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.