West to East

2007-04-29T10:40:00.000+03:00

06-04-07

For me, Dubai was a great time to just catch up on work and eat different food and just to relax and hang out with Niki and victor and the pups.

Here's a pic of me reading some articles about ancient Egypt in Niki's house.

And of course here Niki, Jess and I in front of the famed Dubai in-door ski slope:

I am really glad i had that time to catch up and relax 9not to mention take advantage of the 4 star hotel like quality of the beds and bathrooms at Niki's house, before heading off to Thailand to meet up with Alice for some back packing adventures. Little did I know quite how adventurous that would turn out to be...

2007-04-29T10:07:00.000+03:00

Mamma mia!

03-04-07

We got tickets to go see Mamma Mia! the musical of abba songs. The play was showing at a theater in "Souq Medinat Jumeira", which is one of the new stylized malls in Dubai.
This particular mall is styled to be like a medieval emirati or middle eastern souq, and it is quite well done. It doesn't have a cheesy Disney feel, only the feel of bringing back their heritage in a modern and money way. There are restaurants, bars, night clubs, stores, a theater, a hotel etc. all rolled into one. It looks very castle like, and has indoor and outdoor sections, multiple floors and even windy alleyways. to top it off there is a lake and an Island. People staying at the hotel can take a little boat over to the main part of the souq. Niki took me to an Italian restaurant by this lake the first night I was here, we had wine and good food and a view of the burj al-Arab tower (7 star hotel in the shape of a sail). I was impressed. Another night we had dinner in a Moroccan restaurant with tiled fountains, rugs, and another fabulous view. One night we had exotic cocktails with a very international group all talking about housing prices and investments in Dubai. It is a fun place.
This night we were meeting up with some aunts and cousins from Victors extended family.
victor's aunt and uncle and their best friends moved to Abu Dhabi in the 70's to be doctors and have lived there ever since. They have seen all the changes that have taken place in the emirates since that time, and this was their first time to this mall in dubai. They were also very impressed with it. Since they are not actually Emirati citizens and are approaching retirement, they are going to have to leave the emirates soon and move back to Egypt, since no one can stay living in the emirates who is not working, despite having made it their home for 30 years. though all in all not a bad idea to make lots of money in the emirates then retire in Egypt where the money goes a lot farther.
The aunties were so sweet, genuinely interested in talking to me, complimenting me on my long hair, and at the end of the night extended invitations to come visit for dinner in abu dhabi, which i hope to do next time i'm back in dubai.
As we were planning this night's outing the week before all of the uncles and male cousins dropped out, so victor eventually realized it would just be him and 6 ladies. It was extra cute since it was all victors idea in the first place.
The show itself was lots of fun, dancing queen and all the abba songs woven together in a story made to fit the music. but they did quite a good job of it. It was bawdier than I expected for the emirates. The whole thing was also done in British English not American English, which Niki and i got a kick out of. at the end everyone got up and started dancing while they did the songs for the encore and bows. They even figured out how to work in some 70's space invader like costumes full of sequins and complete with platform shoes.
dah-dah-dun go ABBA!

2007-04-29T09:41:00.000+03:00

School!

02-04-07

Niki is an English teacher in Dubai. She teaches at a technical school, and she teaches Emirati boys of the 15-17 age range. Here is a picture of her with one of her classes :

Since she needed an excuse for me to come visit the school, and I happen to be an archaeologist, a career which most people find interesting but are fuzzy on the details, and it is good practice for ESL learners to listen to different native speakers talk, she invited me to give a little presentation to one of her classes about what archaeology is and how to go about becoming an archaeologist (they were doing a section on careers this term).

While a number of people have invited me to come talk to their classes before, this is the first time I actually bit the bullet and did it. I spent days making a power point presentation, which was really good practice for me, and we reviewed it together to make sure that the language level was appropriate for her students and that I defined the plethora of new words.

So with some trepidation I set off early one Monday morning with Niki for her school. I hung out in the teacher room and met the variety of different people who work there. It happened to be throw-a-little- party-for-people-who-recently-had-babies day so they had lots of snacks and cookies sitting around that I happilly partook of while I was waiting for 9:30 to roll around. I also met the principal and vice principle and tried to sound professional and talked to them about archaeology and antiquities.

Eventually it was time to give the talk. Niki had all the boys introduce themselves. they are all emirati, from dubai and sharja, and futbal (soccer) is the favorite pastime for all of them, except for 1 who likes basket ball and 1 who likes chess. they were all very sweet and kind of giggly and awkward at having this unknown western women in the room talking with them. Niki had made a little worksheet so they could follow along. I gave my presentation alright, a bit too fast i'm sure. they were impressed with the pictures of a mummy and a skeleton, and a ceramic vessel from the emirates. Then we had the question and answer session. it was pretty awesome. They actually were interested and followed what i was saying quite well. i think i even made an impression on them about pursuing a career that you love instead of one that brings in the bucks, and that history is actually important to the world, and that archaeology is not about treasure hunting, but finding information. they asked me lots and lots of questions for almost 45 minutes and i didn't get stumped! Niki and i were both glad that it went so well, and her coordinator boss who was observing also enjoyed it and said he learned about archaeology.

Since i had to stay at the school for the rest of the day while Niki finished working, it ironically turned out to be the perfect opportunity for me to finish all of my reports for the Aswan project without the distraction of tv, movies, books, a kitchen and puppies that are so present at Niki's house. So i got the last f my archaeological work done and taught students about archaeology in the same day.

2007-04-29T08:53:00.000+03:00

Dubai World Cup

31-03-07

The Dubai world Cup is the richest horse race in the world. The prizes add up to 20 million dollars. So it is a big deal around here! It has become not just a horse race but a giant party. You might think that alcohol and gambling wouldn't go over so well in a Muslim country, but this is Dubai there are ways around these things. No gambling actually takes place at the race itself, but supposedly the internet gambling is quite popular so people still have their emotions and finances tied to the outcomes of the races. In addition to being a horse race and a party, it is also somewhat of a fashion show. An excuse for the women of Dubai to get decked out in stylish or outrageous ways. And the best part is the Hats! There is actually a place left where all the women where hats! So the night before Niki and I ran around trying to find something to wear. Luckily Niki had a dress that I could wear, and she got a new dress and hat. The races technically last all day, but we thought that would be a bit much, so after the usual chaos of arrival, we got there just as the sun was setting and everything was in full swing. It was actually the Prophet's Birthday that day, a day where there is usually no alcohol served anywhere in the muslim world, and we were kind of wondering if it would apply to the horse races. We quickly saw that it didn't. They had devised an ''International village'' a sequestered area with all the alcohol vendors. Complete with an Irish pub, wine bars, champagne bars and stalls of every bar and restaurant in town. We saw the tail end of the judging of one of the fashion contests, but it was hard to see who won because there was such a tight not of people around that stage. The hats ranged from a single thin minimalist plume sticking up off of a headband to monstrosities that could only be described a the bastard child of a sombrero and a peacock during Carnival. Many women opted for something in between. The oddest dress we saw was a giant voluminous red bag, for lack of a better word, open at the shoulders with buttons vaguely reminiscent of a Victorian riding outfit, finished off with a horse riding helmet and riding boots. I'm pretty sure she had a riding crop hidden in the folds somewhere. if the goal was to get attention she got it.

There were discarded plastic laminated numbers on the ground, and one drunken boyfriend came up with his girlfriend in tow shouting "599! she got 599 in the fashion contest!" while brandishing a small number in our faces. They wandered off laughing at the absurdity of it.

We found Magic and Jessica and headed down to the actual track, where somehow it was quite easy to find a spot right in front of the finish line with the stands and the awards arena just behind us. There was a whole section of Sheikhs, noticeable in their all white dishdashas, and somewhere in there was the sheikh, Sheikh Makhtoum ruler of Dubai, who has an excessively long title that i wish I could remember that has to be said every time they say his name on the news. since most of the news revolves around him and other shaikhs with similarly long titles this makes for long newscasts with relatively little information. He was the one fronting the prize money for this event.

We saw a few races from that spot. Which involved mostly watching the video screen, because we couldn't see the whole track from ground level, but then as they got closer to the finish line the announcer would get louder and louder and we would all crane our necks to catch sight of them, and then WHOOSH! they were here and gone! We would speculate on the winners before hand, (knowing absolutely nothing about horses and races i might add) "ohh number 14 looks good" " number 2 is pretty feisty" and try to figure out the names that went with the numbers. The names of racehorses are absolutely spectacular in their absurdity. Discreet cat, Premium Tap, forty licks, Spring at last, Parole board, gold for sale, Boston lodge, Asiatic boy, kelly's landing, nightmare affair, Agnes Jedi, red rocks, pop rock, sir percy, honey rider, oracle west, flashy wings, pompeii ruler, formal decree, and of course we can't forget misque's approval and lava man, best name and areyoutalkingto me...

it is as if people opened the newspaper and with their eyes closed randomly pointed to some words to choose their horse's name. there seems to be no rhyme or reason except for a general preference for two word phrases.
"vengeance of rain" won while we were watching, and the overall winner for the night was "Invasor". This was especially lucky, because he is owned by the same sheikh who fronted all the money, so he won a good chunk of it back.

Before the last race we tried to head to one of the champagne bars. We went to "bubble" where we found that the five of us could partake of a bottle of champagne for the meager price of 75$ a piece. We went to the irish pub.

While many at the irish pub stayed to drink themselves to the ground and wake up plastered in bits of grass, stray hat feathers and god knows what the next morning, we took advantage of our accidentally good parking space and headed home, since the races took place on Saturday and Sunday was a work day.

