Damietta and Dust

I had thought of Damietta or bust - but dust was more appropriate.

No-one would describe Damietta as salubrious. It is a small and rather scruffy city in the north of Egypt nuzzled against the Delta and the Mediterranean sea. Just head for the bridge over the Suez, follow the canal north instead of taking the bridge, and when you get close to Port Said turn left. Well - that is the simple version. Actually you sail past the turnoff and do a u turn, then hook back and turn right. This manoeuvre is common in Egypt and I have never worked out why as it is utterly confusing, both for sign posters and for motorists. Add a few flyovers in between and drivers who tend to turn left from far right lanes and vice versa and you are getting the idea.

We came first through Ismailia. This is much nicer and known as a farming community which grows luscious fruit. Mangoes are just coming in and stall after stall lines the road, usually painted scarlet and arranged like shallow vertical stacked boxes, slanting back just enough to stop the contents from falling out. Long green and golden mangoes nestle against each other and shade from the greenest (which will keep longer) at the bottom to the orange gold at the top. The air is redolent with their scent. They alternate with melon mountains, and frantically beckoning sellers try to entice you to buy. Now and again a melon that rolled out to argue with a truck is splattered in colourful chunks across the road. The area is green and lovely.

We passed the bridge over the Suez - and it is truly a beautiful piece of engineering. Suddenly you are in drier and sparser countryside.

Then about half a kilometre on we passed the first container ship.

There is something truly disconcerting about passing ships in the desert - well, in very scruffy sandy scrub anyway. You know you are still a long way from the sea and there is no visible water as the narrow gap between the road and the canal is very slightly humped. Then - just about one hundred metres away you pass an oil tanker - and it is really huge. You can easily - even through the thick glass of Bob's armoured BMW - read quite small print on it. The No Smoking sign is big and obvious though - and I really hope that this sign is more obeyed and enforced than similar signs around Egypt.

We drove into Damietta and were immediately aware of poverty and bleakness. Nothing was luxurious - except the huge number of furniture outlets. These studded the road side - so you had grotty concrete high rise, again and again then suddenly a marble faced extravaganza with Pharaonic columns and gilded lintels, triple storey and bulging with elaborate furniture. Then it was back to grotty coffee shops and places selling spare parts for engines until the next one.

We browsed through a few places and I started to feel a bit unsure of our reasons for being there.

I have a confession to make. Egyptian furniture is very very different. It is ornately carved, heavily gilded, and covered in very elaborate cloth - like heavily embroidered silk or very shiny satins. It is upholstered to the effect that I have often wondered if you would just keep slithering along it until you came off at the other end if you sat down too suddenly. Syrian furniture is much the same. It is like the French furniture at the court of Louis 14th (or was it 15th?), and the style is often nicknamed Louis Farouk.

When I had been in Syria for a few years I started to realise something very strange. I started looking at the carved chairs and thinking that they could be quite lovely, even in Australia, if they were just finished lightly with a satin varnish like Estapol, and covered in a beautiful fabric, but one that is more to our taste, like a heavy linen or cotton print. I left Syria before I actually considered buying one. In Jordan I managed to resist.

Here - I am capitulating utterly. We went to a furniture fair at the weekend. Looking at the pieces there I realised I wanted to do this. We are in an odd situation in that we are going back to no furniture in either lounge or family room. The ancient cane sets from Malaysia have been declared dead. The Furniture Fair seemed to specialise in the most elaborate of the style - with one set even having tiny lovebirds carved above the chairs. Syria went in for huge eagles with wings spread.

You see what I mean?

Jjust look at the bead tassels on the cushions. The red couch is classic Louis Ferouk, red flocked velvet and all.

One lady admiring the modern settings.

I had been wanting to see Damietta for some time as it is known for its furniture and its skilled wood carvers. Where in Australia could you buy carved and beautiful wood without a fortune changing hands?

Take a walk with me through the grotty back streets, and it is like sieving for sapphires in Black Creek in NSW. Every so often in the mud you find a gleaming jewel.

This is turning into a photo essay - but there is more to come.

We had met an uncle of a friend who was with us. One of the men in the Embassy is getting married i a few months. Before an Egyptian man marries he has to set his wife up with an apartment and furniture - all new, and all the best he can afford. He had given up his day off happily when we asked if he would like to come. He rang an uncle who met us on a bridge (what is it about bridges and Egyptians?). His uncle was leading us to a warehouse of unfinished wood.

