Hey guys, I'm back at last. The last few weeks have been busy for me personally but calm politically -- contrary to what one might have expected on January 25. But that seems to be how things work here: unrest waxes and wanes. One moment it seems that the country is truly in crisis and stability nowhere in sight, and then one morning after a series of demonstrations, I wake up to find the newscasters reporting on something else, something unrelated. It has become a habit to double check on Tuesday and Friday afternoons (the main days for protests) if anything is "going on" downtown or in Heliopolis, if I plan to go to either of those places. But by the start of the week, little memory of that specific demonstration lingers. However, a new player has emerged since January 25 -- the Black Bloc. No one seems quite sure of who they are, or whether they really exist in any organized way. We first heard of them on the anniversary: young guys in black ski masks calling to avenge the martyrs of the revolution. Each of two Facebook pages has 50,000 likes, but not much articulation of what the group stands for. The downfall of the Ikhwan, certainly. Anarchy, apparently. But are they a force for justice, a useful but potentially dangerous faction, or a destabilizing para-militia? "If I step forward, follow me. If I stop, push me. If I delay, then I am a traitor and so kill me." And then in English: "Get ready for Hell. Chaos against injustice." And another slogan: "When injustice because law, rebellion becomes duty." When I initially started reading articles about the Black Bloc, it was said that they did not prefer armed resistance, but rather disruptive acts (like blocking the metro tunnels), throwing rocks, and tossing the police's tear gas canisters back at them. Other times I've heard that they were, in fact, carrying weapons during the most recent metro blockage last week or so. Meanwhile, in Tahrir Square itself, the tents have returned for an ongoing sit-in. The colorful banners, speakers' platforms, political litter, and some barbed wire remain, but I've had no problem passing through. The most notable new mural I pass these days on my way to class at AUC's translation lab on Mohamed Mahmoud St. is one that pictures two policemen kissing. Originally, it read: All cops are gay. Soon afterward, however, another anonymous artist painted over the text and rewrote a new slogan: Homophobia is not revolutionary.
This was the backdrop against which my dad's recent trip to visit me took place. He didn't want to redo the Pyramids (phew!) and was more interested in getting a taste of my daily life (with a side of heavy smog). I had a lot of fun introducing him to my neighborhood buddies like Noss the Juice Man, who introduced him to the other employees as "Abu Chloe" and "'Am (Uncle) Fergus". We embarked on a number of adventures, including a fruitless search for Cairo's last stamp collecters' shop and a nostalgically rousing concert of golden age Egyptian music once sung by the likes of Umm Kolthoum. This latter was held at the Arab Music Institute, a hidden nugget of Cairo's past tucked in among the grayed-out facades of Downtown. Inside, everything is impeccably painted -- in golds, greens, reds -- and ushers in sharp burgundy suits are on duty to guide you to your plush wooden seats. It was originally founded, already in 1921, as a monument, a memorial dedicated to the preservation of "Oriental" music. It reopened under the Cairo Opera in 2001, evidently extremely well funded, after some period of disrepair. As the soloist crooned Umm Kolthoum's classic ballad "Enta 'Omry" (perhaps the most famous song ever written in Arabic), I thought of the crackly videos we'd watched in college Arabic classes. I hadn't imagined there was anywhere you could still get this kind of performance live. There is no doubt that everybody in Egypt still loves Umm Kolsoum and the composer Mohamed Abdel Wahhab, and sometimes one hears them in a taxi or a shop, but the days when the entire country would stop its work once a month to hear the diva's new hour-long masterpiece are long past. Yet in the time warp that is the Institute, a blind Azhari sheikh and a smattering of other rapt but aging fans still listen.
