Saqqara

The drive out to Saqqara took us away from Cairo through tree-lined roads that cut a way through fields of crops and small villagey areas. We passed the pyramids of Abusir, a couple of dry petrol stations and a rash of carpet schools before arriving at the entrance to the Saqqara complex, a huge sprawling area dominated by the marvellous step pyramid of the Pharoah Djoser.

This style, maybe even this pyramid, was the beginning of the trend for burying bigwigs in large geometric structures. From mounds of sand the Ancient Egyptians progressed to square, flat-topped mastabas before someone decided to park six mastabas of decreasing size on top of each other. Mind how you pronounce this, as someone who I shan't name found my pronunciation cause for much sniggering. I loved the Step Pyramid, its chunky lines and deep textures, the sand piled up on each step. There was quite a bit of restoration work going on, but we happily wandered around the 'no entry' side and watched the work and found some statues visible through a hole in a wall.

Teti's pyramid looked like an old heap of rubble, but the interior was amazing. A low-ceilinged flight of steep steps took us into the middle chamber of three. The walls were covered in heiroglyphics, row upon row from floor to ceiling. Crawling through an opening, we entered the most amazing room containing a huge stone sarcophagus. Massive ceiling slabs were hung above, some of them seemingly in defiance of gravity - something best not pondered on, especially in conjunction with the obvious evidence that above ground the whole pyramid has completely disintegrated. These slabs were engraved all over with large five-pointed stars, very like starfish, pale against the dark surface of the stone. Again, the walls were carved with heiroglyphs, a repeating pattern of symbols and Teti's name in a cartouche. The person in charge quickly invited us to ignore the No Photography rule - with his hand out, of course.

Mereruka's tomb was stunning. It was a whole complex of rooms with wings for his wife and children. We walked through room after room, each one decorated with fabulous paintings. Again, the mind boggled with the amount of work that went into creating such a place. There were pictures of people working, carrying crops, handling animals - including an experiment in hyena husbandry, Mereruka himself relaxing on his bed while his wife played a harp, children playing games and pulling off some artistic acrobatic balances. And more... and more. As with the rest of the site, it wasn't clear what was original and what had been restored, but I think many of these carved pictures have been repainted, especially as this building has been opened to the light with some holes in the ceiling. There was a statue of Mereruka with an offering altar in at his feet and a huge stone ring sunk into the floor for tethering sacrificial animals. A shaft led down to a burial chamber far below and so I get the impression that this was more of a temple at ground level, in use after Mereruka's death.

I loved the whole site at Saqqara, its huge peaceful space. The step pyramid was more impressive than I'd expected, quite a stunner, but it was the underground chambers of Teti's pyramid that blew me away, or would have done if the guide had butted out long enough for me to zone out and travel back a few thousand years in peace. And the paintings in Mereruka's tomb. This place is amazing - and that's coming from one who gets historied-out fairly easily.

Saqqara - it's not just a beer

Having a blast!

There's so much more I should have been blogging, but frankly I've been so busy having a damn good time that I haven't fitted it in. Maybe retrospectively.

Wadi Digla was a drive of exploration, up the wide, parched river bed, the wadi gradually narrowing until we had to get out and walk, scrambling through the winding gorge, whose floor and sides had been sculpted beautifully by the flowing water. We climbed right out at the top and looked down at the speck of a car we'd left. There was a stark, barren beauty to the place. There were also about a million plastic bags which I imagine have been blown many miles to reach the gorge where they hang in the poor scraggly bushes that really have a hard enough life without that to deal with. And out here, overcome by its rugged good looks against the inhospitable background, Kate consummated her love for her car.

We've been to the touristy souks of Khal el Kalili, visited the peaceful old mosques of the Citadel and looked out over smog-bound Cairo, and we've been on a mad mission to find a cafe called Groppi's where my mother remembers having ice-cream in 1964. On the way there we stumbled upon the tiniest of backstreet bakeries where dozens of people were queuing outside a hole in the wall for the bread that rolled out of the conveyor oven. Seeing our interest, the owner invited us in for an impromptu tour; in one small room, through the floury air, we saw the bread being kneaded, shaped and taken for its quick roll through the oven, while chewing on our delicious fresh free sample. These unexpected moments are always such highlights and suited the crazy mission we were on that day. Incidentally, we found Groppi's too. Everything about it was pretty awful except the ice-cream which was fabulous. Good tip, Mum. Unfortunately we failed in our other mission: to track down mosque-shaped alarm clocks that wake you up with a call to prayer.