2007-04-29T08:49:00.000+03:00

Niki and I outside the Egyptian themed mall in Dubai

2007-04-25T07:51:00.001+02:00

Wakeboarding 24-03-07

Wakeboarding is like water skiing but with a board closer to a snowboard on your feet. We went to a hotel/beach outside of Dubai one weekend to try this wakeboarding. We went with Magic, one of Victor's friends and his girlfriend Jess from England who was visiting for the week. Of course we brought the dogs. Charlie, in accordance with her happy go lucky personality jumped right in the water and swam all around. Maya took the more cautious approach of barking at the waves and running away but eventually stuck her paws in for about half a second. Unfortunately the pups weren't aloud on the boat so we left them with some friends of friends who were hanging out at the lawn chairs. It always amazes me how grown men can be so intimidated by two little dogs, but they did a good job watching the dogs and were pretty nice about it. The boat was a really posh modern speed boat with a speaker system so we could listen to music as we were driving around it really felt like vacation and that we had gotten away from the city. The guy who was driving the boat explained to us how to do it, but I he was definitely an ESL speaker and we couldn't understand a thin he said. Jess, who seems to be quite the accomplished sport enthusiast tried the wake boarding first. She got up on her first try and had two really good runs. She made it look so easy! Victor and Magic went next and couldn't get out of the water! so this was more difficult than it looked. Niki gave it a try and got out of the water a number of times. So it was 2-0 for the girls. It was on my shoulders to keep up our streak. Now at this point I was 100% sure that there was not a chance in hell that I could do this. Ad I was really basing this conclusion on my previous attempts at water skiing, where I just got pulled flat on my face repeatedly, snow boarding, where I basically went down half the mountain on my ass and walked the rest of the way, and sand boarding, where I could glide down the down for the amount of time that it took me to fall down, about 1 second. To my utter surprise and shock I was able to stand up on the wake board on the first try! It wasn't scary at all, but quite fun. I even had a minute long ride at one point! Niki said "who knew I was a wakeboarding expert!"A bit of an exaggeration, but I had a great time and want to try it again.

2007-04-25T07:25:00.000+02:00

March 21st I flew from Cairo to Dubai.

Dubai-

Dubaians spend much time talking about Dubai, or maybe just because I am a visitor, it comes up a lot
I wanted to come here to see Niki and Victor, and grateful for the chance to visit a place that is so at the forefront of the world today. Some piece of history that is happening now.
It is a city at the beginning. Victor drew an analogy with the black and white photos of construction workers in New York, the time that new york was just being built.
It is a unique experiment in making a city. The MAJORITY of the residents are not from here. Everyone has moved here recently. There is a distinction between locals and everyone else. Cars are new, houses are new, roads are new, hotels and restaurants and malls are new. And everything is under construction.

Here there are The best and brightest from the middle east, The top and bottom of India, as the engineers and construction workers, The westerners, particularly British, securely planted at the top. The Emiratis, the older generation pulling the strings, the younger generations sitting back and riding the waves of new found financial security or struggling to catch up as they realize they’ve given away both their good jobs and bad jobs.

And what commodity is attracting so many people here?
That is the odd thing, Dubai isn’t selling a commodity, it is feeding off of itself. It is creating itself, and in that act attracting the people it needs to create itself and sustain itself. It is a true case of if you build it, they will come.

In building all these buildings they need the companies to build them, and construction workers, places for everyone to live, and IT people and companies for the companies, and stores and restaurants and entertainment for all these people, which requires marketing companies and people and PR people, and houses to be built, and cars for everyone to get around, which means car companies, and road construction companies and engineers, and radio stations for people to listen to while their stuck in traffic. And not just any stores and cars by now, because many people are rolling in so much dough that they can afford comfort and class and of course, displays of wealth, which have really come to be a norm.

But I’d say attitude (in the good sense of the word) is simply the commodity here. The attitude of bringing fantasy to reality, and the attitude that they can and must have the best of everything.

After a day or two I finally realized where Dubai reminded me of: Las Vegas. A city built out of nothing in the desert. The themes and the fantasy: A mall themed like ancient Egypt, with carved granite obelisks at the entryway, statues of rams and rulers on every corner, and walls decorated in relief of hunting scenes and smiting scenes. A building in the shape of a wave, the tallest building in the world, designed to have adjustable height just in case anyone dare try to build one taller. A mall themed with Ibn batutta’s journeys, one section each of Andalusia, Tunisia, Egypt, Persia, India, China. Another mall modeled to be an Italian village. Islands constructed in the shapes of palm trees and continents. And that is what is already built. Underway are things like a rotating apartment building, and a dinosaur theme park, and the second (!) (bigger) indoor ski slope.

So everyone has come here to participate in this self sustaining system.

But will it sustain itself? Well, that is the billion dollar question. There is also much discussion of whether or not Dubai will last. Whether or not to invest? To buy houses and property… But in the end it really seems to be at the beginning.

Of course there is the darker side of Dubai. Blatant social divisions, usually along the lines of which country you are from. Think Thursday night having sun downers at a waterside downtown bar packed full of westerners vs watching the Indian laborers walk home in the searing heat to a shanty town of tin roofed housing. Add to that that the emirates chuck out anyone who is a foreigner and not working (except for tourists of course), despite how long they may have been here. No job, no visa.

But on the other hand there are large groups of people from every part of the world. and as Niki points out, everyone is there to work, with a goal and purpose in mind, making for a large conglomeration of responsible people!

So what is there to do in Dubai?
-work- city of responsible people
-eat-restaurants!
-drink-bars and clubs, from the beach to boutique, but all still associated with hotels
-play-drive in the desert, beach, water sports, soon to be amusement parks, golf, polo, horse racing, theater, concerts.
-shop-malls malls malls, with everything from Louis vitton to forever 21. furniture, electronics, clothes.

For me, I am here to visit Niki and victor (and the pups!) and everything else is just the icing on the cake.

2007-04-25T07:06:00.000+02:00

15-03-07

I arrived off of the bus just in time to see the sun rise behind the mountains as I found my hut. What was most amazing about this place wasn’t the sea, or the mountains ringing around the camp, but the silence. It was so completely quiet at 6 o’clock in the morning that I carried my suitcase instead of rolling it along the dirt path, little wheels making more noise than I though possible relative to the silence all around.
This delight in finding silence for the first time in months just shows again that I am not an Egyptian, the desire to be alone and quiet on occasion, that I find so restorative is more alien than little green men would be around here.

There is one outcrop of rock sticking out into the water, I suppose this is the point that gives the area its name- ras Shaitan, or devil’s head.
The mountains of Saudi Arabia are closer here than I have seen anywhere else. They are so close I can see shadows of clouds on them, individual ridges, and a white splotch that might be a building.
The water obligingly compliments the beauty of this place. The sunlight sparkles across the ripples, the water looks grey dark blue or light green depending on the time of day and sunlight.
The camp is in the middle of a large bay, and I can see the other hotels and camps ringing around, but somehow it is still in the middle of nowhere. There are few if any people in the camps, very little sound, and no amenities like stores or internet. Just behind the bay is the road running in front of the base of mountains. They are not hills or foothills but actual brown and red ridgey cragley mountains that dwarf the cars driving by into little specs.

The huts are the best thing about this place though. The hut that I’m staying in is incredible. One wall is built out of stone, and has three semi-circular niches in it. The rest of the walls are made out of reeds. Coulorful rag-rugs hang from the ceiling to floor on most of the walls. There is a stone shelf or bench sticking out from the stone wall for the entire length of it. It is the kind of mastaba, that mastabas were named for. Mastaba means bench in Arabic, and the mud brick versions of them are attached to houses all over the country as a place to sit and chat and while away the hours. The mud brick tombs of the ancient Egyptians were called mastabas because they look like these benches. But with the niches inset into the walls it reminds me also of the Coptic cells I have visited and excavated. The have built in sleeping benches and niche sin the walls. This bench in this particular hut is covered with rag rugs and cushions making a lovely bed. Come to think of it all also reminds me of the hippy houses I saw and stayed in on the desert plain outside Taos.

Though I have no camera with me now, so there won’t be any pictures. It is nice and refreshing in some way to be free of the feeling that I have to document everything. Though now I am just doing it in words instead of pictures. But I suppose the urge comes from doing archaeology, trying to fully document and understand everything before it is destroyed, by us or by other people…

There are just enough little reminders that this is not paradise to make it seem real and to make you feel like you are really living in paradise. It is a bit too chilly, and sometimes there is wind, and of course there are flies.

But I learned how one cold-proofs and fly proof a hut last night. Susi found a mosquito net that someone who is returning in a week left in a hut, and it was slyly loaned to me. The he took all the rag rugs that had been lying around and covered the last of the exposed reed walls with the rugs, attaching them to nails that stick out of the walls. Then we weighted the rugs down and covered any remaining gaps with cushions, and voila! the hut was suddenly warm. Add to that an extra blanket borrowed from another guest, and my ever present hot water bottle and I had my own little warm middle eastern paradise hut for three days and nights.

There are large open circular huts with palm log supports and dried palm roofs with rag rugs and cushions that make up the common areas. To my delight there was a campfire last night. The characters around the fire: Gill and Randy, two Canadians who moved to Israel, you can tell they’ve been hippies since the 80’s but hippies with a bit of money, very nice, but somehow I couldn’t find my ability to play backgammon when I was playing with Gill, because I wasn’t sure if he used the same rules as I do, and because he kept telling me what I should have done. Ah well. Gill writes articles, and Randy does yoga and I don’t know what else. Scruffy is an old crazy hippy, and I mean crazy in it’s basic sense. He definitely interpreted the conversation differently than everyone else and made comments according to his interpretation of what was being said. He had some sort of rice with milk that was supposed to be rice pudding, but wasn’t that he kept trying to give away. A young german hippy/gutter punk girl with dark long almost dreaded hair and that German personality that I can’t describe but always find a bit grating. A skinny old blond woman who’s native language I can’t identify, but I’m guessing might be eastern European, with a 6 year old daughter who looks half Egyptian, and apparently they’ve been living here for a year. Must be some stories there. Susi the Egyptian guy who happened to be awake when I got off the bus in the morning and helped me find my hut and asked me if I smoke bango about the second sentence that he ever said to me. At least it wasn’t “are you married.”

I had some confusion about how you get food and how much everything costs. And through Arabic confusion I figured out Susi said to me “chicken in two hours”, which sounded fine to me. Apparently this was his own personal food and we ended up eating it in my hut. Of course there is no electricity in the huts, so everything is lit by candles. SO I ended up having a candle lit meal in a beach side hut with an Egyptian guy. In anyone else’s life this would have been a romantic occasion, but this is where my luck always fails. Oh well. This was just some random guy not anyone I’d want to have romantic meal with anyway. As it was it was a good opportunity to practice Arabic. I tried to explain about how work in the archaeological ruins isn’t a treasure hunt, it is all about getting information and the context is important. I have only very simple language to do this in though.

There were so many more things I would love to write about for this weekend. I took a day long 10 km walk up the beach toward Nuweiba with randy and gill, stopping and chatting with the different camp owners all along the way. It was a cloudy day (which is good for a long walk) and the overall feelings were of desolation and desperation. One or two camps were prospering, but many were abandoned, with beaches covered in trash and huts slowly falling apart. Of the camps that were nominally functioning, everyone was counting down the days till the Jewish Holidays started and praying that the Israelis would come in hoards, with enough money to get everyone through the season.

