Postcard from New York: Reflecting

I had intended to visit the 9/11 Memorial immediately after it opened; I’d made a reservation when they first became available in April for the 13th of September.  Through slippery thumbing on my iPhone calendar, I mistakenly entered the visit for the 15th, which is my birthday.  As the time approached, I kept asking myself why I’d wanted to go to the 9/11 Memorial on my birthday.

Of course, I hadn’t.  But by the time I realized my error, the 13th had passed.  The first opening I could get on the online reservation system was November 16th.  I booked it, forgetting that I would be on an airplane returning from Egypt on the 16th.

I am aware that I have an overbooked existence, and that it’s my own fault; but I seem powerless to control myself — there’s so much to see and do in life, and I’m blessed with the means to take advantage of much of it.  And as I always say to myself when I’m feeling a little ragged from too much activity — you can sleep when you’re dead.

When I realized my second error, days before I left for Egypt, I tried the reservation system again.  Perhaps not so miraculously there were openings the afternoon of  October  30th; maybe a bit too close to Halloween for most people — both things reflecting on death, but with polar attitudes.  It was the day I was leaving for Egypt, but I had a late night flight.  Had I thought more about the juxtaposition of visiting Ground Zero and getting on a plane to Egypt on the same day, I might not have gone to the Memorial.  I’m not actually superstitious, but let’s face it – it is a bit creepy.

But I was rushing around — I was busy! –and I didn’t think about it.  I booked my ticket for the visit.  On the 3oth, I hopped on the Q train downtown to Rector Street and joined all the other tourists,  which included families with small children, some of whom were actually in costume.  You gotta love kids for that.

The first thing that’s striking, approaching the entrance to the Memorial from Albany Street, is the view of One World Trade Center, formerly known as the Freedom Tower.  I’ve been tracking its progress on my walks along the Hudson River, but I hadn’t seen it from this angle, which presents a more complete view of it.

One World Trade Center

I’m not even sure I like this building,  architecturally; I’m withholding judgement until its completed.  But there is something about its simply being completed to which I have some attachment.  It will feel like “completion” of the whole experience of 9/11 for me.  I think I’ll be able to finally put it away.

The second striking thing is the realization of how much developers must have rushed to meet the deadline of having the Memorial ready for the 10th anniversary this year.  There are degrees of “ready,” and this is at the very low end of the “ready” scale, as in “barely.”

To get to it, you are threaded through a massive construction site — multiple buildings in varying stages of construction, huge maws of foundational work to the complex itself that plumb the depths of Manhattan’s bedrock — it must be an operations and insurance nightmare to have people constantly in motion around the site.

The reflecting pools on the footprint of the Twin Towers are finished (although for some reason, the North Pool was off-limits when I was there.)  The plaza around them is paved, and the rows of trees planted.  The shell of the visitor center is built, but not open.  I was unable to locate the paving stone I’d donated, although there is a system to help you do it that identifies individual trees within row numbers; but nothing is physically labelled yet.

There is an organization to the listing of the names of the victims.  There are sections on the bronze parapets surrounding the waterfalls dedicated to each of the Towers, the three downed flights, the Pentagon, and the 1993 bombing.  The sections are designated with raised letters; the names are stencil-cut all the way through the bronze.

World Trade Center "Section" of the South Pool

The design is quite simple and quite elegant; and the impact is very powerful.

The water falls in an unbroken curtain around the four sides of the pools.  In the center of the pool, it falls again into a concentric square void.  I couldn’t see the bottom of the second void.  It’s like looking down a dark wellshaft and not being able to see where it ends. It’s like a tunnel into the bowels of the earth.  It’s the entrance to the Underworld.  It creates a remarkably focused feeling of loss — terrifying, purifying and beautiful.  The sound of the water falling away into nothingness is remarkable.

The South Pool

The display of the names is touching.  People leave flowers or small American flags in the crevices of the letters and do rubbings of the names with small scrolls of paper and crayons.  It was clear that whole families had made a pilgrimage to the site: one family member would ceremoniously make the rubbing as two others held the edges of the paper, the rest surrounding as witnesses, arms around each other, someone documenting with a video camera.  It was very, very moving.