We've had some great Egyptian food, especially in a lovely courtyard restaurant in Maadi; beers and mezze and stuffed pigeons and all sorts of experimental choices, all of them good. The bread here is definitely highly-ranked in my world-wide favourite breads list. Which I must compile soon.

And every day has finished with an afternoon with the kids, in the garden or pool or biking around the estate, and evenings on the veranda with Kate and Rick. I sit up late when everyone has gone to bed and gaze out at the darkness and smile. I can't quite believe how lucky I am to have such lovely friends and to be here with them now.

I'm having the time of my life.

Cairo Donkey Sanctuary

I was really impressed by Dr Mourad, who runs the Cairo Donkey Sanctuary Mobile Clinic. He was totally committed, enthusiastic and professional in every way. He dispensed treatment without ever seeming to judge those whose donkeys had been badly cared for; he gave advice, asked them to come back next week, but never told them off. For somebody who cared so much about his work, it could have been hard to resist preaching and haranguing, but his approach is perfect. People aren’t scared to come, they return, they learn. A modest smile touched his face when he told us, on questioning, of the success of the sanctuary; it seemed more that he was proud of the project, not of himself.

In a backstreet beside the pyramids at Giza four vets worked out of the back of a van, offering free treatment to anyone who brought their donkey along. There were dozens of donkeys suffering from a fly-borne eye complaint which necessitated rinsing by syringing water up the nostrils to flush out the eyes. This seemed to be a slightly uncomfortable treatment, requiring two men to hold the donkey’s head still while a third inserted the tube and did the syringing. After a bit more cleaning and some eye-drops they were sent on their way wearing fly-masks to prevent reinfection.

We saw a number of donkeys with raw open sores from the ropes and chains of home-made harnesses and bridles. These wounds crawled with flies and looked as if they had been there a long time. The fifth member of the sanctuary team is a bridle maker who will exchange all the dodgy ropes and bits of chain for well-made harnesses. With all this care being offered for free, there has been a great improvement in the health of donkeys in the area. Still, we were told that some owners wouldn’t bring their donkeys because it was wasting time that they could be using to make money, especially if they were giving pyramid rides to tourists.

On another donkey we were shown a healed wound, where a rope across the nose had rubbed right through the flesh, making an extra pair of nostrils. It’s alarming to think that a wound could be allowed to go so far, but to these people they are working animals and there’s none of our soppy attitude to animals. Dr Mourad told us about the education programme he runs and how it really seems to be making a difference, often starting with children who go on to educate their families. He preaches donkey training with love so there is never a need to beat the animal because it will go willingly and respond to verbal commands, and of course the simple message that looking after it might actually mean it lives longer and is stronger. Obvious to us, maybe, but a new philosophy to many. It was good to hear him say how much things are changing, although he cannot hope to reach all areas. It was lovely to see one young boy tell another one off for hitting his donkey, showing that the message is getting through. And the working space they use at Giza each Sunday belongs to a riding stables who will dismiss any staff who beat an animal.

I’m not averse to the odd donkey, but it would be a lie to say that I’ve always harboured a great love for them. But I know good work when I see it and of course I just love to experience these behind-the-scenes aspects of life, every day life away from the tourist trail. Of course, Kate was dying to stick her arm up some donkey’s backside, but they managed to hold her back. This time.

The White Desert

One of the things I had really wanted to see in Egypt was the White Desert. A few phone calls on Thursday and it was sorted – a private tour – for Friday morning. A long featureless bus journey through the desert took me Baharia Oasis, where I was met by my team – two guys, a land cruiser and not much English. First stop was the police station where I had to register my presence and chose to sign a statement confirming that I had turned down the offer of police protection for my journey. Surely I could trust these lads I'd known for three and a half minutes? Anyway, all the tourist police I've met so far have seemed far dodgier, grumpier or sleazier than my guides. So off I went, throwing trepidation out of the window of the shabbily spacious interior of the vehicle as we sped out of town. I leaned back in the low-slung, laid back seat and enjoyed the contradiction of heat and wind in my face.