Another night I went to bed early, but realizing I forgot to fill my water bottle with hot water got up and went to the kitchen. There I found two Sudanese guys sitting around who said there was supposed to be a party. This was odd since EVERYONE was asleep. Eventually a few other people stirred and we got the fire started again, and this guy played the Tabla and sang really unusual haunting Sudanese songs about being love and life as a refugee. They were sang in a really nasal voice to rhythms unknown to me. He was cut off when "the party" showed up. Selim the closest thing to a local celebrity, a guy who played some sort of stringed instrument and his entourage who drummed. They played two songs, then on some unseen que, abruptly stopped, got up and left. I never did get any hot water.
The last morning the sun finally came out just before I left, and I took the chance to swim. It was short lived as alas, there were jelly fish. I then took up my spot by the side of the highway to wait until a bus passed and flag it down. two minutes after I made myself comfortable sitting on my suitcase and reading a book. A convoy of two police trucks stuffed with police men pulled up around me. Apparently we were all drawn to the one shady waiting spot. This was rather uncomfortable for me as they all stared at me for the next hour while I tried to nonchalantly read my book. I was very happy when a bus finally came by and I was on my way back to Cairo.

2007-04-04T15:27:00.000+02:00

09-03-07

As five of us were sitting in an extremely tiny boat, while I was wedged between mindy’s legs and the felucca man’s back was within centimeters of my face as he rowed us across the Nile, Mindy said that if she had to pick just one day to spend in Egypt it would be this day. I had to agree.
We set off early from Aswan, again catching the 6 am train, luckily with less taxi hassle this time. Our group consisted of the aforementioned Mindy who is our Canadian osteologist, and has a mouth like a regurgitating trash compacter which sometimes works out well for her and sometimes not,

Stan the brilliant down to earth friendly Belgian ceramisist who in the late 70’s or early 80’s re-worked the predynastic ceramic sequence, who lives to make life as ridiculous as possible, and who’s goal for the day was to try to sell us for camels,

His Belgian art student Hanna who was with us to draw pottery and who’s career goal has something to do with making "conceptual" jewelery out of animal skin,

and myself.

Maria being the responsible director, stayed home for the day off so that she could write grants asking for money so we can continue work next year.
Upon arrival in Edfu we bought food for our lunch from a shop across from the train station after Stan declared that this would be our last chance for food all day. Then we caught a "servees" (a truck taxi) where everyone rides in the back. The one we got had the interior decorated with 70’s floral patterns on the ceiling and walls giving it a homey but dark feel. There were already a lot of people in the truck so Stan valiantly offered to let us women ride inside and he clung to the outsi de, toes on a little platform with two or three other Egyptian guys and holding on to an overhead railing, with his hair trailing out behind him in the wind
We also particularly enjoyed the cowboy girl decal on the window. And had a good time trying to take silly photos in the back.

Our first stop was at the Belgian excavation house. We had to drop off a bottle of whiskey for the director there from another egyptologist that we had seen at a party the night before. To get there we got dropped off at the side of the road and had to jump across some barriers and railroad tracks because there was no good crossing for a kilometer in either direction. The Belgian excavation house was built in 1906 on a very choice piece of land at the edge of a bend in the river. Stan says this is the excavation house that all other excavation houses try to emulate, and let me tell you , it was beautiful. It is all arranged around a few central domes, with high ceilings, long curvey hallways, recessed windows and balconeys. The kitchen was so picturesque with the sun slanting through the windows that overlooked the Nile and the light shining golden on the red-checkered table cloth, and reed screens dividing off the next rooms, I never wanted to leave. The Belgians had kind eyes but amused themselves by showing off their house trying to make us jelous. (which largely worked).
Our next stop was across the road at the tombs of El-Kab. There Stan knew all of the guards since he worked here for many years. We started with the beautifully painted tombs including a lovely scene of wine making.

But that was just the beginning as we went around to the other side and saw many of the tombs that Stan had excavated.

We stashed our lunch in a shady tomb, picked our way around the large piles of sherds lying around, and made our way to the top of the cliff.

At the top I was excited to see the remains of a rather odd mastaba (that fits well with my new interest in monumental emulation for legitimization). There was also a 25

m deep tomb shaft! I had to lay on my stomach to look down without getting vertigo.

As to the headwraps, Stan is convinced that if one spends the day in the sun without a hat one will immediately get very ill. He scoffed at Hanna and my’s mere scarf covers, despite the fact that I excavate everyday with a scarf covering my head and no negative side effects…
Next we desended the jebel, passed the 2nd dynasty childrens’ cemetery (!) and made our way across the street, past the Old kingdom small mastabas, and to The el-Kab settlement site proper.
This site is surrounded by a large mud brick wall built, apparently, by Nectenebo to help him ward off the Persians when the pharonic period was coming to a close. However, the walled-in an area was much larger than the town itself, and this had the fortunate side effect of protecting the pre-dynastic and prehistoric sites that happened to be located there. These walls weren’t fully completed, and they still had large mud brick ramps reaching to the top, if anyone questions ancient Egyptians’ use of ramps.

We then meandered around the townsite, Stan non-stop spouting off information about excavations here and there, and I followed him around while he tried to find the exact location that a picture was drawn from sometime in the early 1900’s. This mostly involved wading around in brambles and scrub brush, pokey and scratchy, climbing over columns and stone walls, and sweating a lot in the heat, but very fun.
Stan was extremey proud of himself because he was able to locate "the lost tel of El-Kab." Nothing that dramatic really, he just figured out where the tel was before it was removed by sebakh digging.
Eventually we made it around to a small village where Stan wanted to visit an old man that he has worked with since the 70’s. We found the right house, but it was just after noon on Friday, and all of the men in the village were at the nearby mosque. So we pulled up a bench to wait and enjoy our lunch of boxed feta cheese, fateer bread, and cookies. However as soon as we sat down the village children started to gather around. Most of them just stared at us, unsure what to do, but a few were little punks, and with all the authority of the village men tucked away in a mosque, they soon tried to see how much they could get away with: Antics involved, throwing food, stealing food (even though we were giving it away), trying to push the bench over, crawling under the bench and pinching the back of my legs, making weird faces at us, and so on. There were only a handful of trouble makers, and there was also a handful of older girls trying to keep them in line, along with a few brave kids who actually tried to make conversation. When I told them that I was from America, they all started chanting "AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA! AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA!" I had no idea what this ment so I tried to deflect the shouting by telling them where everyone else was from (Canada, Belgium) but this elicited no response. Later I found out from Hammam that "Amreeka Sheeka Beeka" is the title of an Egyptian film where an American man comes to Egypt promising to help some people get to America, but he ends up ripping them off instead.

Eventually 1 o’clock rolled around and all the men emptied out of the mosque, the kids got more in-line, and Stan got to see his old man. As we left to go to another part of the village I shoved the bag with the rest of our food into the hands of a nice older girl who had served us tea.
Now we wer e on to find passage across the river. Stan asked around to see if anyone had a boat, but the only felucca was already on the other side of the river. Instead they found a man with a boat the size of Mindy’s "right brest" (to quote Mindy) that he assured us could hold 5 people.
So that is ho w I came to find myself wedged between Mindy and the felucca man, with ‘the best day in Egypt’ not even over yet.
Here’s us starting to pile in

As we were crossing, Mindy tried to tell me a story about how gross the rivers in Canada are, because she had once been rafting and seen a bag of garbage float by. She had to stop short with this story though, because mid-way through the telling a dead goat floated past.
We made it to the otherside without tipping, and fought out way up through the trees and bushes on the other side of the river. Mindy had a close call with some of the loca fauna:

Then we picked our way through the farmer’s fields which were quite beautiful and had a discussion about whether or not corn is grown in Egypt. (Anyone know?)
Eventually we got to another village, but before we could find transportation for ourselves we stopped at a carpenter’s house for tea while he sent someone to find us a servees taxi. It was a lovely house or workshop with a sort of indoors-is-outdoors thing going on, I think it was two mud brick houses next to each other with the space in between roofed over. Here we developed a sneaky meathod of tea trade. Mindy couldn’t handle one more cup (we had had many already), so she put her full cup behind my back and Stan put his empty cup behind my back and the y made the switch! Here Stan also got to fufil his hope of trying (unsuccessfully) to sell Hanna for a bunch of camels. Aparently, back in the day one of the guys around here always brought his daughters around for Stan to meet hoping he would fall in love and whisk one of them off to Europe, so I think this is some sort of joking retribution. But the best thing about this house by far was the 4 year old girl wearing white faux-fur pants in the 90-100 degree heat.

Eventually a truck showed up for us. Since Stan was the only one that knew the directions he had to ride up front, and us three women were left to stand in the back. We waved goodbye to the crowd that had formed, only to make a three point turn a little way up the allye and pass by waving goodbye again. This slow turn provided the opportunity for many small boys to run after the truck and cling on catching a ride and staring at the khawagas. Now as we carrened down narrow alleyways and over dirt roads an past farmers’ fields, hanging on for dear life and having a great time, we realized what an anomaly we were three white women standing in the back of a truck in a small village in upper Egypt. Every one who saw us got this slightly repulsed what-the-fuck? look of suprize on their faces. The boys would run and try to jump on the truck. The driver would periodically stop and yell at them to get off.
Now we were on our way to Hierokonpolis, which was an opportunity on the level of a pilgrimage for me. Hierokonpolis is the largest pre-dynastic site in Ancient Egypt and has had some amazing and history changing discoveries in the past few years. Ironically, in the pre-dynastic period it was Abydos’ main rival (or Abydos was Hierokonpolis’ main rival) and something of this rivalry still exists among scholars today. SO we had to laugh at the sort of entrance we were making to this reknown site, scretching up and clinging to the back of a pick-up truck in a thouroughly non-professional manner!
No one was around as we arrived so it didn’t matter in the end. The Germans from the German excavations at Abydos were actually visiting the same day, so there was much milling about and confusion over who was who as we arrived. I said hello to one of the directors, but she didn’t remember me. I refrained from reminding her that I was the one dresses as a mud brick at our haloween party 2 or 3 years ago. Eventually we did get to see some of the amazing new finds, and then got a tour of the parts of the site near to the excavation house, including the misleadingly named "fort" which is the sister building to the Shuneh from Abydos, since they are both monumental mud brick structures built by the same king (Khasakhemwy). It was all very exciting and I definetly am re-thinking some of my ideas about the pre-dynastic after visiting Hierokonpolis.
We hitched a ride to the train station with the Germans (again, the epitome of proffesionalism). At the station there was much confusion about what time the next train heading south was supposed to arrive. (There were no "officials" around we just asked people who were also waiting for the trains) Some people thought 5:30 and others thought 7:30. As it was 4:30 at the time we were hoping for the earlier train. One self appointed foreigner liason, a boy of about 7 years old, went out of his way to assure us that no train would come until 7:30. After some clairification it turns out that there is supposed to be a tourist train at 7:30 and a regular train at 5:30. We said we would take whichever showed up first, of course causing much confusion as to why we as foreigner s would possibly want to take the regular train. The boy then demanded Baksheesh. I told him I’d pay him when the 5:30 train showed up (to see if his information was correct). Apparently this is the equivalent of saying "When hell freezes over" as the 5:30 never showed up and the boy got chased away by some gaurds in the mean time.
Stan entertained us with stories of what it was like taking the third class trains in the 70’s, (no seats, lots of straw and animals, pooping in the corner). Another foreigner wandered over, who happened to be Mindy’s osteological idol, (he had been working at hierokonpolis) and he quizzed her and invited her to come to his lab sometime. Mindy was shocked and excited to the core, and we went on joking after he left about putting her "test result" on her CV: examination, Edfu train station, March 2007.
At 7:15 a train showed up and we umped on and actually made it back to Aswan by 9. We figure it was the 5:30 due to the unlikelyhood of the 7:30 being earlier.
Despite our deleriousness at such a long day we managed to stay up just long enough to grab some pizzas, a tasty ending to a fabulous day.