Another highlight of my dad's trip was our trip out to the Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natrun. We followed the Alexandria desert highway, which has sprouted villa compounds at a rapid pace, luring Cairenes away from the urban bustle. We were able to visit three of the four monasteries, all within a few kilometers of each other: Deir el Anba Beshoy, Deir el Souriany, and Deir el Baramouse. St. Beshoy, the local hero, apparently lived as a hermit in the 4th century in underground cells now under two of the churches. At Deir el Souriany, one can visit this cell and see the place where he tied his hair to a rope hanging from the ceiling so as to prevent himself from sleeping during prayer time. Most of the current structure is from the 11th century, and due to Berber attacks at regular intervals much was rebuilt. Today there are over 150 monks at each of the monasteries. At Anba Beshoy we joined a tour of Coptic pilgrims led by an enthusiastic Father Joachim, who treated us to Bible trivia as we walked. Others constantly stopped to ask him (and any of the other bushy-bearded brothers in black robes and embroidered skullcaps they could find) for a blessing. In one of the ancient monk's cells, we stopped and Joachim led the rest of the group in chanting - for me and my dad - a Biblical passage in the extinct Coptic language. I learned that it actually uses the Greek alphabet, with a handful of whimsically shaped additions to account for sounds only found in Coptic. While some of the other visitors went to visit the late Pope Shenouda III's tomb, we climbed to the roof for a panorama of the valley, an enclave of earthen domes topped with crosses.
Nearly next door was Souriany monastery, so named because Syrian monks inhabited the monastery for some stretch of the Middle Ages. As a memento of their stay, they left Syriac graffiti on the walls of the main church, as well as a number of frescoes in a completely different style from those done by the Egyptian Copts. Aside from the exquisite painting, Souriany was memorable for its many monk dummies set up across the grounds to demonstrate various monk activities: eating together, doing fieldwork, etc. While we were examining the frescoes, a live monk came up to us and offered to answer any questions. We sat down with Father Serapion in a corner of the chapel and he proceeded to detail his worries for us about the discrimination against Christians for government jobs and the number of Coptic girls being coopted into converting to Islam in the name of love. (It's possible to convert to Islam in Egypt but not to Christianity.) He was less terrified by the current regime than some other Christians I've spoken to, however: they all seemed to be bad for Christians, in his opinion, but they would hold firm in their beliefs. Fortunately, Father Serapion explained, the monasteries are thriving these days -- not as they once were, but they are recruiting enough youth to fill their ranks. I commented that that is certainly not the case in American monasteries and convents. Yes, he said kindly, because we are much more spiritual than you Americans. You have lost your religion; we have not. He noted sadly how many Coptic immigrants to America and Europe stopped practicing their religion. He turned to my dad, though, clearly thrilled by someone who had so many questions to be answered. But I can tell you are a very good Christian! he told him. We all just smiled and the Father asked for my phone number. One day I hope my English will be as good as your Arabic! he said.
When we returned to the city, we balanced out our monastery visits with a day at some of the best mosques in Islamic Cairo -- Sultan Hassan, El Refa'i, and Ibn Tulun. I brought my dad next door to the Gayer-Anderson House, the English doctor's orientalist paradise I've surely written about before. As we moved through the museum, we encountered a pair of highly distressed Turks. One of them exploded in the face of our guide. I have been in your country for ten days (ten days!!), and I have traveled everywhere from Aswan to Alexandria... And you know what?! I have seen NOTHING about Cleopatra!!! NOTHING! Pure disgust. This was evidently the only reason Turkish Tourist came to Egypt, and he wanted his money back. Why he thought he would find the answer in the Gayer-Anderson house is anyone's guess. The National Museum? offered our guide, shrugging, but Turkish Tourist's fury would not be quelled. This man sought what many come to Egypt to find, his discouragement the realization of the absurdity of that quest once they're here. It's not, of course, that Ancient Egypt has disappeared (scroll down in this post), or that you won't be inundated with pharaonic knickknacks as soon as you step foot in the country. But there is what at times feels like a vast chasm between history - in all its ages - and the present here, and it can be disconcerting or disappointing for visitors.
A few days later we were off ourselves, though, to Luxor, an hour to the south by plane but a world away from Cairo's chaos and gray sprawl. The intentionally roundabout route we took to the airport brought us through the faceless, half-built megalopolis that Cairo becomes once one ventures beyond the inner neighborhoods and a few known outposts like Heliopolis and Maadi. Flying overpasses take you through eerily unlit seas of identical brick apartment buildings, most with rods jutting out from the roofs so that the buildings are never "finished" enough to incur taxes. These swaths of the city are entirely anonymous to me.
