Stepping Up to the Step Pyramid

Less than a week after my first official field trip, which took me to Dashoor, I hopped on the bus to Saqqara and Memphis. The Arabic Language Institute (ALI), under whose umbrella CASA falls, offers its own field trips to locations that sometimes overlap and other times differ from where CASA took us. Whenever they differed, I tried to make my name first on the sign-up sheet. I was determined to do as much as possible. Always. Period.

We arrived in Saqqara shortly after 10am at the site of the Step Pyramid, the oldest building in the world. The priest Imhotep designed it for the pharoah Zoser. The original design was supposed to be a typical mastaba-styled tomb (which would have looked something like the first level of the Step Pyramid by itself), but Imhotep continued adding levels in order to increase the security of his king's afterlife. It almost seemed to me that the design was accidental. As he added levels, Imhotep grew more confident with the new technique. Soon, the structure grew to resemble the "ben ben", which was the term for the shape of the first land to appear out of the ocean-covered Earth at the beginning of time.

As our guide put it: "Imhotep copied no one and no one copied him" though I don't agree that one one copied him. In fact architects in generations and dynasties to come aspired to achieve a more perfected version of the pyramid until they realized the ostentatious structures were homing beacons to buried treasure for tomb robbers.

I should take a moment to refer briefly to my title. Though it may look corny, it rather adeptly reflects my true feelings. We were not allowed inside the Step Pyramid, but we were given time to look around the surrounding area. As I wandered around the side of the ancient building, I noticed the Bent and Great Pyramids off in the distance. I couldn't believe that I had been there - inside, no less! - a week previous. I knew I was far from being a native, but I felt "experienced", a "step up" from where I'd been earlier, if that makes sense. Here I was on the site of a famous Egyptian monument and I could see a place I'd already been. It was great.

Shortly after my exciting moment, we boarded the bus again to Memphis where our guide informed us that the main attraction - an incomplete colossus of Ramses II - was a replica. To be honest, I didn't care. The statue is incredible to view, especially since we know that statues tended to be idealizations of the real people. It is regal, it is strong, and it is historical, even if it isn't an exact likeness.

Less than two weeks in Egypt and I was going strong. I couldn't wait to see what was next.

First Adventure - Dahshur

Now, after spending some time giving an overview of daily life - finding a place to live, what to eat, and how to get around - it's time to embark on my first adventure outside Cairo.

CASA began the summer session of the program in mid-June, which consisted of three classes: Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial which were held Monday through Thursday (remember weekends are Fri-Sat, not Sat-Sun) and a cultural class that met on Sundays to go on field trips. Normally, the program took students to various popular touristy sights, but they decided this year to take us to more out-of-the-way places, figuring that we'd probably see the big ones on our own.

So with this in mind, our first field trip was to two famous pyramids located in Dahshur: Snefaru's Bent Pyramid and Khufu's first pyramid (pictured here - his second is the Great Pyramid at Giza. We went in through the little dot in the center). The Bent Pyramid is a fabulous sight in an of itself because of the place it holds in the process of pyramid-building. As the first pyramid to be built non-step style, it demonstrates how difficult construction can be. In the beginning, the slope was too steep, and halfway up, when the builders realized the walls wouldn't hold, they had to make the slope much more gradual, giving the entire piece a bent look.

It was the next pyramid, however, that really caught my attention because we were going to go inside. I couldn't wait. I felt as Carter himself must have felt when he first discovered Tut's tomb. As we ascended the mammoth stones to the entrance of the pyramid, I felt like some great explorer/adventurer. What I didn't realize was how we were getting in.

Beyond the door, there is a 58m-long tunnel which leads into the antechamber. While the door itself is person-sized, the tunnel is not. It is only about 3ft high, one person wide and angled relatively steeply downward... and it is the only way in or out, so traffic must move in both directions. Fortunately for us, there were no other tourists present, so we didn't have to deal with a two-way path. To prevent you from slipping down the tunnel, the floor is a long wooden walkway with "rungs" spaced about 1.5ft apart.

To light our path, long, slightly-dimmed fluorescent lights were placed on the floor alongside the walkway though not all were on. Only four of them, chosen at distances of about every 15m tried valiantly to illuminate the little passageway. For those who, like me, think in non-metric units, the length of the tunnel 58m is 190 feet. Our only sources of light were every 49ft. And as the tunnel was so narrow, as soon as you'd passed the light, the shadow of the person directly behind you would eclipse the glow. So, the only purpose the lights serve is to obliterate your night vision as you proceed down the long tunnel of what is essentially an elaborate tomb. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.