2007-03-28T12:47:00.001+02:00

Rock Art Day

6ish-03-07
Today was the kind of day that made me glad to be an archaeologist. We spent the day surveying for rock art. (I finally finished excavation in the settlement yesterday. Which is not to say that the work at the other site is done, I now just have millions of maps to make and pages to write in the few evening hours.) I wasn’t quite sure how one goes about doing survey of a massively huge wadi with side branches, and roads and rock quarry activity and whatnot, but I went along to find out.
The first place we stopped was at the mouth of the wadi. The view overlooked green farmers fields and stands of palm trees, and we could see across the Nile to the Wadi where we’ve been working the past month. We immediately found a lovely drawings on the rocks. Then the process for the day became apparent. Drive a bit, stop and jump out of the car, and bam! there’s rock art everywhere you look (and in a beautiful setting). The process was aided much by Mustafa and Sayeed, who practically explode out of the car the moment we stop (well Sayeed does, Mustafa takes his time) and are disappeared among the rocks before Maria and I get to the first drawing. So they scout out the area and we come along behind photographing. (Though I have to say, some areas were so rich with drawings I even found a few myself!). The photography is a bit of a task since of course, the drawings are not always conveniently placed. One person has to hold up a small scale, yet remain mostly out of the photo, and the other person has to try to get in front of rocks that are sometimes practically hanging in mid air. At one point I was crouched down, holding up the scale, and I shifted my weight just slightly, and the rocks started to slide around me. I could feel the main mass of them being held in place by my hip (lucky for me I have ample hips), so after Maria took the photo I made sure she got well away, and then planned my escape and bounded out of the way and down the hill in one quick motion as the rocks slid behind me throwing up clouds of dust.
The first side branch that we went to was behind some rock quarry activity. We crossed the tracks for the mining cars and the flattened expanse of rock. But right after that Sayeed found a some drawings high up on the side. So I strapped on the camera and climbed up the boulders and rock outcroppings that make up the side of the valley. And so it went, all through that wadi, up and down the rocks photoing images carved into the rocks. It was a beautiful shaded wadi, with a narrow path at the bottom strewn with large rocks, and high walls that made it shaded. This one also had tons of modern Arabic inscriptions, including one conveniently bearing a date, March 23rd, 2001. When we finally reached the end, a round alcove of rock, I could see the Arabic inscriptions continuing on in a smaller higher path, but we had much more to do today. It was at this point I realized that my trowel was gone. I had it for sure at the first drawing in the wadi, and now I was at the end, a considerable distance, with no trowel in my back pocket. I looked around dejectedly at all of the nooks and crannies formed everywhere by the rocks of various shapes and sizes, all in browns and grays, the colors of my trowel. I kept an eye out walking back, but of course I didn’t find it. I had been toying with the idea of calling this wadi "Wadi Jamila" b/c it was so pretty, or "Wadi al-Hayawan" for al the rock art, and now I’ve added "Wadi al-Mastaren" Wadi of the trowel, for my trowel that has been offered to the rock art gods. I spent the rest of the day with the tune of the song "I left my wallet in el-Segundo" but with the words "I lost my trowel in as-Subera" going through my head.
The "Bad-ass" land rover that we’ve been riding around in this whole time finally got to do what it was made for. There were roads in some parts of the wadi but they were only rutted dirt tracks at best, and in many places non-existent. Just an expanse of rocks and pits that we bounced over. One "path" dead ended in a large boulder (with a rock drawing, it doesn’t get any easier to find than that!) This gave Hammam the opportunity to do the two things he loves best- driving recklessly and complaining about his hardships. For instance doing a three point turn over a ridge of rocks when there was a clear flat path nearby, and than asking how many days were are going to survey because he is worried about the poor tires on his poor car…
In a rather "English Patient" tone, we ended the day not with the "cave of Swimmers" but the "Wadi of the (oh wait, I can’t tell)." (No gripping romantic sidestory, unfortunately.) The wadi was filled with pristine sand dunes sloping off of each of the sides, no disturbance by a single footprint before us, and all along, carvings. Now of course this is not some esoteric enigma, rather these images were one of a handful of artistic/ideological motifs used in that period. And this particular kind of image remained an important motif throughout Pharonic history, which is a bit obvious for a culture centered around a relatively placid river. Luckily there was no car breakdown, or sandstorm (already had one last week), but there was some intercultural exchange from our version of an international sand club.
Sayeed wears a white headwrap of about 3 meters of cloth which he twists in to a kind of rope and wraps loosely around his head and that magically stays in place as he scales rocks and jumps down inclines. Maria asked Sayeed if his distinctive headwrap was Bedja. He enthusiastically confirmed, and then proceeded to tell us in a sly, dark humored sort of way, that the reason he has such a ridiculously long headwrap is because he is from the desert, and if he is going through the desert somewhere and dies, it is his shroud that he can be wrapped in and buried in there on the spot. H explained this is an "aren’t I clever" sort of voice, not a heavy or serious tone. Apparently the shroud is what you need for death. Location, headstone, services, food offerings, etc don’t matter, but the shroud does, and it is so important that you have it with you at all times, just incase you die. I am certainly not concerned or aware of my own mortality on such a daily and practical basis.
This did trigger some vague sort of memory, probably something I read about people saving up to get a shroud before they get anything else, because it is so important. Maybe it was in a Naguib Mahfouz book…
Later I also learned the difference between the names Sayeed and Sayid, which sound the same to an American ear. Sayeed has the letter ayn in it somewhere and it means "Happy," and Sayid has no ayn and means "Mister". This is an important distinction for me to figure out because there is the above mentioned Sayeed who works with us in the field, and then there is Sayid, the 9 month old son of our cook Fatima. I’m sure I have called each of them the others’ name a few times!

2007-03-28T12:26:00.001+02:00

25-02-07
Bishareen-Bedja
Mustafa, Sayeed and Dhoha are from the Bishareen tribe/clan/heritage, which is a branch of the Medja or Bedja, which are Eastern Desert nomads. Their families are originally from the Sudan and near the Egypt-Sudan border, but were relocated to the Kom Ombo area in the 60’s with the building of the dam and Lake Nasser.

2007-03-26T23:11:00.000+02:00

23 Feb
This morning I gave in to a bit of western indulgence. I rented a bike last night, and I got up with the sun this morning, put on my I-pod and went on a photographic biking expedition around Aswan. (Getting up early, biking for fun, and I-pods are all very non-Egyptian.)
For weeks now I’ve been sleepily seeing all these picturesque scenes as we ride to work in the morning, the mountains reflected in the still Nile like a mirror image, the groups of birds skimming the water, a bus from the 50’s painted all red with the old style "Coca-cola" emblazoned on the side, Feluccas lined up waiting for the day with their sails still stowed, the yellow early morning sunlight on the Nubian village at the edge of elephantine Island…
Since I got my film camera from Abydos last weekend the time seemed ripe for photographs. The downside of wanting to photograph everything in the early morning light is that I don’t get to sleep in on my one day off, but ma-alish. Really, the photos are just an excuse for exploring Aswan, and a bit of solitude away from all the roommates, and doing something different with my day.
It was exhilarating and peaceful, coasting along the corniche listening to U2 and Billy Holiday. My I-pod compliantly played fitting songs like "It’s a beautiful day" and instrumentals from the English Patient. With the Nile on my left and Aswan on my right, I passed first Elephantine island with the feluccas crowded around like sleeping ducks around a rocky nest, and on the other side all the European style buildings in their faded flaking-paint glory with ground floor shops not yet open. Then I got to the section of the corniche with the cruise ships all lined up one after the other waiting to spew forth sun burned scantily clad tourists. In the gaps between the boats I caught glimpses of Kubayet al-Hawwa and the Old Kingdom tombs of the princes across the river. I passed the train station, and the empty gardens, and the turnoffs to who-knows-where that all look the same. (The road is much longer when you’re biking!) I found the Coca-Cola truck on one of these turnoffs. Then I passed the point where the paved corniche sidewalk ends and the road just drops off to the Nile. I wasn’t worried about getting hit by a car, only one car would pass about every ten minutes, and they weren’t concerned about which lane they had to drive in, easily going well around me. And then I discovered what I missed by always looking at the Nile every morning. On the other side of the road there are all these crumbling old mud brick buildings in fields of palm trees. With the sunlight filtering through the leaves, I couldn’t help but use a lot of pictures on those. Eventually I got far enough out of town that I was at the part of the Nile where the water becomes still. Here there are so many birds in the water, ducks and egrets and humming-bird like ones and pelicans and who knows what. I spent some time trying to catch one of the all white egrets flying against the dark water, we’ll see if any turn out. Conveniently, a fishing boat came along, and I got some of the classic man-on a boat-in the Nile shots. On the way back I was chased by a dog, but I stopped and yelled at him, which surprised him enough to make him run off.
Back in town again I loaded up the color film and rode in circles on the streets around and behind the souq and train station, watching the town wake up. I chatted with a baker, kids, a falafel vendor, a female (!) store clerk, and had to get all sorts of things worth less than a pound on credit b/c I only had a hundred pound note. Eventually I got change and circled back to al the places repaying a pound here, 50 piasters there. Riding a bike around the side streets of Aswan is the equivalent of off-roading in America. The streets are lumpy and bumpy everything but flat, up down and sideways on a hill all at once. I took photographs of some of the doorways that I love, old and ornate and decrepit, with the street levels raised around them. I had to cut through the ‘new’ souq a few times, with its flat paved street and vendors ready to pounce on the first victim (customer) of the day. A kid ran after me trying to get baksheesh but I turned it into a race instead, yelling "yella!" making him laugh and extracting myself quickly from the souq without anymore hassles.

