Vignettes

1.
A car went past us on the way to Carrefour this morning.

On the back in a huge and obviously custom made sticker was one word.

JENIUS

2.
On the way back from a coffee shop where I had joined a friend to drink a luxurious cappucino in a cup big enough to float a fair sized model boat I saw a very old man who had been going through garbage bags left for collection as I came past. He had a small pile of food in front of him and was picking and discarding bits and eating. Every second piece was given to the very very pregnant tabbi cat beside him.

3.
There are times when I am forced to relinquish my deeply affectionate view of Cairo. The garbage in the Khan reached horrible levels today. One pile we passed was almost shoulder high. It was covered with flies in great black clouds and had a large selection of cats working their way through it. Many were obviously starving and sick and worst of all - one dead cat was curled and slumped like a discarded strip of fur on the pile.

4.
I met a very famous Egyptian actress last night. No names for obvious reasons. I was telling my friend Ibrahim that she had been there this morning and he could not understand the way I was saying her name.

"How old was she?" he said.

I thought for a second, considered forty and decided to be kind.

"Maybe 35" I said.

He appealed to our chef for his version of who she was and Ahmed's face lit up and he said the name - almost as I had said it - and light dawned.

Ibrahim protested in Arabic and both burst out laughing. Apparently she was not 35 but in her sixties.

I want her doctor's name!

5
In Edfu on the Nile cruise we were rushed out of the boat almost in the act of docking. We had been held up at the lock at Isna and had only an hour left before the Temple closed for the night.

A line of horses and buggies were fretting and pawing at the curbside.

The guide was allocating people in the order they had come off the boat into buggies. We hoiked Mum into one and I clambered in beside her - it was extremely high and I had trouble getting my foot from the step to the higher level so the driver lifted my leg by the trousers.

Then the next couple arrived - and both were large people, like me, and while the buggy had opposing seats there was minimal space between them. Four left-out legs stuck out at very awkward angles and we were all laughing so hard as the poor horse staggered along that it was hard to work out who owned the legs. Any closer and we would have had to marry.

It was fine on the way there. We moved at a furious rate down the main hill and I wondered for a second if we were so out of control that the buggy might actually overtake the horse.

Coming back was different. The hill was shorter coming down and long and slow going up and the horse just couldn't do it. At one stage his head twisted over his shoulder as if to say 'what is back there anyway?'. His feet were scrabbling and slipping on the bitumen and he started to turn back to go back down the hill.

A shout from the driver alerted a couple of police and pedestrians to the problem. There was a somewhat derisory look for the large pink and white passengers with legs still draped over the hubs, and they started to push. Two shoved the buggy and two tried pushing the horse from the rump.

My mother still gets the giggles when she thinks of the indignation on the horses face. I can only feel sorry for the poor animal.

6
We had a large cocktail party last night. In Egypt it is almost impossible to say how many might turn up, so we catered for two hundred. In fact about one hundred and forty came. Finger food two hundred is a lot of food and waiters circulated continually with big trays.

One older man sat outside at a round table covered with a white on white embroided Damascus cloth. In front of him he had a large plate of chicken wings roasted in soy and sesame seeds. Obviously he had requested them as all the trays were of mixed hot hors d'oevres. Someone in the kitchen had arranged them for him as a radiating wheel with a curl of fresh coriander in the centre and a small dipping bowl of sauce. He tucked a napkin into his collar and went to work on them, sucking and dragging the meat off the bones, then replacing the bones neatly in the position of the original wings so they radiated out from the centre.

A women plonked herself on a chair opposite. Clearly they did not know each other from the look she got.

Moving the vase of flowers out of the way in the centre she reached across and removed the plate from him and proceeded to his obvious annoyance to scoff the rest.

Back in Cairo

My mother is in town - and despite being my mother is fit and well and still going strong. I think she is getting used to immediate questions about her age, but I am starting to feel a bit testy about perpetual comments that she looks like my sister. Or worse - my daughter.

We have done so much. We have seen pyramids - she even attended a performance of Peer Gynt at the Pyramids at Giza with Queen Sonja in attendance. We have bumped around the Western Desert in a four-wheel-drive with a good looking bedouin at the wheel. She has had a ride on a felluca with Ron Barassi who helped her to cross another felucca to get to the dock when we returned. She wished there had been more feluccas. We have had a cruise from Luxor to Aswan in the total luxury of the Sonesta Star Goddess. More on that later.

