A dark day’s night

A lot has happened in the last week. I wandered the white and black deserts of the Sahara. I walked miles and miles of Old Cairo. And I moved to Ethiopia to begin a 6 month placement with the Earth Institute.

Earlier tonight I received an email from a close family friend informing me that my father was in a car accident and currently in intensive care. One of the pillars of support and love in my life was almost taken from me and the world turned black.

I walked outside, dry heaves rack my body.

After stumbling around the street for some brief moments I fled to my hotel room. In the room, sitting down, standing up. Pacing the cramped quarters.

I headed back to the use their phone and call my mom. She sounded strong and was necessary ballast to my hoarse whispers and tear soaked sentences. By the end of the 11 minute conversation I learned that my dad had been broadsided by another car causing the SUV he was driving to flip and partially eject him. His scalp had been severely lacerated and two vertebrae broken. Emergency surgery was performed to stop bleeding along his scalp and he will soon undergo surgery to repair the damage to his vertebrae with metal rods. By the time my mom had stopped talking I could only grunt in anguish.

Rushing onto the noisy Ethiopian street I started walking. Walking to erase the pain. 30 minutes later I found a bench facing De Gaulle plaza and the comings and going of young lovers and families. Staring at this busy African scene, I wept. And quivered.

Gathering myself I returned to the phone to call Chelsea I struggled through my words.

I emerged from my room near midnight. Hungry and knowing it would a long sleepless night I walked by countless beggars and homeless, sleeping on the streets every few yards while Ethiopians middle class pursued nightlife.

Finding food and returning to take a shower it took shock therapy for me to change my outlook and start thinking about the positive aspects of the situation – he is a live and relatively well and the current prognosis is optimistic. And all it took was the faulty electrical wiring of my bathroom cum shower cum washroom. The water heater hangs on the wall – tubing from the wall leads to the heater and is returned via tube to the shower nozzle. After several minutes of frigid water I adjusted the nozzle and was offered a whoosh sound as the lights throughout the room dimmed. A strange humming filled the air. Turning the water pressure up a tingle shoots up my arm. Confused and still unsatisfied with the water pressure (at this point only slightly greater than a steady trickle) I reach for the sink to turn on the water (the sink being placed roughly adjacent and below the shower). This time a pronounced shock went up my right side and my fingers vibrated numbingly.

Grasping the faucet to turn it off I was greeted by the welcome tingle. And for the first time that night I smiled.

Today was a good day, I didn’t even have to use my…

I’ve found that my mood is heavily dependent on how productive I feel. When I travel, photography is a way to capture memories and create art. Today, I at least felt like I was shooting creatively and felt pretty good about my shots.

Other things that made today a good day.

I realized just how safe Cairo is. While I would like to attribute the lack of hassle to my general swarthiness I think it’s more probably due to the nature of the city and its people. Because it is an ancient city that has had little influx from other places there is little division between commercial and residential areas. Families have lived in the same area for generations and there is a distinct sense of community palpable for even a passerby like myself.

Also, I had forgotten until now that while I might be absolutely miserable at dithering with maps I am a damn sight better at following a compass and treating my routes as if I am drawing transects across the city. Cairo makes this approach especially since the city is set up on a north south axis due to the Nile and cliffs. If I go west for long enough I’m going to run into the Nile. If I go north long enough I’ll fall off into the Mediterranean. South to Sudan and East will get me to the Red Sea. Magic! Besides a map is nothing more than cartographic conjectures on what the world would look like if you squashed it and pasted it to a sheet of paper.

O Cairo, where art thou?

I’ve been back in Cairo for four days now. It turns out that it’s not easy to get to know a city when there are no street signs, no visible landmarks, and you don’t speak the language. To counter that I had maps without street names, an unerring ability to go in the direction contrary to what I had intended compounded by a propensity to walk in circles. So, in effect, even my circles were backwards.

All in all I’d say that I’ve just about got this city nailed.

Days 1 and 2 were spent attempting to follow the historic trail through Islamic Cairo –getting a sense of the mosques and madrassas that have provided the nexus for the city’s social interactions for the last 12 centuries. While I can’t say that I found the heart of Cairo (and held it still beating in my hands) I was able to witness a city with that breathed with the daily flows of an intensely urban communal experience. Life is carried on in the streets and awhas (coffee and sheesha houses) as the cramped living quarters spill people onto the wide, typically stone or dirt avenues of its historic areas.