As we came around a corner Bob said quickly and urgently, "Don't look, he has taken off his fingers." I swung obediently (did I promise obedience?) but not before I had seen a young boy - maybe a small fifteen or younger, with a strangely truncated hand - and a lot of blood, winding his shocked way towards a car. Blood dotted everything and our host in the shop we were now being led into was surreptitiously trying to rub it into the floor with his foot while showing us things high on the walls. It was hard for me not to try - gruesomely - to scan the floor for spare fingers, though I know here they would not have the money or technology to attempt to put them back.

It was a sudden and shocking reminder of the lack of work-safe practice in Egypt, and shadowed the rest of the day.

The warehouse was marvelous. Another photo essay is inevitable as the pattern on pattern was wonderful! I fell in love with a totally impractical table with Napoleonic decorations - shields and festoons of flowers in swags. It was impractical as it was too big and high and round for a coffee table, not quite big enough for a dining table, and the marvelous decorations made it totally impossible to put your legs under it without pain.

We chose two chairs and a narrow side table, and were persuaded that we also needed a smaller round side table to go between them.

One very elaborately but beautiful carved chair - in the naked timber - cost about three hundred dollars Australian. I can see it in beige and black toile at the moment, with honey coloured timber - but that could change. I have a photograph of the same design 'finished'.

and a detail of the top of the chair.

And just to finish - some wrapped work ready for shipping against a Pharaonic backdrop in one of the huge shops. It was so like a major art piece that I loved it.

Looking for Hashim

It is quarter to six in the evening and Summer is here with a vengeance. It is currently 43 degrees (109 for those in the States), and the air is shimmering. Morning showers are odd - cool water for a minute, then the hot water reaches the shower and I step in. Then the shower is suddenly uncomfortably hot and I have to get out again as no amount of turning it down to the cold side will change the temperature. What has happened is that the water in the cold pipes is now the water from the pipes on the outside of the house - and really hot. In fact it is usually hotter than straight hot water.

Heat wraps around you like hot milk when you step outside - or in my case, when I walk up the stairs to the roof where my studio is. The last two flights are very hot as no air conditioning gets there and there is a huge glass window which belts out heat. It is the sort of heat that I dread entering, then as I go out I think "Really this is not too bad." Then halfway down the block to get a cab it starts to hit and sweat is trickling down my back.

This morning I walked out to join a friend for a 'lady' lunch. There were no cabs for some strange reason outside Seoudi market - there are always cabs here so it was odd - and I walked a couple of blocks to pick one up. I could almost feel my makeup sliding off in a sheet! When I found a cab I was not sure I was better off - climbing into a hot metal box never seems like a good idea in extreme heat and the vinyl seat had been in the sun. Worse - I had a cranky cabbie who grumbled all the way - all of four blocks - to my friend's house.

However - I had fun yesterday.

I had called up one of my friendly drivers to take me out to Saqqara to chase down Hashim. This is the man who is the subject of my latest quilt.

He works at Saqqara, but the last couple of times I have been out there I have missed him, or he is not on that shift. A phone call to a man who is the Inspector of Antiquities revealed only that they had many men working there called Hashim.

We left early in an attempt to beat the heat. As we crossed the Qasr El Nil bridge (which, by the way, was built by the firm who built the Sydney Harbour Bridge one year later) the statues of the lions that guard each pylon were wrapped. I was sorry for the lions - they are marvelous exaggerations of lean leonine form. One of the other statues, and I am embarrassed to admit that I don't know his name, was surrounded by scaffolding. I loved the silhouettes of the men putting it up - such interesting shapes.

We arrived at Saqqara early. It is the site of one of the first pyramids - the Stepped Pyramid. Did you know that Egyptian tombs used to be covered with a mud brick structure called a mastaba which was intended to keep the mummy safe from grave robbers, ready to be used by its owner in the afterlife? Then an early pharaoh - and in the case of Saqqara it was Xoser - decided to put a mastaba of stone over his tomb, then another mastaba on top of that but a bit smaller - then another - and you have pyramids like the Stepped Pyramid and the original section of the pyramid at Meidum.

It is actually more layers than this but this is the romantic view where I cut off the busloads of tourists and the bottom two levels as well.

We brought out the photograph of Hashim and showed it around. The consensus seemed to be that he was not there today - and I didn't need a translation as it was obvious from the head shaking. Within three minutes we had attracted about three men. One was delegated to go and find Hashim's phone number.

He came back with his hand tightly closed. I assumed he had money in it - but he had actually written the number on his palm.

We attracted attention from tourists as five people craned around his hand to try to decipher the bits of phone number that had disappeared into the creases. It must have looked like palm-reading - which of course it was.

