Gearing Down

We are more aware every day that our time here is drawing to a close. On 3 June, we should be in our house in New Haven by mid-evening. We all have our ways of dealing with anxiety. Mine is making lists and knocking off things; Harris’s is to work even harder on his manuscript. For example, we have lots of stuff to ship back (the alabaster lamp collection in particular) and lots of stuff to give our buddies Sarah and Mark and Emad. So I’ve written a Word document with everything on it to sell, give, or trash. It gives the illusion of control.

I have also filed my final report for Fulbright/IIE, and have written my conference paper for the 10 May Fulbright conference. Graded everything I have to grade, and am working on the last classes for the term. Next comes a round of Skype calls for everything we need to have done once we return (from the dentist to taxes).

A peep from our front balcony at Road 200. Spring has sprung, leaves are out.

Harris gave another brilliant talk on Monday at AUC, a lecture called “Are You Popular? Dating, Gender, and the Double-Coding of Rock and Roll.” It’s based on an article coming out in December, ISA, and Harris the techie embedded musical examples and films into his PowerPoint. He also registers an official sneer at PowerPoint since it kept losing his links; as one friend, Dave Tawfik, put it, “I bet Bill Gates sits around and tries to think of ways to make speakers even more anxious before talks” (put it in a British accent and it’s funnier!).

The poster for Harris's talk

We had a wonderful dinner at the gorgeous house in Giza where Tarek and Hend Swelim live. Our buddies Sarah Mineart and Chris Evens came along (poor Mark is mired in directing the soon-to-open “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at AUC, and Katherine is traveling). Tarek and Hend live in a compound they built years ago with their extended family, when north Giza was very quiet (it’s a lot busier now). Their house combines wonderful furniture and rugs with gorgeous woodwork from Hend’s factory (which makes inlaid and decorative wood for the best hotels, and some lucky homeowners). Drinks and hors d’oeuvres by the pool began an evening that lasted until way past our usual bedtimes!

Chris Evens, Harris, and Sarah strike a pose by the pool at Tarek and Hend's

Tarek, Sarah, Harris, Farida (Tarek and Hend's daughter), and Chris  at dinner

Tarek, Harris, Farida, Hend, and Chris

The two dudes, Harris and Chris

The two hens, Mel and Sarah

Four happy guests!

Tarek and Hend's house at night; add scents of flowers and a soft breeze

Speaking of lists, here’s a couple:

Things I will miss                                              Things I won’t miss

The Arab Spring                                                The Arab Summer

The calls to prayer                                              The loud, really early calls to prayer

Koshery and kefta                                              Having to wash produce with Clorox

Sunshine                                                             Sandstorms

Hanging out laundry                                           Hanging out laundry

Walking everywhere                                           Filthy shoes from walking everywhere

Housekeeper who cooks                                     I really will miss Nagat!

Everything delivered                                           Gonna really miss this, too

Driver                                                                  Not ever driving

How different everything is                                 Being Other; patriarchy; feeling isolated

Amazing freshly squeezed juice                          Gonna really miss this, too

My students                                                         Lazy entitled students (not many but a few)

Europe’s proximity                                              Europe’s prices

Diving in the Red Sea                                          Freezing while diving the Red Sea

Lively streets                                                        Constant honking, fear of getting run over

Seeing the Pyramids while at the gym                 Nothing even comes close

Arabic                                                                  Arabic

Nifty-looking scarves                                           Having to cover up since I’m female

Learning the money                                             Carrying a zipped bag to hold lotsa bills

Paying attention to politics                                   Reading about fundamentalist candidates

Witnessing history                                               Witnessing some tragic history

Bargaining for stuff                                              Students bargaining for grades

Not fretting too hard if I run late                           Everyone runs late

Luxor XXX beer                                                 The calories from Luxor XXX

Our beautiful objects in the flat                            Living in a noisy flat

Food at China Winds                                           No comparison

There’s a chance we will come back, but time (and politics) will tell. The political situation here changes every day. We are hopeful that the elections will place someone moderate in the Presidential chair, but there’s no guarantee.