It wasn’t long before we veered off the road and across the packed sandy gritty stuff, then shot up the side of a small sand dune, thumping to a halt just as we seemed ready to take off. I got out for a wander on the dune and enjoyed the views beyond. The flat pan I looked down on was a curvy maze of tyre tracks, where the sand showed through the black grit and I wondered if this was one of those places where the tracks are never blown away. It looked like it.

The journey continued, on and off road, the detours taking us to various viewpoints and interesting features where I hopped out to explore and photograph. The desert got blacker and we stopped at the foot of a volcano, its solid black plug giving a good indication of where the black desert got its sand. There were lots of these little volcanoes and the mixture of colours gave the desert and its hills a wonderful depth and texture.

At a small oasis village we stopped at a cafe for a lunch of flies with salad, bread and flies, and fly tea. The guys began teaching me Arabic and conversation flowed like porridge, although porridge isn't generally so amusing.

Beyond the black desert was more sand-coloured desert. The off-road was high in “wheee” factor at times, with some big ups and downs, including one long steep up that took us seven attempts, zooming back down and looping round at high speed on the flat before gunning for the top again. This one was to reach a small crawl-through cave-like structure. Inside the walls were chock with crystals and outside some superb specimens lay around. I picked up a diamond-like lump, as long as my thumb, and held it up to see the sun shining through its smooth translucent surface.

Crystal Mountain had a similar abundance of crystals, although mountain was something of an overstatement. It had layers of crystals, reddish sedimentary rock and something volcanic on top and a natural rock arch, some organ-pipe effects, white powdery chalk which could even have been talc, and probably anything else you care to think of. This was a baby mountain gone crazy in a geological pick’n’mix.

Agabet was stunning, huge sandstone lumps, mountain-like but not mountain shaped, rising up like islands out of the sand. We perched at the top of a rise and looked down at it spreading out into the distance before us, then whooshed down the sand and drove between these things and back to the road.

We joined the road again, and soon enough white things began to appear in the sand. The white desert! We left the road and headed into an area known as The Tents because the rocks look like, well, tents. Actually, I thought they looked like buns and loaves dropped in the sand, with the odd ball of ice-cream, slightly melted at its base. They were densely packed at first and we wove our way between them in the golden pre-sunset. Then there were mushrooms, more blobs and the occasional phallus. There was a chicken shaped rock and a pretty good rabbit. In some areas the white rock was flat-sided and lumps of edgy icebergs seemed to drift in the sand, in other places there were series of similar rocks sweeping in line like waves. Some blobs were peeling their outer layers and flakes dropped at my touch or crunched underfoot. I haven’t done my research but this must have all been chalk, firm but brittle, and pretty good at leaving its mark on my clothes.

While the guys set up our little camp, I watched the sun go down and listened to the silence. It’s a good place to get a perspective on the world, on your own insignificance. So much space, so much sky, the nearly full moon well risen already. The same desert I had walked and slept in on the other side of this continent. A lot of sand, a lot of space. A beautiful world, some of which we haven’t spoiled yet.

Our camp consisted of a windbreak, some rugs, a table and three mattresses. Anything fancier could never have been so perfect. In the evening, a desert fox came to visit us and later a rather nice mouse. Presumably a desert mouse. Abdul cooked up some pretty good stuff over the fire and the evening passed quickly, eating, drinking tea, smoking shisha and talking. It was warm and windless so we all slept out on the rug under the Saharan sky. My general life plan doesn’t normally include sleeping in the middle of a desert with two strange men, having inhaled strange substances, but I really wasn’t in the mood to worry. And of course, my judgement was as good as their intentions, the tobacco innocent and appley. At about four o’clock I woke up to see that the moon had gone and the sky was absolutely bejeweled. I had to keep forcing my eyes open against sleep just to see it; and now it could almost have been a dream. Was the sky really blue-black? Were there really more stars than I’ve ever seen before? Were they really bigger and brighter and closer? I don’t want to know. I can still see that sky in my mind’s eye.

