Alexandria and Siwa

We departed Ma’adi Monday at 10AM for a long-awaited cultural journey to Alexandria and Siwa Oasis. Alex (as locals call it) came first. Traffic on the Cairo-Alex road was awful, so it took hours to get there; sometimes I wonder if there is any city in Egypt with manageable traffic! At least I got to photograph some cars and trucks with funny stickers on their windows.

The advertised amenities

Does it really have YouTube??

Trucks are always painted wildly

Our guide, the brilliant Tarek Swelim, showed up the next morning, and we set off for a day tour of Alexandria. It’s a curious city. Like Chicago’s Lake Michigan, the Mediterranean gives it an openness Cairo entirely lacks. Our hotel view gives you an idea.

View from our room

Its population of about 7 million has changed quite a bit since Tarek was a child in Alexandria. People from the countryside have poured in looking for opportunity, and as many are not educated and very traditional, the most conservative side of Islam, the Salafis or Nour party, has taken hold. We could count the women not wearing hijab on one hand, and there were lots of men with the massive beards and forehead bruises announcing their conservative bent. Prior to Nassar coming to power in the 1950s, Alexandria was home to many foreigners, its place on the Med making it a natural center of trade. Now it’s pretty much all Egyptians, though the European style buildings of downtown abound, crumbling in many cases.

History exists in Alexandria in palimpsest, literally in some cases in layers. Sometime in the 1960s, a small Roman amphitheater was discovered under a pile of rubble and dirt. Its careful excavation revealed a small but quite lovely site, and one can literally see how new Alex has been built on the older city.

Layers of history in Alexandria

Enjoying the ampitheater

Another layer of history was revealed during a visit to catacombs, also discovered under rubble when a donkey simply disappeared down a hole. The catacombs were the burying grounds for generations of Alexandrians, many a mix of Greek and Egyptian, and it was fascinating to see how the two cultures blended. The images painted on the walls were Egyptoid, not exactly Greek or Roman yet not really Egyptian. The old religions still practiced in Upper Egypt during the Ptolomaic period were watered down in Alexandria, and the art mixed Greek faces and poses with Egyptian motifs. I finally understood how the word “Alexandrian” as an adjective describing something derivative and imitative came to mean what it does.

Temple within the catacombs

Alexandrian painting in the catacombs

Catacomb chambers for bodies

A visit to the Museum of Alexandria reinforced this insight, with a small but professionally displayed collection that visually described how the city survived invasions, takeovers, bombings, religious changes, and floods with a fine collection of sculpture, ceramics, and so forth. Marine archaelogists have also found wonders and continue to find more.

All rescued from the Med

Objects from the sea, photo in back of diver

Greedy that we are, the highlight of the day was an opulent lunch at a seafood restaurant called Blue and White (for its Greek origins). We ate far more than we should but it was splendid and often exciting. First up (after many appetizers) were grilled slipper lobsters, the meaty tails lightly touched with butter, followed by langoustines, calamari, an enormous grilled sea trout, and some bony little local fishes. Dessert was out of the question, but Tarek indulged me in a café offering mint tea and sheesha. After that, we were whipped, returned to the hotel for a quiet evening and an early start the next day.

En route to Siwa, we stopped at the Commonwealth memorial cemetery from the decisive battle of El Alamein during WWII; this was the turning point in north Africa that disgraced Rommel, the Desert Fox, and at enormous cost, kept the Nazis from taking over oil-rich north Africa and the Suez Canal. The site is perfectly maintained, and deeply moving. Soldiers and sailors from all over the British commonwealth were represented, from South Africa to New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. I found tears rolling down my cheeks as each of us wandered through the thousands of headstones. The battle was as bad as the worst in history. Like Gettysburg, there were over 58,000 casualties of both Axis and Allied forces. There are separate cemetaries for the Italian and German soldiers.

Entry to Alamein, Commonwealth grave site

Though largely Christian, Jewish soldiers were honored appropriately

New Zealander

Scottish

South African

Those who fell together are buried like this

An unknown soldier; there were many

View of part of the Commonwealth site

Welsh

After this sobering stop, we continued onward to Siwa. And continued. And continued. Siwa Oasis is about 50 miles from the Libyan border in the great Western Desert (or Libyan Desert or Great Sand Sea, depending on your point of view). It took nine hours to get there from Alexandria. It looks like a mirage after hours in the desert, lush with palms, lakes (mostly brackish) and freshwater springs, hot and cold.

