phone pictures around town

This is the bridge closest to the center of downtown, and is a popular destination for promenading, particularly for couples wishing some intimate conversation somewhere respectable and free.

Used book market.

On her last day in Cairo, Rachel wanted to revisit Talaat Harb square, with some good examples of 19th century architecture.

This sign says "closed for prayer" and I liked how nicely decorated it was. On a scarf shop.

Sidewalk magazine seller. Arabic, English, European languages represented.

A similar sidewalk seller, this time newspapers. Note the variety.

Lunch along the Nile.

Oh what a global world we live in. This sushi establishment has branches only in Cairo and Sao Paulo.

Self-portrait with cookies.

my talk and cousins visit

I gave a talk about my dissertation research. That's my first slide, a photo of Zubayr Pasha, my subject.
Afterward friends and colleagues came out to eat


Hilary and Colin were in town. We climbed down into Dashur pyramid.


Colin watched the rice pudding seller walking through Khan al-Khalili.

dan and em visit

Two friends visited recently, overlapping in a trip to Sharm where Rachel successfully ran a half marathon. While it was nice to be at a resort, and Rachel ran well, Sharm is a nearly complete culture vacuum. Our friend Assaf met us there from Israel, and it was nice to hang out, and we could show you pictures, but they could just as easily be in Mexico.

Here are Rachel and Dan at the pyramids

I (Zach) went with Dan to visit the Sultan Hassan mosque, my personal favorite of the old mosques of Cairo, though I'm not sure why. This is out front, som examples of Arabic calligraphy. The block writing is called Kufi script.


Dan and I sat in a common-man cafe, which had a very comfortable cat.

:Rachel went with Em to Luxor


Hot-air balloons and pigeons near Luxor:

Luxor temple at night:

Ancient Egyptians carving of two people kissing:

A boat ride near our apartment:

And a night out for dinner, in which Zach got creative with the camera.

phone pictures

I finally figured out how to get photos off of my phone and onto the computer, a task which ought to be straightforward, really. Some of these, then, are new, some older.


Inside the Coptic museum a strange combination of mashrabeya, usually on the outside of a building, with a glass skylight on top of this atrium.

El Dor El Awal playing. They are our favorite Egyptian Jazz band. This is at the Geneina (garden) theater at al-Azhar park, which is a beautiful park built on top of an old garbage dump. The dump was so high that it's got a nice view of downtown.

Electric scales, Obama brand.


Figs. They're delicious but it's hard to wash something that delicate and already open.

Egyptian Stella is no relation to European Stella. This is at the great Cafe Hureya, part cafe, part bar, part Egyptian intellectual haunt, part foreigner haunt. Beer is served with tirmus, little yellow beans soaked in salty water, which are also served by street vendors in places people promenade. The skins of tirmus are generally removed before eating, both to ease digestion and for sanitary reasons, so every table has a little pile of shells. Classy.

book fair etc

The monstrous annual Cairo Book Fair took over the convention center for two weeks. Thousands of shoppers, probably tens of thousands each day, and many hundreds of stalls from publishers big and small. Books run the gamut from instructional to novels, and from beautifully-bound to affordable-to-the-masses. Most books are in Arabic, and most published in Egypt, but quite a few are in European languages and published elsewhere

Another hall:
This is one of the dozens of used book dealers. Most used books seemed to go for under a dollar.

The American University stall had the best selection of books in English. I liked the contrast of the super-nerdy Islamic Liberalism upper left and Charles Bukowski, lower right.


Typical subway commute.




The new warning on Egyptian cigarette packages. Black on yellow text is a standard health warning. White on black reads "Smoking for a long period effects marital relations." Some locals think that the picture is too vulgar, but at least the language is polite.

islamic cairo walking tours

We went on two walking tours of Islamic Cairo organized by the American Research Center in Egypt. Islamic Cairo is the portion of Cairo that was developed between roughly 800 and 1800. Islamic Cairo is full of narrow winding streets, most too narrow for a car to comfortably use, which makes it quiet and peaceful and full of human-scale life.

This round hall with red floor and balconies was designed for sufi whirling dervish dancing.

Lamps hanging into the courtyard of the Sultan Hassan mosque:
Each of us at the top of Bab Zweila, one of the entrances to Islamic Cairo.


A typical late-20th century apartment building faces across the street from an ornate medieval mosque.
The calm quiet inside of a mosque.
A sweet potato seller and his roastery. I've heard these were very common on the streets of New York City a couple of generations ago. They are very cheap and very delicious. The word for sweet potato in Egyptian Arabic is batata, whereas the standard white potato is batatas. You want to think that the s has something to do with plural, but it doesn't.


A woman cutting vegetables to be sold with fuul to passersby. Fuul is the most typical breakfast and lunch dish in Egypt, though it can be hard to find it, or its fried cousin taamiyya, in the afternoon or evening.

A renovated courtyard in a large home owned by someone wealthy and powerful, it feels oceans away from the loud street just in front of the home.


Historical and architectural beauty, and in front of it a multitude of different kinds of chips, soda, and candy.

Rachel at Talaat Harb square, in some senses the essence of downtown Cairo. This part of town is a good contrast to Islamic Cairo with its late-nineteenth century appearance.

Zach shopping in the used book dealer's market in Azbakiyya.

jacob's visit: sinai and cairo

Jacob is visiting us, so we've been doing extra touristy stuff. He likes photography. He took some of these pictures with our camera. He chose these pictures.

First Mt. Sinai. We were staying on the beach in Dahab, drove to the base of the mountain, starting hiking in the very wee hours and reached the top before first light, along with many many others, secular and religious pilgrims alike.













Typical beach cafe in Dahab, with good snorkeling right from the tiny cafe dock.

Roadside cafe on the drive across the desert back to Cairo.



Sunset over the driver's shoulder. Assistant driver luckily was driving.

Sunset falucca (sailboat) ride on the Nile in Cairo.



Pyramids.



From the top of the Cairo Tower.





Dinner at Sequoia.

Subway.

Ibn Tulum mosque.







Tentmaker's alley.





Short desert hike near our neighborhood.