I was up in the pre-sunrise light, gazing, still stupefied by my surroundings. The White Desert is mind-boggling, beautiful and serene. It could be another planet; it could restore your faith in this one.

Wishing I had a couple more days, we packed up and headed straight back to Baharia. In the car I felt fit to explode with happiness, joy even. I was high from the desert trip, but it wasn’t just that. It was like the culmination something that’s been growing and bubbling up inside since I got here. Unfortunately there were no crazy off-road dune excursions, so my whoops and wheees may have seemed rather peculiar to Abdul and Romario.

The bus back from Baharia took forever but I was still flying when it dumped me, six hours worth of mosque music still echoing in my ears, in some godforsaken corner of Cairo nowhere near the bus station. I merrily hopped to and fro across six lanes of traffic in search of drinks and snacks and then set to finding a taxi. I soon had to drop my policy of only waving down cabs that looked vaguely roadworthy or uncrashed and realized that beggars couldn’t be choosers when no driver had heard of the district where Rick and Kate live. As soon as I got a glimmer of recognition, I hopped in and ended up having a grand old time directing the driver, whose English was even worse than my Arabic (and that’s saying something), round the ring road navigating by the “hmmm, this might be familiar” method. It’s particularly invigorating to use this method while having to deliver directions with great authority and make split-second decisions at high speed in the wrong lane. I arrived well chuffed with my unexpected navigational brilliance.

el Muqattam

Cairo's rubbish. It all ends up here, a neighbourhood of reclaiming and recycling.

It pains me to chuck recyclables into the bin. But after seeing el Muqattam, it all makes sense. Everything is being recycled by this community. How the rubbish ends up here, I've yet to find out, but the streets are chock-a-block with trucks delivering huge amounts of the stuff, seemingly sorted or semi-sorted. Men with receipt books oversee the coming and going of sacks and bundles, while every house has an open fronted downstairs piled high with a different material - paper here, PET bottles there, white plastic, cardboard, aluminium cans each in their place. Amongst the heaps, people sit, sorting, trimming, flattening or bundling. And smiling.

This isn't an industrial estate, it is a residential area. Above the shop-lots where the rubbish sorting takes place are people's homes. There are Coptic Christian churches, schools, simple cafes and small shops selling basic necessities. Old men sit drinking coffee and smoking, children play, work, look after younger siblings. Trucks piled high with cardboard share the narrow streets with donkey carts, young men shouldering enormous sacks and girls balancing trays of bread. All this amongst the piles of rubbish, stench of bins. I've never seen, or imagined, anything like it.

It looks and smells like an unpleasant life, yet the people there seemed positive, happy and welcoming. There was activity everywhere, an industrious feel of people making a living. Children poured out of school in funky uniform dungarees and babies played in the rubbish. I couldn't help wondering about the health of these kids, but maybe they just have fantastic immunity. They certainly looked in good shape.       

                   

            

These kids were using shears to cut off the ring of metal joining the top to the bottom of aluminium cans. These curls of metal were dropped into a bag while the rest of the can was tossed into a tub. So while we melt down the whole thing for re-use (I think), here the different parts have different uses.

The whole place was fascinating, on many levels. I would love to talk with these people, hear their stories and outlook on life. What is the education and healthcare like in their community? How do they see themselves and their future? And I would love to find out more about the rubbish and its processing. I think I can feel an article coming on. 

Turning 40 in style

Giza. Pyramids and sand, a sphinx, sun and camel touts. What more could anyone have asked for? We had a wonderful day out. That sounds so trite, but it shouldn't. It was fabulous in every way.

You always hear that nothing can prepare you for the scale of the pyramids, but this so often had prepared me. Still there was plenty to amaze. Mostly, that all of this, each huge structure, was for just one man. Standing at the foot of a pyramid, each one of about 2 million stone blocks reaches your shoulder. Stepping back I tried to imagine one body deep inside, and that was the perspective that was hard to comprehend, exciting, ridiculous and awe-inspiring. I loved the solidity and enormity, and the monument to certainty or insecurity that had inspired and necessitated it.

