Life With….

After leaving Luxor Temple, it was time to return to Cairo – a fact I was honestly dreading for health reasons.   Yet, in some ways my favorite day of the trip was still to come.

The next day, my friend and I woke up determined to explore Islamic Cairo, and if time the Citadel (we did not make it this far).   On paper this sounded simple – getting a ride to the gates to the Fatimid district – and walking down the Palace Walk through an area filled with medieval architecture, mosques, madras, and houses that is mostly walled in and closed to cars.  After which you hit the main market areas, cross over into the Kahn – Al – Kalhkai (or more touristy Bazaar) and then again explore the tent makers market on the way stopping at my friend’s favorite shops and mosques as we headed to the citadel.   In actuality, we found new buildings to explore that neither of us had ever seen before and became so sidetracked by my friends dealers that we did not make it to the more traditional tourist stops – a trade which I think is well worth it.

After yet another nerve wrenching taxi ride, we entered through the Bab Al-Futuh Gate, which was built in 1087 and entered a mosque adjacent to  right after entering.  The mosque was simple and peaceful, and after depositing our shoes and covering our heads, we rested in the courtyard while planning our next move.

We headed through the medieval street- just wide enough for a car and donkey cart, filled with merchants selling all wares from everyday teapots and goods to touristy brass shaped like a pharaoh filled with people going about their life and children getting treats as they left for home (apparently it is very fun to try to speak English to Americans and they run up and shout hello or tell you there name and ask you yours).    We reached our first destination Bayt al-Suhaymi “the Blue House”, which was an Ottoman Merchant’s house built mostly during the 16^th and 17^th Century.

The state purchased the house a few decades ago – and it is been restored well, and is the only one of its kind open to the public.  There are multiple interior courtyards, intricately detailed wood screens covering windows from which a woman could be observed on the street, but which allow her to peek out unobserved and allow fresh cool air to filter through out the house, intricate inlay and rooms whose paneling and detailing can only go to show that the house was designed to impress other merchants.  At the same time, there is shrine in the interior courtyard, and the master bedroom and bath, which are lit only by colored glass in the ceiling making the rooms, look like fairy castles.   Similarly, the family dining area is decked out in blue tiles from Turkey, and is breathtakingly gorgeous, and lends the house the nickname the blue house.

The house is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life – even without much of the furniture.  Some of the first floor rooms, which I presume were used for familial purposes as well as to impress other traders, had people meditating in them; another room with red, blue and gold wood inlay panels on all of the walls clearly is where pious members of the staff chose to pray.   Even the rooms with out paneling, but with screened wooden windows and stained glass panels on the high walls above them became filled with interesting light and shadow patterns bringing the room to life.  The only downside were the stairs – uniformly dark and narrow, often up against rooms that were two stories with light coming in from ceiling cupolas and the windows.

After leaving there we continued down the Palace Walk (Shari’ el-Muizz) towards the Markets, stopping into a craft booth, where I bought an amazing candle shade in the shape of a person – which was sadly destroyed when I knocked off a table while unpacking.  After avoiding a merchant proudly displaying an image of Obama as the new Tutankhamen of the world, we wandered into the Sultan Qala’un Complex.

This is a large complex, not all of which remains – but we saw the Madrassa, the Mosque and Mausoleum and the exterior of the hospital.  The doors to the Madrassa had never before been open when my friend was there – and we were both impressed with the intricacy of the mosque section and the beautiful inlaid room where the theological teaching occurred. This room was dark – lit only by stained glass – and had an elevated center for the teacher – but was cool and you could easily imagine a group of boys studying there.  When your eyes adjusted, the paneling and woodwork along the high walls was reveled, giving a whole new dimension to the room.

The mosque and madrassa were entered through a separate gate down a hallway lit by candles.   The Mosque is on the left, and the interior orientation is not identical to the exterior – inside the walls are thickened in areas so that the interior orients towards Mecca rather than the street.  The Mausoleum itself is breathtaking.  Every panel, every speck of wall and ceiling is decorated.  There is wood, inlay, intricate carving, different paint patterns, and decoration made out of words repeated into geometric patterns made out of lanterns.  The room is both somber and uplifting – with your eye constantly drawn both to the black sarcophagus elevated (and fended in) in the center and the height of the room – as if the sprit of the body was being pulled upwards toward the heavens in a room designed to honor both the man and his God.    The décor is so intricate and the space so detailed, that it was next to impossible for my brain to take it – or my camera to capture – but it was one of the more spectacular interiors I have seen.

