pilgrimage ('09)

I apologize for the lack of blogging in the past week (I received several worried messages and/or emails to the effect of whether or not I had died). I have not, in fact, died, although the fatigue is certainly starting to set in over the past week.

Synapsis.

Last weekend, Asger (intern coordinator from work) and I decided to head out to Saint Catherine Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula. For those of you who don't know, brief run-down on Saint Catherine.

The monastery was built in the 6th Century CE by the Emperor Justinian (of Justinian and Theodora fame) around the site of the Burning Bush and Mount Sinai (indeed, the building's original and formal name reflect these holy sites). To this day, it continues to be a Greek Orthodox monastery (an anomaly in Egypt), and is the only extant, unmodified known Byzantine church in the world. In the 9th Century, the bones of the martyr Catherine (a young woman put to death in several ways, including being broken on the wheel, but, as martyrs often prove quite difficult to kill, eventually beheaded) miraculously transported themselves there, hence the current name. The monastery's other claim to fame is its fantastic library collection (in terms of Christian manuscripts, second only to the Vatican in Rome) which is notoriously well-guarded following the theft of a priceless manuscript in the 19th Century by a German scholar. Today, the monastery has also become an international pilgrimage/tourist (so hard to tell apart) destination (complete with awesome website: http://www.sinaimonastery.com/en/index.php?lid=1 ), servicing primarily Christian pilgrims, with a skew toward the Asian Protestant and Eastern Orthodox.

Back to our pilgrimage. Saint Catherine is rarely reached from Cairo. Most pilgrimage arranged tours are through Sharm al-Sheikh in the Sinai and attached to a larger pilgrimage agenda on a bus. As two random guys in Cairo going there, we had a significantly less-traveled road. Namely, there is one bus that leaves Cairo once a day to go there. It leaves at 11:30 in the morning, which we took on a Friday, and proceeds to drive through two deserts (the Eastern Desert and the Sinai Desert) through the heat of the day without air conditioning to get there. We arrived at 8, unfed, hot, and disoriented. The village of Saint Catherine (about 2 miles from the monastery) is beautiful. It is oddly reminiscent of a Western National Park built in the late 1960s (red stone construction, small motel-ish facilities). Luckily for me and Asger, we encounter an old man as we left the bus in the village, not knowing where to go, who took us to his cousin's hotel-motel-"Bedouin Camp" named Mukhayyam Musa, or Moses' Camp. A weird combination of those three first descriptions, it is surprisingly well-kept and nicely priced, with each of us getting a small, basic room (but it included things like a towel) with a king-sized bed for about $9. Nice. However, the Mukhayyam Musa was not serving food @ 8pm, and our very nice self-appointed guide felt terrible about this, so he offered to take us back to his home for a dinner, which, around 9:30 we ate on his balcony overlooking the red rock hills with the village below (his house was literally the highest building in the town). It was beautiful. The director of Saint Catherine Village Agricultural Projects (even after talking with this man for 3 hours, I am unclear what agriculture he is overlooking) will definitely be receiving a thank you letter from myself.

However, by the time we left at 10:30, we could just get back to the Mukhayyam Musa in time to sleep (albeit some of the best sleep I've gotten in Egypt as the Sinai gets cold at night) for one hour until we needed to wake up to start the walk to the Monastery. A word of explanation: the tradition of visiting the monastery is to climb Mount Sinai at night for the sunrise, then descend in the early morning in order to visit the monastery, which is only open from 9 am - noon. So we began our pilgrimage.

