At about 3 a.m. in Cairo I was awakened by violent nausea that emptied my stomach. Three hours later the wave swept in again. A half hour after that I finished packing my things, left the apartment where I was staying, broke the key in the lock, and hailed a taxi for the train station.
Was it the calamari sandwich I'd eaten the day before? (Very yummy.) Did I forget to use bottled water with my toothbrush?
It takes two full days to feel like eating again, but as soon as I do I head straight to a waterfront place famous with local Alexandrians for its seafood. (Sooner or later we're all going to die, and I AM on the Mediterranean!)
I am not disappointed. I take a carriage to the old Anfushi district, around the western peninsula from my hotel. As we turn the corner from the busy corniche the street suddenly turns quiet and pungent with fish on wagons that line the route. The Farag Restaurant is not far, right across a quiet street from a swimming beach that will be mobbed in a few months with Cairenes escaping the city's heat, but tonight there's no one here but a single family playing on the swingsets.
Inside I'm greeted warmly and steered to a beautifully displayed fresh catch of the day: calamari, pompano, red and white snapper, shrimp in three sizes, and several other varieties of multi-colored fish. I choose the large shrimp—grilled in garlic—hold up 4 fingers and assent to a salad. The host doesn't mention that the salad will be enormous and in ADDITION to the 4 other salads, plus 5 loaves of pocket bread, plus the pickled vegetables that I love, that he'll bring right out for me. I'm stuffed before the shrimp (6, not 4) and salad arrive, but they make a good breakfast. I end up paying $16—more than I've spent on any meal so far—but it more than makes up for the day I've lost touristing.
I decide to spend an extra day in Alexandria since I feel so capital now and begin the day at the Alexandria Library, a soaring, ultra-modern edifice right across from the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great chose the site to become the greatest city in his empire, but it was Ptolemy I who executed the vision. The library was intended to be the most comprehensive in the world and books from around the world poured in to be copied and added to the nooks.
It may have included as many as 700,000 scrolls when Julius Caesar reportedly burned it down during a battle after setting fire to his own ships in the harbor, from where the flames spread to the docks and beyond. About 400 years later Emperor Constantine burned it down again in his Christian zeal to eradicate Alexandria's polytheistic past, of which the new library was a part. But in the meantime, scholars from around the world used the collections to piece together discoveries in math, physics, biology, astronomy, medicine, literature and geography. Today, across from where I sit in the library's coffee shop, the large open plaza is full of young scholars with notebooks in their laps, taking a break from their labors in the stacks. Meanwhile two women in sweatsuits and hijabs jog by on the corniche.
I almost skip Alexandria because most of its treasures remain under water. Built in the delta of the Nile whose fanning tributaries relocated naturally over the centuries, the city has sunk at least 20 feet since its heyday. But though divers have been recovering artifacts since the '90s, whole neighborhoods and legendary districts are still coming to light.
Ptolemy (a Macedonian) was a great builder and intended Alexandria to be a bridge between the old pharaonic era and the new Hellenistic one, and evidence of this inspiration is apparent in the many underwater photographs hanging in the Alexandria Museum. When I go to the museum—my next stop—it is these eerie underwater photographs I find most compelling. The artifacts themselves tell only a piece of the story that the photographs hint at.
You can't scratch the ground in Alexandria (or anywhere in Egypt) without turning up some ancient thing, which is a constant irritation to modern builders forced to give the reclaimers time to excavate a promising site. But they rarely get enough time to uncover much before development begins, so more natural means typically reveal new finds.
That's the story behind the catacombs that I visit next, three levels filled with dead over the generations, with the bottom level now underwater. The discovery as told to me via hand signals by the ancient guide is that a donkey stepped in a hole and fell through, revealing the immense caverns beneath. "The donkey die," he laughs.
But that's the same story behind the discovery in the 1990s of the vast necropolis near Bahariya Oasis called the Valley of the Golden Mummies, where I'll go next, and of many sites discovered elsewhere over the years. It's a continuing source of amusement to Egyptians that despite more than a century of hard labor by foreign Egyptologists, it's still the random donkey that's turning up the finds.
My last stop for the day is the Roman Theatre, uncovered beneath subsequent constructions and just sitting there in the midst of a thriving city. The Romans took over officially after Cleopatra committed suicide, marking the end of the pharaonic era. Like the Ptolemys before them, the Romans would blend elements of previous architectural styles with their own. I can see the evidence of this in what's left of the rich people's catacombs, with their scarabs, cobras, and pillars.
It's the end of the day and I have no interest in food, so after finding the train station and struggling through buying a ticket to Cairo for the next day, I return to my hotel and call it a night.
I can't relax completely, though. When I reach Cairo I want to find the nearby bus station and try to book a ticket to the Bahariya Oasis for that day. The train station is in the center of the city—a pulsing, choking mess of vehicles, animals, shouting vendors and pressing people. ("The word "chaos" comes from "Cairo.") On the train I ask someone to write the name of the bus station in Arabic for me, since every single attempt of mine to be understood using my Lonely Planet pocket vocabulary has failed. What works is writing what I need, when I can find a likely volunteer, and just pointing to it.
When I get to the bus station I'm too late to depart today, so I head to a juice bar to kill the afternoon before notifying my Cairo friends that I'm back —again—in town. That's where I am now, listening to very loud, very bad American music.
(I'm delighted though, apropos of nothing, to note that of the three people seated near me, all are using Apple laptops.)
I've taken to reading your postings aloud to whoever is in the room with me. I'm reminded with each post what a terrific writer you are.
ReplyDeleteStay safe and well. xxoomm