Luxor, on the other hand, is nothing if not manageable in size. Its problem is the dire state of the tourism economy. Empty horse-drawn carriages called caleches line the streets of the city, their drivers squatted nearby. Only once did I see anyone riding in one. Felucca boatmen stride beside you, promising: No hassle, no hassle. I'm just trying to make a living, you know? Many have certainly learned what appeals to tourists' sympathies. There is an undeniable awkwardness, and more foreigner's guilt, that comes about as a result of being among the few tourists (and only Americans) in a city whose entire livelihood has always been tourism. The Corniche is spotless, the sails of the feluccas flutter against the river, and the skies are fresh and bright, but the cruise boats are all tied up and the people's desperation is palpable.
How many camels for your daughter? might be an appropriate subtitle for this part of the post, as it was the most common refrain (aside, perhaps, from baksheesh?) we heard while in Luxor. This joke has, apparently, not gotten old yet. Our first pharaonic destination in the city was the Karnak Temple. It was close enough for us to walk from the center of Luxor. We spent the afternoon wandering through the site, playing Indiana Jones among rows of ram-headed sphinxes and pretending to translate hieroglyphics. Although I find it nearly impossible to identify with the Ancient Egyptians, walking through Karnak is pretty impressive. It was built over the course of approximately a thousand years, and while artistic taste doesn't seem to have changed much over that millennium, every pharaoh added his (or her! whoo Hatshepsut!) mark on some corner or other.
The other important site on the East Bank of the Nile is the Luxor Temple itself, smaller than Karnak but especially spectacular by night. Part was turned into a church by early Christians and a mosque was built into another side once the Arab conquerors arrived a few centuries later. But the heart of the original temple still stands, many chambers replete with unreadable hieroglyphic inscriptions and monumental statues. Here we discovered more ram-headed sphinxes, which, it turns out, actually line a ceremonial route all the way to Karnak! Do the math and figure out how many sphinxes that is. We had tea in the nearby Winter Palace, the grandest of Luxor hotels, which played host to movie stars and vacationing princesses in a different era. Classical music wafted through the halls and a sign warned us to remember our formal wear if we wanted to dine as I sipped the thickest and richest karkadeh (hibiscus tea) I've ever tasted.
We decided to devote our second day in Luxor to the West Bank, which is less developed than the East but home to every famous Egyptian tomb you've ever heard of and many you haven't. We decided to take the public ferry, and on the other side managed to shake off the hustlers to secure a couple of bikes for the day. We began riding out to the Valley of the Kings, inhaling deeply and basking in the warm sun. The first to greet us were the Colossi of Memnon, two gigantic statues that welcomed visitors to the land of the dead. The rocky hills ahead are thick with tombs, but took the long way around to reach the kings by bike. It is clear from the geography that the ancients hoped to outwit tomb robbers by cutting the most important tombs into a fairly narrow pass in the rock. (Still, the tomb robbers were smarter.) We chose to visit Ramses IV, VI, another Ramses, and Merenptah. The miraculously intact painting in some of the tombs - especially that of Ramses VI - was the most astonishing thing about them: parts look as if the paint went on last week, and yet the imagery is so distantly exotic. The golden sky goddess Nut stretches out, improbably, across the ceiling of much of the tomb shaft, encompassing the heavens beneath her limbs. In a couple of the tombs, ancient Coptic graffiti also suggests that visitors have been coming for quite some time.
(Sorry, photos were not permitted in the Valley of the Kings!)
Skipping Tut because everything of his is in the Egyptian Museum these days, we made instead for some of the lords' tombs, tucked into the hills nearby. These are a bit more humanistic than the kings', a bit less shackled to artistic convention. Roy, for example, was a royal scribe rewarded for his labors with a rather unevenly cut but charming resting place. The ceilings are painted not with Nut but rather floral patterns that might possibly evoke Theban nobles' real home decor. Personalization is also more evident here than in the kings' tombs: special attention is paid to the tools of the trade, like the scribe's papyrus plants and pen holder. We spent that sunset, and the next, on the terrace of Marsam Hotel near the Colossi, overlooking green fields of wheat and skipping more cups of karkadeh.