Memorial

I didn’t stay long; I had some errands to do and an appointment to make before leaving for the airport.  I will come back in the spring, when more has been finished, when the weather is warmer, when the trees have filled out a bit, when One World Trade is further along.  I could have spent a bit more time reflecting.  These are definitely “reflecting” pools in both the visual and the mental senses.

However, one perhaps unintended reflection particularly caught my eye on this visit.  Two buildings on the perimeter of the site were reflected in the water underneath the parapet, creating an uncanny reminder of the icons of what was lost here.

Reflections in the 9/11 Memorial

Postcard from Egypt: End of the Road, November 13th

Today is our last day together as a group.  We’ll return to Cairo by bus and have a final dinner together at our hotel in Heliopolis, a well-heeled part of Cairo closer to the airport.  Three will leave tonight; two in the wee hours of the morning.  And I’ll see the rest off tomorrow after 7 a.m.  We’ve had a pleasant finish to the tour at our hotel in Alexandria’s Montazah Park overlooking the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean from our Alexandria Hotel

After checking out, we make a stop at the palace within the park.  It was the summer home of King Farouk, the last king of Egypt, deposed by Nasser in 1952.  Occasionally used for ceremonial functions, the palace mostly sits fully furnished and unused behind locked gates.

Montazah Palace, Alexandria

In some ways, it seems a fitting image for Egypt today.  Who’s in charge and where are things headed?  Since the January 25^th revolution, there’s been a caretaker government.  Parliamentary elections take place at the end of this month, and that parliament will draft the country’s constitution.  Presidential elections will follow.

In reality, over the past 5000 years, Egypt has never been a true republic or representative democracy.  Instead, there has been an unbroken line of pharaohs, kings, emperors, occupiers, khedives, and military strongmen – punctuated by assassinations, invasions, occupations, abdications, and revolutions.  What will be different this time?

Many forces compete to shape Egypt’s future: tradition and modernity; internationalism and Islamism…

Prayer Time in Nubia along the Nile

…religion and secularity; poverty and privilege.  It seems impossible to predict which will win or how these forces will reconcile themselves to the entire country’s best interest.

Cairo Market

We just have to keep our fingers crossed for our new-found friends.

The Nile, Downtown Cairo

Postcard from Egypt: On the Lam in Alexandria, November 12th

It’s a free day in Alexandria with nothing scheduled until the evening.  But some decide they want to go into town via the hotel shuttle and catch a few sights they’ve read about in their guidebooks.  Word spreads and ultimately the entire group decides to go.

When our guide gets wind of the plan from one of the group at breakfast, he hustles out to the front of the hotel just as we’re boarding the shuttle.  He seems offended that we didn’t ask him to take us.  No amount of explanation about spontaneous plans or respecting his and the driver’s time off will mollify him – he and the driver are here to serve us and are going to drive us and guide us wherever we want to go, period.

We decamp from the shuttle and pile onto our bus.  And, unintentionally, this is where the outing becomes a bit of a minor “incident.”

Because of the transitional nature of the political situation in Egypt, certain precautions are being taken, particularly it seems, as concerns American tourists.  Less because we’re more vulnerable than others, I discern, than because we’re more of a political liability should anything happen to us.  With apologies to our northern neighbors, as our guide says, “If you were Canadian… nobody care.”

So when sightseeing in and around Cairo and Alexandria, a plainclothes policeman with two automatic weapons underneath his suit jacket has accompanied us everywhere we go.  I’ve also noticed a lot of paper-signing with white-uniformed tourist police when arriving and departing from hotels and at each site we visit.

Because nothing’s been arranged in advance, there is no guard to accompany us today, which sets off some alarm bells with the tourist police at the hotel.  Our guide is apparently required to disclose our destinations and sign things avowing his taking responsibility for us.

Our first stop is the new Library of Alexandria, opened in 2002 and a unique piece of modern architecture.  Sadly, we’re unable to tour it as we’d hoped, because the employees are on strike!  The women who usually act as guides apologize profusely and explain what’s happening – it’s a mini-repeat of the recent revolution, demanding better treatment and the ouster of the Library’s management.  We wish them success and enjoy the architecture and this taste of the new empowered spirit in Egypt.