The oasis 

Unlike much of Egypt, Siwans are Berbers with their own language entirely unlike Arabic, and a curious culture that in the past allowed male-to-male marriage, and still immerses women from head to toe in a tent of robes.

Siwan women, taken with a zoom

Our lodge, Adrere Amellal, is an eco-lodge pioneered by a visionary environmentalist. Its architecture is created entirely out of local materials, featuring mud, stone, and salt, and it has no electricity. None. I learned something. I like electricity. The food was wonderful, all local and organic, and since the owner is Coptic, alcohol is served generously for cocktails and dinner.

Adrere Amellal nestled into its mountain

Adrere Amellal from up high

Coffee on our porch delivered every morning

No electricity creates atmosphere

A quiet moment on our little porch

Tarek figures out our day with butler Abdullah and driver Ali

But its setting was transcendent and our stay there included two outings each day. Our first was to the remains of the temple of the Oracle of Amun, sought by Alexander the Great to confirm that he should rightfully be ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Temple of the Oracle of Amun from below

Alexander stood right here

Our afternoon outing was a wild ride through the desert in a seemingly indestructible Toyota Land Cruiser specially outfitted for the desert. Our driver Ali took us up and down sand dunes, some of which must have been slopes of nearly 180 degrees. Terrifying and lots of fun! The desert scenery is unearthly, and we learned why the Great Sand Sea is so appropriate. There are large tracts of fossilized oysters, sand dollars, clams, scallops, and corals. We even saw the fossilized remains of a great sea turtle.

A particularly graceful dune

Dunes, dunes, everywhere

Close-up of fossilized molluscs

Great Sand Sea rock filled with mollusk fossils

Sea turtle fossil in the desert

Me and Harris, Great Sand Sea with oasis in the background (click to enlarge)

The three desert musketeers

Ali made us tea as we watched the sun set. Another thing I learned: wearing contact lenses in the desert is miserable! Between the wind and the blowing sand, lenses quickly become encrusted. Live and learn. Also, the desert makes your clothes, hair, and skin dirty very fast, and it’s cold at night; Harris and I wore every single garment we brought just to stay warm.

Desert sunset begins

Desert sunsets are amazing

Ali makes tea in the desert

 

Early morning horseback riding

On the 16^th, I did something in retrospect I can hardly believe. I woke up early to go horseback riding in the desert before our morning excursion. The horses there are the owner’s personal polo ponies, outfitted with English saddles. My charming and kind guide, Saad, helped me mount Ruby, and we headed off for the dunes. After a bit, he asked if I wished to gallop, and we set off. Somehow I figured out how to post and stay on the horse despite no pommel like a Western saddle. It was terrifying yet I was thrilled. The 16^th  marked the one-year anniversary of my back surgery; I can confidently say I am very well recovered. After an hour and a half of galloping and walking, I walked on legs like jello back to our room to shower and get ready for the day. I’m still sore and bruised!

More sand dune riding was the order of the day, and this time we were joined by other guests, including the very charming Swedish ambassador to Jordan and her family. The scope of the desert defies description. Armies have been lost there, but thankfully, we survived.

Returning to Alexandria for one more night, we met with a Fulbright colleague and his wife for dinner. In the morning, before driving back to Cairo, Tarek took us to the breathtaking Biblioteca Alexandrina, a modern answer to the fabled Library of Alexandria. Its reading room alone is one of the great spaces in architecture. Check out its website, www.bibalex.org.

The granite exterior of the Biblioteca Alexandrina inscribed with many writing forms

The amazing reading room (internet photo)

Biblioteca Alexandrina complex from the air (internet photo)

Ruby and I snuggle after a gallop

Back to Cairo, and to a dinner at Bruce and Annemarie Lohof’s place in Zamalek in honor of the newly appointed chair of the Fulbright Commission, Tom Healy. By the time we fell into bed, we were exhausted but happy. What a week! I am letting the pictures do the real talking. Now it's work hard to make up the time. BTW, Paul Lauter, my colleague and boss at Trinity, arrives this Saturday for a short visit!