On our final day, we at last made it to the Luxor Museum. It is actually much better organized than the Egyptian Museum here in Cairo, mostly because the artifacts are labeled. In addition to an excellent collection of Amenhotep busts and the like, the museum had on display a number of everyday objects (like cabinets, a bed, baskets) extracted from tombs looking like new, a scribe's writing materials, and an architect's scribbled plan sketched on the back of a piece of papyrus. These objects offer at least a glimpse of the humanity of that civilization, which can be so elusive in the temples and tombs themselves. From the Luxor Museum we went to the Mummification Museum, a room near the ferry dock that has laid out for your viewing pleasure specimens such as a mummified crocodile and a cat.
This was the backdrop against which my dad's recent trip to visit me took place. He didn't want to redo the Pyramids (phew!) and was more interested in getting a taste of my daily life (with a side of heavy smog). I had a lot of fun introducing him to my neighborhood buddies like Noss the Juice Man, who introduced him to the other employees as "Abu Chloe" and "'Am (Uncle) Fergus". We embarked on a number of adventures, including a fruitless search for Cairo's last stamp collecters' shop and a nostalgically rousing concert of golden age Egyptian music once sung by the likes of Umm Kolthoum. This latter was held at the Arab Music Institute, a hidden nugget of Cairo's past tucked in among the grayed-out facades of Downtown. Inside, everything is impeccably painted -- in golds, greens, reds -- and ushers in sharp burgundy suits are on duty to guide you to your plush wooden seats. It was originally founded, already in 1921, as a monument, a memorial dedicated to the preservation of "Oriental" music. It reopened under the Cairo Opera in 2001, evidently extremely well funded, after some period of disrepair. As the soloist crooned Umm Kolthoum's classic ballad "Enta 'Omry" (perhaps the most famous song ever written in Arabic), I thought of the crackly videos we'd watched in college Arabic classes. I hadn't imagined there was anywhere you could still get this kind of performance live. There is no doubt that everybody in Egypt still loves Umm Kolsoum and the composer Mohamed Abdel Wahhab, and sometimes one hears them in a taxi or a shop, but the days when the entire country would stop its work once a month to hear the diva's new hour-long masterpiece are long past. Yet in the time warp that is the Institute, a blind Azhari sheikh and a smattering of other rapt but aging fans still listen.
Another highlight of my dad's trip was our trip out to the Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natrun. We followed the Alexandria desert highway, which has sprouted villa compounds at a rapid pace, luring Cairenes away from the urban bustle. We were able to visit three of the four monasteries, all within a few kilometers of each other: Deir el Anba Beshoy, Deir el Souriany, and Deir el Baramouse. St. Beshoy, the local hero, apparently lived as a hermit in the 4th century in underground cells now under two of the churches. At Deir el Souriany, one can visit this cell and see the place where he tied his hair to a rope hanging from the ceiling so as to prevent himself from sleeping during prayer time. Most of the current structure is from the 11th century, and due to Berber attacks at regular intervals much was rebuilt. Today there are over 150 monks at each of the monasteries. At Anba Beshoy we joined a tour of Coptic pilgrims led by an enthusiastic Father Joachim, who treated us to Bible trivia as we walked. Others constantly stopped to ask him (and any of the other bushy-bearded brothers in black robes and embroidered skullcaps they could find) for a blessing. In one of the ancient monk's cells, we stopped and Joachim led the rest of the group in chanting - for me and my dad - a Biblical passage in the extinct Coptic language. I learned that it actually uses the Greek alphabet, with a handful of whimsically shaped additions to account for sounds only found in Coptic. While some of the other visitors went to visit the late Pope Shenouda III's tomb, we climbed to the roof for a panorama of the valley, an enclave of earthen domes topped with crosses.