Strike signs at the Alexandria Library

Meanwhile, the tourist police have called our tour operator to alert him that we’re out and about officially unescorted.  The tour operator calls our guide to say, “You’re a professional; how could you take them out without proper procedures?” to which our guide responds, “They were going anyway, so better they go with me on the bus than on their own.”  The tour operator apparently agrees, but asks to speak to me.  He respectfully explains we should always let them know our plans in advance – just as a precaution in light of the current political situation, that’s all.

No one seems to get the spontaneous decision-making behind the “plan” (nor the non-compliant nature of freedom-loving Americans) and we start to jokingly refer to ourselves, not without some pride, as “the rogue American tourist group.”

If anything in Egypt is remarkably efficient, it’s the security apparatus.  It seems the tourist police have called ahead to their colleagues at all our intended stops.  By the time we arrive at the Alexandria National Museum, the police are expecting us and “cover” us as we exit the bus.  (At the same time, they don’t seem overly concerned about the several busloads of people on cruise excursions milling about; but perhaps they’re just Europeans.)

The museum is a well-curated set of exhibits that details the various influences – Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Coptic Christian and Islamic – on this cosmopolitan city.  We tour it briefly and then we’re off to the Roman amphitheater, which is nicely intact and next to an ongoing excavation of the site of the Roman baths.  There’s a certain “yes, that’s us” exchange between our guide and the police as we arrive there.

The Roman Amphitheater

To complete what’s become a multi-cultural day, we have a photo stop at Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, the only synagogue left in Alexandria.  (An article in Wikipedia claims there are less than 100 Jews in all of Egypt today.)  We shoot between the bars of a locked gate, behind and in front of which there is fairly heavy security.  Some negotiating on the guide’s part has allowed us to photograph, as normally – surprise! surprise! – permission must be secured in advance.

The Only Synagogue in Alexandria

It’s easier to walk to our next stop than take the bus, which will meet us elsewhere where there’s adequate parking.  Seemingly from nowhere, three armed plainclothesmen appear to escort us – one in front and two at our backs — to the Coptic Christian Cathedral.  The building is new, but it was on the same site that St. Mark founded the first Christian church in Alexandria in 60 A.D. and from which his body was stolen by the Venetians in 828 A.D. and placed in St. Mark’s Basilica.   (His head remained in Alexandria, though it’s been lost now for a few centuries.)  After that, we do a walk-through of the ground floor of the 1929 British-occupation-era Cecil Hotel, now a Sofitel.

Inside the Coptic Christian Cathedral

For a rogue tourist group on the lam in Alexandria, we have a rather banal end to our adventure.  We stop for lunch at a shopping mall, where we get a taste of the most recent foreign invasion – American-style fast food in the food court.  While I’m having an individual Pizza Lopez Sausage at a place called Pizza Queen (that’s Lopez as in Jennifer; the DeNiro, the Cruise and others are also on the menu) our guide – who’s almost fluent by now in gay self-deprecating humor – walks up and says “We have the Burger King and the Pizza Queen; I should have known I’d find you in this one.”

Postcard from Egypt: Abu Simbel to Alexandria, November 10th and 11th

It’s a beautiful morning at our hotel in the desert; we regret having to leave.  Over the next two days, we’ll travel essentially the entire length of Egypt from Abu Simbel near the Sudanese border to Alexandria on the Mediterranean shore.

Morning at Abu Simbel on Lake Nasser

Our flight from Abu Simbel makes a brief stop in Aswan, and then we continue to Cairo, where we check back into the Ramses Hilton on Tahrir Square.  Tonight we have our farewell dinner, since the main tour ends here, although twelve of us have taken the optional extension to Alexandria.

Our dinner is on a floating restaurant that cruises the Nile.  There’s some soothing music during dinner, then an Egyptian band with a belly-dancer (we’re told she’s Brazilian) and a whirling dervish whose routine ends with his whirling dervish skirt lit up in blue neon stripes.  Liberace would have been jealous.

I give out the Toto Tours “Ramses Awards,” for memorable faux pas and notable eccentricities.  Everyone gets one of the busts that were purchased in the Aswan market with his award.  It’s also Ron’s birthday, so there’s a cake and, of course, his gift of the metallic crocodile, which caused a delay twice going through airport security: in the x-ray, it looked just a bit too real.  But there’s something gratifying about seeing an armed, uniformed officer carefully opening and closing a rhinestone-studded box in the shape of a crocodile.