After long minutes in the stifling darkness, I alighted within the antechamber which I thought smelled heavily of cleaning solution. I was duly informed that what I smelled was ammonia and it hailed from another source. Still, I was very happy to be somewhere I could stand up properly and take stock of my surroundings and there were little vents pumping air in, so I could catch my breath for a moment. I was in a small room that was about three stories high. Straight ahead, a rickety-looking wooden staircase lead almost to the ceiling where the burial chamber was located. As I made my way upstairs I wondered what the ancient Egyptians had used to pass in and out. They certainly hadn't used these stairs.

I should explain that although the pyramid looks perfectly straight from the outside, the architect had cheated. Khufu's pyramid was built as any other step pyramid, then covered with rocks to give it a smooth facade. From within the tiny burial chamber, the structure was evident in the ceiling which stepped its way up to the pinnacle. I didn't care. I was still in awe.
From within the pyramid, I could barely breathe from excitement (and heat). Temperatures in mid-June are not forgiving, even less so from within an air-tight container that had been sitting in the sun all day. I was dripping sweat from every pore in my long-sleeves and long pants (I was new to Egyptian traditions and didn't want to take a chance on t-shirts). But I was happy. Oh so happy.

Imagine my position. I had just walked down a gangplank bent over doubled and crouching in total darkness and had emerged, as if from a cocoon, 3,000 years before I'd entered. Perhaps it was my enthusiasm or the fact that this was my first pyramid, but I really felt as though I could feel activity around me. If I listened hard, I could hear the chisels of workmen and smell the paint of the artisans. I saw overseers walk around me with papyrus "clipboards" checking progress. It was an incredible experience. All this despite the fact that there were no carvings or paintings on the walls (long since removed by grave robbers) and parts of the inner chambers were filled with rubble. But none of that mattered.

I was inside a pyramid.

And when I alighted again, into the sunlight which was now incredibly painful on my seriously dilated pupils, I thought that this is what pharoahs must have imagined they would see as their souls moved in and out of their resting place: a sprawling western view over the land of Egypt.

A Linguistics Interlude

As I mentioned in my introduction to this blog, my two biggest passions are travelling and languages. So far, Florence of Arabia has been about daily life as I experienced it living in Cairo, Egypt. Soon I will be moving into some of the adventures. However I am taking a quick break to make an announcement.

I am currently writing a series of linguistic articles for the About: Italian Language Web site and as of last week, the first article, Introduction to Italian Linguistics went live! Each article will appear every two weeks through December. Please feel free to stop in and read them. While on a tour through Tufts University, my tour guide introduced herself by saying "I love it here at Tufts and I'd like everyone to love it, too!" Not everyone will love linguistics as much as I, but I'm hoping people can have fun with the articles.

And if you're curious, the picture for this post is of the side of the new library in Alexandria, Egypt. Every writing system ever used by humans - past and present - is represented on the walls of the library, though not all may be visible in this picture.

Enjoy everyone!

Chocolate in Cairo

This second part of education of Cairo's culinary delicacies is being included on my own whim. As any woman will understand, chocolate in constant supply is part of any good diet to promote mental, if not physical, health.

About halfway through the summer portion of the CASA program, a friend of mine who had lived in Cairo before, mentioned off-handedly that the Four Seasons Hotel, located on the banks of the Nile, has an all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, if I'm remembering correctly. The price is 65 £E (little more than $11) which was a bit drastic for our stipends, but still worth it. So in celebration of the end of the summer session, we headed over to the air-conditioned lobby of the Four Seasons hotel, where a musician was playing live piano music, to sit and relax and eat as much chocolate as our stomachs could stand.

The "buffet" (I use quotation marks because I had a 20-ft long buffet table with chocolate bars the size of my head pictured in my greedy little mind) is a lovely round table, about 3 feet in diameter loaded with exquisite truffles, tasty little cakes, and melted chocolate in a pot (for dipping shish-kebobbed pineapple, strawberries and bananas), all of which was gourmet-quality. Despite bragging that I would probably be going up for 3 or 4 helpings, I found myself incapable of finishing my second helping.

