When I went down at 9:00 am to meet Ahmed, he was there waiting and he introduced me to Ibrahim who was with him and who was to be my guide. We went out to the car, Amed said goodbye and Ibrahim got in the car with me and Mustapha, the driver and off we went to the Citadel of Salah Al-Din.
Poor Ibrahim. This is my first time alone with a guide. The only other time I have had a guide was during the two weeks I spent with Beth and Bruce in Rajasthan, and as soon as I realized what the set-up was, I was unhappy. I thought a driver would be picking me up, taking me somewhere, and the leaving me alone, but Ibrahim is there to stick with me. He's knowledgeable, pretty good with English but his comprehension is weak, polite and completely accommodating. I just don't like having someone I don't know with me. I feel rushed at every site and I don't care for oral narration while at sites. But hey, I paid $300 for 4 hours of tourism.
That said, this is like the worst of Calcutta in terms of the noise, dirt and chaos on the street. There are 22 million officially and Ibrahim says another 12 million "unofficial" residents. Again, that is like Calcutta. These cities have the population of our country; infrastructure in stage four crisis. Ibrahim pointed out a crowd on the side of the street that was absolutely massive and the scene was like what you see when UN aid trucks reach an area where there is no food and you see this scene of desperation-driven crowding. Well that is what I saw in two places as people were trying to buy gas for cooking in their homes in canisters. It was truly shocking to see.
Ibrahim described a catastrophic change here and talked about his feelings about Egypt. He is happy for the revolution, but the revolution has scared away all the tourists as my photos will show, and so hundreds of thousands of people are without work, sales and/or income.
I pass through security to enter my hotel. Every place we go, we go through security. We go through a security check to enter a quartier and then, once inside, we go through more security to enter a mosque. At every security check, I am identified by nationality. There are police in every block; there is a tourist police office at every site.
After the Citadel mosque, we went to the oldest part of the city. I was interested in the religious buildings, I said, so we went to two Christian churches and a synagogue.
The first Christian church is a fairly new one. It was lovely in many of its details and a service was going on when we were there. The other christian church we went to did not allow photography, but is has a crypt in its basement that I peered into where Jesus, Mary and Joseph were hidden at some point.
Now I have to admit that when I hear stuff like that, I have an "oh really" response. I just don't get faith. Tis big part of me wants to say, "And you believe this stuff?" I am not even sure of the extent of my disbelief; all religious myth mystifies me. But in that space, I was quite overcome emotionally.
The taj mahal made me cry when I first saw it. I also cried when I first saw an original van Gogh. Besides the church of the crypt, seeing the Nile also brought out my tears. Tears are the end result of all my emotions. And extreme emotion takes me there, and it moved me to be in a church where people believed the holy family hid.
The synagogue and the churches, although of other faiths, all bear only Islamic decoration and architectural features, plus Christian images in frames hung on the wall in the churches. I could not take photos of them, as I said, but I do have photos of the first, more modern, Christian church.
The Ibrahim too me to the souk. I hated it because I am not a shopper, I don't want Egyptian artifacts made in China and the lack of tourists makes me a target for every single person on the street and I am sick of it already.
For a "shit load" of more money, I could go to the park I wanted to see, but the clouds have come in and it is raining, so I am going back to the hotel. Besides, my idea of a calm time at the park did not include having two guys sitting in a car waiting for me while I take in the sites. Too bad it isn't sunny; there's a pool, bar and sun deck on the roof.
Challenges: Geez, crossing the street is brutal. I mean crazy stupid scary. The cash machine in this hotel is broken, so the staff told me to go across the street. Well, free terror, and once across, the bank machines there weren't working either. The national day of protest has hem all down, so I am hoping to get the cash I need at the airport.
Note: The Citadel Mosque is a "secondary" site. It was built in 1814. The secondary sites here are booming, compared to normal, because no one is going to the museum. What tourists do come, are all being directed to secondary sites.
No comments:
Post a Comment