A very loud - shouted - phone call was made and I was told that he lived a long way away - more than two hours. I could not see why someone who lived as far away as Alexandria would work at Saqqara. No - two hours was an exaggeration. He would be home from another job in one hour - could we ring then. We were not allowed to bring the man who had made the phone call as they did not speak to each other.

Directions were given.

At this point a lot of interest was shown in the photographs of Hashim I was showing around. Suddenly they all wanted photos and I was to bring them back to hand out, as I had with Hashim's. I took a string of men, one after another in the gaps between tourists. I was interested in the machinations of one good looking young man who had sidled into another man's photograph, and then asked for one of his own. For each I took a distant view, and a close up. when I took this man's closeup he changed his mind about how he would look, and the white and very dramatic kaffieh around his neck was suddenly a perfectly and tightly wrapped turban.

One, then two

the full view and the closeup

and with turban!

We drove for an hour. One endearing sight was a woman on a donkey nursing a goat as the donkey trip-trapped along the dusty road. I got out of the car to take a photo and after I had taken it she beckoned me to the other side to show me a kid stuck in position as it was being born. For a horrified moment I thought she was taking it to be killed - but it was going to a vet.

We finally met Hashim on a bridge. Have you ever tried to explain to a slightly worried and suspicious Egyptian the idea of a release paper? It is a concept that does not exist in Egypt - in fact in a lot of places. The idea that someone has to give permission for their picture to be shown in public was obviously foreign to Hashim. I heard bits of the earnest conversation going on and he obviously could not understand whey the Australian Ambassador's wife would want him to sign a paper. Worse - I heard the words for secret police - he was really concerned. In the end we or rather, Wael - my driver for the day - wrote it in Arabic.

And - I have my signed release form. Ahmed, our chef, said "I could have saved a lot of work. I can write that I need four bottles of milk and sign it and put a date on top and in America they would never know what it said.

So - we have added a translation below and had that signed by the translator as a true and accurate version.

Waiters and Fire Extinguishers

There is nothing quite like starting a dinner party rigid with ambassadors with a waiter - THE waiter - collapsing with a grand mal fit onto the fire extinguisher which then proceeded to cover the kitchen with white powder.

That was the short version. Now for the long one.

Our very nice and regular waiter carried the somewhat diminished platter of prawns with their selection of dipping sauces into the kitchen. The housekeeper was in there and ready to wash up as dirty dishes arrived. She glanced at the platter, realised there were only two prawns left and pointed out to the waiter that I was always happy for my staff to try the food and 'did you want a prawn'. She got no response. She looked at him and his eyes were looking up. She repeated the question. Just as she started to feel frightened by the blankness on his face he took a step back, then another and went straight down.

He hit the fire extinguisher, snapped the pin, and landed on the trigger. A hissing cloud of white powder poured out into the kitchen.

A grand mal fit is terrifying if you have never seen one and my lovely housekeeper was terrified. She tried to speak to him but he was arching and thrashing. She had heard that you are supposed to put a spoon into the mouth and tried it but could not lever his jaws open. Then he went still and started to go as blue as a Nubian can and she totally panicked - certain that he was no longer breathing. She rushed out to the balcony where the group had started on the red wine and were talking elegantly of the politics of religion. Maria silently beckoned the chef. Ahmed was at the barbecue and about to put the steaks on, surrounded by the usual retinue of men who always seem to feel that barbecuing has to be supervised. The only slight difference was that most of these were ambassadors.

He dismissed her with a flick of the fingers. She beckoned more urgently and as he approached her she hissed the name of the waiter and shot into the kitchen. He followed demanding to know what was wrong with the waiter. One step into the doorway and Ahmed almost fell over him - still seizing.

He froze. "What is he doing?" was the first astounded question.

Then - noting that the kitchen and Maria were snow white - including the last pair of prawns on the platter, the stove and every single surface including the waiter. "How is he making the powder?"

He tried to lift the waiter, and skidded in the white snow underfoot. On the white tiled floor is was as slippery as glass. Both went down together, and the waiter started to fit again. Ahmed was lashed by a twisting arm and was horrified at the position of his hands, trying to untwist them and realising that that was impossible.

"Get Gamal" he said to Maria.

Maria rushed to the back steps and downstairs where our gardener had been making tea for the drivers.

Gamal came into the kitchen, looked at the poor waiter, and dropped to his knees, going into the sura of the Koran for well being and health. Halfway through it the waiter stopped fitting and relaxed. "Look," said Gamal. "How effective is the Koran? Now he is unconscious."

Ahmed came out and beckoned me. By now I had realised that something was going on as the group of watching men who had been hanging over the barbecue has drifted back to the table and the barbecue was emitting blue smoke until I turned it off. It is so unlike Ahmed to walk away in the middle of something that I was already concerned.

