Cairo, the city victorious

Finally, my last Egypt post: 3,500 years of history down, and only the latest ~1,000 left! 

But first, a quick preview to Priscilla's upcoming food blog post. My favorite activity of our entire trip was the food tour we took with Bellies En-Route! We had a private walking tour in downtown Cairo and ate and drank through nine different stops until we were about to burst. We did so well that our guide took us to the extra bonus dessert stop. Priscilla will be covering the actual food; I only took photos of all my empty plates to prove how much I ate:

Back to history. The Rashidun Caliphate (first post-Muhammad Islamic state), wrested control of Egypt from the Byzantines in 641. Although Egypt was ruled by a succession of Islamic empires, the capital always stayed in the greater Cairo area. Cairo itself was founded in 969 to be the new capital city for the Fatimid Caliphate, which at the time ruled all of North Africa and had just taken Egypt from the Abbasid Caliphate. The city's name, al-Qahirah- "the Conqueror", or "the Victorious", is named after Mars, which was in ascent at the time. They built an imposing hilltop fortress—the Citadel—and the city slowly expanded to encompass the nearby previous capitals. 

Islamic Cairo, or "Old Cairo", is a lively district of narrow streets, shops, and mosques, and is a great place to explore and do all your shopping at the Khan al Khalili market.

We also saw an incredible performance by a troupe of Tanoura Dancers, the local version of the Sufi "whirling dervish" tradition of worship, where dancers pray and spin to reach a state of religious trance. The dancers spun their weighted skirts for 30+ minutes at a time, and it was so mesmerizing that we felt entranced too. Almost as mesmerizing as the antics of the finger-cymbals musician.

Moving ahead to modern times (it pains me to skip so much history- Saladin! the Ottomans! the Mohammad Ali Pasha dynasty! the Suez Canal! French and British occupations! the 1952 revolution! your homework is to please go read up on those, seriously Egypt has so much history), Cairo is enormous now- with a population over 20 million, it's the largest city in the Middle East and the second largest in Africa. It's so sprawling that it's even conquered the nearby Great Pyramids and the Old Kingdom capital of Memphis. It's absolutely packed with people and is seriously polluted. 

Our first(!) day in Cairo we visited the slum known as Garbage City, which was a good way to Overton window our air quality expectations for the rest of the trip. Garbage City is part of the Manshiyat Naser slum, one of Cairo's Coptic Christian areas (cool fact: 10-15% of Egypt's population is Coptic Christian. Egypt had one of the earliest Christian communities, founded in just 42 CE!). Garbage City is home to Cairo's garbage collectors: they collect trash from throughout the city and bring it here to sort and process. There are bales of garbage and recyclables everywhere, and some of the buildings are home to urban livestock (we saw pigs, goats, sheep, and pigeon coops).

Cairo isn't all modern history: the classic Egyptian Museum is located in a huge historic building next to Tahrir Square. The biggest draws are the Royal Mummies, with big-shots such as Rameses II, Seti I, and Hapshepsut, and the treasure from Tutankhamun's tomb, including my favorite, his famous golden mask. No photos allowed in those two halls, but wikipedia has some decent ones of Tut-loot. The Egyptian Museum has a reputation as an overwhelming jumble of poorly labeled and displayed exhibits, but it was much better than I expected. They're almost finished building a new modern museum near the Great Pyramids, so there are a few giant wooden moving crates scattered around the museum, which actually add a surprising amount to the atmosphere. 

We also visited the excellent Islamic Art museum but didn't spring for the photo ticket. Several exhibits are marked with a red sticker to show they were reconstructed after a 2014 car bombing on the police HQ across the street.

That's a good transition to my next modern Egypt topic. So, is Egypt safe? Hard to say. The revolutions and protests from 2011-2014 resulted in replacing a dictator (Mubarak) with a dictator (Morsi), and then replacing that dictator with yet another dictator (Sisi). Egypt is stable now but struggles with domestic terrorism, and the human rights situation is bad: Freedom House rates Egypt as "not free". The security presence is heavy and omnipresent, and the US Department of State advises strongly against travel outside of tourist areas. During our trip there was an attempted bombing in Giza, and the suspected bomber later killed himself and three police officers near Khan al Khalili and the Madrasa where the Tanoura dancers perform.

Now I need a gradual transition back to more hopeful topics. Here's a revolutionary mural near the protest landmark Tahrir Square, showing a starving street kid and his meal of baladi bread. 

Real change is slow and difficult, but what I most enjoyed about Egypt was the people. Resourceful, resilient, incredibly welcoming, and a great sense of humor. Example: it starts raining but our driver's windshield wiper isn't working right. He jumps out in slow traffic and tries to bend it a little by hand, but instead it snaps off. He laughs, moves the wiper back and forth a few times by hand in time with the remaining wiper, and then jumps back in the car. If I was a bad travel blogger, I guess this is where I'd end with something sentimental like "Egypt is never what you expect, instead it's so much more", or "Egypt is the car".

We celebrated the end of our Egypt trip with a private sunset sail on the Nile with our friends. Our felucca (traditional Nile boat) tacked back and forth across our peaceful stretch of the river, and we enjoyed good company until the sun set.

Until our next trip!

-Peter