Still, that didn't stop me from returning. Over the course of my 12 months in Cairo, I probably visited the Four Seasons's Chocolate Buffet 6 or 7 times with various friends and family, to celebrate the end of a semester or someone's visit. Sometimes the piano player would be there, sometimes a guitar player was there. Each of them knew only about 5 songs so if I stayed long enough, I could listen to the same song 2 or 3 times. A few of the ladies working in the buffet began to recognize me, which I found amusing. And it's always handy to have someone recognize you in a food establishment because you know they'll work hard to get you a place to sit (as seating was indeed limited some nights).

The bell in the picture here was a present from a friend from the buffet and was consumed in one sitting (it's hollow).

And now to add a little ps, I answer a question I posed in the previous post. I challenged anyone to guess what I might be eating in the picture and for those of you who happened to guess kirsha, you were correct. Do not confuse kirsha with the koshiri I described, which is made of rice, macaroni noodles, fried onions, lentils and marinara sauce. Kirsha is wild baby buffalo stomach. I had my bite here before knowing what it was and it actually doesn't taste all that bad. But once I knew, I wasn't able to eat it again.

Egyptian Cuisine

Before moving on to some of the adventures you can experience while in Egypt (cab ride jokes aside), I thought I would round-out a description of daily life in Cairo. I've already talked about finding a place to live and getting around the city, so I thought here I would stop to take a minute and describe the culinary delights of Cairo. And here I make the distinction of Cairo, not Egypt, because for anyone who likes sea food, a trip to Alexandria would be well worth the effort. In that coastal city, you can feast to your heart's content for hardly any money.

One evening while in Alexandria, a friend that knew the area well took a group of about ten or twelve of us to a fabulous, well-known restaurant named Abu Ashraf where we picked our own sea food as we walked in the door. We chose from crabs (one for each of us, of course), salmon, shrimp, and a few other fish. At our long table in the back, we proceeded to add a few salads for us to share, and baskets with local Egyptian naan-like bread along with heaping plates of rice and possibly some chicken slices were brought to our table. The food just kept coming and it was all fresh, local and exquisitely delicious. After we finished, we were given the bill (which also included a pepsi for each of us and water for all) which was about 360£E (Egyptian pounds) total .... this translates into about $62 and was to be divided amongst the ten or so of us. We tipped heavily.

Cairo, on the other hand, is a slightly different story. Located farther inland, it doesn't have the same access to fresh meat and fish. While you can find them from vendors, you really have to search hard and know where to look. What are in abundant supply are fresh fruit and vegetables. The most delectable bananas, mangoes, strawberries, oranges, eggplants, peppers, zucchini, and more can be found in little vendors' carts peppered throughout the entire city. Lemons are sold at the vegetable stand in baggies of six or eight because they are so small; their diameter is probably no bigger than that of a quarter and they are all perfectly round and immensely flavorable. As a biproduct of having such fresh fruit available, it's always better to buy juice from small juice vendors instead of from the Metro grocery stores. The vendors keep large supplies of fresh seasonal fruit around and it's a BYOB set-up (Bring Your Own Bottle). My flatmates and I used to go to a vendor with empty 2-liter water bottles and walk away with fresh squeezed blood-red orange juice, regular orange juice and anything else that sounded good at the time. You can also buy juice by the glass and my two favorites from restaurants (vendors had more intricate mixtures) were mango juice - because it was thick and chunky with mango bits - and lemon juice. Both were very cool and refreshing, especially in the heat of summer.

But even these cannot be the staple of every meal. The most available foods - native to Egypt - are not for the faint-hearted. Atkins would not have fared well in Cairo. The plus side is that many are quite tasty and really cheap, even if you don't factor in the exchange rate.

One of the cheapest (small ~ 2£E or $0.35; large ~ 5£E or $0.86), most filling meals you can buy in a hurry is koshiri and is a mixture of white rice, macaroni noodles, chick peas, and marinara sauce, topped with copious amounts of lentils and fried onions. To this you can either add hot sauce or a garlic/lemon sort of sauce (which I recommend to give this dish some moisture). In fact, koshiri is so popular that while sometimes offered in restaurants, it's easier to find in little fast food stores dedicated almost solely to the dish.

Ta'amiyya - which is even less expensive (at about .35 £E or $0.06 per sandwich) - is also very popular, especially if you're in a hurry. It is a small pita sandwich filled with a little lettuce and tomato surrounding fried crushed bean cakes that for some reason are a really nifty color green. There was a little sandwich stand two blocks down from my school that was no more than a hole in the wall. It was take-out only so the quickest way to find it was to look for a large group of Egyptians crowded around what could have easily been mistaken for a blank wall. Inside was a long, narrow kitchen, barely wide enough for two people to stand next to one another but it functioned well and quickly.