The attached mosque was more subtle but still intricate.  Its outdoor courtyard and fountain were calming, and the marble and patterns where the Inman would be were decorative, rich, and yet simple (epically compared with the mausoleum) allowing the focus to be more on the holy nature of the work.  Inside the courtyard was a brick – with the date of construction artfully inscribed on it – causing my friend to remark on how this one of the things she loved about the culture that words could be portrayed so artfully as to give them multiple meanings and cause you to rethink them.

After leaving the mosque we headed toward the Kahn, but before getting there, were greeted, enthusiastically by my host’s favorite dealer at the bazaar – Mustafa the antiques king of the street.  His shop was overloaded with goods brought from traders who go to houses to buy their pieces, and honestly I think he could gladly find you anything.  In his possession ranged good from ink boxes of Sultans to Buddha’s and tin signs for coca-cola.  Yet if you looked closely there were remarkable treasures to find, and he happily provided us a three-course lunch of soup, vegetable and a Bedouin chicken over rice right there in his booth while we looked.  I loved the soup made with a green herb, the lentil and pasta, and other foods, it was probably as close to authentic Egyptian as you get (if you don’t count the koshary we ate at the legal aid center where my host helps Iraqi refugees).

After spending what must have been three hours in his booth and purchasing a variety of pieces, we crossed through the Kahn stopping in spice markets and perfume stalls and avoided the touristy hagglers to go over to the tent makers market.  There we found a woman my friend knows who sell head scarves, of good quality but much cheaper then found in the upscale hotels.  She, a trained lawyer who like many other lawyers cannot make her living in law as the system is currently set up in Egypt, and her father served us hibiscus tea while we tried on a variety of scarves.  After collection our possessions – we headed back through the Kahn and over towards the Sultan Qala’un Complex, and the whole area was light by orange, green, red and blue lights – both accentuating the architecture and replicating in large the light through stained glass lanterns.  It was totally different then when seen by daylight, and emphasized the planning that went ot the creation of these medieval buildings, while imbuing them with a life of their own not seen even at the busiest parts of the day.

The next day can only be described as a day of almost but not quite.  For states we headed to American University in Cairo – where my friend needed to do some enrollment work.  This is a new campus set outside the main city by about 30 minutes, and all of the buildings are modernist plays on traditional Islamic architecture.  As such it a fascinating place to look around –which was fortunate as my host was getting the run around.  I looked around, and explored the library – where I picked up a cookbook (shocking right), a book on politics in Egypt which I found fascinating, and a book, just released in England but I have not seen here yet,  told by an Iranian refugee in the Netherlands who writes of one extended family during the period leading up the Iranian Revolution – infusing the story with elements of the Koran and Persian Fairytales that make it  fascinating and hard to  put down even if in places it reads a s series of short stories.   After this excursion we headed to Cairo – to pick up our supplies from the market (and some last minute gifts for my family).  We hoped to make a church service at my host’s ex-pat church, and then head to an American style Diner before I headed out on my plane.  Instead- shocker of shockers -between a traffic jam before the market and torrential downpours when we arrived – we missed church and wound up at the diner instead.

After the diner – we headed through the puddles (Cairo has no storm drains, causing the water to just stand) to the subway where we got a ride back to her place.  After a hurried shower and packing, I caught a cab to the airport – but a ride that should have been ½ hour took over two due to traffic jams caused by the puddles left by the earlier downpours.  Fortunately- my entire plane was so delayed, so instead of leaving at midnight we left closer to 2:30 am.  Thank you Delta.  But of course we landed at JFK – after my connection had left, in the middle of blizzard in New York. My brain – still suffering form bronchitis, could not handle it when Delta informed me that the earliest I would likely get out was Sunday – so I plodded myself to a new terminal, where a nice agent rebooked me.  I was one of the first six flights out of JFK that day, and after a two hour delay in Atlanta looking for flight attendant to take our flight, Delta got me home (I am still so thankful for this I cannot tell you) about – I was in my house at 10 pm, over 33 hours after I had started traveling, and I finally let may bronchitis take hold – not moving for most of the rest of the week.   Focusing instead on getting well (as I am still doing) and reading the above mentioned books.

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All text and copyrights preserved by the author 02csb For more information visit http://www.peebesalgy.com Courtney Brown

Create Your Badge  All text and copyrights preserved by the author for words and original pictures and may not be used without author's permission. For more information visit http://www.peebesalgy.com Follow me on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/peebesalgy or contact me directly through http://www.peebesalgy.com/blog/contact-me/ Courtney Brown | Create Your Badge

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