the walk

Once at the "base camp," for lack of a better word, we started the climb up by flashlight. Mount Sinai is not an easy climb, let alone in the dark. I had also failed to realize the my Danish traveling companion had never been higher than things in Denmark (so, like, a table?) before, meaning that he began to have some horrible altitude sickness by the time we were nearing the summit at 3:30 am. Near the top, there is an area with Bedouin guys selling coffee and tea and renting blankets. Blankets? you might ask. Certainly. At the top it was windy and freezing and 3:30 in the morning. Probably about 35 degrees Fahrenheit. We needed three blankets, then started our camp out at the top. Luckily, it was empty at this point and beautiful. So far from, well, most things, the top of the mountain gets possibly the best view of the stars I have ever seen, including the full ribbon of the Milky Way. Absolutely beautiful and we were the only people up there for about one and a half hours. Starting around 5 am, the pilgrims (Russian, Korean) and tourists (British, German, Japanese) started to come in droves. Droves.

nearing sunrise (circa 5 am)

pilgrims/tourists

pilgrims/tourists

sunrise on mount sinai

not the happiest asger has ever looked due to being underslept, altitude sick, and muhammad, the bedouin i accidentally befriended by becoming his arabic-russian translator with a woman at the top. he gave me an american penny to remember him by (?); i gave him a dc metro card.

pilgrims/tourists

Here's the thing about Mount Sinai though; it might be freezing at night, but literally the second the sun was up, you could feel the heat start. Thus began the mad dash off the mountain as temperatures climbed up to 100 (around 6:15 am).

get off the mountain

Off the mountain (around 7:30), we stopped in the monastery guesthouse until the monastery opened, drinking nescafé and not eating (as they wouldn't sell us food since there was barely enough for the people staying there). The monastery guesthouse, as it turns out, is infested with blue chairs, cats.

guesthouse and its two infestations

After exhausting (literally), that option, we entered the monastery.

monastery walls

Dodging between the Russian tours, we saw the Burning Bush (cutting, made in the 9th Century, the actual site of the Bush being inside the chapel).

burning bush cutting

At this sleep-deprived point in my being, I really couldn't get over how, next to the Burning Bush, there is a fire extinguisher (in case it happens again?). I think it is actually the best thing I have ever seen.

use only in case of emergency, miracle

We toured the interior of the chapel, which is an absolutely beautiful building with some of the most famous icons in the world inside that, for better or for worse, one cannot take picture of, but here is the area near the door to the church. The monastery open to tourists/pilgrims is remarkably small, with very narrow passages. I am glad I managed to take a few photos without people.

outside the church

church entrance, bell tower

the monastery belltower and its minaret (built in the 9th century in the fatimid style for local bedouin muslims as a sign of good faith. it was never used though as its qibla does not actually face mecca. nice gesture though, and is still mentioned by the bedouin).

Once we exited the monastery (around 11), we encounter our next task for the day: how to get back to Cairo. There is one bus a day from Saint Catherine village to Cairo. It is, unfortunately, at 6 in the morning. So to take that, we'd have to wait until Sunday morning, thus missing a day of work. Unacceptable. So began the negotiations.

For the first time since I've been in Egypt, my Arabic was ridiculously useful. Nice thing about speaking Jordanian/Palestinian is that the Bedouin in Sinai (with a few, minor adjustments) can understand me perfectly. Go symbolic capital. Anyhow, with this oddly acquired skill, I set about talking to all of the Bedouin guys I could find asking if any could recommend a way home. Taxi available... for $500. No. Taxi available to Suez for only $100 each (then, presumably, find something to Cairo). No. Eventually, realizing that as a group of two our bargaining power is, well, useless, I just ask them that if they see anyone else going to Cairo, let us know. Lo and behold, ten minutes later, there are three American guys who had been in Israel looking to go to Cairo. After consulting with them for a minute (Me: "Going to Cairo?" Them: "Yes." Me: "I can negotiate for you as long as you're kind of willing to follow me, a complete stranger into wherever that takes us and count of me to be able to get you out of it." Them: "Umm... Yes?"), fanagle a cab ride for $6 a person to go to the nearest police checkpoint on the highway in the desert (what with Sinai's recent checkered past of changing borders, it is currently closely monitored to say the least). Once at the checkpoint (in about 120 degree heat), we are walking up toward the guard building when a white car zooms by with about ten people more than it can contain inside. They get out, yelling, open the passengers' side door, help a man out who clearly has a broken left leg and is bleeding at the hip. From garbled phrases, I can hear that there was a car accident, he was in the car, the other guy, not so lucky (car accidents are common in the Sinai where the equation of reckless driving + heat + old cars often results in serious accidents). As we continue to approach, it becomes clear that the other guy is, in fact, in the back seat of the white car. I'm starting to question the choices I've made in life with the amount of corpses I've accidentally seen. That said, I get to the nearest officer, ask if I can help, and am basically informed that they're waiting for an ambulance. In the meantime, we wait until a bus comes by, which we hitch a ride with for about $10 to get to the farthest northern suburb of Cairo six hours later.