The next morning, five friends head for home, and the rest of us drive three hours by bus to Alexandria.  Founded by Alexander the Great, it’s the home of Greco-Roman Egypt.  Much of the ancient city, including the lighthouse that was among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the fabled library, was destroyed centuries ago by man or by nature.  Some of it, possibly including Cleopatra’s palace, lies buried at the bottom of the current harbor.

We see some of the few bits that remain, like the Catacombs, where Greek and Roman motifs blend with imagery of the traditional Egyptian gods.  The most famous  relic is known as Pompey’s Pillar.  It stands alone in an excavated temple complex in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Pompey's Pillar, Alexandria

At the edge of the Mediterranean, we visit the Qaitbey Citadel, built by one of the Mameluke rulers in 1480 A.D.  Among the limestone blocks, we occasionally see some red granite, supposedly stones that were repurposed from the ruins of the original Lighthouse of Pharos. 

Our Group with Ahmed, our Guide, at Qaitbey Citadel

At a spot in the water below the Citadel, you can see small whitecaps breaking above the platform that was the base of the lighthouse, a tantalizing suggestion of what once was there.

Fishing where the Lighthouse of Alexandria Used to Be

Postcard from Egypt: Abu Simbel, November 9th

I can honestly say I thought it a bit extreme to fly from Aswan to Abu Simbel and spend one night to see yet another temple.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.  And I realized it as we were flying in, the moment when we could clearly see the temple at the water’s edge with the huge, seated figures of Ramses II carved directly into the hillside.  It was spectacular.

Our guide astutely waited to the end of the day to take us there, when the buses of daytrippers who’d driven three hours across the desert from Aswan had already left.  We had the place essentially to ourselves.

Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel

The site is even more spectacular when you take into account that Abu Simbel, like the Philae Temple in Aswan, was moved when the Aswan dam was built from a lower location that is now underwater.  But in the case of Abu Simbel, the entire face of the hillside out of which and into which the temple was hewn, was cut up in a grid pattern and moved along with it.  A concrete dome recreated the hill, and the face of the hill and the temple itself were fitted onto and into it.  The backside of the artificial hill is covered in desert sand.

We’re treated to an additional spectacle: the setting sun ignites the desert on the other side of the lake, and the waters of Lake Nasser reflect the colors of the sky in which a full moon is rising.

Sunset-Moonrise over Lake Nasser

We stay for the sound and light show.  There’s no dog of any kind involved, but we all agree it’s the best show of this kind we’ve seen in Egypt.  We’re reluctant to leave afterwards, as the temple lit at night is both beautiful and mysterious.  Undoubtedly, Ramses II intended it to have a certain awe-inspring effect, and it definitely still works its magic.

Night at Abu Simbel

Postcard from Egypt: Aswan, November 8th

Today is our busiest day yet.  Our cruise is docked at Aswan, in what is considered Upper Egypt or Nubia in ancient times.

We visit the Aswan High Dam in the morning, followed by the Philae Temple– a lovely temple that was moved to higher ground on an island, when the dam was constructed and the waters flooded the valley behind it.  Later we have a ride on a felucca, the traditional sailing boat of the Nile.

Felucca Sailing on the Nile

One of the most interesting visits this morning is to a quarry used during the Pharaohs’ time for much of the granite stone we’ve seen in the temples around Luxor, far down the river.  An obelisk, originally intended to be one of Queen Hatshepsut’s in Karnak, developed a crack and couldn’t be used.  It remains today just as it was left, half-hewn out of the surrounding stone.  It’s a happy accident, since it demonstrates so much about how the ancient Egyptians made some of their monuments.

The Unfinished Obelisk

The highlight of the day is a late afternoon boat trip to a typical Nubian village, made even more pleasant by a nice, cold beer.  Along the way, we stop at a beach filled with locals enjoying the river as the four-day Muslim festival continues.  We take off our shoes and roll up our trousers, so we can at least say we stood calf-deep in theNile.

