Week Seventy-Five

Today, which we'd pretty much written off as anon-day to do admin stuff, turns out to be exactly that - except that we didn't get the admin stuff done. We slept separately and particularly well until mid-morning and then headed out to visit the Embassies of "civilised" countries: the UK and the US (we're planning a potential bounce off the UK into the US next, and Milla needs visas for both). The US Embassy is closest and therefore first: it's a couple of large, modern blocks behind a high, guarded wall and lies a couple of streets south of the American University. The entrance is pretty easy to find, but the guy there won't let us into the compound without a pre-arranged interview appointment: he gives us a phone number to call, and tells us to go to the apparently nearby CIB Bank.
We wander off, wondering if this is some sort of arrangement they have with the bank, or whether it's some kind of special number which can only be reached from a particular type of line. We opt to hit the British Embassy before going further, since it's just down the road - another high-walled complex, with nice old white-washed buildings and tennis courts inside (we appear to be have the security fence atop the wall painted blue): we end up walking 95% of the way round it, due to an accident of navigation. Security is a bit more lax here - they don't seem to have a problem letting us inside, but just before the X-ray machines there's a big, wooden "Firearms Deposit Box" (one of those British anti-embarrassment devices, to obviate any potential loss of face by armed terrorists at the security point - good to see we're taking the terrorist threat seriously). Comparatively friendly they may be, but they have the (to us) hostile visa hours of 08.30-09.00: gosh. We take a form (the same English-language-only one which they use in Bucuresti) and set off to see if we can't at least make that phonecall, get an appointment and progress the US situation.
There follows a hugely irritating and tiring one hour wander around the area in search of the local branch of the CIB Bank. As is usual in these situations, we ask a wide spread of locals - only one of these admits to not knowing where it is; all the rest give us confident, contradictory and inaccurate sets of directions. Naturally, none of them actually knows, and we eventually give up and return to the US Embassy for real directions. There's a guy at the gate who speaks better English, and we discover that the whole CIB Bank thing was in order to pay a $110 non-refundable payment for a visa application (!): this amount also needs paid just to get an interview (we wanted to ask how long it would take, what the chances are, and so on). Ouch. Other discoveries on this second visit are that a.) the partly-automated phonecall to get an interview will cost 2LE per minute, b.) that interview details are then mailed to an address in Egypt and c.) they won't tell us what the current waiting list time is.
It's mid-afternoon by now, too late to see anything really (most interesting things close at 16.00 in Egypt), so we detour by KFC and the AUB bookshop - quick checks on Lonely Planet volumes reveal an almost total lack of budget accommodation in our favoured US destinations, so that's kinda worrying. I also succumb to temptation (not like me) and buy DNA's last - the Salmon of Doubt. A detour past a hairdresser reveals the bizarre information that hairdressers are closed on Mondays (I don't know why - they guy who told us seemed surprised that we hadn't known).
The rest of the day passes with us collecting and looking at photos, Milla washing some of her clothes, me reading my new book, both of us arguing, then playing backgammon, then arguing more.

On account of going to bed after 02.00, we sleep through our alarm clocks (optimistically set for 06-something, so that we can hit the British Embassy). i eventually get up at 07.30 and stomp around bad-temperedly (at this rate we'll spend the rest of our lives in Cairo): Milla's up and ready to go at 08.20. We both skip breakfast and march back down to the British Embassy: we're past the informal security ad into the visa section by 09.00. As with the Embassy in Bucuresti (and possibly in other countries where we assume they don't know how to queue properly) there's a queue minder, who directs us to a place in a long row of seats - this is the queue for "Reception", and everyone shifts up a seat or two at regular intervals - like a progressive Mexican Wave, or a bizarre music-free version of Musical Chairs.