That said, I can’t say that I particularly care for what 2nd world Cairo represents. The clothiers, technology shops and commercial dross that fuels middle-class lifestyles had the same inanity it has everywhere else but it takes on a special poignancy when intricately carved 9th century minarets are visibly crumbling to dust within a remote control click of a brand new plate glass, tile floored, halogen lit storefront.

However hard I might try to find the timeless charm of an ancient city, in Cairo at least, I have found for the most part the charmless product of a quasi-socialist state. I do, however, think I have gotten some exposure to a modern Islam, something I had very little exposure to prior to my arrival nearly a month ago. It has been an interesting peep at a highly religious society charting its path through the modern world. What has been most surprising is the near absence of incongruity between religion, traditional lifestyles, and contemporary accoutrements. In my ongoing naiveté I had expected at experience at the very least a visceral recognition that there was something amiss due to this forced marriage of globalized commerce and culture.

However, despite my qualms (which most directly stem from the fact that I do not even know the basics of the language), Cairo truly is an amazing modern city at least several million people larger than New York. And the rare moments wandering down an old-world street when I have found myself confronted by a soaring minaret above the satellite dishes and concrete apartment buildings have been truly special. Other delights have included a city park converted to a nursery that offered sorely needed respite from the roar of the city and a street festooned with colorful cloth canopies and Christmas lights rising above the muck of overflowing sewer systems.

Yesterday I managed to make it to the 2nd largest book fair in the world. The sheer acreage covered in books was more astounding than the book themselves. Apparently, the fair, held over 2 weeks each January/February attracts 3 million visitors. Not knowing even the basics of the Arabic alphabet it became miles of artistic squiggles.

Today, I decided to treat myself to the Egyptian agricultural museum. A sprawling Nasser era relic with massive neoclassical buildings dedicated to enlightening the masses on the minutiae of agricultural practices from the pharaonic era to the present. From millet to maize to egg production to animal husbandry to community processions the museums had no more focus than a small child after a kilo of sugar. Bizarre and wonderful the museums (there were 5 or so total) showed me what can happen when you put a pineapple in formaldehyde for half a century (it melts) when you leave a stuffed bird hanging from a rope for too long (it is denuded and looks silly), when you have more stuffed birds than cabinet space (you squeeze them in – any way you can) and when you build a museum campus and fail to provide even a modicum of funds for maintenance and repair (it becomes the Egyptian Agricultural Museum or something akin to it).

Injera and wat is starting to sound pretty good right about now…

Getting in touch with my roots

For 15 terrifying minutes I thought I was going to eat desert fox for breakfast the next morning, slathered over dense Bedouin bread.

Only minutes before I had been reflecting on the intricate relationship between camels and falafel. When they fart they produce a thick falafel odor that ranks as one of the most intense aromas I have encountered. And when they poop, which they do rather indiscriminately – on themselves, standing, sitting, laying, burping, fighting, etc, they produce perfect falafel balls of uniform texture, shape, size, and presumably taste.

I had been shaken from my falafel/camel reverie as I munched on the umpteenth bite of thick stew and fire-baked bread which had stealthily over the last several decades replaced the traditional Bedouin diet of sheep’s milk, camel milk, sheep meat, camel meat, and sundry goat products. Historically, any grains (primarily wheat) and vegetables eaten by the Bedouin were obtained through trade with their more sedentary neighbors.

Having entered the scene sometime in the post-nomadic period I was treated to a delightful array or tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, potatoes, and unidentifiable pulses and grains. And yes there was milk but moderation was emphasized and it was either drowned in sugar or cheesy, and thus ambrosial.

Anyway, back to the fox, but as digressions are my lifeblood you can expect many, many more. Early that evening two of Farrod’s sons (Farrod was my steadfast Bedouin guide) wandered off with two spring traps. When I asked what they were hoping to catch I was repeatedly told “arnab.” After thorough questioning I eventually figured out that it must be a flying mammal-reptile hybrid that was invisible except at night and might or might not feast exclusively on the pinky fingers of small children. (after returning to Dahab I found out that “arnab” meant rabbit).