Roof of Deir El Anba Beshoy
One of the Syrian frescoes in Deir El Souriany
When we returned to the city, we balanced out our monastery visits with a day at some of the best mosques in Islamic Cairo -- Sultan Hassan, El Refa'i, and Ibn Tulun. I brought my dad next door to the Gayer-Anderson House, the English doctor's orientalist paradise I've surely written about before. As we moved through the museum, we encountered a pair of highly distressed Turks. One of them exploded in the face of our guide. I have been in your country for ten days (ten days!!), and I have traveled everywhere from Aswan to Alexandria... And you know what?! I have seen NOTHING about Cleopatra!!! NOTHING! Pure disgust. This was evidently the only reason Turkish Tourist came to Egypt, and he wanted his money back. Why he thought he would find the answer in the Gayer-Anderson house is anyone's guess. The National Museum? offered our guide, shrugging, but Turkish Tourist's fury would not be quelled. This man sought what many come to Egypt to find, his discouragement the realization of the absurdity of that quest once they're here. It's not, of course, that Ancient Egypt has disappeared (scroll down in this post), or that you won't be inundated with pharaonic knickknacks as soon as you step foot in the country. But there is what at times feels like a vast chasm between history - in all its ages - and the present here, and it can be disconcerting or disappointing for visitors.
A few days later we were off ourselves, though, to Luxor, an hour to the south by plane but a world away from Cairo's chaos and gray sprawl. The intentionally roundabout route we took to the airport brought us through the faceless, half-built megalopolis that Cairo becomes once one ventures beyond the inner neighborhoods and a few known outposts like Heliopolis and Maadi. Flying overpasses take you through eerily unlit seas of identical brick apartment buildings, most with rods jutting out from the roofs so that the buildings are never "finished" enough to incur taxes. These swaths of the city are entirely anonymous to me.
Luxor, on the other hand, is nothing if not manageable in size. Its problem is the dire state of the tourism economy. Empty horse-drawn carriages called caleches line the streets of the city, their drivers squatted nearby. Only once did I see anyone riding in one. Felucca boatmen stride beside you, promising: No hassle, no hassle. I'm just trying to make a living, you know? Many have certainly learned what appeals to tourists' sympathies. There is an undeniable awkwardness, and more foreigner's guilt, that comes about as a result of being among the few tourists (and only Americans) in a city whose entire livelihood has always been tourism. The Corniche is spotless, the sails of the feluccas flutter against the river, and the skies are fresh and bright, but the cruise boats are all tied up and the people's desperation is palpable.
How many camels for your daughter? might be an appropriate subtitle for this part of the post, as it was the most common refrain (aside, perhaps, from baksheesh?) we heard while in Luxor. This joke has, apparently, not gotten old yet. Our first pharaonic destination in the city was the Karnak Temple. It was close enough for us to walk from the center of Luxor. We spent the afternoon wandering through the site, playing Indiana Jones among rows of ram-headed sphinxes and pretending to translate hieroglyphics. Although I find it nearly impossible to identify with the Ancient Egyptians, walking through Karnak is pretty impressive. It was built over the course of approximately a thousand years, and while artistic taste doesn't seem to have changed much over that millennium, every pharaoh added his (or her! whoo Hatshepsut!) mark on some corner or other.
With Dad at Karnak
The other important site on the East Bank of the Nile is the Luxor Temple itself, smaller than Karnak but especially spectacular by night. Part was turned into a church by early Christians and a mosque was built into another side once the Arab conquerors arrived a few centuries later. But the heart of the original temple still stands, many chambers replete with unreadable hieroglyphic inscriptions and monumental statues. Here we discovered more ram-headed sphinxes, which, it turns out, actually line a ceremonial route all the way to Karnak! Do the math and figure out how many sphinxes that is. We had tea in the nearby Winter Palace, the grandest of Luxor hotels, which played host to movie stars and vacationing princesses in a different era. Classical music wafted through the halls and a sign warned us to remember our formal wear if we wanted to dine as I sipped the thickest and richest karkadeh (hibiscus tea) I've ever tasted.
