Moving on.
Day 2: more awesome breakfast (hooray for ful!), and then we set off to visit some of the oldest parts of town in what are known as the Islamic and Coptic parts of Cairo. Given the current political climate in what we 'murricans call the Middle East, it's quite difficult for me, as an outsider, to imagine Christians and Muslims living so harmoniously there together. In that light, one of the things that amazed me most about downtown Cairo as we first drove through it was the abundance of crosses and crescent moons, all over the place, in extremely close proximity. It was very, very cool, and while I'm obviously not familiar with the particulars on the ground, where the real people live and interact, I genuinely hope that Egypt can manage to keep its government secular, so as to maintain tolerance for its devout and varied religious populations. (Soapbox now returned to its hiding spot under the bed.)
But back to me! Our first stop in Islamic Cairo was the Hassan and al Rifai mosques, which are mind-blowingly huge and very close together. So much so that I was essentially too overwhelmed to register that, perhaps, it might be good if I got a shot of them in their entirety, side-by-side. I failed at that wholly. At least we saw some good stuff on the drive there, though, that was definitely as interesting. (This is what it sounds like when I try desperately to make up for my photographic shortcomings...sigh).
We drove past several absolutely massive walled cemeteries, which are dotted with their own ancient mosques, and in which people actually live. You might have them called 'Cities of the Dead.' They're generally slums, although the earliest people living in Cairo's cemeteries are thought to be the caretakers hired to guard and maintain the tombs of the wealthy. Also, traditionally, the mourning periods wherein family members of the deceased would stay at the gravesite lasted for days, and so to accommodate caretakers and relatives alike, people began building guest rooms onto their burial sites. That, in turn, created the bit of necessary [and cheap] spaces in which some very impoverished people now live.)
Also drove past the Citadel, which would probably take a few days to visit in and of itself. (We didn't, but it'd be worth a return trip, especially for its views of the city.) It's a huge complex whose history dates back to Saladin himself, in the 12th century, but which has been extensively remodeled during the 900 years since. (Interesting factoid: the taller and narrower the minarets on a mosque, the newer they are. This is the 19th-century mosque built by Muhammad Ali Pasha, but within the Citadel's walls, there are mosques from the 14th and 16th centuries as well.
But how 'bout we talk about the stuff we did visit? I did manage to get one photo of the Hassan/al Rifai mosques together, but as I took it out the car window, it's pretty terrible. Here it is, anyway.
As you can sorta see, these things are huge. The one on the left is the Hassan mosque, and it's old. Built between 1356 and 1363, it dates to the Mamluk period (1250-1517), during which time the slaves used in various Muslim armies took power for themselves and very successfully put their own leaders in charge. It was a bloody era, but boy, were those guys builders.
The mosque here, and on the right in the photo above this one, is the al Rifai mosque, which was intended to mimic the Hassan mosque both in design and in prestige. This one, however, was built between 1869 and 1912.
You certainly can't fault their attention to detail, though.
Back to the Hassan mosque. This is the caliph's seat, where the Mamluk leader would sit and actually interact with ordinary mortals. (I learned a new architectural word here: muqarnas is the word for those stalactite-y details along the ceiling. It's a very common and really incredible feature of Mamluk architecture. Apparently.)
Interior of the Hassan mosque courtyard with its gigantic ablution fountain.
No, seriously, this place is enormous. Here's Mike, for scale.
Detail of the mihrab (prayer niche) and minbar (pulpit).
Insanely ornate scripture panel, which you can see around the hall in the photo above. Really, really beautifully carved.
Since we were there, we ducked into the al Rifai mosque, as well, which--despite its youth--is no less spectacular.
The wooden partition here is made of sandalwood, and so this room is incredibly fragrant. (It surrounds the tomb of the 12th-century Sufi saint for whom the mosque is named. Also buried in this mosque: the last shah of Iran, whose tomb is covered in ridiculously expensive green alabaster, and where the muezzin sang for us to demonstrate the acoustics; and the last king of Egypt, who was overthrown in 1952 and died in exile in Italy. His remains were brought here during the presidency of Anwar Sadat, who, ironically, was one of those that helped to overthrow the king in the first place. Go figure.)