A bike and a camera, I’ll have to do this again!

2007-03-25T13:22:00.000+02:00

Stray thoughts

We had a Belgian geologist working with us for a few days, taking core samples of the sediment in the wadi. The great thing about this was that he looked just like Donald Sutherland! For some reason that makes me feel like laughing. Some throwback to watching Mash when I was five. Donald Sutherland just gave me a thumbs up across the felucca!

The best disparaging phrase I’ve heard since "the shit hit the fan," was said by our (female) Polish Surveyor, referring to the weak tea at breakfast one morning: "Dis eez de pee-pee ov my seester"
It kept me giggling for 20 minutes

2007-03-25T13:17:00.000+02:00

18-03-07
Riding the train from Abydos to Aswan I was reminded of the feeling I had passing this way a few weeks ago. I am so excited to be exploring this new part of Egypt. Southern Upper Egypt. With its stone houses instead of mud ones. With its mysterious "Nubian influence".
I’ve always heard people talk about the "Nubian influence" in (modern) Aswan, without saying what that influence was. Now I have some idea.
I think the most noticeable aspect is the music in the streets. There is a certain kind of Nubian music, played on a hand drum, and with clapping and singing. It is similar to the Bedouin music and Upper Egyptian music I’ve heard, but with its own rythms, and different venues. Bedouins play in the desert, Upper Egyptians play at private parties, but Nubians, they seem like they’l play music anywhere. You hear it coming from passing feluccas that are spilling over with people. We saw this from the veranda of the German excavation house while we were being very still, trying not to interrupt the discussion (read speech) of a local official. A few nights a weeks, the music floats up to our flat from the village below. I spent one night with my head out the infamous bathroom window, wishing everyone in the flat hadn’t gone to bed already and that it would be plausible and possible and not rude to go crash a wedding party. On any day you might see groups of people walking around in pubic streets playing music for whatever occasion there may be. I had to laugh when I couldn’t stop by the photo shop one night and harass them for more empty film canisters because the entire store was blocked by drummers and singers escorting a bride and groom who were getting their portrait made.

On a slightly different topic, some comment has to be made about the photo shop in Aswan, Photo Sabri. It is between our flat and the nearest internet café, so they got to know us well. They would head right for the drawer where they kept empty film canisters the moment anyone from our project walked through the door. Or else they would start with apologies for not having any. (We use the canisters to store fragile small finds.) But the best thing about the shop are the pictures on the walls. This is what happens when digital manipulation meets third world tastes. Egyptian babies edited to have blue eyes. Babies edited onto the backs of dolphins. Small girls edited into tropical scenes with bikini clad cartoon characters. Six year old boys behind the wheel of sports cars and motorcycles. A bride and groom with a mirror image of the bride’s head looming up behind the couple. A child next to a green leprechaun at the end of a rainbow. That is just the tip of the iceburg, all that I can recall at the moment. But in addition to the edited photos there are the regular photos. A giant poster sized picture of a 10 year old boy with his eyes crossed and lips pursed. And the prominently displayed poster size of a well over the hill, bald except on the sides, man sporting heavy 70’s sunglasses which are matched by the heviness of his gut, and the heaviness of a thick gold necklace, and balanced by a dark prayer bruise in the middle of his forehead. You have to wonder, is this the image of the ideal man? Or do people only see status? Is it an image rife with status markers? Are they impervious to asthetics? Or have they transcended beyond mortal vanities? I think the whole place was some sort of window on the middle class Egyptian psyche, I just don’t know how to interpret what that window looks on to!

2007-03-25T12:56:00.000+02:00

I haven't posted in a while because things got very busy at the end of the season in Aswan, so hopeful i can do some catching up now!

Abydos part 4
17-02-07
Waiting at the Baliyana train station is something of an experience, along the lines of knowing how zoo animals feel.
Ahmed, the house manager (bailed out) on me- He dropped me at the train station, told me my car number and seat number, and booked it out of there. I suppose he didn’t want to spend the next hour or two bored in the sun, guarding and sometimes making awkward conversation with this khawaga.
In order to catch a train out of Balliyana you must show up at least an hour before the train is scheduled, and you can end up waiting for as much as two hours after the train is scheduled. No one ever knows when the train will actually arrive. This is just a small station, a quick 30-second stop in some provincial town for trains en route to Cairo or Luxor or Aswan. Anything could happen on the train’s journey before it gets here. The time on the ticket is just an estimate, and you have to be ready to jump on it at whatever time the train may show up. This is standard practice for all the small stations across Egypt.
A brief word about the "ticket." As Ahmed explained earlier, the station here does not have a computer, so the ticket is hand written on an ultra thin piece of blue paper. The paper does have some official looking letterhead stamped onto it, but al the pertinent info is hand written in Arabic. Sometimes they don’t use the thin paper but little squares of cardboard.
Now to explain about waiting at the station. First you have to understand that travel for foreigners is not freely permitted in this area (all of middle Egypt). And in some ways I am extremely greatful that there are still some areas where westerners are allowed to do as they please, bringing their culture with them. It actually protects the culture to some extent and prevents the jadedness and sleeziness that develops at the interface between tourists and Egyptians that are trying to survive off of tourism.
So as far as I know, the only westerners who ever get on and off the train here are archaeologists, associated with either our "beyt Amrekee" (American House), or with the "Beyt Alemanee" (German house) which is in the wadi next to us. On the ride over here I was just absorbing and appreciateing that this town is so free of toursists, so "authentic" and "untouched" (to use some words I normally dislike because everything that exists is authentic in some light. Such as a plastic coin made in china is an authentic example of our mass production and age of plastic, though not an authentic ancient artifact that stupid and immoral tourists hope to buy at some archaeological sights. Or to use my personal favorite, Upperclass Egyptians are just as authentic Egyptians as a Bedouin in the desert, even though they may not fit with some people’s pre-conceived notions of what an Egyptian is like).
But what I’m trying to say is that foreigners are something of an oddity here.
Last year, waiting at this same train station with a group of people from our team, on our way to Luxor or Aswan for a break, our house manager left, as he tends to do, and we had some lazy policemen that day who were off drinking tea or sleeping or mish arifa eh (I don’t know what). A crowd slowly started to form at a bit of a distance from us. Groups accumulated down the platform and boys and men sat lineing the platform across from us, swinging their legs and watching with the attention 14 year old boys normally reserve for porno flicks
Slowly, as word got around I suppose, more people accumulated filling the gaps between groups, and the crowd edged closer and closer. People’s heads appeared over the wall behind us. A few brave girls crept up and started talking to Jerrie. Then some people started climbing over the walls, and some crossed the platform, all the while our space was becoming smaller. The women in our group migrated to the middle while the "men" took up positions toward the outside. The tension finally broke when the train arrived and we slipped on. As the train pulled away we all looked at each other with an odd feeling, asking "What the hell was that?"
Today, I am here solo. A foreign female alone is probably even more of an oddity than a group of foreigners. But I have a diligent officer standing rigidly, hands clasped behind his back, feet spread, about two meters in front of my bench, making his presence known and occasionally shooing away gawking boys. Despite this, I am currently the subject of much staring from afar. I could feel the suspense as everyone watched while I searched around in my bag trying to locate this pen.
The reason it was so difficult to find my pen is because my bag is fully stocked with food and cookies that the dig house has reknown stores of, and some sort of chicken sandwich thrown together by Hassan and Sinjab before I left. Somehow it is just the sweetest and most touching thing to have someone pack a lunch for you, Even if it is their job, and they are probably shaking a bent head at the Khawaga’s inability to take care of themselves. Still, the overflowing bag of enough food to keep me going for two days (as if I need to eat five cucumbers in one meal) gives the warm and fuzzy impression of caring.

2007-02-23T19:41:00.001+02:00

16-02-07

Trip to Abydos part 1:

I need to know how to say in Arabic:
Shame on you for taking advantage of a stranded woman!

I left about 5 minutes later than I planned to catch the 6:00 am train to Abydos on my day off. But when I got downstairs I found that the door to get out of the apartment building was locked and could only be opened with a key! I had to wake up Maria and Fatma and half the third floor just to get out of the building, and by this time I was quite late. Then of course the murphy’s law of taxi’s came into play, and the one time I actually desperately needed a taxi there wasn’t one in sight. I RAN full speed down the hill and towards the corniche, eventually I found three taxi drivers lounging around in front of the old cataract hotel. But they had formed some sort of racket, and were insisting on 10 LE for what should have been a 3 LE ride, but I didn’t have time to argue, I had about 7 minutes to get to the station! SO I said ok, as long as you go fast. Fast Fast Fast! And he pushed that taxi to the max, wheezing and whirring along the practically deserted corniche. But he was still haranguing me about the money during the ride, which is never done and very rude and implies mistrust, so I berated him as best I could in Arabic, and tossed the money at him without a word, when we arrived, which is a sight slight, but I was wishing I knew how to say :Shame on you for taking advantage of stranded women!" What a mondodizmo.
I got on the train at 5:58, and the train actually left at 6:01! A miracle for Egypt! It was a good thing in the end that I didn’t try to find a different taxi.

Trip to Abydos part 2:

Train rides are always a bit of a torture for me. I’m constantly torn between giving in to the lulling rocking motion of the train and the usually odd time of day and falling asleep, or staying awake with my face pressed to the window watching all the towns and fields and the parade of the gorgeous and mundane pass by.

Trip to Abydos part 3:

The reason I went to Abydos was to get my film camera, which luckily I had volunteered to be a project camera for the Abydos project. Normally I probably wouldn’t have brought my film camera, but now that my digital is out of commission I am glad that it is around. But that was sort of just the excuse really to go see what they have uncovered since I left. I can’t really take about the work, but let's just say that I had to put on climbing gear and a hard hat, climb down a 10 meter ladder, and flashlight in hand it was colorful and beautiful. It will be covered in sand and possibly never revealed again, so it was a one time opportunity. As my mother likes to point out, I love one time opportunities. And beyond that It was a chance to see the team again which I had to prematurely leave, and who were so sweet to me.
So I rode the train for 7 hours one day, stayed overnight, and rode it 7 hours back the next day!

