mimic adults in their speaking styles and hand gestures. The idea that children should be in bed by 8pm is not a common one, and I often see families (complete with toddlers and carriages) at restaurants, sweet shops, and window shopping at one in the morning.

this one is for dad!

This vendor was especially tidy in setting up this tool display. Assorted screwdrivers, saws, pliers, cool bolts, hooks and locks; perhaps this vendor has a shop in Cairo and makes a special trip to the suq.

kid's corner

Toys for tots and some pretty slick tricycles. There were plenty of Egyptian women at the market, although the overwelming majority was male (not unusual at all). These women are wearing very typical muhijaba clothing: long, dark and loose. In addition they are wearing full outfits underneath the black outergarments, and it was at least 80 degrees this day!

carpets for sale, entering the main suq area

As we passed through the carpet area, the suq quicky became crowded with vendors, especially for clothes. Adham is in the blue shirt with a Yemeni kifaya (some of you may recognize from this past winter, it kept me warm in Italy!)

me!

And to be fair, I included the only photo of me taken on that day, so you can see what I wore.

my favorite photo from this series. want shoes?

how about shoes with no flies on them?

shoes, shoes, and more shoes for your browsing pleasure

The number of shoe stalls was pretty surprising. But then considering how large this market is… The first photo is my favorite, the man’s hand gestures and cigarette are perfect! Notice the green fly-swatter in the second photo. The third photo shows a style of clothing for men called galibayya, a single, long outergarment that is worn over pants and a shirt (usually, and hopefully!) It is not common among middle- and upper-class Egyptians, and usually indicates someone from Upper Egypt or a farmer (fellah). However Adham’s well-off uncle and very wealthy Bedouin in the Sinai also wear the galibayya, so you can’t always assume someone who wears it is lower class.

hamam - an egyptian delicacy

This man is selling hamam, which people translate to “pigeon” but they look more like doves. They are delicious to eat, and people all over Cairo have cages on roofs and attached to windows. In the evening, you can see flocks of hamam flying all around the city. Strong hamam can cost as much as a tens of thousand of dollars, because they will attract birds from other groups and increase the flock for the owner. A famous man in the 1980s had thousands of hamam and his aviary spanned an entire rooftop. But these days, it is not quite as popular as a lot of roofs have been appropriated for human habitation rather than bird.

the market for animals

The hamam sellers line the entrance to the animal market, a large section of which you can see in this photo. The conditions for animals are pretty atrocious. At least a quarter of the dogs and cats looked as if they wouldn’t make it through the day, and there is very little food, water, or space provided. Nevertheless, anyone can come to sell things at this market, and you do see some well cared for and unusual animals among the mix. Notice the lack of women in this particular area. Sometimes I felt like I was at a Rammstein concert, looking around me and seeing a sea of male faces, but with Adham next to me everyone was very polite and I wasn’t bothered in the slightest. However it was apparently unusual to have a white girl in hijab checking out the animals, and I definitely had the largest crowd gathered around to observe me!

a man and his dog

This man is selling his German Shepherd. I have only seen a couple other privately owned German Shepherd in Cairo: one when Adham and I took his dog to the veternarian, and two that live in a villa with Adham’s neighbor. Other than that, all the German Shepherds I have seen are employed by the government and large hotels as bomb sniffing dogs. The idea of dog breeders is near absent in Egypt, as Muslim people generally avoid keeping dogs as pets. The nose of a dog is said to be unclean, since dogs are always sniffing at everything. If you make wudu (ritual washing before prayer) and touch a dog, you must make your wudu again before going to pray. The few street dogs that you see around (nothing like in New Delhi) are rarely taken in by people, even when adorable little puppies. It is only among the middle and upper classes that one sees a real kind of dog culture. The ladies who lunch of Heliopolis (the posh area) with their rhinestone-bedecked and fuzzy-sweater-wearing yorkies and pugs have quickly caught on to the dog-as-accessory trend.

siamese kitten for 50 guineas!