At 09.30 they stop letting people in, but continue processing those already inside, which is good. Our first stop at Reception is a woman who checks that Milla's filled in the form correctly and warns that it may take some time because she's Romanian (not Egyptian): she seems fairly hostile, and directs us to the second Reception queue (a woman who takes more details, gives Milla a number for some further queue, and directs us to the Cashier). Compared with us, the next guy in the queue got a really hard time: mind you, he was kinda asking for it. He wanted to apply for a visa for his wife to come and work with him in the UK - the woman at Reception tells him that she'll need a Settlement visa, tells him the cost and also tells him that his wife will have to apply in person (he seems to have assumed that he can apply on her behalf). In the course of a two-minute argument, he lets slip the information that a.) he got his British citizenship by marrying a UK national, b.) he hasn't actually married this new "wife" yet (but has presumably got rid of his first one), and c.) he's already bought the tickets and arranged the trip for about ten days' time. Beautiful moments include his Arab stance on travel ("Your wife can travel separately and join you later"; "No she can't - she's my wife") and the classic "But that doesn't fit in with my plans" ("I'm sorry if the official policy of the UK Government doesn't fit in with your plans"). Ho, ho, ho. He left angry and had an odd half-Scots, half-Egyptian accent.
As for us, we get to the Cashier and (as happened in Aqaba) discover we've brought the wrong currency: again, the Embassy is insisting on local currency. It's a far cry from Romania, where the Embassies we got visas from took almost any currency except the local one. At least they let me out to change money, and then back in.
Finally, there's a long queue for an actual interview, which is kinda nerve-wracking because we keep seeing people in front of us either being refused or having heated arguments (the money we've just paid, though much less than the US Embassy demanded, is equally non-refundable). Eventually it's Milla, and she has a relaxed five-minute chat with the guy - he understands why we didn't apply in Bucuresti (the visa would've expired by now); he'll have to make some enquiries to the Embassy in Romania, but doesn't think there'll be a problem. Can she leave her passport with them, and phone on Thursday (at the local call rate)? No problem.
We leave just after midday feeling pretty optimistic, get back to the hotel and crash out from 14.00 to 18.00. The evening is spent dropping films for prints, doing a bit of writing/washing, and having our usual KFC (the piped muzak includes some Egyptian(?) artist who's put words to Mozart's 40th Symphony - about as kitschy as whoever put words to Swan Lake recently . . .). Disappointment and pisser of the day is the almost inevitable discovery that the photos from the cheap plastic camera are shit (foreseeable, is only because of how little we paid for it), including the cloudy and dramatic Sphinx ones. 'Focus Free' apparently refers to the pictures, not just the camera.

An odd sort of day - I'm up at 07-something and out at 08-something, leaving Milla sleeping. Today's simple mission is to retake photos previously wasted with the plastic camera, and my first and farthest destination is the Pyramids. I meet a Bedou English-speaking Visual Basic programmer (of all things) on the bus, accompany him via a change of bus to a spot apparently closer to the Sphinx site entrance (there are two - the normal bus terminates just down the hill from the Great Pyramid): it isn't that much closer, as it happens, because there's two or three blocks to walk afterwards. Actually, it's quite interesting because around that entrance there's a little Bedou-type village, rather than the blocks, fast-food joints and papyrus "factories" that line the main route in.
My actual time at Giza was almost dull, since I was basically retracing a route from a previous day except that a) I noticed there are steps up the north side of the Sphinx (hadn't seen them before), b.) I'm impressed by a little Bedou girl selling postcards at the site (aged 6 or 7) who slips effortlessly among Arabic, English and Italian (whole conversations, not just words), and c.) there's a mean wind coming in off the desert. The consequent in-progress sandstorm, as well as battering the visitors (less Egyptians today, except for a primary school group who presumably couldn't cancel), also gave an excellent idea how relatively large monuments could be completely swallowed up by the sand. It also explained why street-sweepers around Giza and Cairo seem to be collecting mostly dust and sand, rather than litter. I got out of the site, asked the tourist information office there for instructions on how to get to Saqqara (almost the last nearby place that we want to see), and caught the 11.30 bus back. Or rather, caught the 11.30 bus mostly back. While snarled up in Cairo's seemingly eternal traffic, another bus ran into the back of us. Knowing where I was, observing the traffic, and guesstimating my chances of correctly identifying another bus to catch as nearly nil, I opt to walk (45 minutes) back to the hotel: it's a good thing we've acclimatised to the heat.