Two more very popular small dishes that you can order in restaurants as part of a barrage of appetizer-like choices are fuul, and fried batinghen, which is the Arabic word for "eggplant". Fuul is beans that have been so deep fried, there is sometimes a layer of oil about 1 centimeter thick floating along the top (fuul also comes in small pita sandwiches and tends to not be quite as oily). It's eaten with local bread, either regular or baked until it comes out in crispy chip form.

If you're worried, there are also restaurants from other Arab countries (Lebanese food abounds in Cairo and is very good) as well as some American staples so you shouldn't run into too many problems. But my philosophy is - to rearrange a famous quote - "When in Cairo, do as the Cairenes do" and if you're ever there, I recommend trying some of these dishes which are really quite yummy.

One final note. The picture above is of me eating a dish my friends and I ordered without knowing exactly what it was. It turned out to be infinitely intriguing. In a few days, I will put up another food post. See if you can guess between now and then (when I reveal the secret) what I am eating.

Getting Around Cairo - Part II - The Process of the Cab

If the ingenuity of the automobile that ferries you around from place is amazing, the process of the cab ride is mind-boggling.

When hailing a cab, there are many factors you need to take into account. "Where am I going and where am I now? Is it rush hour? How much am I willing to pay based on those factors? Do I care if there's someone already in the cab?" As many travel books warn, meters in cabs are more decorative than anything else. Sometimes a cabbie will reset the meter for show when you step inside the cab, and if the meter is really fancy, it might actually count off some numbers until it gets stuck again. But no one actually uses them to negotiate your fee. So in order to roughly calculate how much to pay, you need to think about the distance you're travelling and how long it might take to get there based on traffic patterns. As for the other person in the cab, never let another face in the window deter you from trying to flag down a cab. Remember that the roof only has a short rack on it for luggage. Sometimes there's a little sign that says "taxi" but it won't light up and drivers are usually willing to take two or three fares at a time to maximize profits.

Once inside the cab, the fun begins. Traffic in Cairo does not resemble anything you might be used to. The closest analogy that I can come up with is the running of the bulls in Spain going in slow motion. Most streets are one way and have faded lines denoting lanes but it's my suspicion is that they were drawn by a child with white chalk long ago. As though being herded by some giant shepherd, cars will fit any little space they can find and some roads that should only be two or three lanes wide wind up being six or seven cars wide. It's like trying to watch people all merge at the same time all the time when they're stopped at various intersections.

When the cars are actually in motion, it gets even better. The same herding process is in effect, only at a faster pace. Driving along on the left side of the street (remember they're one way, mostly) doesn't necessarily mean you're going left, or even going straight. It's within everyone's right to want to make a sharp right turn at any given moment from 3 lanes over. Not everyone is happy about it, though.

While in a cab one day with a friend of mine, I experienced this first-hand. Our driver had us on the left side of the road, despite the fact that we needed to go right. A cab directly to our right, however, thought that going left was the smart thing to do, so we gradually converged as we moved down the road. Now we were both in the wrong, but I guess there's a pecking order to who goes first and our cabbie was not pleased about not being at the top of that order. The other cab cut us off and kept going.

Well. Our driver wasn't about to stand for that. He stopped the car, got out, and by golly went over to give that driver a piece of his mind.

In fact, he was so annoyed that he forgot to put the parking break on before getting out of the car. After a few seconds, the car began to roll. There were no other cars on the road, so this wasn't too big of a problem, but considering that we were slowly orienting ourselves perpendicular to the direction of traffic, it would soon become an issue, so I decided to pull up the parking brake. Leaning forward, I couldn't find it and I remembered that very often these cars were built from kits meaning that having knowledge of one cab, you knew where most things were in another. Sometimes the emergency brake was down by the pedals, so I just assumed I had no shot at reaching it and that it would probably be easier to get out of the car. However, I was on the infamous left side of the car with a locked door and no lock and my friend didn't look like she was interested in going anywhere. As we started to slowly pick up a little speed, I thought I could just steer the car nicely into the curb where we could wait out the fight. So I began steering the car from the back seat. But we weren't really travelling that fast and no matter what direction we went in, we were bound to hit a curb eventually so at my friend's suggestion, I sat back down to enjoy the ride.