When we heard the shrieks in the night we raced towards the source to find the furry banshee hurling itself in all directions trying to escape the trap. Its right leg was mangled in the trap and the fox clearly was not excited by its future prospects of a right to life. Farrod’s sons dragged the fox back to camp and hogtied it to a bush. Returning to our meal I started doubting my ability to eat the little guy. I asked Farrod what he planned to do with the fox and to my delight found that they were going to take it to the national park service (they would receive a finder’s fee) where it would be rehabilitated (or as I suspected…sent to the government run furrier).

I slept soundly that night, under the full moon, in an ancient land. But as I sank into slumber I did wonder – what would fox taste like?

The next morning we climbed a mountain looked down upon the An Khodra oasis (historical stopping off point for pilgrimages to Mt. Sinai from the Middle East) and returned to the village. Late in the afternoon on the drive out of the sandy hinterlands we were treated to that rarest of things – a desert rain.

Diving the deep blue

I left Sharm el Sheikh the moment I could, approximately 15 minutes after bidding a rushed farewell to my parents and sister in the lobby of the opulent Hyatt Regency perched on the cliffs of the Red Sea. Dahab was variously quoted as an hour, four hours, or 8 hours from Sharm. Also, interestingly enough, I was quoted transportation costs between 836 Egyption pounds (approx $150) and 11 Egpt pounds (approx $2) Finally, settling on the $2 option the travel agent representative shepherding my parents (and myself) warned of impossible delays if I took the bus and looking me straight in the eye told me the roads simply were not paved “up there.” Fearfully pressing money into my hands and casting furtive glances to the heavens my parents rushed off to catch their plane.  

Mohammed arrived some moments later. Some moments after that (a hair less than 40 minutes) I arrived in Dahab at the Penguin Camp.

Having long-harbored a natural affinity for penguins which I have emulated in my gait, my lifestyle, and my morphological maturation I found the Penguin Camp to be the natural choice for where to spend my next 10 days in Dahab. Days 1 and 2 at Penguin were spent doing shore dives in the beautiful Red Sea. Amazing coral life, impressive fish diversity and relatively warm waters (it beat the hell out of doing night dives in California in the dead of winter – but only by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit).

Day 3 was a rest and read day. I wandered around town, got to know the feral cat population. Shared a cushion with a gimp dog and dug my heels in for a sustained bout of reading. Topic of choice was a formidable tome on the last 50 years of African history. Which, despite popular opinion, is about as frustrating a story as one could imagine.

That night I joined a hodgepodge of groups to form that Saturday’s diving contingent to Ras Mohammed and the SS. Thistlegorm, the crown jewels of a Red Sea diving experience. Leaving Dahab at 11am our motley crew was comprised of a group of affable Koreans, a disgruntled band of Germans, an intoxicated group of Japanese, a Brit, and a Spaniard tossed in for good measure. After an hour’s drive we arrived on the boat and instructed to sleep. I had the good luck of unknowingly stealing the first mate’s cabin.

After an hour of sleep he attempted to crawl into the bunk with me and I, after steadfastly refuting his amorous advances, banished him from the room in a somnolent daze. 

And the muckery begins…

I arrived yesterday evening in Dahab on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula within swimming distance of Saudi Arabia.

For New Year’s I was in the company of the French, betwixt and between, as we flew over the Atlantic. Initially I suspected that Air France would spare no expense and no extravagance would be considered too great for passengers in their care as the year turned. While visions of bare breasted women running down the aisles painted impossible orange hues where NOT part of my expectations I did expect a proper nasalized toast over the plane’s loud speaker followed by the uncorking of a vintage dom perignon. A kazoo or party blower might have been a nice touch as well.

Alas, nothing. I was asleep and if anything painted orange flashed down the aisle past me it did so sufficiently quietly as to leave my sleep undisturbed.

Since that somewhat anticlimactic flight I managed to arrive on Jan 1st with the rest of my family in tow (or the general state of ill-preparedness and sleep deprivation with which I fled the US maybe it was they who had me in tow).

It was a good trip, colored only by the occasional rankling when the lap of luxury in a developing country does not necessarily guarantee superior food or comfort.

By the end of it we had visited nearly every temple and tomb from Cairo to Abu Simbel. No phaoronic sage (nor their eternal resting place) was left undisturbed in our inquisitiveness.

At the end of our journey we came to Sharm El Sheik. The Red Sea, Mt. Sinai, Moses’ burning bush (fire crotch?) were all there to greet us.

And yesterday I got to Dahab.