Milla's still in bed when I finally reach the hotel at 13.00 or so, so we have breakfast together. After that, I set out for a quick zip around Islamic Cairo - the light's bad, though, and it feels as if there's a storm brewing, so I quickly turn back and snooze through the afternoon while Milla washes clothes. Evening sees food, writing, beer, an awful lot of backgammon (Milla insists on extended play despite her losing streak, and crashes 15 games to 1) and tons of washing clothes. Entertainment is provided when I nip out to buy the beers (it's chilly outside: the locals are all in jackets and scarves, I'm in short sleeves since everything else is wet): the staff at our local off-licence have been imbibing and are loud and incompetent. As we first observed in Jordan, arab men seem totally incapable of drinking alcohol without becoming (at best) unconscious or (normally) boorish. Oh, and also today I give up trying to find a suitable hardback notebook and buy a softcover one instead.
We hit the sack about 01.00.

Today starts as a bit of a repeat of yesterday: I get up, leave Milla sleeping, and head into Islamic Cairo to retake some of the dud photos. It's a simple route, into the middle and then north to the city wall, and then south to the other city wall, and finally back home: we weren't impressed enough by the Citadel to want to fork out the fairly steep entrance fee just for more photographs. The only item of note during the trip is that I get a lot less hassle from vendors (particularly gold and silver) when I'm on my own than when I'm with Milla.
I'm back at the hotel just before midday and discover that Milla is not only awake, but has phoned the British Embassy - could she come in and collect her passport, with visa, at about 13.00? Well yes, of course. We have coffee and breakfast, meander down to the Embassy and get there at about 13.05: Milla doesn't actually go in, but gets her passport from the security guy at the entrance. There's one query (the leading "0" from her passport number has been omitted from the visa - apparently not a problem), but otherwise that's it. It's a very nice visa (I've never seen a British visa before): all wavy lines, with a hologram and computer-printed details: better-looking, in fact, than the main page in my British passport . . .
Since we're done really quickly, we set out to see the few remaining items of interest in Islamic Cairo: actually, they all lie between the old city wall and the Citadel. Some intuitive map-reading, a general sense of what direction we should be going and a slice of luck takes us in a pretty straight line from the Embassy, through a couple of residential areas of concrete blocks, into more winding and older streets and then to our first target, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. Ibn Tulun was an Abbasid ruler of Cairo who set up a nice new city when he arrived, north of the first Islamic fort-town of Fustat next to the old Roman town: called el-Qatai, there's bugger all left now except for this - the former main mosque, and oldest in Cairo.
It's in the old style - a huge courtyard (with cloistered walkway around) and a large colonnaded (open) prayer hall along the Mecca side: peculiarly there's an outer wall round the entire building, creating a regular enclosure on three sides which was apparently used as a market. It's got some interesting architectural detail, like the patterned crenellations and the stucco-work on some of the arches, but is basically pretty dull (if very large). It's also not in a great state of repair, though during our visit there was tons of scaffolding up and about fifty people working on it: wearing white coats, they seemed predominantly female (in headscarves, of course) and looked sufficiently young that it's probably a University project. The highlight of the mosque is the minaret, separate from the actual mosque and standing in the outer enclosure: it's square-based with a spiral on top, which I don't think we've seen before but is apparently an Iraqi model. There are okay views of Islamic Cairo to the north and the Citadel to the east, but mainly of rubbish - rubbish heaped up in the streets below and on most of the roofs, whether of 2-storey or 5-storey buildings. In the case of the lower roofs, it's presumably just been chucked there from adjacent buildings; with the higher roofs, people have presumably gone to some effort to carry it all the way up (either that, or it just sprinkles down from the sky). Once again, it's the prevailing impression of central Cairo and goes some way to explaining the foul smell.