I also loved that these pyramids are perched on the edge of modern Cairo. In pictures they appear to be out in the desert, but from the other side you see that the city has reached this site. A grey, smog-ridden city butted up behind the pyramids, its roofs peppered with satellite dishes. Against the stark, calm simplicity of the pyramids it looked chaotic, flimsy and lost. It should have spoiled the view but rather this contrast enhanced it.

We walked around the great pyramid, marvelled at the awfulness of the metal box housing a museum that butted up against one side. We visited the second pyramid, and Khufu's queens' pyramids - mostly rather dilapidated, before heading down to solve thee riddle of the sphinx. Ismail, Kate's lovely driver, joined us and together we pieced together history and speculation. He seemed to be having a great time, taking hundreds of photos, helping us fend off numerous touts and offers of camels - to ride, not in exchange for us.

Kate took me to lunch in a swanky hotel with a pyramid view where we feasted on Egyptian bread and their equivalent of mezze, while checking every now and then that the pyramid (we couldn't work out which it was) hadn't gone anywhere. It hadn't.

Back home in the afternoon there was cake with candles and cards and presents and balloons, the kids singing and a camel-shaped handbag singing and it was quite the most perfect birthday I can remember. And no, Kate, I'm not just saying that, so Halas already.

Cairo

From the moment I'd booked the flight, I couldn't wipe the silly grin off my face. I was off to Cairo to see Kate and Rick and the kids and I couldn't wait. Luckily I didn't have to, as I had, typically, done it all very last minute. The only hiccup on the way was sitting on the tarmac for an hour and a half in Paris while they mended a hole in the plane, which wouldn't have done much to inspire confidence had I been able to suppress my excitement for a moment. That happened later, somewhere over the stunning views of the Mediterranean when I was overcome with nervousness and the recognition of my supreme cheek in inviting myself in the first place. I needn't have worried, and within a millisecond of arriving I felt as if I was coming home. Of course, Kate would be able to make a dose of bubonic plague feel welcome, but that's not the point.

This is the house of anyone's dreams, huge and airy and spacious. I've taken up residence on the veranda, looking out over the pool and garden to the golf course below and desert beyond. It's always idyllic, but the evenings are quite magical, the subtly lit palm trees framing the darkness beyond, the only sound the deep calling of frogs.

It's been fabulous exploring with Kate, who is also doing many of the sights for the first time. In the museum there wasn't much information but we realized that this was making it all the more interesting as we wondered what things were or what their significance had been. I've taught "Ancient Egypt" to nine year olds enough times to know some basic history and burial practices and so on, and knew something of the contents of Tutankhamen's tomb, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer quantity of artifacts there. Or for how perfectly preserved nearly everything is. It was stunning and quite baffling. I found my mind going round in circles trying to understand the beliefs surrounding these rites and customs. The mixture of literal and symbolic to me seemed illogical - such as taking real pots and pens and furniture with you into the afterlife, but having only a model boat for the journey. Tut was planning to be the Gods' scribe in his next life, so took with him a huge box of pens and whatever else he would need. I hope he's still there, scribbling away in hieroglyphics, The death mask was breathtaking, it's delicate face so engaging that I was drawn repeatedly to look at it as I would a human, as it was, despite its heavy rich gold and slightly stylized features, just that - human, almost living. The inner mummy case is pure gold, beautiful, as is the gold-plated second case. It blew my mind to think of the huge amount of artistry, effort and gold that was spent on death, made only to be hidden forever in tombs. What certainty these people must have had. Or were they just covering all bases? The third, outer sarcophagus is still in his tomb at Luxor, along with his body, but we saw the canopic jars and a chinese doll set of boxes that had encased his well-encased mummy. How difficult must it have been to break out and then have to find your innards in their canopic jars? And if it was all so easy, why did they need the death-masks to help the spirit identify the right body to return to? Yet in all this complexity, there is the simplicity of belief.

And how amazing it is that this belief, this wealth and the desert have together given us such an enormous amount of perfectly preserved history, so separated from our own time that we can only speculate and gaze in wonder.