We are now just back from Syria.

Centamin, an Australian gold-mining company opening the first gold mine in Egypt since the days of the Pharoahs - no - they were still operating in Roman times - have agreed to sponsor the planned exhibition of work from the Tentmakers' Khan in Cairo. Expertise Events had arranged sponsorship to cover the space allocated for the exhibition, and now I have funds available for two men to travel with me so people can watch the work as it is done. I am so thrilled and grateful. Quilters coming to the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne in February will now be able to see something formerly only seen in Egypt.

On my way to break the news to the men I had an unusual taxi ride.

My mother had decided to come with me. We got into an old Lada with a Mercedes crest firmly mounted on the front. I always have trouble getting local drivers to understand where I want to go. The area I always think of as Bab Zuweilah has never worked - somehow the old gates of the city are just not known to local cabbies. Khan Khayamyeh is the Arabic name for the Tentmakers' Khan - but that does not usually work either. I had started getting them to take me to King Farouk's old headquarters - and then I direct them from there, but that leads to a lot of annoyance - usually with cabbies twisting around to tell me that Abdeen Palace was 'back there' with lots of hand waving. Egyptians look at you when they speak to you. That is fine when you are face to face across a desk or a cocktail party - but a bit worrying when you are sitting in the back of a cab with a driver who insists on facing you as he speaks.

One of the Embassy drivers told me to ask for the Police Headquarters and Gaol. It gets me some odd looks but it works and I do get to where I am going.

This time we got into the cab and the driver told me he loved England. I said I was not English.

"I love America," he said.

"I am Australian."

"Ahhh - Ozzzzie Ozzie Ozzie."

However - he actually knew Bab Zuwelah - so we got in.

The driving got more erratic as we approached Port Said Street - a huge road intended to be three lanes on each side but usually running at least twelve lanes of traffic. You have to take a deep breathe and just push your way through this, and he did. We turned left and then he started to get impatient. Traffic was banked solidly in front of us and we had at least three blocks to go. I would have got out and walked but my mother is 83 and squeezing between large trucks and buses is not my favourite occupation at the best of times.

The driver muttered something and swing hard across all the traffic to dive into a very very narrow lane. He just missed the feet of a man being shaved in the street, and from the imprecations hurled at us he obviously upset the barber too. Then the ride was like something out of a video game. We met a lot of cars, all going the opposite way and apparently thinking that we were wrong. We probably were.

We dodged and scraped and all the time the driver kept up a stream of swearing - very loudly and at everyone within sight. I did not know exactly where we were and decided that the only way to get my mother out of an extremely local area was by staying in the car. At one stage we squeezed through a large flock of sheep and goats obviously waiting out their time to be slaughtered for the Eid.

Finally we belted with increasing speed around vegetable stalls and a drink seller, and swung out in to the open area in front of Bab Zuweilah and the Tentmakers.

We staggered out of the cab and gratefully accepted the offered tea from my freinds in the Khan. I love this area. It is one of the gentler areas of Cairo, and I leave every time feeling recharged and serene. Usually.

Our friends laughed at my imitation of the taxi driver and walked us back to the gate. A taxi was standing in a parking area and Ayman woke up the driver to tell him to take us to Zamalek. He didn't want to - and entreaties got more noisy and voluble. I heard Aymen telling the driver that my mother was very old and he should be ashamed to make her walk further. He very very grudgingly agreed to take us, and Ayman insisted on prepaying.

I started to get into the back so that my mother could follow without the awkwardness of that shuffle across the seat - a woman does not sit next to a driver in Cairo. The driver shouted a warning and our friends immediately insisted that only my mother should sit in the back - the other side of the seat was not attached and it would tip over. Mum sat down - gingerly.

I got into the front and as I sat I realised that what looked like a car seat was nothing of the sort. It must have been about six separate cubes of foam rubber with an old and somewhat smelly rug on top. It was very soft foam rubber and as my nether regions descended they touched the rubber - and unnervingly kept descending. As I went down - and down - the rubber cubes separated. I hit metal at one point - not nice smooth floor but what must have been the support metal strips for the seat. I am still dented.

We took off with a lurch and a puff of smoke and with every lurch the bonnet flew up, momentarily blinding the driver. He didn't seem to care. He wasn't very happy about taking us and other than a question about the exact location of the house he was silent. We swerved - often late enough to frighten me - around several pedestrians.