Luxor Temple by night
We decided to devote our second day in Luxor to the West Bank, which is less developed than the East but home to every famous Egyptian tomb you've ever heard of and many you haven't. We decided to take the public ferry, and on the other side managed to shake off the hustlers to secure a couple of bikes for the day. We began riding out to the Valley of the Kings, inhaling deeply and basking in the warm sun. The first to greet us were the Colossi of Memnon, two gigantic statues that welcomed visitors to the land of the dead. The rocky hills ahead are thick with tombs, but took the long way around to reach the kings by bike. It is clear from the geography that the ancients hoped to outwit tomb robbers by cutting the most important tombs into a fairly narrow pass in the rock. (Still, the tomb robbers were smarter.) We chose to visit Ramses IV, VI, another Ramses, and Merenptah. The miraculously intact painting in some of the tombs - especially that of Ramses VI - was the most astonishing thing about them: parts look as if the paint went on last week, and yet the imagery is so distantly exotic. The golden sky goddess Nut stretches out, improbably, across the ceiling of much of the tomb shaft, encompassing the heavens beneath her limbs. In a couple of the tombs, ancient Coptic graffiti also suggests that visitors have been coming for quite some time.
(Sorry, photos were not permitted in the Valley of the Kings!)
Al haraka baraka, as we like to say -- "Movement is a blessing"
Skipping Tut because everything of his is in the Egyptian Museum these days, we made instead for some of the lords' tombs, tucked into the hills nearby. These are a bit more humanistic than the kings', a bit less shackled to artistic convention. Roy, for example, was a royal scribe rewarded for his labors with a rather unevenly cut but charming resting place. The ceilings are painted not with Nut but rather floral patterns that might possibly evoke Theban nobles' real home decor. Personalization is also more evident here than in the kings' tombs: special attention is paid to the tools of the trade, like the scribe's papyrus plants and pen holder. We spent that sunset, and the next, on the terrace of Marsam Hotel near the Colossi, overlooking green fields of wheat and skipping more cups of karkadeh.
A fishing mural adorns one noble's tomb
Off we were again to the West to reclaim our bikes and return to the funerary complexes. But first, I had caught wind (and seen a sign) that a village named New El Gourna was right around us. I had studied Gourna in my Art in the Modern Islamic World class back at Princeton because it was the chief project of architect Hassan Fathy and the practical application of his book Architecture for the Poor. Wikipedia says Fathy was "Egypt's best-known architect since Imhotep." That reeks of hyperbole, but may in fact be true. Fathy (1900-1989) wanted to reinvent Egyptian architecture, or rather create a modern Egyptian style that had a distinctly historical identity but was meant to be lived in and used by regular folks -- something that was not just mimicry of Mamluk mosques or Ottoman palaces. On the road from the ferry to the Colossi, we came across the first mudbrick house Fathy ever built in Gourna, which the son and granddaughter of the original owner have made into a small museum. The son has updated the house with basic modern amenities (electricity came to Gourna in the 1970s) and repaired the damage to the foundation and walls that comes from salt that has seeped up from the ground since the Aswan High Dam was built. Most of the village, though, fell into disrepair in the years after Fathy left it. The owner of the museum house took us over to a couple of the handful of original Fathy houses that still remain. Wealthy Egyptians living abroad have hired this entrepreneurial guy to oversee the renovation of the historic homes. As we toured them, our guide pointed out the earthen domes used to create a feeling of natural air-conditioning. He sighed and explained that while Fathy intended his project for the poor, the poor had no interest in this "authentic" ambience: they dreamed of balconies and Corinthian frills. When wear and tear set in on their Hassan Fathy houses, they let them disintegrate and then built new, modern ones in their place. Now, he said, it was the rich who were charmed by the simplicity and historicity of Gourna.
Despite the relative failure of Gourna itself, Fathy had a huge influence on Egyptian architecture (and even more broadly) in defining a style that was authentic but more or less suitable for modern life. Here's a mosaic mural of Gourna on the wall of the Fine Arts Faculty in Zamalek, done by students:
Before we left, we visited Fathy's village mosque, which is also crumbling at the base. The muezzin, Ahmed, explained that it is awaiting UNESCO funding. They hope it comes before the columns collapse.