Not the most restful weekend, and plenty of unforeseen events, but all in all, I am content I went to Saint Catherine. I actually think it'd be a really interesting place to do fieldwork... Fulbright perhaps.

And the full album.

pharaonic egypt on display

Yesterday, I finally trucked it on over to the Egyptian National Museum. For those who don't know, this museum is where all sorts of crazy famous stuff is kept. Like the finds of Tutakhamun's tomb. Or the Fayum Portraits (the only known instance of portraiture in the ancient world, the Fayum Portraits are a series of paintings from the Christian community of the 3rd - 5th centuries done on wood panels designed to resemble their sponsors... as they were attached over their mummified face so that their soul could find their body after the Resurrection). Or thousands of thousands of other treasures.

The collection truly is unlike any other, dwarfing any other archeological museum in the world. That said, the curation job does its best to destroy the impressiveness of this collection. Nothing in the museum is meaningfully labeled, and priceless artifact upon priceless artifact are stacked to the ceiling. Nevertheless, it is not an experience to be missed, and I'm glad I went.

That said, while wandering around these amazing 4,000-5,000 year old artifacts for hours, as I returned to the love of Pharaonic (and continued my love of post-Pharaonic) Egypt, I realized that I have a kind of permanent sense of disbelief for Pharaonic objects. Notably, that I suspect that every Pharaonic object, every sphinx, every obelisk, every carving is made of styrofoam. Basically, I realized that my conditioning of Egyptian "artifacts" stems entirely from the Lost River of the Pharaohs ride at Water World in Denver, CO. It's kind of hard to get over this association once it's in your head, no matter how priceless and rare the object. Kind of like having a song stuck in your head, but rather that you unconsciously associate all of the antiquities with a cackling styrofoam head, fake smoke, and being thrown down a manmade stream in an inflatable raft.

This probably says a lot about me.

you can read the same thing you just read, but more academic sounding!

That's right ladies and gentlemen! For this special, one-time (in the sense that this will forever be available for free, public consumption because this is the internet) offer, you can read the post below, but on a different blog that sounds slightly more pretentious because that blog has money behind it ($ = fancy writing style).

In other news, in case you didn't notice, although I imagine you did if you found your way here, the url for this blog has indeed changed. In theory, it is easier. But yes, you are now reading this at:

alexanderwamboldt.blogspot.com

Take note for future reading ease.

rural egypt

Yesterday instead of researching Pope Shenouda III again, we had a day of office fieldwork.  By that, I mean we headed down the Eastern Nile Road through the fluvial plain south of Cairo to get to the village of Deir al-Maymun.  

along the eastern nile road

along the eastern nile road

a method of irrigation rarely still seen, along the eastern nile road

On the way to Deir al-Maymun, we were distracted and went to Atfih, which, the last time the Report visited, had a mounting tension in the local Christian population.  