In filling out my Fulbright questionnaire, I thought hard about this past 9 months. It’s been great for us as a couple—I’ve been so proud of Harris, and we got to spend a lot of time together—and it’s made us want to do more academic travel to unusual places. I also am very proud of being a Fulbrighter, and hope that my work here has reflected well on the United States. I am even proud of just doing this, taking a flyer and going to a famously unstable country in transition, where life is different in pretty much every respect, and not just doing it but thriving. Thank you, Fulbright, for opening this door and allowing both of us to learn and grow and thank you, AUC. It has not been a bowl of cherries every minute but I would not trade it for anything.

Dinner tonight at the Winds with Chris as part of our mission to eat everything there. Grading, class prep; and our best to everyone.

Malesh

Arabic, from what we can tell, is exceptionally expressive. One word we’ve picked up with multiple uses is malesh. Like the many meanings of “forget about it” (or in Donnie Brasco’s vernacular, fuggetaboutit), malesh can mean “too bad,” “I’m so sorry,” “my bad,”  or even something ruder like “ask me if I care?” In this case, our past week was malesh as in “too bad.”

There’s a bumper sticker we see sometimes in the U.S. that says “A bad day diving is better than a good day at work.” It’s not true. I’d rather have a good day at work than the dive trip we went on during the 3^rd week in April. It was a disappointment, and not the farewell to the Red Sea that we had hoped to have. As they say here, malesh.

After a flight to Hurghada and a 3.5 hour bumpy crowded ride from there to Marsa Alam in southern Egypt, we boarded the M.V. Emperor Elite, a liveaboard dive boat, and moved into our stateroom.

M.V. Emperor Elite (internet photo)

The boat was reasonably comfortable, and the other divers an interesting and surprising mix, representing South Africa, Switzerland, Poland, Russia, the U.K., and us. The common language was English, excepting one diver who seemed to be a monoglot Russian. The two dive guides were excellent, Daniela (from Venezuela) and her husband Cseba (from Hungary). Our itinerary took us from Marsa Gahlib south to the Saint Johns reefs, just north of the Sudanese border. Why, you might ask, was this trip disappointing?

Southern Egyptian Red Sea dive sites (internet photo)

Our fellow divers and the hard-working staff of M.V. Emperor Elite

Blame it on the weather and the food. Egypt, like Europe, had had a very cold winter, and the waters of the Red Sea were far colder than normal—from 71-74 degrees F—exceeding the ability of 14 mm of neoprene to keep us warm enough. Being cold underwater is a form of torture for us, and being cold when visibility was low was even worse. Every dive was a challenge even when rewarded with the occasional manta ray or shark. Out of 21 possible dives, we could only manage 13. Again, malesh. What can anyone do about the weather? If you can, let me know!

The food on the boat was quite poor, bland and over-cooked. Most liveaboards don’t have great food but this was particularly bland. Again, malesh. At least we didn’t return having gained weight.

Dinner time

But we did enjoy wine with dinner and socializing with the United Nations of divers. And we made friends, particularly with a couple from South Africa, Celeste and Rocco, and have an invitation to visit their farm there!

Cocktails on the upper deck

There were even some special sightings on this trip: a pod of dolphins that hung around the boat a while; a view of a manatee or dugong from the surface; and several shark and manta ray sightings.

Two views of sportive dolphins

Since this is our last dive trip on the Red Sea, we were sorry it didn’t leave us with the kind of dazzling memories that the Maldives did. Returning home, we found that there had been another sandstorm, so the porches and clotheslines were covered with dust. It’s now beautiful spring weather, and we have retired all warm clothing. I resume teaching, and Harris gives a big talk on Monday on rock and roll, gender, and the economy of dating. I’m starting to make inventories of stuff in preparation for leaving, preparing my talk for Fulbright and final report, and generally feeling melancholy about rolling things up. It’s been a very eventful time here, and the coming bruhaha about the elections and constitution promise more drama for Egypt.

Wine, Swine, and Art

Our Easter break came in two parts. First was Italy, or as we called it, the land of wine, swine, and art. Indeed, we proudly consumed a pork product at every meal. A change from Cairo. I particularly wanted to go there since Harris had never been, and it had been 26 years since I was there last. It thrilled me to not only experience the place but to experience through Harris’s delighted reactions as we turned a corner and an ancient Roman site appeared, or looked left and saw meandering medieval alleys.

Building detail, Florence

This posting will be pretty quick and dirty since I want to get it up before we depart for part two of break, a dive trip of the southern Red Sea.

