Cairo Investigated 1

arches into my office

AUC plaza

After a short trip with colleagues to Ain Soukhna (a resort area near where the Suez Canal meets the Red Sea)—a trip that balanced meetings about curricular matters with drinking and eating with our buddies—we returned to business as usual. My students at AUC are giving me a lot of pleasure, and to my surprise, my art history survey course is the most fun. Last time I taught it was ten years ago, back when slides were in use rather than PowerPoint, so I’m re-inventing the wheel with new PPT presentations. The students make it worth it. They pepper me with questions, many of which I have to answer “I don’t know,” and are filled with energy and life. As I walk to my office, through campus plazas and arches, it’s great knowing that a room full of eager, challenging, and smart kids await me.

My wonderful class

Harris and I are officially residents now. We picked up our passports from the Fulbright office with official residency visas inside good through early June. Getting the visas involved producing an official copy of our marriage license to prove that though our last names are different, we are legally married. Thankfully, my brother Bruce is super-efficient and obtained the license, sent it to Fulbright, and we are now legal. Ironically, Egyptian women don’t usually take their husbands’ names. Go figure.

Khan below the Citadel

First act as residents was to be tourists, and with our friend, guide, and driver Emad (pronounced “eye-med”), we went to the Street of the Tentmakers in the Khan al’Khalili, the fabled souk and shopping maze. It’s situated right below the Citadel, an early 20^th century fortress whose walls include limestone removed from the sheathing of the pyramids; its center is the Alabaster Mosque, an enormous attempt to out-do the great 16^th century mosques designed by Sinan for Suleyman the Great in Turkey. Ironically, the neighborhood at the base of the hill of the Citadel is El Khaleefa, a poor area with winding streets no wider than a small car, teeming with people, animals, smells, and life. Some of the “streets” are no more than three feet wide, filled with obstacles and mud, and festooned with stuff for sale (lots of it impressively colorful, tacky, and sexy clothing!).

Harris and Emad

Street of the Tentmakers

Did I mention tacky?

Some of our loot

Getting into decorating

Emad went to high school there, and as he drove his taxi, all I could think was his car was threading the streets like threading a needle. Once we arrived near the Street of the Tentmakers, and parked, Emad trotted us to his friend Hany’s studio. Hany has spent his life sewing splendid appliqués, a skill he learned from his father, who learned it from his grandfather. He showed us a piece in its first stage, its design drawn with tailor’s pencil; after months of work, the end results are breathtaking works of art that marry Pharonic motifs with traditional arabesque geometries and sometimes quotations from the Qu’ran. As we sipped mint tea and Turkish coffee, Hany brought out piece after piece. We were so dazzled that we spent far more than we’d planned, and our flat is bedecked with gorgeous fabrics. Two are quotations from the Qu’ran involking God’s name with a line asking for protection. Not only are they beautiful (I think of Kufic script as jewelry for the language) but the motif of protection in our home seems wise. The only condition was that those two pieces never touch the floor. 

Hany at work

Living in a largely Muslim culture always makes us think. I had the temerity to give a lecture to my survey class of the arts of Islam, which I had written originally after 9/11 for my students at UConn as an attempt to counteract ignorance about Islam. My students added a few observations to my points in the lecture, but it was afterwards that was special. One student put it well: “Muslims’ actions don’t reflect Islamic teachings these days.” I’m learning from them, probably more than they learn from me. In the future, I hope to talk with the women in the class about wearing the veil—why they choose to do so, what it feels like, and how they see the veil and feminism—since I know most of these young women are serious feminists.

On Saturday, we are taking a tour of Cairo guided by a provost from AUC, John Swanson, whose passion is the history of the city. I am going to post this before his tour since I strongly suspect that the tour will yield its own posting! Plus, in 8 days, we see Harris’s sister Nancy and husband Tom in Sharm el’Sheikh, and Nancy is bringing me swag from the states. Cheers to all.

PS: learned a new text/email abbreviation: IBM, for insha’allah bukra malesh (God willing, tomorrow, no penalties, my bad—“malesh” is pretty flexible in meaning)

Future University; couldn't make this up!

PPS: there is a postmodern monstrosity near AUC called “Future University.” You gotta see it.