Immediately adjacent to the mosque is another restored house, or rather two. It was restored by some British doctor/major, and donated to the Egyptian state: naturally, this being modern Egypt, entropy quickly set in and the place started falling apart. Apparently sponsorship and investment are gradually restoring it again, though a number of the rooms are still closed. I intuitively opt not to get a camera ticket, which is the right move: our guided tour is mostly through little half-decrepit rooms with little to recommend them except some fine mashrabiyya windows. There are a couple of nice, large furnished rooms which are excellent - mainly, though, it's just depressing. Probably the worst feature (apart from our guide's recurrent insistence that the house featured in The Spy Who Loved Me) is one of the supposed highlights, ie. that Gayer-Anderson was a collector of antiquities during his travels. A lot of his collection is apparently spread through various museums in Egypt now, but most of it still seems to be in the house. And most of it is the most tasteless collection of Egyptian, Persian and Chinese kitsch that you can imagine - I mean, some of the pieces are pretty old, but they're real rubbish. The few exceptions (some Syrian wooden ceilings, some of the lamps, a couple of small pharaonic friezes cut from tombs) seem largely accidental and out of place. The walls, incidentally, are hung with various portraits of the succession of suspiciously young Nubian boys whom he kept as servants - and there's a classic picture of the Sphinx with Gayer-Anderson's face substituted in (that's one I haven't seen in the tacky photo shops). One interesting observation - our guide points to a "Lucky Eye of Fatima" as we go - the little blue eye shape we've been seeing all over (including at the Egyptian Museum, easily predating Fatima).
It's a relief to get out and head east (and slightly uphill) towards the Citadel and the two huge mosques that face its (closed) gate. The one of the left (Sultan Hassan) is genuine Mamluke; the one of the right is 19th century (they had a neo-Mamluke period here, about the same time as the West had neo-Gothic/Victorian Gothic). There are several prominent signs up emphasising that the mosques require "No Tickets", so presumably they haven't been getting many visitors. Both are high-walled boxes, apparently in sandstone, with little exterior decoration except a few columns and the massive, decorated maqarnas doorways (with the Sultan Hassan mosque, the doorway's actually taller than the seven-storey building and they had to raise the front wall higher to accommodate it). We hit the older mosque first.
After dropping our shoes at the desk (Ibn Tulun provided slip-ons, even though all the people working on the restoration were wearing regular shoes), we look around the small but very highly-domed vestibule. An archaeologist-come-guide joins us and offers his services, but we don't want to get into what we're thinking of as "baksheesh situations": it does raise the question of whether "archaeologists" in Egypt are all multi-lingual, like the little kids selling stuff at the pyramids. The northern part of the complex, which apparently contained a market and apartments and other not-particularly-mosquey stuff, isn't open to visitors (it seems): instead we follow a wide passage south and emerge, to our surprise, in a massive mosque/madrasa courtyard. Comprising four high-vaulted halls (there are four branches of Sunni Islam, and most madrasas teach/taught all four), it's easily the most impressive mosque we've seen since getting to Egypt: Sultan Hassan apparently invited architects from all over, including Europe, to make this the best building in the Islamic world - and he did a pretty good job.
Chains suspend hundred of little lamps a couple of metres above the floor of each hall, but only the qibla/mihrab wall has completed decoration in bright colours (though dusty now, like the lamps) and gold. Behind that wall is the mausoleum and it's even more impressive: high decorated wooden maqarna-work drips down from the impossibly high ceiling, and although dark it's very atmospheric. There's a colossal wooden chair and Koran-stand, but no coffin - poor Sultan Hassan was assassinated before his mosque was finished, and his body disappeared.
Feeling that the complex both needs and deserves more money (we would hae paid for a ticket to see this one), we put a little in the baksheesh box on the way out and then cross the narrow, almost claustrophobic lane between the high walls to the other, new mosque. The al-Rifa'i mosque/mausoleum was built in 1869 to house Egypt's new royal family, which it does - and that includes the Shah of Iran. The mosque itself is okay (inside there are two cats playing, which is something you wouldn't see in a church) - it's almost a better imitation of an Ottoman-style mosque than the deliberate Mohammed Ali structure in the Citadel - but we can't be arsed looking at the tombs since a.) they're only tombs, b.) they would need unlocked by caretakers expecting baksheesh and c.) the mosque is on the point of closing anyway, so they'd expect more baksheesh than usual. As it is, the guy at the shoes desk at the entrance asks quite insistently for baksheesh for looking after out shoes: on the basis that he's only just got there (before that he was wandering around inside trying to get us to look at tombs), we ignore him.