deir al-rasul, atfih, egypt

After the 1992 earthquake, the village church (by scholars dated around 800 CE, by locals dated around 200 CE) was rendered structurally unstable, but funds were not presented for the restoration (for a rural Egyptian village, conducting structural work on a building over a thousand years old is financially unfeasible).  As a result, the Christian population had built a new church without permit next door in two days to ensure that it could be put up before the authorities stopped the construction.  Since then, the government has stepped up and is renovating Deir al-Rasul (literally, the Monastery of the Messenger, but it is a church).  

deir al-rasul, under construction

Deir al-Rasul also claims its sacred history through the presence of a cave-like structure that is accessed from a small room to the left of the altar in the haikal (Coptic churches are structurally similar to those of Greek/Russian Orthodoxy, where an iconostasis separates the main body of the church from the altar, which is called a haikal in Coptic churches).  Through this room, a small vertical shaft in one wall reveals a space about eight feet long, four feet wide and high that is eight feet above this side room.  Here, Saint Paul (not the Apostle, but the 3rd Century Saint Paul) is said to have lived.

the passage to where st. paul lived

where st. paul lived

The village of Deir al-Maymun is further south, at a point where the fluvial plain narrows.  Because Egypt rarely sees rain, the Nile flood provides the sole source of water for much of its ecosystems.  As a result, the green fluvial plain along the Nile breaks away at the exact point where the rich silt and water from the floods stop, opening to the Eastern and Western Deserts on each side of the river.  Deir al-Maymun is at a particularly narrow point.  

where the fluvial plain breaks into the eastern desert

deir al-maymun, notice how brief the fluvial plain is between the nile at right and the eastern desert at left?

The village itself is also an anomaly, with around 150 families, only 4 are Muslim.  This concentration of Christians is rare in Egypt.  Despite its remoteness, the village also hosts two important Christian sites: the Church of St. Antony and the Church of St. Stifin.  

door on left: church of st. antony, door on right: church of saint stifin

church of st. antony, church of st. stifin from above

The Church of St. Antony holds the cage where St. Antony was alleged to have started his asceticism, living in a narrow cleft in the solid rock upon which the church is now built.  Next door is the Church of St. Stifin, which locals call the oldest church in the world.  This title is hotly disputed.  

inside st. stifin

The village priest has been attempting to expand these sites (along with the place where St. Antony is alleged to have woven the baskets from whose profits he survived) into a pilgrimage center, and has purchased the neighboring homes toward the Nile where he hopes to build a small retreat center and café for the anticipated visitors.  The majority of villagers work in agriculture or a nearby quarry, but both enterprises are unsurprisingly not very lucrative.

planned site of future center

site of st. antony's basket weaving

inside a village home

The Eastern Desert Road is a recent addition to Egyptian transit, less than 5 years old.  While certainly the faster travel method, it also overheated our thirty year old car in the 110 degree heat, leaving us in the desert for much longer than anticipated waiting for it to cool.  So it goes.

the eastern desert road

the eastern desert road

complete coverage

quick thought/link

As I am sure all of you are aware of, United States President Barack Obama spoke recently in Cairo.  It was kind of a big deal.  Part of the speech was on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Obama rightfully called attention to the hateful discourse of Holocaust denial that one periodically sees in the Middle East, calling for it to end in order to make meaningful peace discussions a reality.

With that in mind, it equally behooves us to recall how this event can and is manipulated and twisted within the United States.  Indeed, when using a historical reference, I think it's important to remember that all instances of remembering history are (un)consciously making statements about current affairs.  The closest thing to a fair use of history is to at least try to remember it at in the truest and most holistic sense of which we are aware, regardless of a person's country or culture of origin.  Denial, lying, and fragmentation of history further misinformation and distortion, lending themselves to sectarianism, violence, and hatred.  This resonates particularly true with an event as recent and painful as the Holocaust.