2007-02-23T19:34:00.000+02:00

11-02-07
Exciting day for me as an archaeologist! I found an ephemeral feature in loose sand in the settlement site!!!!
Also- Italians really do love pasta. The Italian women on this project are touchingly Italian. Not to say that they are stereotypical, but when Maria found out that Valeria knows how to cook all the traditional pastas from scratch, and four voices chimed out "tortellini, ravioli, fettuccini" in the lilting Italian with the stress on the second to last syllable you could hear the loving longing lament clear in the voices.
And Valeria told me how her grandmother made her a huge pan of lasgna before she left. And two nights ago Maria and Serena instrucedt Fatima on how to make an "Italian style sauce," but their looks and tone of voice conveyed that you can’t make the real thing here. And more than that they teased us with the possibility of making tiramisu, but in the end decided there aren’t the right ingredients to make real tiramisu

2007-02-23T19:33:00.000+02:00

10-feb-07

Today I explained to Mustafa, one of our workmen, that Venezuela and brazil and Argentina are not part of America, the USA, but are on the continent of South America. He knew all about continents, and is generally better informed about politics than I am (he started discussing Dutch politics with one of our crew members the first day), but apparently had heard of these places as being ‘in America’ or in ‘South America’ thinking it was referring to the USA and the south of the USA. An understandable misunderstanding.

2007-02-23T19:16:00.000+02:00

Reclaiming Aswan

Sometime around February 10th

Now I look at Aswan again, this is the forth or fifth time I’ve been to Aswan, and the city looks so different now.
we went to a ‘new’ part of the souq. It was built two years ago, in a somewhat traditional style with closet sized shops on both sides of the street and streamers of triangular flags stretching across the open street top, but still it was new. It had none of the organic growth that naturally occurs causing shops to appear at all different levels, winding alleys, floor levels raised above original doorways, so that you have to step down to go in. Now everything is horizontal, not vertical. My feelings about the souqs are pretty clear.
But I had never even been that far into the souq before the 4 times I've been here before. I’d always just stuck right along the corniche.

Arriving the first day, I rode around in the (bad ass) land rover with Hammam while he bought bread and I found that I didn’t even think of this as the same town that I had been to before. We were in the older and more run down part of town where the buildings are small and unstandardized and yellow and the streets are covered in a veneer of dust.

Today we went to the "tombs of the princes" (or nobles depending on which guidebook your reading) Also known as Kubeyet al-Hawwa, if you want to sound cooler and less touristy. Kubayet al-Hawwa means ‘cup of wind’ and it refers to a little modernish tomb or shrine sitting like a hollow fez on top of the mountain that the other tombs are carved into. The tombs were absolutely amazing, and I definitely have not been to them before (I couldn’t remember before we went, if I had or not). It can only be described using some cheesy awe-inspiring phrases, "Great columns hewn out of the rock" comes to mind. Some parts were how I imagine Petra to be, only less well known. The tomb paintings were vibrant, and the views were so stunning that I would want to be buried there as well, if I were an ancient Egyptian.

And now in the hour before sunset, I am waiting on the corniche, the river is flooded with feluccas, sails aloft, and the sun is making the white buildings turn golden. It feels Mediterranean. I see it all with a different eye than I have before.
The sounds of Nubian drumming floats from a passing felucca stuffed full of Egyptians celebrating something or other.
How nice it is to be near the water after spending all week in the sand!

2007-02-23T19:03:00.000+02:00

First week of February

The view from the large bathroom window in our apartment is incredible. You look out over part of the town on this bank full of colorful houses and mud brick buildings falling down or being built or both, with a yellow minaret in the middle. Just past that is the Nile, with an Island in the middle, green and rocky. Felluccas with big sails, carrying tourists on the sunset ride glide by, and on the far bank, past the palm trees and houses, the desert rises up with the silhouettes of the mausoleum of Agha Khan and the monastery of St Simeon. It is really the sort of view one travels the world for, foreign and exotic and dirty.
I fought through all the luggage and furniture blocking a wooden door in my room and found that it opened onto a balcony with this very view. What a shame to block up such an exquisite balcony! I wrestled a chair off of the other balcony and got it arranged onto this tiny one. It is just the sort of chair I would choose, made out of reeds like wicker, and it fits just barely onto the balcony. Now the mosque has just turned on its neon lights, the sun has just sunk under the horizon, and the call to prayer is starting in rising off-timed waves of Allahu Akbar.

2007-02-16T20:36:00.000+02:00

Here is a picture of me and my trenchmate at Abydos, Penny Minturn. We were working under a possibly unstable brick area so we had to wear hardhats. Penny is a Bio-archaeologist, and she just got her PHD! Congratulations Penny!

Unfortunately, the day I left Abydos my digital camera broke. I'd been hoping it would fix itself if I just left it alone for a while, but sadly that strategy failed. Insha-alla I'll be able to get it fixed in Cairo or Dubai.

2007-02-14T18:36:00.000+02:00

2007-02-14T17:48:00.000+02:00

By now I’ve left Abydos a long time ago, and it was a wonderful and idyllic season right to the end. I was so sad to go, one month in Abydos seems so short compared to the 5 and 6 month seasons of the last few years, but at least a short season did allow me to retain my sanity!
The last day of fieldwork we took a big group photo. Of course we asked Sinjab and Mish-Mish the breakfast donkey to be in the photo, but when he brought her over there was practically a mass revolt! Apparently no one wanted to be in a photo with a donkey! ( I do have to admit, donkeys are not highly regarded around here, and it is also a derogatory word...) But some harsh words from the reyis kept most of the boys in place. A few snuck away anyhow. And we took another photo without the donkey to try to be sensitive.
Most of the crew went to Luxor for the weekend the same day I was leaving, which worked out quite well. I got to take a day off in luxor between projects. I was delighted to find that this team frequents a different hotel, the St. Joseph. In previous seasons I always stayed at the new winter palace, (garden section), and since I had residency visas, it was quite affordable. But unfortunately no visa this season, so luckily the st joseph turned out to have clean rooms, hot showers (with tub!), and the requisite bad movies and music videos. It even had a balcony that I didn’t make too much use of.
And we at the oasis café at least three times. The oasis café is my favorite in luxor, in an old re-done apartment, with high ceilings, dark wood décor, plays jazz music, and has cappuccino and lattes, and really good food. Most of the rest of the time was spent shopping, (window shopping in my case), being shocked at the major changes that have been taking place around luxor, and just spending time with the team before I hit the road.
When I actually left the hotel Saturday morning, I had a great "first." I was mistaken for a Tunisian! The taxi driver didn’t think I was Egyptian, but since I spoke to him right off in Arabic (and hopefully also b/c I didn’t look like your average ignorant tourist sporting tank top and shorts) he thought I was a native Arabic speaker with a funny accent from who knows where!
I had a lovely conversation with him on the way to the train station. I only understood about 50% of what he said but I faked it pretty well, and we talked about the Disney-fication of Luxor and (_____)
The worst thing about the changes at Luxor temple is that it is superficially a success. It does look much better down there now, you can see the mountains across the river silhouetted by the setting sun and framed by the columns and pylons of the temple... but that is just going to fuel the fire (_____).

The "Disney" side of the renovations that are going on are such things like the new arches at all the souq entrances, strange pseudo-pharonic trashbins and streets lamps and all that. People can go to Disney world if they want to see a version of reality, but I wish that authenticity could survive somewhere instead of changing reality to fit vaguely held notions of what a place is like or should be like..
and on that note here are some of my perceptions of egyptian souqs.
A souq is just a street where a lot of vendors happen to have shops. There are some covered markets that are square, but most souqs are just never ending meandering streets, where the type of item sold usually clusters together. Some do have sections that are covered, like the street of the tent makers in Cairo by Bab-Zuweila, which is the oldest market in cairo. Some have actual awnings that stretch into the street, or sometimes sheets of cloth are strung up, but usually not. Just stores along the street, most are small and closet size, some have a tiny opening but stretch long and thin back into the recess of a building, some have narrow step stairs leading to another floor, like a glass shop I’ve been to a few times near khan al-khalili, where the wall is lined with all sorts of glass works making the staircase narrower, and women sit upstairs painting the glass in god- awful cheesy patterns, and the lamps hang down so that you are always in danger of banging your head, and the shelves stick out into the room so that you are likely to knock something over with your bag, and baskets of beads line the floor so that when you crouch down to get away form the lamps and stay still avoiding the shelves there will be something else to look at.
But getting back to souq streets, I want to say again that they are just streets. I couldn’t really find the souq the first times I went to Luxor and aswan without someone who knew where it was, because there was not large flashing entrance sign (oh but just wait), there was no real difference between the restaurants and tea shops and cell phone stalls, that just eventually morphed into and you’d just have to use a marker like "stay to the right of the "chicken hut" restaurant and you’l be there". Then suddenly you realize there are scarves and t-shirts hanging from the walls and everyone is saying Hello in imitation of a british accent and "look here my friend" "no-charge" "T-shirt" " I have what you’re looking for" and so on. Once you know where the souq is it was obvious, but to the new eye it was hard to pick out, not how you’d imagine.
Dirty dirty streets, sometimes you can’t tell if it is a dirt road or a road covered in dirt, and there are tables squeezed between the shops selling, T-shirts and cheap jewelery, or food or underwear in the lest touristy souqs. And when it is busy, the crowds are amazing. So many people pushing against each other in both directions that you couldn’t keep your group together by holding hands. And in the middle some absolutely crazy out of touch with reality driver is slowly honking their way through the crowds and forcing a car through. Sometimes the vehicles are motorcycles, so loud and annoying, playing like they are going to hit you and laughing hysterically, or aiming for you just because they can. But more common than motorcycles are delivery trucks, dropping of god knows what to god knows who, a group effort to get them maneuvered around a corner. Usually there is only a medium amount of people at the souq, so that you have enough space to find a niche to stow yourself out of the way of the tires, trying to avoid the puddles and piles at the same time.