Then in the middle of peak hour Downtown he pulled in to the side of the road and left the car double parked. "One minute," he shouted in Arabic while he ran down an alley into an office.

I could see it was a specialty eye surgeon and was wondering to myself whether he intended to come back when he did.

He was positively loquacious and explained to me that he had to have an operation in two days so he could see again.

Then he drove us the rest of the way home through rapidly moving and overcrowded Cairo traffic.

Iftar for One Hundred

I have been in Syria for six days with friends. I lived there for years and love it so it is always a joy to go back. However, that all pales into the background after the events of this week.

On Sunday morning I had twenty-five ladies visit me as part of a bus tour. I have never been the subject of a bus tour before and was somewhat uneasy. They were coming to see the house and the quilts. I had been away for the week before and was not sure that the house would pass the 'run your finger over the lintel' test. Mind you, I considered this briefly and decided that anyone willing to do that deserved, at least, a dirty finger.

I had promised a tour of the quilts and morning tea, and agonised a bit over the morning tea too. It is still Ramadan so I knew some people would be fasting. The club is a mix of Egyptians and expatriates though, and so morning tea needed to be on offer.

We decided on fresh juice as they arrived. Ahmed has started to make the most delicious fresh lime and mint and honey juice - blended WHOLE limes and mint in water, strained through cloth and mixed with a little honey in hot water. Chill and add ice if you wish (I freeze mint leaves into the ice) and it is really delicious on a hot day. The temperature is starting to drop but it is still over thirty most days.

We also made fresh guava juice. I have always thought that I didn't like guavas. I have trouble getting past the heavy perfumed aromatic fug that hangs around them. Add to that the slightly gritty over-ripe pear texture and I have always ignored them. Here they are everywhere. They are pale yellow globes, lumpy like a quince but the size and vaguely the same shape as a pear. They nestle in their thick green leaves in boxes, or wonderful towers on the fruit stands. The cool yellow and dark green looks refreshing.

In my first six months here I was offered a thick white drink on a tray and took one. Ah - I thought - banana milkshake! The taste confirmed it - cool and creamy and smooth and rich. I was halfway through it and enjoying every mouthful when someone commented that their cook had made guava juice for everyone. It still took me a moment to realise that that was what I was drinking.

So - our lovely elegant Nubian waiters in their crisp black and white offered trays of lime-mint, guava or water. I walked the tour around the quilts and the first floor, took them up to the next level and more there, then announced that we would look at my studio but that it meant a serious climb.

The trouble with six metre ceilings is that it is a long long way up when you need to go up three floors. I kid myself that it keeps me fit - but I am not fit so I am obviously not doing it often enough, or fast enough.

Some of the ladies were mopping brows as we reached the top - but all loved the studios.

Then tea. For those Aussies who read this it is all going to be very dull. My lovely cook made sandwiches last time we felucca-ed. They were made with cold toast and featured a piece of fried egg and a piece of chicken speared with a toothpick to stay in place. I had quietly decided to show him our sort of sandwich so made my mother's amazing Christmas chicken sandwiches and an egg and lettuce one to give variety on the plate.

Then I taught Ahmed pikelets and had to restrain him from piping elegant rosettes of cream onto the jam with a "No - it has to look home-made". "But," he said "I am a professional'. I pointed out that we were making a perfect Australian tea and this was one of the things that was important and he was happy with that.

Add in Anzacs (biscuits for the non-Australians), a slice with a spiced base and an almond and ginger topping, small cupcakes flavoured with cardomom and rosewater and topped with lemon and cream cheese icing and a scatter of jewelled pistachio slices and pomegranate seeds, and the world's best chocolate cake which is almost a baked chocolate mousse. Ahmed has become a specialist at making the last - we are demanding it for many occasions at the moment.

They ate - all except two - and left.

We have almost one hundred people tomorrow for an Iftar. Iftars are always buffets or heavily waitered - as everyone has to be served by the time the call for prayer starts.

I walked into the kitchen this morning to find every single pot out on the benches. It looked a bit chaotic - and was. So many things need to be presoaked. Khameruddin - the apricot leather which is cooked with water and is a traditional way to break the fast soaked in about four large pots. Another four pots were simmering chickens on the stove for chicken soup. Lentil soup will be made tomorrow. Khakadeh simmered on the second stove top or cooled on the benches ready for straining in the last group of pots.