Holiday Revelers Frolicking in the Nile

At the village, we visit a family’s home.  We’re treated to the sweetened hibiscus drink that’s popular here as well as tea and some home-made sweets.  Everyone gets a chance to hold a baby crocodile (I passed on this opportunity) as well as to get a henna tattoo.  Then we visit the local school, where we get a lesson in the Arabic numbers and alphabet from the village schoolmaster.  I’m afraid we’re rather poor students, as five minutes later none of us are able to repeat anything.

Remedial Students at a Nubian Village School

Some of us visit the Aswan market that night, which is teeming with festival revelers.  Our guide Ahmed and I shop for small gifts for the group for our upcoming farewell dinner.  We end up doing a back-alley deal at a wholesaler’s for a mixture of seventeen Nefertiti, King Tut and Akhenaten busts, as well as a rhinestone-studded metal crocodile as a birthday gift for one of the guys, who was the first to hold the real crocodile in the Nubian village.

There’s a lot of haggling between the guide and the wholesaler, and I’m shown numbers in Egyptian pounds and U.S. dollars on a calculator for my agreement.  The guide has established a code with me:  when he says “very good price,” it means it’s a good price and I should accept it; if he says, “it’s a good price,” it means we can do better and I should refuse.  We eventually arrive at a very good price, and I’m given a Nefertiti refrigerator magnet as a thank you for my purchase in bulk.

Postcard from Egypt: Cruising the Nile, November 7th

Cruising the Nile: November 7^th

In the morning, we travel by horse carriage from the ship to Edfu Temple.  Edfu is noteworthy in that the structure is quite well-preserved.  It gives you a sense of what an Egyptian temple – this one to the god Horus – really looked like.

Main Entrance Gate, Edfu Temple

On our return to the ship, we discover that the cabin boys have taken towel art to a whole new level: a monkey with a toilet paper head and tail hangs in the entranceway as we open our doors.  The boys stand in the hall, waiting to see my reaction as I enter and are thrilled with my delight.  “You like?” one of them says, grinning ear to ear.  “Is monkey.”

Cabin Boys' Towel Monkey

Further upriver, we visit Kom Ombo Temple in the late afternoon.  This was a healing temple – perhaps the world’s first hospital – and has some wonderful hieroglyphs depicting the doctors’ instruments, including a stethoscope,which look surprisingly familiar.  There’s even a treatment for erectile dysfunction inscribed on one wall: it involves some opium and the juice of an onion, boiled in a spoon and rubbed on the penis.  Our guide claims it’s quite effective.  Try it at home, if you have a good opium dealer.

Early evening, Kom Ombo Temple

That night after dinner, we’re treated to a Nubian Show on the ship with music and dancers and the usual embarrassing audience participation.  We’re entertainment ourselves, as most of us have dressed in gallibiyas – the long robe that Egyptian men traditionally wear.  The much larger French group, with whom we share the boat, applauds us as we walk into the bar.

Some of the Toto Group, Walking like Egyptians

Postcard from Egypt: Cruising the Nile, November 6th

Cruising the Nile, November 6^th

We leave our cruise ship early in the morning and board a ferry boat that takes us across the river.  Our “Captain” introduces himself as Aly Baba.  As at every tourist spot in Egypt, nobody’s shy in asking for bashish and rubbing the tips of their thumb and index finger together.  But occasionally the request is a bit more subtle and even entertaining.

A reminder from Captain Aly Baba

We visit the Valley of the Kings, where the tombs of some of the Pharaohs are cut right into the hills surrounding the valley high above the Nile’s flood plain.  Protected from sunlight and weather, much of the color is still visible in the decorations that cover the walls and ceilings: yellow, red, turquoise and royal blue on a white field. 

While his tomb is not the most spectacular by any means, King Tut’s mummy and one of the coffins and sarcophagi that it was nestled in are maintained in the tomb.  His reign was undistinguished, but by virtue of never having been reached by robbers, his tomb and all its contents were intact when discovered in the 1920s, and that has made him famous.

Our next stop, the funerary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, is in an incredible setting, carved out of the hills that surround it.   It has a special resonance for another reason: it’s here that in the late ‘90s, Al Qaeda terrorists surrounded 58 Japanese honeymooners and gunned them down.  Not surprisingly, there’s no acknowledgement of the event at the site.  And today, a military installation perches atop the hills.