2007-02-07T18:30:00.000+02:00

I've moved south, and now I'm working on a University of Rome project in order to get some experience excavating a pre-dynastic site.
Working here is very different of course, the work days are longer, we leave at 6:15, get to the site at 7, work till 3, sometimes take the finds to the official storeroom, then get back around 4. But we have two meals during the day, one around 9 and one around 1. I say around because there is no whistle or anything like that, no set time or length of the break. Not the regimnented to the minute schedule of Abydos!

They are finishing up a Pan-grave cemetery this week, but we also started the predynastic settlement and cemetery. I've spent most of my time so far at the pre-dynastic site. We've laid out the grid and taken a bazillion elevations and all that. No total station unfortunately. I got sick the second day. New pl;ace new germs, what can you do. I was exhausted to the bone the previous day and that usually happens to me the day before I get sick. But I spent the morning running around and getting my visa renewed. The inspector came with me, which helped. He is a nice normal young guy from Kom Ombo, but went to school in Sohag. I of course had to get a million passport photos and a whole bundle of stamps, and a stack of copies, but the cranky lady behind the window eventually couldn't come up with any more excuses and gave me the visa. (after remarking how there is no space left in my passport- there are 4 whole pages! Tons of space). Al-humdulilah there was a passport office here in Aswan!

So to back track a bit, there are 8 women living in a three bedroom apartment! I have three other roommates in our room, but the door doesn't even shut and it is a big room, so it is kind of like we are living in the middle of the apartment anyway. But at least I don't have to share a bed! Only me and one other girl have beds to ourselves! 4 of the team members, including the two co-directors, are Italian, and there is one from Poland, one from Netherlands, one from Canada, and me. After an initial wariness, everyone seems to have warmed up and they are very sweet. The polish surveyor, though female, still has the prickliness and no-nonsense attitude of surveyors everywhere, at least that is one thing you can count on! I think I won her over since I had a very necessary plumb bob, and general competence at laying out grids. The Bioarch was very quiet until I started giving her advice about where to go in Luxor, and then her true ebullient talkative side came out. Hamam (Egyptian man) is the driver/manager (like Ahmed's job) and he lives in a flat across the hall with our cook/maid Fatima and her husband Nuby, and their 9 month old son Sayid. So there is a baby here for all the women to croon over too. Fatima is a good cook, and I had to miss some babaganouj being sick! Oh and there is a washing machine, so Fatima washes all our clothes!

The site is called Naj al-garmila, and it is just a hair north of Wadi Kubbaniya. The pre-dynastic site is just off a road dividing the desert from the green, and the Pan grave site is up on a hill behind that with a beautiful view of the river. The weirdest thing so far is that I don't have to take notes! The main director for each site takes notes and the rest of us are basically glorified labor. But I think this will change as more and more people leave. The last week it will be only Maria and me in the Settlement site, everyone else will be gone! We do most of the work ourselves, there are only three workmen (and so far two of them seem pretty useless).
There is a little work in the evening, but nothing to worry about, and somehow the 8 women manage to share the one bathroom and shower without too much waiting or problems.

The coffee situation however is dire. The first morning they hadn't really made extra coffee to account for me, and I got about a tablespoon of coffee. Even if it is Italian espresso, that doesn't cut it for me. They made extra the next morning, but I was sick of course. There is no coffee out on site! And there is Nescafe in the evenings. This is really going to take some adjustment of my caffeine dependence, but insha-alla, I can do it.

2007-01-29T20:51:00.000+02:00

I just returned from gufti house, (went for a goodbye tea already, seems like I was just having the hello tea), and conversation was really lagging because of a new addition to the house, a TV. We saw them mounting the sattelite dish last week. And so the modern world arrives. First sattelite dish in the royal wadi. This new development doesn't seem like development to me.

But a (different) type of development is going on in Egypt right now. For some reason (____) that the archaeological sites should be "pristine landscapes," which in reality comes out as a concrete bubble. (_____) and pour concrete over everything so that there is a parking lot and a long long walkway to the site.
(_____) I don't even know where to begin. I've seen this happen to Dendera over the past few years. Dendera is a 2 hour car ride from Abydos, so we go at least once a season. I don't remember what it looked like three years ago, but it wasn't noteably aweful, I only remember the ruins. Then last year, we pulled up and parked in a field of dirt in front of the ruins. We spent a few hours there and were hungry by the time to leave, so we tried to get food. However they had built a wall between the city and the ruins, and we could see a restaurant but could not get to it. There were new spaces for shops inside the wall, but they were empty. So we tried to walk into town, ust to get a bag of chips or anything, and the (____) wouldn't let us go. They couldn't fathom why we would want to go into town. So they sent a boy to get us something and the only thing he could bring back was sodas. They swore up and down there was nothing else we could possibly get to eat in the village (uhh, those must be some hungry people).
See really the whole situation of creating a concrete bubble around the ancient monuments has a lot to do with (______) in Egypt. (____) . But the worst is that they seem convinced that tourists, foreigners, don't want to come into contact with anything balady (village related). It would be impossible to convince the people that need to be convinced that an ancient monument in a village is much more exciting and has more character, than one in the equivalent of a walmart parking lot. Lets not even mention the (_____) people who's lives and livelihood are dependant upon social connections that have been cultivated for as long as anyone can remember.
So they make all these changes, and still at dendera there is only 1 smelly dysfuntional toilet and no food.
And (____) they want to do that to Abydos.
I've been asking (___) and racking my brain for anything I could to to (help). But the plans are already made and approved, (___). All we can do is hope that they run out of money each year before they get around to "rennovating" Abydos.
Not that Abydos couldn't use some work, (_____)? These sort of plans are happening in Luxor right now. They already (____) the tombs of the nobles that you used to have to wander around the village to find the tombs with a local guide. And they apparently (----) a path from the Nile to Karnak. So now the cruise ships can pull up and their cargo can go back and forth to the temple without setting foot in town.
And there is nothing that can be done.
(___) knows many people at all levels of this, and I asked her if there was anything we could do to keep abydos from getting 'rennovated,' anything we could do to (---). And she looked me in the eyes and said they'll never believe that.

2007-01-20T19:55:00.000+02:00

Mummies Make Me Sick
A Skull in the In Box
Don't Wear Corderoys in a Sand Storm
All possible blog titles this week. We actullay only found parts of mummies in my Op, finger, foot etc, but as soon as we started turning them up I got another cold. Coincidence? I got sick after excavating a baby mummy last year too. Or maybe it's just that I'm always sick at Abydos. Inhaling 5000 year old body parts along with a steady diet of of oil soaked carbs every meal has got to be healthy right? I wonder how people ever got the idea that grinding up mummies and letting apothecaries hock them as a health supplement was a good thing.

Mc Donalds Mish Kweyis
Every morning at 9 we have breakfast out at the site (second breakfast really, most everyone grabs a snack before we leave at 6 am). It is a nice little affair in a low canvas tent which provides both shade and protection from the winds. Sinjab rides out on a donkey called Mish-mish (apricots) with a big blue cooler containing our breakfast balanced across his lap. Often our inspector from the Egyptian antiquities organization joins us. He speaks some English, but Janet usually backtracks and summarizes everything for him. One morning last week we somehow got onto the topic of McDonalds. Turns out there is a McDonalds in every big city in Egypt, even Sohag, the capitol of this area, the inspector proudly told us. We ran into trouble when we tried to explain that we don't think that's a good thing. The statement "We don't like Mc donalds" was met with confused stares from both Sinjab and the inspector. We breifly went over how if you eat a lot of it, you get fat, which didn't really bring the point home. "It is not good for your health" was getting there, but I think we actually got the point across with "It is not good for the heart." I was about to launch into a diatribe about globalization in my simplified child-like Arabic when the whistle signaling the end of breakfast blew, ending the cross cultural discomfort. The last faux pas however went to the inspector. He watched one of the older and fluffier ladies on our crew awkwardly getting up off of the ground, held up is arms in a hunched over way like a football player and said "She eats a lot of MacDonalds" and smiled at his joke while the rest of us stifled our shock and quickly changed the subject.
Tonight we found an instance of cross-language confusion. We have an Arabic teacher from the village who comes twice a week to teach us colloquial Egyptian Arabic. He looks like he is about fifteen but is actually a realy good teacher. He is following a rather standard method of teaching Arabic, starting with hello, good morning, time, food etc, even though we are kind of jumping to know any dig related Arabic. So anytime a word is applicable to the work we listen quite closely. He was going over various food words and he taught us the word for jam is maraba. Janet stopped and tried to ask him if it is the same as the word for square. We use the word square to refer to our excavation units in Arabic everyday, and we have all been saying maraba. However when janet asked the question the teacher still thought she was talking about jam, so we had to pose the question in 5 different ways and draw pictures of various geometricl objects before he finally went oh! murabaa! (the aa is a consonant in arabic that doesn't exist in english and is difficult for english speakers to pronounce). So as it turns out 'maraba' and 'murabaa' are not the same word at all and I have been calling my excavation units "jam" for three years! Where is your jam? How is the work in your jam going? We need to start a new jam. I'm sure it was apparent what I was talking about from context, but still i had no idea I wasn't saying it correctly. That would be like someone calling me 'Beef' all the time because 'th' is hard to pronounce!