Back on the trail we rode past alabaster workshops lying in wait for tour buses. Our favorite was the Opera Aida Company for Alabaster. I shuddered to remember the infamous jade factory affair of 2005, an unannounced detour from a group excursion to the Great Wall of China. But this time we were free to pass the factories by, and parked ourselves at Deir El Bahry, the Temple of Hatshepsut. Perched majestically against a craggy backdrop, the woman pharaoh's monument is approached by way of flights of sloping stairs. Throughout the temple, her face has been scratched out by her sourpuss stepson, the next pharaoh. But what remains is a pictorial representation of Hatshepsut's journey along the Red Sea coast to Somalia, known as the Land of Punt -- an evidently enchanting land of incense, ebony, and strange animal life.
After dark that evening, we flew back to Cairo. We struck up a conversation with our taxi driver, Mansour, on the way to the Luxor airport. What do you think of the revolution? he asked bluntly. I told him I thought things had started well but were increasingly disappointing as time went on. Mansour agreed. He had voted for Abo El Fotoh in the first round, but had grown completely disgusted with the system. Luxor was in dire straits without tourism. It badly needed factories or some new way for people to work. Meanwhile, the police were imported from elsewhere -- mostly the same thugs as before the revolution. In Mansour's view, they had no respect for local ways of resolving conflict or for the dignity of the people themselves. Most importantly, he told us, A second revolution is coming. The first revolution was for the rich and the middle class. The second will be a revolution of the poor. They last two years had brought them only greater hopelessness. This time it will be violent. My dad asked: And where will you be when this happens? Mansour responded: I will stay home. I can't fix all the problems! He would continue studying tourism, graduate, and hope to find a job in a field whose value has disintegrated in the last two years. Meanwhile, he was proud to be middle class himself -- to share a taxi with his father and make enough that he didn't need to hustle or wheedle anyone for money. Mansour shook our hands grinning and sent us on our way.
The original Hassan Fathy house in New El Gourna
Despite the relative failure of Gourna itself, Fathy had a huge influence on Egyptian architecture (and even more broadly) in defining a style that was authentic but more or less suitable for modern life. Here's a mosaic mural of Gourna on the wall of the Fine Arts Faculty in Zamalek, done by students:
Before we left, we visited Fathy's village mosque, which is also crumbling at the base. The muezzin, Ahmed, explained that it is awaiting UNESCO funding. They hope it comes before the columns collapse.
Back on the trail we rode past alabaster workshops lying in wait for tour buses. Our favorite was the Opera Aida Company for Alabaster. I shuddered to remember the infamous jade factory affair of 2005, an unannounced detour from a group excursion to the Great Wall of China. But this time we were free to pass the factories by, and parked ourselves at Deir El Bahry, the Temple of Hatshepsut. Perched majestically against a craggy backdrop, the woman pharaoh's monument is approached by way of flights of sloping stairs. Throughout the temple, her face has been scratched out by her sourpuss stepson, the next pharaoh. But what remains is a pictorial representation of Hatshepsut's journey along the Red Sea coast to Somalia, known as the Land of Punt -- an evidently enchanting land of incense, ebony, and strange animal life.
Approaching Hatshepsut's Deir El Bahry
After dark that evening, we flew back to Cairo. We struck up a conversation with our taxi driver, Mansour, on the way to the Luxor airport. What do you think of the revolution? he asked bluntly. I told him I thought things had started well but were increasingly disappointing as time went on. Mansour agreed. He had voted for Abo El Fotoh in the first round, but had grown completely disgusted with the system. Luxor was in dire straits without tourism. It badly needed factories or some new way for people to work. Meanwhile, the police were imported from elsewhere -- mostly the same thugs as before the revolution. In Mansour's view, they had no respect for local ways of resolving conflict or for the dignity of the people themselves. Most importantly, he told us, A second revolution is coming. The first revolution was for the rich and the middle class. The second will be a revolution of the poor. They last two years had brought them only greater hopelessness. This time it will be violent. My dad asked: And where will you be when this happens? Mansour responded: I will stay home. I can't fix all the problems! He would continue studying tourism, graduate, and hope to find a job in a field whose value has disintegrated in the last two years. Meanwhile, he was proud to be middle class himself -- to share a taxi with his father and make enough that he didn't need to hustle or wheedle anyone for money. Mansour shook our hands grinning and sent us on our way.