It's after 17.00 and we head all the way back to Downtown for another KFC (en route we actually pass a young girl with a skull almost the same size and shape as the elongated ones in the Egyptian Museum, so maybe it is genetic after all), and to answer some emails: it seems the company which manufactured my plastic Platypus water bottle (the one that gave out in Port Said) will "be glad to replace [my] bladder with a new one". I feel that's good to know for later life. After that, back at the hotel, we have a discussion with the staff over a trip to Sakkara (I still have problems over the spelling - these days "Sakkara" is the preferred English spelling: I still have a tendency towards the once-ubiquitous, more francophile, "Saqqara"). They offer 70EP for Saqqara, Abu Sir and Dashur by taxi which, after discussion, we decide to go for - it'll probably cost us 50EP more than making our own way there, but we reckon it'll save hours. We go to bed early (01.00) on the basis that we've agreed to set out at 07.30 tomorrow: just in case, we ask the hotel staff to wake us at 07.00 if we haven't surfaced.

After yesterday's early rise neither of us stirs until 10.30, when I get up and make the breakfast: we eventually drift out into the streets of Cairo at about midday. Our singular mission is to find out train times and prices from the main Ramses station: this involves a fairly long walk - one which we'll presumably have to repeat with our rucksacks. The station turns out to be a pretty normal station - different types of ticket/destinations are sold at different places and the ticket for Upper Egypt, Air-Con (rather than Sleeper) are sold from a little hall on the far side of the tracks: we wouldn't have found it without the aid of a member of the omnipresent Tourist & Antiquities Police. There's a regular train leaving at 00.30 which (in theory) takes about 10 hours: the pleasant surprise is that Second Class only costs 32EP (with our student cards, of course). We get tickets for tomorrow night, on the basis that we're already past check-out time for the hotel today. We both wonder what "Second Class" means on an Egyptian train . . .
The afternoon is spent writing, and early evening sees a painfully expensive Post Office stop (I have a package, and Milla's mailing a kilo and a half to Romania): the Egyptian postal service has a reputation for "losing" about 15% of everything posted, but hopefully that'll be less from the main Post Office in Cairo. We shall see, but it'll be a real pisser if I lose a whole notebook of words and the photos from Petra and Jordan.
The evening is cards, backgammon, writing and discussion over what to do with the rucksacks if we're returning here after Luxor and Aswan - my favoured option is to take only one rucksack (and the tent - the accommodation "options" at Abu Simbel don't sound like options in our sense of the word). Naturally, if we have to be out of the room by 12.00 tomorrow, then we should repack the two rucksacks tonight: equally naturally, we don't. And equally naturally? We go to bed late, despite having that to do as a task tomorrow morning . . .

We're up later than expected, "later than expected" being just before 10.00: breakfast, discussion about the rucksacks (we decide to take both - Milla doesn't trust the hotel) and subsequent packing of the rucksacks takes us to 12.20 or so. The most painful decision was to donate my East & Southern Africa book to the hotel - it's about half a kilo and I've been lugging it about since leaving Scotland: its abandonment here is a concrete confirmation that we're not in fact heading into Africa, about which I'm still not totally happy (a feeling I first noticed when Milla successfully got her UK visa - in fact I'm a little depressed about the whole idea of going home). All that aside, we leave our bags at Reception and set out - after picking up cigarettes (there's an L&M Light shortage in Downtown, it seems) and changing E300 into Egyptian pounds, we head off towards Islamic Cairo. En route we pick up basic supplies (water and chocolate) and Milla discovers a new addition: Cadbury's Fudge.
We don't actually go into Islamic Cairo proper, but stop on Sharia Port Said (which kinda runs down the western side of it) to visit the Islamic Art Museum, which we've been intending visiting for weeks nw. It's a large, but single-storeyed affair of big rooms and the first surprise is that there's nothing old here (actually, that should have been pretty obvious, since it's an Islamic Art Museum, but it was still a surprise in Egypt): there's a small number of pieces from the 7th to 10th centuries, but mostly it's from the last millennium. Scattered through the museum is some excellent work, but mostly it's pretty second-rate and the majority of pieces seem to be at least partially broken. The best stuff, generically, is Mamluke - particularly 13th/14th century metalwork (brass) and some of the later (18th/19th century) especially Ottoman pieces: even the Korans, to my eyes, become dramatically better in the last 300 years. Possibly they're just more in-step with a modern appreciation of (eg.) accuracy and symmetry: historically the most significant one is probably a handwritten copy from the 7th or 8th century (ie. pretty soon after the very first).