Our Egyptair flight to Rome brought us to the charming Albergo del Senato, right on the Piazza della Rotonda, with the glorious ancient Roman Pantheon built for Hadrian viewable from our window. Its stunning dome, coffered to reduce its weight, remains a wonder. Rather than let it crumble, the Church converted it into a Christian site, and today, it’s where the painter Raphael is buried. It was great to pop in and out since it was right in front of our hotel. Pleasant to enjoy a glass of wine while viewing it, as well, through the hordes of tourists. Note to self: don’t go to Italy during Easter break because it is everyone else’s break as well. There were wall to wall tourists almost everywhere, especially at sites like the Pantheon and Vatican.

How cool is the Pantheon?

Especially its interior (internet photo)

Our view from the hotel, Rome

I made a few travel arrangements that worked out very well, so I’m passing them on: book tours with Context Travel (www. contextravel.com) to avoid lines, see the sights with brilliant guides, and navigate the most complex museums; transfer between cities by car service from Prestige Rent (www.presitigerent.com) to really see the countryside, and make side trips en route; and be sure to seek out the more obscure museums and churches to avoid crowds and see great things. I may be an art historian, but the private tours we had from Context were conducted by great teachers (art historians and historians), and both of us learned so much.

Our first (and only) day in Rome began with a tour of the Vatican museums and Saint Peter’s on Good Friday (another note to self: avoid the Vatican on holy days) with the brilliant guide Lauren Golden. She offered us a curated tour of the museums, highlights that meant the most to us, and was expert at politely but firmly making way through mobs with constant permessos and persistence. Using a few objects as touchstones, we saw the collection with insight despite the crowds. For example, Lauren suggested examining the Belvedere Torso, an ancient Greek marble that probably depicted Ajax about to commit suicide—twisting, anatomically dense—as the window onto understanding Michelangelo’s work. Evidently, it was not just his favorite work, but as an old man losing his sight, he would run his hands over it (don’t try this today!); its anatomy depicts every muscle of an athlete with detail. Indeed, scholars know that Michelangelo did secretly dissect human corpses in order to master anatomy.

Saint Peter's dome in the background

The Belvedere Torso (and tourists)

The Apollo Belvedere, one of many ancient sculptures in the Vatican

What can one say of the Vatican collections? Stupifying, glorious, priceless, and a mix of ancient, Renaissance, and Baroque. Everyone knows Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and wall of the Last Judgement.

Sistine Chapel ceiling, my photo

Roman sculpture of the Nile; click to enlarge and note the croc 

But what opened our eyes were the magnificent stanze in the papal apartments frescoed by Raphael. In one room in particular, we could see the change in Raphael’s work from before he beheld Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling in the wall representing Theology to after, in the wall of The School of Athens. One is static and conventionally painted; the other is dynamic, with acidic colors, and Michelangelo represented as Heraclitus, clearly identifiable as him not only by his face but by his sculptor’s boots and moody demeanor. Raphael paid homage to another master, Leonardo, in the figure of Plato in the center, pointing towards the heavens. By the time we got to Saint Peter’s itself, with Michelangelo’s “Pieta” and the baldachino by Bernini, we were overwhelmed. The place exudes power.

Raphael's "Disputa" or Theology (internet photo)

Raphael's School of Athens; click to enlarge and see Michelangelo and Leonardo

The one night we did not eat pork was a dinner at La Rosetta, Rome—and probably Italy’s—greatest seafood restaurant, just a stone’s throw from the Pantheon. Beginning with raw oysters and ending with dolci, the tasting menu lasted three hours and two bottles of wine. Truly outstanding, a blowout meal worth every Euro.

We had just enough time to scamper over to the Spanish Steps and into the Keats-Shelley House. This modest apartment was where poor John Keats, barely 25, suffered and died from tuberculosis. His chamber, with its small bed, death mask, and drawing of the late Keats by his friend Severn, was deeply moving. Keats's “To Autumn” has been the subject of some of Harris’s work, and as he wrote in the guestbook, it was “heartbreaking.”

Harris contemplates Keats, his death mask and drawing

Keats's room viewed the Spanish Steps (though without so many tourists)

Italy has more Egyptian obelisks than Egypt!

We went by car service from Rome to Florence with two outstanding detours to San Sepolcro and Arezzo, both important sites for frescoes by Piero della Francesca. The weather had turned foul, rainy and cold (tiempo brutto!), which was something of a blessing since it kept tourists away from these already somewhat obscure towns. San Sepolcro’s town museum is home to several of Piero’s works, and most satisfying, his “Resurrection” of ­­­­­­­1463. We were able to just sit and gaze, allowing its rational image of the miraculous to soak in.