Interior of the main room of the al Rifai mosque. And they didn't even make me cover my head. (No shoes allowed inside for anyone, though.)
Walking back towards the front of the mosques, with the Citadel in the distance. Sheesh.
After seeing the mosques, we headed for Khan al-Khalili, Cairo's infamous souvenir market, which, to be fair, is also frequented by locals for all manner of things. It's full of shops of all shapes and sizes and sells just about everything, and if you're obviously a tourist, you will undoubtedly be accosted (but friendly-like) by the shopkeepers at every turn. Naturally, we loved it. (Especially when a few guys yelled at us, "Hello! How can I take your money today?" Now that's an honest man who's figured Americans out.)
Lamp shop and gorgeous architecture. There's been a market here since the 14th century, although most of the architecture--at least, in the market area proper--dates to the 16th.
Jam-packed antique store in what looked like an old palace.
...where they had the largest chandelier I've ever seen. This thing had to be at least seven feet tall.
Inside one of the original gates from 1511. (Those stripey pieces of alternating colors of masonry on the wall are also hallmarks of Mamluk architecture.)
Miscellaneous fancy tower inside the market complex.
Katryn took us to a cafe for some fresh juice, and this was the view from their roof. (I don't think I've talked about juice yet. In my limited experience, Muslim countries tend to be rife with fresh juices, and it is grand. At various points, we sampled the mango, strawberry, lemon, sugarcane, doom doum, apricot, pomegranate, and orange juices--several of which, like the mango/strawberry/apricot, were essentially just pureed fruit. Super thick and more like a snack than a drink. Delightful and delicious.)
Katryn had pointed out to us a few structures used by people to house pigeons, but it wasn't until the cafe at Khan al-Khalili that we got to see them in action. From the window of our upstairs cafe, we could see this guy standing on the roof of what I'm going to call his "pigeon box", waving this flag.
And wouldn't you know it, within minutes, a flock of pigeons was circling around, preparing to land. Apparently, the pigeons are trained to differentiate between the flags and calls/whistles used by their "owners" to call them home. Pigeons are quite common on the dinner table in Egypt, and so lots of people raise them, with the help of these boxes.
Gorgeous, ancient minarets near Khan al-Khalili...but more about that later.
After our brief respite at the cafe, we piled back into our private van (yeah, Mike ponied up for that, and it was well, well worth it!) and headed towards the oldest part of the city--Coptic Cairo. I will confess that it's a bit nerve-wracking to go through a well-guarded security point and into the pedestrian-only streets of the Christian neighborhood in what is 99% a Muslim country: all signs point to suspicions that, were terrorists to attack, this would be high on the list of targets. However. It's quite serene there, and very pretty and clean, and so people just go along on their respective ways.
Our first stop was the ancient Hanging Church, so called because its nave was built suspended over the sunken foundations of a Roman fortress, on a platform of alternating palm branches and stone. Parts of this building have been here since the 9th century, and, as with any ancient building, any number of remodels have been conducted.
As is evidenced by the 19th-century exterior facade.
At the top of the steps, you pass through a short hallway full of portraits of the Coptic popes over the years, and into this beautiful little courtyard...
...which leads to the incredible carved-stone entrance of the church itself.
On the inside, there are 13 columns representing the apostles and Christ (although Judas' column is black, and Thomas' is gray), and the wooden arched ceiling was designed to represent the shape of Noah's ark.
Unprecedented for me: the juxtaposition of traditional Christian imagery (in the Coptic, medieval-looking style) with Arabic script. Seriously interesting.
Incredibly ornate wood and ivory altar screen.
Eleventh-century marble pulpit.