Queen Hatshepsut's Funerary Monument

The Habu Temple is another place we find the original color intact…

Color on a Ceiling Panel, Habu Temple

…and also a reminder that we’re not the first tourists or adventurers to have visited these ancient stones.

19th-century Graffiti

Postcard from Egypt: Cairo to Luxor, November 5th

This morning we leave Cairo and fly to Luxor.  Upon arriving we head directly to our first temple – actually a complex of temples at Karnak.  I know I’m betraying my age, but every time I hear the name, I can’t help thinking of Johnny Carson’s clairvoyant routine as the Great Karnak.

I couldn’t have predicted how impressed I would be by the scale of Karnak.  I’ve seen some impressive ruins in my time, but nothing this massive nor this ancient.  The members of our group, perhaps for obvious reasons, are quite taken with the stories of Queen Hatshepsut, who passed herself off as a king.  We’re delighted that the obelisk she built here is taller than her son’s, who tried to efface her memory.  Sometimes Time is a true and just judge; today, her son is just a minor player in her story.

Massive Columns at Karnak Temple

Before lunch, we board the MS Monaco, which will be our home during our cruise up the Nile.  A few hours’ rest is most welcome after 2-1/2 full days of sightseeing.  In the early evening, we head to Luxor Temple, which is illuminated after dark.  It’s a charming and romantic way to see it.

Luxor Temple is a microcosm of the cultures that have swept through and dominated Egypt over the millennia.  There are, of course, the “chapels” to the Holy Trinity of Egyptian gods – Isis and Osiris and their son Horus.  Alexander the Great appears in carvings on the temple walls, crowned as a ruler of Egypt after the Macedonian conquest.  You can see the remnants of a Last Supper fresco, plastered over the Egyptian carvings in Roman times, when part of the temple was converted into an early Christian church.  And above the temple, attached at a time when most of it was buried in the sands, is a mosque, still open to the faithful today.

Moonrise over Luxor Temple

We return to Karnak Temple for another sound and light show.  This one progresses through the temple, and the voices of the principal historical characters tell us their stories.  While he doesn’t howl during the triumphant music, another mangy dog travels with us from section to section as the show progresses, sitting on the old stones and scratching at fleas.  Apparently, he was booked only for a non-speaking role.

Postcard from Egypt: Among the Dead, November 4th

Memphis, Saqqara and Giza

While modern Egyptian Muslims are preparing to sacrifice cows and sheep to the one true God over the next few days, we’re visiting memorials and resting places of a lot of ancient dead Egyptians.

We start at Memphis, the capital of the New Kingdom.  There’s nothing left of it save the odd sarcophagus or statue, with one notable suggestion:  a massive statue of Ramses II lies on its back inside an open-air building.

Ramses II with a friend, Memphis

The tomb of a high priest at Saqqara is much more interesting.  The walls are covered in bas relief with scenes of daily life – fishing expeditions, storing beer, animal husbandry, even a party with dancing girls, all rendered in charming detail.

Also in Saqqara, we see the first Egyptian pyramid – the Step Pyramid of Zoser, built some 4700 years ago.  It is, of course, a tease for what’s to come after lunch – the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.

The Great Pyramid of King Cheops is really big!  Some of us decide to pay the extra 100 Egyptian Pounds (less than $20) to go inside to the burial chamber.  It’s a 45 meter climb up a narrow passageway; at some points you have to be quite bent over to clear the ceiling.  The chamber is a dark stone room, devoid of decoration and empty except for an empty sarcophagus.  But the bragging rights for having done it are worth the price of admission.

The Group at the Great Pyramid, Giza

After a short ride on a flea-ridden camel – mine curved his long neck back toward me and scratched the top of his head on my right leg – and a look at the King’s reconstructed boat (which is pretty cool), we hustle down to catch the last sight before it closes – the Sphinx.

We just make it.  In the warm light of the setting sun, it’s quite photogenic.  And for some reason, despite the crowd, I get a very peaceful feeling there. There’s a quiet confidence to something that’s been where it’s been for the past 4000 years that makes any temporary concern seem trifling.

The Patient Sphinx, Giza