Piero's Resurrection (internet photo)

Medieval streets of San Sepulcro

 In Arezzo, the church of the Franciscans houses a major cycle of Piero frescoes of the finding of the true cross. They were cleaned since I was last there in 1986, and are glorious, particularly the images of the finding of the cross, with San Sepolcro in the background.

Piero's Finding of the True Cross (internet photo)

Our driver Severino took us up to the Piazzale Michelangelo before dropping us at our hotel in Florence. Its sweeping views of the city reminds us how the massive dome by Brunelleschi dominates Florence, visible from nearly every point in the city.

Windy but a great view

Yes, it really looks like this when the weather is good

The Arno at night

After enjoying the view, Severino dropped us off at Hotel Gallery Arts, one of several boutique hotels run by the Ferragamo company, and we moved into a glorious suite on the top floor with a view of the top of the Duomo and something one rarely finds in Italian hotels: lots of space. It spoiled us for our four nights there.

A very nice room indeed!

View as we cross the Ponte Vecchio right outside our hotel

On Easter, Florence began the morning with a beautiful parade through the city of people dressed in Renaissance garb, playing drums and horns as they marched through the streets to the city’s symbolic center, the Palazzo della Signoria.

Drummers on Easter

Horns in the Easter parade

Over three and a half days, we walked until we couldn’t walk any longer, and began to suffer from Stendhal Syndrome (an overdose of art). What did we see? The Uffizi, with its many treasures (guided by a wonderful historian from Context Travel);

Bottecelli's Primavera, one of the Uffizi's many gems (internet photo)

Santa Croce, with its Giotto frescoes and Brunelleschi’s gem of a chapel made for the Pazzi family;

Dome of the Pazzi Chapel

Harris considers the Pazzi Chapel

the Medici tombs by Michelangelo, a wonderfully pressed space, narrow and high, with the tomb figures of Dusk and Dawn, Night and Day, surmounted by his brilliant images of two not very important Medicis, Lorenzo (brooding, with a moneybox on his knee);

and Guiliano  (martial and twisting);

Michelangelo's compressed space in the Medici Chapel (internet photo)

Brooding Lorenzo, with Dusk and Dawn (internet)

Martial Giuliano, with Night and Day (internet)

the Laurentian Library and vestibule, also by Michelangelo, with its steps flowing like lava and glorious reading room;

Flowing steps of the Laurentian Library (internet photo)

the Bargello museum, home to Ghibert and Brunelleschi’s competition panels for the Baptistry, which I have tormented students with in the art history survey,

Ghiberti on the left, Brunelleschi on the right

as well as Donatello’s Saint George, David (one of the most lewd sculptures I’ve seen), next to Verocchio’s much more proper David;

Verocchio's youthful David

Donatello's saucy David

Donatello's St. George as a soldier

Bargello courtyard

Bargello courtyard

the amazing frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, most famously those by Massacio;

The Tribute Money by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel (internet)

Massacio’s fresco in Santa Croce of the Holy Trinity, combining science and faith in its geometry;

Massacio's Holy Trinity (internet photo)

Pontormo’s “Deposition” in Santa Felicita, one of the most beautiful paintings ever.

How gorgeous is it? (internet photo)

On our last day, we went through the Palazzo Vecchio, the city hall, with its rooms decorated (or should I say, over-decorated) by Vasari, its grand hall, and most beautifully, chapel for Eleanor of Toledo, painted by Bronzino.

Bronzino's frescos (internet photo)

And no, we did not brave the hordes at the Accademia to see Michangelo’s “David.” The one is Las Vegas at Caesars Palace will have to do for now.

Overdose of art indeed! However, we also fed our bodies and very well. Between pork and bistecca alla fiorentina at Ristorante Toto to wild boar at Cinghiale Bianco to maltagliati and fine wines at Cantinetta Antinori, we ate and drank very well. BTW, the Cantinetta Antinori is housed in the palazzo of the family, and of course, features their many wines, all very reasonably priced by the glass and bottle.

Mangiamo!

Today, we are doing laundry, repacking for the dive trip, and I’m grading papers. The weather in Cairo is perfect spring weather, unlike the cold winds of Italy. More in a week or so!