Outside the stone gate entrance to the church complex, an inscription carved in both Coptic and Arabic. No idea what it says, but I thought it was really beautiful.
Outside the church you can see the remnants of the Roman fortress, which was expanded by Trajan between 98 and 117 AD (and then again later in the 4th century by the Emperor Arcadius) from an older fortress, called (get this) the Babylon Fortress.
Next, we walked down a staircase from street level and into an entirely separate network of streets below.
There, we visited the church of Abu Serga, even lower than the old street level we were on, and the oldest church in Egypt, where we got to peer down into the cavern in which the Holy Family was supposed to have hidden during their flight to Egypt, away from the persecution of Herod the Great. Naturally, no photos allowed, but its footprint was similar to the Hanging Church, although the central sanctuary is a full two stories high, and much brighter, due to the presence of lots of windows and whitewashed walls. (Still lots of columns, though, and the same style of pulpit, wooden barrel ceiling, and ornate wooden altar screen.)
I'll confess to a little accidental thievery: I absolutely took this photo before I realized there were no photos allowed, and so if anyone has any complaints, I'm happy to take it right back down.
Outside the church, they had a handy-dandy map of the route the Holy Family took through Egypt...and I was allowed to photograph that. At least.
Then, we ducked into the church of St. Barbara, which was almost identical to to Abu Serga, but famous for its ancient relics and icons of St. Barbara (surprise!). Our last stop was the spectacular synagogue of Ben Ezra, which began life as a church, but was converted into a synagogue in 882 when the church couldn't pay its taxes, but the Jewish community could. Obviously, it's been updated many times since, but it's quite beautiful inside, with small marble columns, black-and-white archways, and mother-of-pearl inlaid into the intricate wall carvings. No photos allowed--and I got that right this time!--but a really nice one can be found at the end of this post. Unsurprisingly, it was quite tightly guarded--a synagogue in the heart of Cairo, who knew?--but really nice to hear people talk quietly about peace and respect around us as we visited.
After that--and after a random group of young-ish men stopped and asked to take a photo with Mike, which was both sweet and, from my perspective, hilarious*--we had the world's largest bowls of koshari at what has the reputation of being the best place for it in town, Abou Tarek. Katryn did the ordering for us, and our lovely driver Muhammad joined us (finally! although he didn't speak much English, so I can understand how he might feel weird about eating with us), and holy smokes, was that a good meal. And hearty, sheesh. We ate at about 2:00 in the afternoon, and I wasn't even remotely hungry at dinnertime...and Katryn told us that it was the small bowl we'd had. ("We're big eaters here," she says. Yeah, no kidding. She was about half my size, literally, and polished her lunch off like it was nothing.)**
The famous Abou Tarek. Five floors of green and blue neon, mirrored chandeliers, aquariums, and serving only kushari. How great is that?? (And Mr. Tarek himself even helped Muhammad park our van on the relatively narrow, busy street. Lovely.)
Directly across the street from lunch: a cart selling sandwiches under the dubious title of "The King of Liver," and this guy carrying his ginormous tray of fresh bread thusly.
Post-lunch, we said our goodbyes to Katryn and were dropped back off at our hotel, with basically a half-day left to our own devices. So we turned around and crossed the bridge back to Tahrir, with the intention of spending a few more hours at the Egyptian Museum, when we got sucked in by the oldest trick in the book. An extremely friendly man, whose English was excellent, told us we were headed the wrong way for the museum (even though we hadn't told him where we were headed--how obvious are we?), then told us he was going there himself and he'd take us. We chatted and chatted, and he led us in what felt like the right direction, but we eventually ended up in his brother's shop.
Ugh. We'd been set up, and fell right for it.