We were soon rescued by a passerby that ran over, ripped open the front passenger side door and yanked up on the emergency brake which had been hiding under the armrest. After saving us, he ran over to our driver, still locked in a heated debate, and slowly but firmly steered him back to our car. He got in somewhat ruffled, made no apologies, took the parking brake off and sat in the middle of the intersection (still perpendicular to anyone wanting to pass us) watching the other car. He waited until the other car was pulling away then shouted a phrase I hadn't yet learned in a determined effort to get in the last word. In the end, I guess, he'd won.

This type of behavior is not a-typical but it's not necessarily the norm either. Drivers zip in and out from in between cars and pedestrians alike and sometimes near-accidents happen. But there are rules - albeit a different set that you might be used to - and a sort of unspoken code that everyone adheres to. Once you learn the code, you suffer much less stress, and you tend to shield your eyes less often from the sight of your life flashing before your eyes, or in this case, flashing by the window of your cab.

Getting Around Cairo - Part I - The Cab

One of the more exciting things you can do while in Cairo is to ride in a cab. It is a singular experience in automotive design and capability.

The cab itself is half the fun. Personally, I love cars like these. They've got so much more character than a brand new Mercedes (not that I find myself in those too often!). They're like a living, wheezing organism that speaks to you with every move it makes. This entry is devoted solely to the physical being. For an account of how the ride works, see Part II.

To begin with, the exterior of the car is black and white, with a short yellow rack on top for extra luggage. Normally, the paint job helps people pick a taxi out of traffic, but during the night when it's darker and most drivers don't use headlights, it makes them a little harder to spot. Still, if a driver sees any pedestrian stopped for more than .2 seconds at a time, they'll pull over and ask if you need a cab, even if you were walking in the opposite direction in the first place. I guess this makes the task of finding a cab a little easier.

Moving to the interior of the cab, there is only one way to enter. Without a doubt, the door on the left is locked, which isn't a problem since you're getting in on the right anyway. But sometimes it sticks, so the driver reaches around behind the seat to pry it open. Once inside, if you're with a friend, you're not getting out again unless they do first. Remember that the door on the left side is locked. If you're lucky, the lock is still a part of the door, though probably broken. The handles to open the manual windows on either side are also optional. Sometimes you'll find the handle in the side armrest, sometimes not.

In terms of space, I think I can comment pretty accurately. I'm 5'10" tall, which adds to my joy riding in the backseat. Some of the taxis had front seats that had leaned back and forth so many times, they'd broken, so the seats were held upright by resting on a string tied from one side of the car to another. Even if the seats weren't broken, the car is small enough so that I could never really fit completely in my share of the leg room. That's what short friends are for! Even tall friends let me share their space when there was a few extra inches behind the passenger seat.

The front seat of cabs can be even more exciting. Under normal circumstances, women ride in the back seat like pretty much everywhere else in the world. Men tend to ride up front, hanging out and talking politics but the atmosphere is a little different for a woman. To be honest, I didn't care one way or another - though I tended to feel better in the back - and if there were too many of us to fit in the back, I didn't mind sitting up front.

One of my earliest trips in the front seat was at night, coming home from a movie. In an effort to decorate the area surrounding the driver's seat, there was a crimson, shaggy rug-looking cover over the entire dashboard. In the right-hand corner where I sat was a light-up sign that had a heart with an arrow and the word "Love" (in English) in the center. It was set to slow strobe so periodically, the light would follow the length of the arrow into the heart and very romantically light up the "Love" in the center. Blue lights that were either neon or black lights lined parts of the interior of the car in between the doors where the seat belt was fastened to the door frame and under the rear windshield. The entire ambiance had me expecting some cheesy saxophone music instead of the Qura'an recital that was playing in the tape deck.

Overall, I think the impression that remained most indelible in my memory was the fact that no matter the state of the cab, the car continued to run. I could probably count on one hand the number of times a cabbie accidentally stalled the car in the entire year I was in Egypt. And as car inspection is "optional" (you can usually bribe your way out of being overdue) the car will spit varied amounts of serious-looking exhaust into the air. Suspension is a myth and it wouldn't surprise me if parts of some cars were held together with rubber bands but despite all this, they continued to navigate the congested streets of Cairo taking their passengers to and fro.

I was quite impressed.