We did an emergency run to the shops for large new plastic bins to store it all in overnight and it is now down in the cold room.

Khakedeh is a dried hibiscus flower - almost like a succulent - that is simmered for about half and hour with water. The strained liquid is deeply ruby red and spicy. It is sweetened and served either hot as a tea, or cold in Summer. I love it - it is just like a fresh plum juice.

At one point of the preparations Ahmed spoke rapidly to Veronica in Arabic, asking her (he calls her Um Abdullah as this is the name of her eldest son - so 'mother of Abdullah')to taste the Khakadeh.

"I am fasting" she said.

Both looked at me. I agreed that I would taste the Khakedah and they dippered it from the large bin it had just been strained into and poured a small portion into a tea glass.

I sipped and it was delicious. "It is very very good," I said.

A second sip. "It's perfect".

"Perfect for you?" said Ahmed anxiously.

"Yes. "I said. "Absolutely perfect".

He reached into the cupboard, took out another two kilo bag of sugar and slit it expertly open. Before I could even draw a breath to comment it had gone into the bin with the juice.

"Egyptians like it sweet," he said.

I am still chuckling hours later. It seemed so funny.

We have split and seeded dates, chopped dried figs and apricots, and soaked them in khameruddin with coconut. They will be lightly sweetened and a bit of rose water added tomorrow. This is not a dessert but the first thing eaten. So the fast will be broken with juice, then the kushaf (the dried fruit compote), then soup for those who wish to have it, and then a break before the rest of the meats - lamb, chicken and kofta and a fish the size of a two year old - and salads. Dessert is baclava style pastries, and icecream cakes to celebrate a series of birthdays.

So think of me tomorrow - hosting what is starting to feel like a very big breakfast at five twenty two! Exactly. Iftar must be the only meal in Egypt that is ever exactly on time.

Back to the City of the Dead, and Dark Angels

I took two visitors to the City of the Dead last week.

I love this area. In Egypt, unlike in other Islamic countries, there is actually a tradition of tending graves and even visiting them. In most Islamic society a body is in the ground within twenty four hours. This is so here. In Saudi Arabia it is simply put in the ground wrapped in a white cloth. Here it is still buried within twenty four hours, but a coffin is used, and in many cases there is an elaborate family vault. In a country where the average citizen in Cairo has a few allocated metres of space in housing they get a great deal more when dead.

In other countries in this region the funeral rites really take part after the burial. Families sit in silence with the immediate family of the deceased. Guests come and go through this period and it can go on for up to a week. Women wear black and no makeup and jewellery. Men and women sit in separate areas (and I have, very irreverently, wondered if this is due to the 'no makeup and jewellery' ruling).

Caretakers marry and have children so the small families grow and add other ramshackle rooms. Those children grow and marry and create more housing in spaces between family graveyards. Slowly humanity takes over the City of the Dead. As the Lonely Planet Guide says, "ideal location, with very quiet neighbours".

All down the long alleys between blocks the spinners of silk thread work. They come out int he mornings, like spiders, setting up their long webs of fibres and walking their three legged spinning wheels. Forward, as the thread spins and tightens with the twist. Then back as they slacken it off. Grooves cut into the the dirt surfaces of the roads in the places where the wheels are walked. Down to the three marker stones, slacken, then back. Repeat - again and again.

The worker with his wheel

And at the far end of the very long block

The wheels are made of the simplest of materials, the men are old or very young, as the healthier mature men are able to seek more lucrative employment. In my early days of visiting this place I took many many photographs and was always asked for backsheesh. There is a gentle and significant rubbing of forefinger and thumb which is almost universal. Now I find that the spinners I regularly visit do not ask for money, and many are offended if it is offered. Yet these are men who earn about two dollars after a day of hard toil on a wheel. I am honoured that they consider me friends, but wish they would take the small amounts I offer to reduce their hardship, when I live so well.

'He's not heavy, he's my brother'

Mother on the doorstep. It is really common here for galabiehs or nighties to be worn at all times in the house - street clothes are put on to leave the house only, and removed when the wearer returns. There is not real embarrassment about receiving friends in a nightie.

The City of the Dead is a huge area that wraps around Cairo and encompasses about half of it. It is large flat areas which are walled expanses of family vaults. Sometimes tombs are visible, sometimes it just looks like areas of paving. In each case one paved area will easily lift out, leading to stairs under the space which has the actual graves inside. Sometimes this is actually nowhere near the small above ground tomb.