We spent the next hour trying not to buy papyrus "paintings" (look, dude, we know they're mass-produced!) at truly outrageous prices. (FYI, those things are everywhere, people, and we actually knew at this point how much we were willing to pay for them.) In the end, we ended up buying one at a ridiculously inflated price, but he had "given" us a large-ish piece of papyrus as a "gift" when we walked in, and I'd had my eye on another, which I somehow managed to get it thrown in for "free." That made me feel a little better about what idiots we'd been in the first place, although the worst part is that we missed getting back into the museum, which had already closed (two hours earlier than its website said, even!).*** I felt terrible about it, since I knew that Mike really wanted to go again, but I guess these things happen when you're too nice to say no.****
We ended up walking around Downtown, which is the part of Cairo around Tahrir Square and is weirdly full of lovely, if a bit grimy, French architecture (thanks, occupiers!), then walked back and relaxed in our room for a bit. Or at least, until we heard fireworks immediately outside of our window.***** On the ground floor of our hotel was some sort of reception hall, apparently, and the fireworks were the prelude to the arrival of a bride and groom to their wedding reception. Which was accompanied by music and dancers and a whirling dervish, and we watched the whole thing from our window. (Sorry, the videos are super dark, but the camera can't compensate for that when it's in video mode. At least the music is clear.)
Here you can see the couple in their surprisingly Western attire, and the six drummers, two tambourines, and single trumpet player making all the noise. The musicians even sang a bit.
I know, I know, it's incredibly voyeuristic, but the music was irresistible.
They played for at least 15 minutes, with that poor bride in her sleeveless dress just standing there in the chilly evening air.
Earlier there were two guys dancing around with spangled sticks, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera. The dervish came next and danced for a good while, but that video would have been several minutes long, so here he is before he got to any of the fancy sideways-spinning and various other tricks. (Sorry.)
After we creepily watched the wedding arrival, we opted for a super light dinner in the rooftop restaurant, where we shared some muhammara, hummus, and a stuffed-feteer (kinda like puff pastry) pizza with Egyptian sausage, cheese, peppers, and olives. More food than we needed, probably, but really good nonetheless.
One last look out our hotel window. The tall thing is Cairo Tower, built in the 1950s and supposed to resemble a lotus flower. I think it's a bit goofy, but apparently there's a decent rotating restaurant at the top, and the whole thing is a fairly beloved landmark amongst the locals.
The next morning, we headed to the airport at 5:30 (poor Muhammad!) and our flight to Aswan...but that'll have to wait for next time.
Up next: Aswan and Luxor. (Still pretty surreal that we were there.)
*Poor Mike. Just by virtue of his sheer size, he gets plenty of attention wherever he goes. Add to that his current mustache configuration, and it's a fairly explosive mixture. Pretty much everyone with something to sell would shout something along the lines of, "Hey, Mustache!" or "Mr. Mustache!" or just "Mustache!" to get his attention. Also heard: "Big Show!" "Steve Austin!" "Rambo!" (Which was one of the more popular things they seemed to shout at anyone who looked vaguely American...) I forget what else. I couldn't help but snicker each time, although I know he got tired of it fairly quickly. I think that's what you get, though, when you look kinda like a professional wrestler.
**Coincidentally, she also looks almost exactly like Mila Kunis, except with extremely thick and curly shoulder-length hair. She was quite cool with us at the beginning, but warmed up fairly quickly, and we really enjoyed both her knowledge and her conversation. She's very sweet and lovely and we hope that she gets far more tourist business in the very near future.
***Lessons you should take away from all of this, in the event that you find yourself in a tourist-driven economy in the Middle East (or Turkey, for that matter...): 1) know where you're headed, and know how to get there yourself; 2) accept hospitality and kindness, but don't trust anyone; 3) ugh, you can't trust the website of virtually any major establishment to have its correct opening times posted. In our experience. More lessons to come.
****(And don't trust your wife's sense of direction. Ahem.)
*****This was not the first time we'd had fireworks right there, actually, and every time we were up on the roof, we saw them in various places around the city. Just as Germans love David Hasselhoff, so do Egyptians love fireworks. I feel very comfortable in making that blanket statement.
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