2007-01-14T15:01:00.000+02:00

Who Has Skype? If you have skype leave a comment, so I can try calling! I'm having troube getting credit to call out. My skype name is hart.beth

2007-01-12T11:19:00.000+02:00

Ahh Abydos

My time at the dig house has been so far immensely satisfying, and of course I could go on about how much it feels like home and how good it is to be back, but I'll restrain myself. Highlights from the first few days: Dibble's team burning baskets for nightly camp fires, scrambling to learn the pottery sorting system, trying not to say 'last year...' and 'we used to...' too often, seeing Ahmed and Heba's new baby, checking on the Shuneh and happily seeing that it is still standing, explaining my grad school plan to Lindsey while standing on the north wall of the shuneh watching the sunset and overlooking all of north abydos, Janet (the director) being really glad I'm here and hoping I can stay longer.
One particularly fine day went like this:
The digsite this year is on a high ridge right next to the edge of the village, so the view is of dunes with bright green farmland and village houses and minarets in a slight haze behind. I'm working in a huge 20m by 20m unit with Penny, a bio-arch from the southwest. That morning the stratigraphy was as obvious as one can hope for, one deposit clearly differentialted from the other, and the architecture that we were looking for was turning up exactly where we expected it to be. Heather and James kept unearthing exciting small finds in the next unit over. Our breakfast hut this year is not a reed lean-to but a short white canvas tent borrowed from another team. Really gives that turn of the century archaeology feel. Where's my umbrella and gin and tonic? Back at the house for lunch after the fieldwork portion of the day was over we got chicken nuggets in addition to the usual rice and red sauce.
Afterlunch Bev (from dibble's team) and I walked to the Seti temple since it was her last day and she hadn't had a chance to see it yet. I was explaining what i knew about the lanscape as we were walking, and trying to assure Bev that I knew where we were going (not just wandering through the desert), when we passed by the German dig house. Sleeping at the side of the dig house was an unusually agressive pack of dogs. Most desert dogs in Egypt will scatter at the sight of you bending over and just pretending to pick up a stone, but not these ones. They kept coming closer and we had to actually shower stones at them while walking in the other direction, but they still got a little too close for comfort. I was frantically looking for a stick and actually thought they might attack. Where is a police guard when you really need one? (Normally the police wil follow us through the desert, but this time they just radioed to the police at the temple that we were coming, and left us on our own.) Luckily we managed to put enough space between us and the dogs and most of the pack lost heart and wandered off. Luckilly we made it to the temple unscathed.
The temple was clear of tourists and one guard gave a half hearted attempt to point out the gods and ask for baksheesh but then wandered off. I had fun explaining everything I could to Bev. We shuddered at the green slime water filling the Osirion and photo'd some of the famous names from the King list and wandered among the pillars.
I think Bev was a bit freaked out by the dog experience, so we opted to take the longer village road on the way back. Rounding the corner of the Ramses temple we came upon a group of children who were momentarily shocked by our presence. However they quickly recovered and and statred what's-your-name?-ing us. I made the aquaintance of two 8 year old girls, Maha and Rehab, who were mildly suprized at my ability to speak Arabic. They were puling at my shirt, and I only later realized that my shirt was probably riding up in the back and they were trying to save me from a village faux-pas. A little farther down the road I met a man named Hamadi who works for the German excavations. He kindly escorted Bev and I past another group of madly barking dogs and a group of equally agressive young boys. The boys had been entertaining themselves by beating on a puppy and switched to trying to get the poor thing to attack me. But I got all the info from Hamadi on when the germans are coming, and he even invited us to attend a wedding sometime in febuary. All together an unusually eventful walk to and from the seti temple.
The events of the night weren't yet over. As were were doing evening lab work, Sinjab was trying to shoo us out of the dinning room and keep us from waling back and forth. It was both Lindsey's birthday and Harold's team's last night. So the house staff were gigling and being secrative and setting up a special dinner. We only got a bit worried when we heard sounds of a microphone being tested in the diningroom. When the bell finaly rand we entered a room lit by candles balanced in empty soda bottles, and huge speakers blaring theme songs from various romantic movies. After the first course of soup SInjab brought out the best thing one can expect at Abydos: Pizza! We all stuffed ourselves without thinking about dessert. Before long Happy birthday was belted out over the speakers and linsey found herself cutting up an extremely sugary cake brought special from Nag Hamadi (a town 30 km away). The cake was accompanied by all sorts of egyptian deserts, baklava, basbousa, kunafa, etc.
Once all the festivities died down Lindsey decided to take a tray of sweets over to the Guftis (our head workmen from the town of guft). I spent the next hour and a half drinking tea and takling with them in Arabic about all sorts of things from updates on everyone who worked here last year, to corporal punishment, overpopulation in Egypt, the lack of an Egyptian job market, and the threat for Egypt of the Dam Sudan is building. I think the Guftis were suprozed at how much arabic I can speak since I am always to deistracted at work to get into long conversations.
We got back to the house and instead of sleeping I ended up drinking a different kind of tea and chatting with Dibble's departing crew and copying pictures and an Egyptian movie onto my hard drive. I finally got to sleep at the incredably late hour (for abydos) of 11pm, figuring that a night spent enjoying yourself and having fun can be more invigorating than a dissatisfied but long sleep.

2007-01-12T10:44:00.000+02:00

Night out in Cairo

I arrived at the Longchamps hotel to a message already waiting for me, with a cell phone number to get ahold of Niki. Of course it couldn't be as simple as that, and after getting another number from that number, and having a lovely but chilly dinner on the terrace at the Mariott discussing grad school options and egyptologist gossip, I finally got ahold of her around 10. After a while spent listening to the aforementioned Israelis playing my guitar, Niki and victor finally arrived just before one in the morning to pick me up. Luckily jet lag was working with me at this point, since my body was considering that it was only 6 pm in Michigan. We headed for the Jazz club since it was Wednesday night. Wednesdays are the popular night for Jazz club, which I had forgotten in my 8 month hiatus from Egypt. I was happy to find Grainne (Pronounced Gronia) waiting in the car also. It was a flash back to three years ago where the four of us were practically inseparable, and often found at the Jazz cub.
When you walk into a packed bar in Cairo you have to walk in with the air of I belong here, I'm important, don't even bother trying to stop me. And because we are three foreign women and Victor (who used to do advertisement for most of the sort of places) it's not usually an issue.
The Jazz club is probably the smokiest place I've ever been. People smoke non stop and there is about zero ventilation so it hangs in a cloud and permeates your hair and all your clothing instantly. The intensity of the smoke is only matched by the loudness of the music. Of course the music doesn't consist of a piano player in a dark corner, but rather a Dj playing every pop-y dance music from Michael Jackson to Bob Marley. Eventually a table in front of a set of speakers opened up, resulting in conversations shouted directly into each other's ears consisting mostly of What? What? and a sheepish shrug. The people watching was spectacular as always, groups of egyptian guys hopefully eyeing every girl that walks by, dazzlingly gorgeous Egyptian women in Chic clothing, foreign women clearly just arrived with their preconceived notions of frumpy clothes appropriate for egypt, young couples catching a scandalous snog in one of the few places where you can get away with that, slick young egyptian men in tight jeans looking like they just walked off of a vodaphone commercial. Friends of friends showed up and we eventually got around to dancing (picture me dancing away while Egyptian man dances after me). We closed out the bar and as niki, grainne, and I stumbled arm and arm back to the car with a trail of guys behind, ready to head to the next place that stays open until 4 or 5, the night lit up by the distinctive orange glow of Cairo street lamps I thought: and people wonder why I love Cairo?

2007-01-05T14:29:00.000+02:00

Cairo
Arriving in Cario I felt, as always an overwhelming sense of relief. Not about being through with transit, but relief at being in Egypt. My lifelong drive to get to Egypt was never satisfied with one year or two, but manifests itself with relief every time I come back. I never want to stay away forever.
Secondary to relief I felt familiarity. The smell as I stepped out of the airport was indisputably the smell of Cairo. I've finaly identified it as mostly diesel fumes, but with undertones of garbage, ciggarettes, and old ladies' perfume. Non of that 'spices of the orient' bullshit. As I waited to ge tthrough passport control I smiled at the familiarity of hearing Arabic everywhere again. The deep voices of men shouting about luggage, the high pitches mothers hasseling their kids, and the condesending tone of fashionable lebenese 20 somethings. The ride from the airport wasn't the quintissential speeding clunky taxi, but I was re-amazed at how close the cars actually do get to each other, changing lanes, crossing bridges, near missses that would practically be lawsuits in America.
And over the past few days I am again reminded (you'd think I'd have this down by now) that you CAN NOT plan in Cairo. My plans for exploring the alleyways of Islamic Cairo have gotten lost between trying to meet up with Niki and victor and trying to get project busness taken Care of. As it turns out the best times to see niki and victor are between 11pm and 4 am (so much for waking up early). And luckilly the kodak store is open on fridays, the cameras are a knive's edge away from being a total disaster. I have film developing right now that will determine if it is disaster or not. And it was a good thing that Janet knows someone in Cairo who happens to have multiple lenses that fit on a nikkormat camera, since I accidentaly brought a macro lens for it!!!
Neither did I plan for a couple of Israeli americans to end up in my room the first night loudly singing folk songs with the aid of my guitar. But I did manage to get some essential pointers on playing the guitar and have even learned to play a little 2 bar 3 note tune!
Running around yesterday, hopping in and out of taxis, wending through zamalek with a coffee in hand , cajoling in english and Arabic, trying to get my phone turned on... there was no place I'd rather be.

2007-01-02T17:41:00.000+02:00

2007 and Life without Lola

Pouring rain may not be unusual to Michigan, but no one expects it in December. There wasn't a flake of snow to welcome in the new year. 2007 came in to the sound of sarcastic toasts to global warming and raindrops on the rooftops. On the bright side, I haven't broken my 4 year streak of not seeing snow.
Life without Lola is much as I expected. Lola was synonymous with autonomy to me. Being dependent on people for cars and rides is not my cup of tea, not my favorite way to be. This is the first new year that I've had without knowing she's trustilly waiting for my somewhere, in the front driveway or 2000 miles away. The ability to get up and go anywhere at anytime, with my sleeping bag and tent in the the back.
luckily I won't be needing a car for the next six months. Instead I'll be living out of my backpack. I did end up getting that sexy new red back pack, and named her Sexy Sadie since she is red and sleek.
In addition to the backpack I am also taking my new guitar. I debated for a while over the logic of bringing a guitar, THAT I DON"T KNOW HOW TO PLAY, on a six month journey across several continents...But then I thought, why not? It'll be motivation to learn, and on the scale of ridiculous and illogical things I've done in my life it doesn't rate that high (Lets think back to the first trip I took with Lola, from Michigan to New York, not really knowing how to drive a stick, having only practiced for a few hours over five days, Or how about going to Europe for the first time without even having a guidebook! I don't even remember how I found anyplace to stay.).
Insha-Allah I'll get the guitar on the plane without incurring additional fees and hopefully six months from now I'll be able to play at least one song. And hopefully my laryngitis will be gone so I can sing without making people scrunch up their faces in pain. Insha-Allah.

2006-12-29T17:48:00.000+02:00

Here it is December 29th I believe. I have my annual case of Christmas Laryngitis. (Remind me never to ever make plans around Christmas since I always get sick at this time of year.) I should be leaving for Egypt on January second, and I have a lot to do in the next few days. Unfortunately most of it involves spending money, which I am trying to save for my trip. I am also deciding whether or not I should borrow money to get a new backpack that I am in love with. It is red and black. It is a good size, not too big, not to small. The straps all zip inside for checking on the airplane. It has a detachable day pack. There a number of pockets for organization, and many straps and clips and whatnot on the outside for attaching extras like sleeping bag, tent or shoes. Since I will be living out of this for the next six months or so, I'm thinking I should go with it. Rationalization anyone?