Walking in Memphis, like an Egyptian

eM - the uncrowned queen of bloggers went to Egypt, this summer. Here's what she has to say about her trip.
When we last met, she was a journo with a leading newspaper and on the verge of becoming a published author.
You can check here why she is the blog queen!!

Awww.. I've missed you guys. And blogging.

Egypt was fantastic, but I have so much to say, I hardly know how to contain it into a single blog post. Travel is mind-broadening, and sorta figure broadening too, I must say, I'm a couple of kilos heavier, which sucks, but the amount of beef I ate is all worth it.

Oh, the pyramids! And the colours! Egypt is all about colours--the blue blue blue blueness of the Mediterranean Sea, the hot yellow brightness of the Sahara desert, the green reptileness of the Nile. And that's only their geography. All over the skyline there are green domes of mosques, and every hour on the hour, there's the call to prayer. People stop to pray everywhere, spreading cardboard on sidewalks, sitting with their hijab-clad dates at coffee shops, over the rattle of the train, and not at all self-concious or disturbed by the noise and the clamour around them.

And the hijab. All the women wore scarves around their heads, little sundresses with a full-sleeved bodice and jeans underneath, some even in heavy burkahs, with only their eyes visible. The Lonely Planet told us to dress modestly, and we did, modestly, in t-shirts and long skirts and still eyes followed us, men attempted to get familiar, women tittered to each other about these bold, bare-headed foreigners from the land of Amitabh Bachchan (who they adore), who looked so much like them, but were so shameless.

Are you Muslim, is another question that I was asked over and over again, that and do you have a husband? Both of which I answered in the negative, to which they looked puzzled. Hindusim is a concept not understood at all there, most people haven't even heard of it. One man asked me my name and when I told him, he said, "That is not an Egyptian name. My name is Mustafah, that's not an Indian name." "Yes it is," I said, and he started. "You have Muslims in India?" Even our guide, a strange horrible man called Mohammed said, "I bet you have no Muslim friends in India." "We do, actually," we replied, but he still looked disbelieving, even when we broke it down into figures and statistics.

The ancient Egyptians are more or less forgotten in all this, spoken of only as history lessons. No one worships Amun-Ra or Horus or anyone anymore, which is sad, especially when you see their breathtaking temples, and look at 3,000 year old heiroglyphics, still shiny and new looking. When we were making thingummies out of clay over at the Indus Valley, they were making marble statues, and coins and they had gods for every possible thing, including the god of sex, who is always depicted with a massive hard-on and whom Mohammed pointed out without fail at each temple. "That is his benis," he said (Arabic doesn't have the letter 'p' so all we heard was "bictures" and "barking" and so on), "Have you ever seen a benis?" This to me, right in front of my mother. "A lady never answers these questions," I said, as frostily as I could, but he just cackled and said, "That means you have!" Jesus.



More stories in the next post. So nice to see you all again.



8:51 pm, update: Happy Day was the name of the falluka that took us gently across the Nile. Our cruise ship was called, appropriately, I thought, Le Scribe, but fallukas are things of Cleopatra, with huge sails and two laughing men, who teased me and Small and picked me a handful of water weeds, which I then gave as an offering to the Nile, which I have fallen madly in love with.

At sunset, our falluka drifted close to the marshes and we were very still, listening to the loud opera of frogs and watching as kingfishers darted suddenly across the water. It sounds like a tourism plug, even as I'm writing this, but it was so, so magical, and witchy that I don't think I can do it justice.

As a marked contrast to that, let me offer you the story of a young man in the marketplace, selling glass bottles of coloured sand. "You know Tupac?" he asked me in this strange Brit accent, which sounded so odd in contrast to his long kurta like outfit (that they call a gabbaleya). When I nodded, he said, "Well, he my brother. And Craig David? He's my son."

(/smileyface\)


UPDATE 2:

What we saw

* The Pyramids (overwhelming)

* The coffee shops (encouraged spending)

* The food (kebabs and kushari)

* The belly dancers (almost in a sari)

* The whirling dervishes (whirly)

* Khan-el-Khalil bazaar (pearly)

* Camels called Michael (who almost smiled)

* The Philae temple (in the middle of the Nile)

* Moses' spring (where he was found)

* An old mosque (the dome was round)


What I read

The Lonely Planet Guide To Egypt (excellent for anyone making the trip, I always find the LP even more informative than the locals)

In An Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh (I picked up most of my Arabic from this book, my proudest point was saying Al-Hindi (for India) to farmer's kids and seeing recognition across their faces)

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk (Okay, not about Egypt, but good reading anyway)

Khul Khaal (About five Egyptian women, telling their life stories. Did you know most of them had clitordectemies?)