As I reached him in the doorway he said, very formally, "I am afraid our waiter will not be able to complete his duties tonight."

I was a bit flabbergasted and said "Is he sick?"

"He is tired."

"Just tired?"

Ahmed was heading back to the kitchen and twisted one hand eloquently in the air. At least, it would have been eloquent if I had known what it meant.

At that point I assumed a quarrel had broken out in the kitchen and our waiter was walking out in high dudgeon. This, I thought, was a matter for a man.

I tapped Bob on the shoulder and suggested he check the kitchen as there seemed to be a problem with the waiter.

Bob walked in on a scene of total devastation. Everything was covered in white and the waiter was by far the worst. Bob and Ahmed managed to hoist the (now conscious) waiter to his feet, and he staggered oddly around the kitchen, then pulled himself to attention and said "Red wine."
He looked bizarre enough to be really frightening and Bob steered him to the stairs and suggested he sit. A firmer suggestion was acted on.

Bob rang the doctor. When the waiter had recovered a bit Ahmed and Gamal helped him downstairs. Maria swept the Kitchen and Gamal proceeded to throw out or wash everything that had been out.

Ahmed cooked the steaks. The dinner was perfect, probably considerably helped by the amount of red wine that had been consumed in the interim, mopped up a bit with generous helpings of my home made olive and rosemary bread - thank goodness I had made that!

Our waiter is now fine, but has absolutely no memory of the evening. Both Ahmed and Maria had sleepless nights after this, but we did a very long debriefing next day which had all of us roaring with laughter, and then swinging straight into "Poor man" commiserations. Somehow laughing at another's misfortunes is a coping mechanism.

There are still odd bursts of laughter around the house. Looking back - it was funny- not so much at the time. And - we have a new fire extinguisher, all ready, as Ahmed said, for next time.

Quick answer to a question

I have a question in the comments that I cannot answer as I don't have an address.

So - yes, the jackets are sold - but only really in the Tentmakers' Khan. They are rare - one was made some years ago for a Saudi Prince, and they were a bit surprised when I ordered them. I took the tentmaker and the fabric to a tailor as I wanted it well made. I had also a jacket (two actually) that I liked and which fitted well. We left the fabric there, and the tentmaker phoned when it was cut out. The tentmaker collected it. Then they sewed on the appliqué. Then they took it back to the tailor (I had delivered the lining in the meantime). He cut out the lining, and made up the jacket. The tentmaker picked it up and rang me to collect it.

Yes - I could have bought it from the tailor but the tentmaker wanted to see my face when I collected them. It was my dear friend Mohamed Dendon, who is coughing far too much, smoking still and not looking well - which is worrying.

So the answer is yes - they are for sale - but because they would need a range in different colours and sizes to make on spec I think they will only be made by order for a while.

Jackets from the Tentmakers

As a small teaser I thought I would put up a couple of photos of the back of the Hashim quilt. I used two dyed pieces - neither very interesting - to make the back. One was a failed attempt at a length I wanted to feel like a sandy beach - and one a pale mauve using up the last dregs of dye on a hot day when I had really lost interest in working any longer. I sewed them together, then cross cut them and flipped one - so it is a large fourpatch.

I like plain fabrics on backs as they show the drawing of the quilting process.

I collected two jackets from the tentmakers. I ordered these ages ago and handed over the fabrics - the plain colours all from Australia, and the background for the cream one from Syria.

Neither is exactly what I had in mind. I worried about the blue as I saw it in the 'sewing on pattern shapes' stage and felt that the single drifting lotus pieces were very like extraordinarily large polka dots from a distance. Iwas not sure that large polka dots were a look I wanted. Made up it is better though, especially with the Syrian fabric lining.

The cream was supposed to have only a V of work at the top and on the back and perhaps down the sleeves a little. I drew this up and explained it, with translation. Three months later all this was obviously forgotten as it is covered in work. However - I love the design work. Faced with the glowing delight on the face of the old man who laboriously stitched it when I put it on and swirled in front of a mirror - I could not possibly have disappointed him with a negative comment of any kind. It is a bit worrying that there are many obvious pencil marks on the back where the design drifted a bit from its intended origins. I will try a pencil eraser - cross your fingers for me!

So - these are definite eye candy. This blue is a shortish jacket that I saw as quite casual - a bit more dressy with black pants, but alright too with jeans. Sorry about the bad focus - better ones will be done when I have time. I shot these not realising how blurred they were.

And the cream one - longer and more evening-ish.