My main complaint (worse than the inconsistent level of labelling) is that the late 20th century revolution in information presentation hasn't reached here yet: the whole place needs taken apart and re-structured (they're working on the outside, currently). The exhibits are mostly Egyptian, though there's good representation of Persian and Turkish stuff, but none of it is displayed in ways which make any sense in terms of (eg.) artistic development by period, region or style. The stuff is just jumbled up: a typical example is "Hall 14 - Ceramics from Different Islamic Cultures" (actually mostly Turkish) - a room incomprehensibly spanning several thousand kilometres and many centuries. It's more "This is what we've got" rather than "This is what it means". The same can also be said of what they choose to define as "Islamic Art" - there's a bunch of stuff, for example, for use in Coptic Christian churches (they amazingly describe ducks with human heads as "Christian motifs"): in order to include these, they presume that the pieces were made by muslim craftsmen for sale to Christians. Conversely, they have Chinese-made pieces produced for muslims. There's likewise a magnificent Venetian plate "perhaps" made by muslims in Italy. Oh, and they have some excellent Bohemian glassware with no commentary, presumably bought by or presented to muslims.
Points of interest? The heavy Byzantine and Persian influences in the early stuff, and the imitation Chinese styles in the later stuff (except in that peculiarly Islamic art-form of arabic calligraphy). And the ornate decoration they applied to guns (inherited from how they decorated swords), including the use of silver and gold - bizarre, to modern eyes, for an item where mass-production/mass-distribution is much more important than having a small number of really nice-looking ones. And they had a large collection of astrolabes (an Egyptian Astrolabe features heavily in the last Skene novel, though I don't remember ever having physically seen one before). The custodians, of course, keep half the cupboard/display lights off (especially for glassware, silk and books) so they can switch them on especially for you and then ask for baksheesh - as so often, the pursuit of baksheesh has just led to more imaginative ways to inconvenience people. Ah well.
The museum closes at 16.00, and we leave at 15.56 to head into Downtown for a KFC, long (3-hour) internet session and then McDonalds (yep, KFC and McDonalds in the same evening). The afternoon crowd is still around: black-clad female tents, shopping very slowly (probably because of reduced visibility). We have some discussion on the product photos displayed in fast food "restaurants", and finally decide that they belong to the class of Platonic Ideals which will never be attained in this world. Especially the Platonic Zinger Supreme. And then it's back to the hotel to kill time with coffee and backgammon (there are a couple of French girls hanging around - they just hung around all day yesterday too: perhaps they're waiting for something).
We finally hit the station at 23.30, about half and hour before the train does, and hang around for a bit. The train surprises me by being a.) clean and b.) fairly modern (in both cases despite external appearances): the carriage is of the rowed seats type, with each pair able to swivel to form a cosy foursome with the previous pair - there's an adequate luggage rack, and all the seats have ample legroom and are reclinable. Except Milla's. I offer to swap, but she refuses - she wants to swap rows, since there are a few empties. I don't think this is advisable since all the tickets have seat allocations, and there's at least one more stop inside Cairo (at Giza). We leave roughly on time, stop at Giza for a long pause and a flood of people and luggage, and then pull away again totally packed. We swap seats with each other, and the night passes in intermittent sleep - the whole train seems to be non-smoking . . .
As we chunter south, we've also managed to knock up past the ninth £1,000: this time it lasted a respectable 60 days, mainly on account of our accommodation cost (for two people) averaging less than £3.50/$5 per night. With accommodation at £198, entry fees at £146 and transport costs at £82, the biggest item of expenditure by a long way turned out to be food at £313. The rest is mostly the usual culprits - cigarettes at a painful £63, films and processing at £47, internet at £43 and post/packing at £11.