There must have been at least ten kittens like this, and almost half seemed too young to be without their mother. 50 Egyptian pounds is equal to about nine dollars, and Adham tells me I could have bargained the seller down to 20! Cats are regarded quite differently than dogs. Although most people do not have domesticated cats living in their homes, the streets are populated with stray cats that people will put food and water out for occasionally. The Prophet Mohamed is said to have had a cat, and by his action this automatically makes housing a cat acceptable. Interestingly, it is not considered proper to buy and sell a cat, but rather it should be given as a gift or rescued. An owner has a responsibility to give food, water, and the freedom to roam to his or her cat.

desert fox

After the hamam, kalb (dog), and hut-ta (cat) areas, comes the exotic animals! These vendors did not like me taking photos of their animals, so all I got was this sneaky photo of a little fox. There were also ferrets, iguanas, snakes, and a chameleon! Interestingly, I saw no chickens or rabbits, probably because these are regarded as food and never pets, therefore they are usually sold in butcher shops.

view from the animal section

The animals are kept under the freeway overpass, and it makes for a dark, dank area. It was nice to come back out into the sun and the air.

space saving techniques

Some vendors have a very small area for their goods, and vertical presentation definitely helps make things stand out. Notice how crowded the market is in the background!

clothing for sale

This is a typical display for clothes. With hundreds of people rummaging among the articles, it would be impossible to keep everything folded. I did not look through the clothes very much, but what I did see looked practically unused. I have no idea where the clothes come from, if they are thrift, overstock, donated or gathered from family and acquaintances. I imagine a combination of all.

perusing the kora (ball) selection

I like this photo of a mother and her child checking out the toys. This is towards the end of the suq, and the vendors start to spread out more.

keeping cool on a hot summer day

This is a water (or juice) vendor, the kind you’ll see all over Cairo. The earthenware jugs keep the water cool, and the paper cups are for takeaway customers. It also sells tirmuz, a delicious snack that looks like bloated corn kernel and is incredibly addictive. You also see vendors with glass cups for stand-n-drink, but my favorites are the men who carry around a large metal drum of water strapped to their backs and a holster belt equipped with small glasses. These men are often colorfully dressed with flowers and trinkets adorning their water drums.

summer color

Many trees in Cairo bloom during the late spring and early summer, and you will see  technicolor blossoms across the city. They really make a nice contrast to the dusty buildings and the blue sky.

i got in trouble for this photo!

I liked this archway and took a photo, but shortly after the man sitting in the doorway went to the police idling nearby (there are almost always police idling nearby in Cairo…) and complained about me taking a picture. The police (three young men around my age) came up to Adham and me, politely explaining that I wasn’t allowed to take photos. Egypt has incredibly strict prohibitions on taking photos of anything governmental (try taking a photo of Mubarak’s presidential palace and see how long it takes for the secret agent men to tackle you and take your camera – just kidding! i think…) but occasionally you will find that regular people don’t appreciate being photographed either.

I was walking around Cairo with Adham one day and there was a big trash dumpster that was pretty raunchy and had garbage spilled all about it. There were about seven cats perched elegantly all aound the rim of the dumpster, but when i went to take a photo of the cats, Adham dissuaded me and explained that the people watching on the street would think I was taking photos of garbage to show everyone back home how dirty Egypt is! So, being a foreigner with a camera introduces a new set of social regulators to maneuver by, and although I wish I could take photos of all I see, there really is a time and a place for everything.

Well that is the end of this first installment, I hope you enjoyed the tour through Suq al-’Ala! I reduced the size of the photos so if you would like to see any of them full resolution just let me know.

egypt cairo souq suk souk souq suk souk friday market

Hello everyone, I have finally started a website so I can share photos and stories with you all! I will try to keep it updated a much as I can. This way you can check in if you like to see what I’ve been up to. Well, here goes!