For anyone wondering what I'm talking about, this particular story from today's news is sickening.  If you a resident of New York, or just have enough time on your hands,  please call/write/email Dov Hikind with a politely-worded message informing him that memorials to the Holocaust should be memorials to all of the Holocaust.

things that amuse me at work, a mcsweeney's list

I compiled a top 5 list of article headlines I have come across while reading a million entries on the Arab West Report (one day one of you will accidently click on it).  It can be found here.

buchi's camera's photos

Buchi from work has a really nice camera.  

buchi

We were playing with it at the work party.  It is incredibly fun to play with nice cameras.  Then he came to the Pyramids with me yesterday along with said camera.  Here are the resulting images.  If anyone was wondering, yes, yes I would love a really, really nice camera for a birthday/Christmas/graduation present.  Or an iPhone (I still do want it for my birthday Dad!).  The camera though, maybe graduation...  Anyhow, here are photos.

fancy camera + triangle = awesome

this is pretty much the same shot, just zoomed in.  but oh, how it zooms.

this might be my favorite picture of myself ever taken

famous triangles

This weekend (because weekends are Friday and Saturday here, so while all of you read this over your Sunday morning coffee, remember that I woke up at 8 and have been sweating in an office at a computer for hours.  Similarly, when you re-read this on a Friday at work, remember that I got to sleep in), I have lived up to my ultimate tourist.  Yesterday, Sheetal and I went back to Khan al-Khalili (and north/south of it), which was really pretty (re: kid with kite on roof), if a bazillion degrees (actual temperature.  Bazillions exist in both Fahrenheit and Celsius in Cairo).

near bab zuweila

bab zuweila

shade at al-fishawi (open for 2 centuries without being closed one day).  also, stuffed crocodile.

sheetal at the masjid al-aqmar – mosque of the moonlight

street view

inside the wikala

inside the wikala

inside the wikala

on top of the wikala.  

Then today I woke up at 7 in order to go to some famous triangle-y things in a suburb of Cairo with Buchi from work so that he can see them before they leave.  

these famous triangle-y things

I feel like going there was the singularly most touristy thing I have ever done and may never  be able to out-tourist.  They are the Pyramids at Giza after all.  For the record, I don't really mind being a tourist (it is, after all, how one sees things when traveling), so this is more an observation about how seeing the Pyramids is the ultimate tourist destination.

for all your mini-statue of anubis needs

For those of you who didn't know me as a fourth grader (be glad first of all), I had a thing for Pharaonic Egypt.  I can still probably rattle off the who-begat-who of Pharaonic cosmology (Nut + Geb = Osiris and Set, etc.).  That said, during this entire phase, I never really became interested in the Pyramids.  They were part of the whole yes, but never really the part that appealed to me.  As a result, I guess my expectations for today were pretty low for the Pyramids themselves.  I didn't think they'd be boring, just that they weren't something that particularly interested me.  

they were uninterested/ hot and sleeping in the pyramid.

The Pyramids of Giza themselves are located in Giza, which is really just a suburb of Cairo (with something like 7 million inhabitants) at this point.  The illusion of the Pyramids being in the middle of nowhere in the desert is completely an illusion.  Most views reveal the sprawling apartment complexes of Giza all around you, with just a small, cordoned off area of desert to surround the Pyramids.

see the polluted sprawl of cairo in the back?

there it is!

After entering the park at the Sphinx gate with my oddly still functional Jordanian student ID giving a 70% discount, the Sphinx sort of confirmed this suspicion.  I guess it was just smaller than I had pictured/ wanted it to be.  Significantly smaller.  And behind a wall.  That said, I did learn its name in Arabic, which is أبو الهول (Abu al-Hol), or the Terrifying Dude.  This combined with its small stature completely re-endeared it to me.

the dude

hey look, it's me.

However, once approaching the Pyramids, they started to win me over.  Don't get me wrong; there is nothing to do in the park really other than look at big triangles and have people attempt to get you to pay to ride a camel.  But there's kind of a reason those triangles are famous.

triangle + horse cart

As always, for complete photo collection:

Friday (Islamic Cairo)

Saturday (Pyramids)