Each space has an allocated caretaker who looks after it and lives within the enclosure in a small hut or room. His job is to keep an occasional plant watered and to arrange chairs and the space if the family notifies him that they will visit.

To move from the dead to Angels is a fairly obvious step.

In the areas all around the Khan al Khalili are angels, - dark angels or bad angels as they are often called here.

These are well presented men, with good English who are in a way the personification of the Nigerian scam.

Their modus operandi is simple. Fall into step beside an obviously foreign visitor, chat for a few minutes to "Practise my English" and they are well spoken, friendly and courteous. Once you relax a little they offer to show you something a bit unusual - how the backgammon boxes are made, or a place that dyes silks, or a school where children are taught to weave - and the angels are very good at picking something which will interest you. They then weave you through many alleys - and often you are actually walking loops to make sure you actually need them to get back. Any suggestion that you might pay is greeted with horror and affront and "I am showing you as I like to use my English" or "No, it is because I thought you would be interested, I do not want your money"!

At this point you are shown a shop "of my uncle", or some family member. You are offered drinks, or given a small box, or something that will make you feel indebted. Then they will show you bigger and much more expensive things as they show you how slow and difficult and intricate they are to make. It is made obvious that you are expected to buy as you are being treated specially.

The worst of all this is that some of this sequence is common here - from very nice and honourable men who just want to help and who will not apply any pressure to buy at all. The difference is that the 'angels' are emotional manipulators of great expertise. An unwillingness to buy will subject you to initially subtle pressure of the "I brought you here for nothing from the goodness of my heart, but these men are very poor and Ramadan is a time of giving...et cetera".

Or you are taken back to the point you came from and the requests for money go on as you walk to leave you feeling unkind and ungrateful. Sometimes they will actually shout in deep offence and anger at you - so poor manipulated people will hand them fistfuls just to make them go away as crowds gather. Sometimes a tourist policeman in on the scam will approach and suggest a payment which might be appropriate - and they will split it as you leave.

You know you have been done by an angel when you feel guilty and distressed afterwards! Somehow you are always left feeling thoroughly bad - hence the 'dark angel' or 'bad angel' title.

Underneath it all I constantly remind myself that this is a very poor country and that I am in comparision, very rich.

Problems With Our Water Works

The story of my flood several days ago continues.

We have had several days of workmen on the roof. The temperature has been steadily climbing again after an almost bearable 32 C four days ago and today hit 40 C again - unfair really in late September. This makes Ramadan hard and my guards in their heavy suits seem to wilt after midday.

I have three fans out on my balcony and I am not brave enough to use them. There is a beautiful bronze pigeon nesting on the top of one - right where she would be swept off, nest and all if I turned it on. Worse - I have three remotes and they are fan-specific. I pressed the button on one and pointed it at one fan, and a different fan went on - not, thank goodness, the one with the nest.

On the roof you could add a good five degrees to that temperature at ground level. It doesn't help that it is a concrete expanse with zero shade for most of the day.
For days the men have been working in extreme difficulty on the split pipe which is most awkwardly placed about half a metre over and almost a metre down from the edge of the low wall around the roof. This is a very sheer wall about three and a half stories high. Worse - our ceilings are incredibly high and while it makes the rooms cool and very beautiful it makes hanging over the edge of the roof likely to be lethal.

The pipe has been resisting all help offered. They have managed to replace a section - and what they did with cutting gear and two men hanging onto another's legs you do not want to know. It split again. Yesterday they seemed to be coming and going all day and it was truly hot.

At five I saw them leave, and waved them off, only to realise forty minutes later that I could still hear hammering on the roof. It was almost Iftar and I had already taken out the meal we give our guard at this time. I just could not believe they were still there at Iftar.

I pulled out a tray and realised that I was not not at all confident carrying a tray with five glasses and a lot of juice boxes up three flights of steep stairs. I shoved them into big plastic bags and rushed up, arriving just as the call to prayer started.

The poor men did not even have water. The water had been off all day while they struggled with the pipes.

Our lovely office handiman who supervises all workers in the house took the stairs two at a time down for water and brought up bottles for one for each man. I watched in amazement as they just upended the lot straight down their throats. I left them eating dates - very much part of the ritual, though better if they have been soaked in milk.

They finished at about 7.00 and left.

Today the pipe is leaking again.