| Following is a collection of emails we sent home from Egypt. I'll try
and get around to cleaning this up this weekend.
November 10: I'll write more later but I just wanted to give a quick rundown (please forward to anybody i forgot to include) of the days events ... airplane delays greatly exaggerated, we arrived 3 hours early to philadelphia and were AT OUR GATE in ten minutes. same in england. this morning we awoke to a spectacular, amazing, unbelieveable sunrise over cairo. from the 10th floor we looked out onto a city shrouded in mist, went to the dig with a car full of archeologists, worked all day on the dig, linda sorted bags of finds and i photographed some of the things they'd dug up already. then at about 3:00 brad opened a tomb that he had been working on all day -- he handed rocks up through the shaft to me, i passed them on to linda and she stacked them along the base of mastaba 2000, the huge ediface which over shadows the site of the eastern cemetary. and he and i and linda were the first human beings in 4500 years to see what was inside -- the skeleton of a man, age still undetermined. brad brushed off the bones and we photographed them in situ tomorrow the physical anthropologist will come and give her best shot at determining who this person was. brad noticed terrible spinal deformations and said "this person probably did not lead a good life." right now we're back at the apartment, covered with sweat and sand (which is in EVERYTHING -- every bite of food or drink of water has grit in it). linda and i have been learning arabic for a couple of weeks now and we had a chance to practice with the workmen who were helping the excavation. it's amazing to me that i can say something in arabic and they answer and it makes some sense. they speak a little english and our conversations are very limted "this is good!" "this is not good" "i don't understand" "my name is ___" but it's amazing to me nonetheless. i have to run, we're meeting a friend for dinner. more later. kyle ------------------------------------- november 11: egypt is amazing. we are having such a good time. we went again to the dig today. while walking out to the site, brad reached down, picked up a stone and dropped it into my hand. i looked at it, it was white and round, a perfect skipping stone. "that's a patella," he said, "a human knee cap." Years of archaeology closer to grave robbing than actual science have made a mess of the giza plateau and tons of poorly excavated dirt and stone litter the place. human bones too. linda didn't want to spend another day cooped up in tombs so we decided to walk to the sphynx. which means around the pyramid and through the camel gauntlet -- dozens of extremely persistant men offering you rides on camels, promising the best views, the lowest prices, the best time. we waved them all off and walked past kufu, the largest of the three pyramids, and down onto the road leading to the sphynx. here, something really strange happend. there was a group of about 100 school girls coming up the road and linda, tired of being cooped up under a scarf (in muslem fashion) had left her head gear at home. well, 100 egyptian school girls got one look at linda's hair and they all started shrieking "you're so beautiful!" and "i love you!" and they RAN across the street and mobbed her, they wanted to take pictures of her, pictures with her, all progress was halted. it was as though madonna had stepped into the deptford mall to buy a hat at Hot Topic. this continuted unabated for the hour it took us to walk 200 feet to the foot of the sphynx. finally, realizing that we would see nothing like this, we made our escape off the giza plateau and south into the village of naslet anzanam where we bought a flaffel from Mr. Abhud. He had us sit down on the curb next to his stand (which was in the basket of a bicycle) and the second part of the strange trypdych of our day began. mr abud made us a pair of flaffel sandwitches, a plate of pickled vegitables some egyptian tea and two cokes for five pounds ($1.25) he was so friendly we just sat on the steps for the next couple of hours and mr. abud introuduced us to the entire village as they passed by. many people stopped to talk and to try out their english, they were all quite friendly. people kept giving us stuff too -- a hat, some post cards, a little statue. we spent a lot of time talking about the situation in afghanistan -- everybody hopes the the bombing will stop during ramadan so that the afghan civilians can have their holiday in peace without worrying about stray American blockbusters blowing up their homes in the middle of the night. Sentiment is also very strongly that they want to see proof that Bin Laden actually did it. many people said they'd be the first to jump on the american bandwagon if they saw some proof that bin laden actually blew up the WTC, but as of yet they hadn't seen anything that convinced them, he just seems like an easy target for an enraged U.S.. I was really suprised by the number of people who suspect that mossaid did it to make americans attack the arabs. finally, after about two and a half hours of holding court on mr abhud's step, we accepted an invitation from three men we'd met, omar, saad and said to go to a coffee shop where they bought us hot mint tea and we watched men play dominoes. saad desperately wants us to come back tomorrow and go to his house, meet his family and see his pet monkey. a couple hours here, being introduced to everybody in the village, who are all related, and it was time to go back to giza and meet brad and the rest of the archeologists for the trip home. first, i buy a couple arabic language music tapes. they play a bunch for us and, i hate to say it, they all sound identical. so i pick the two that get our friends the most excited. a cassette tape here is about five pounds. on the way back to the plateau, once again, linda was mobbed, this time by little kids, and the strange thing about it was that this time _i_ was mobbed too. i signed autographs, i kid you not, i signed two hundred autographs. mostly on egyptian money, but also in address books and bits of trash. kids pressed lemons into my hand "a gift! a gift! for you!" someone gave me a little statue of a sphynx, it was insane. about six times a policeman with a kalasnikov came up and routed the kids "ishme! ishme!" (sort of "go away!" -- its such strong language that brad says he only uses it when talking to animals like pesky flies.) but as soon as the cops went away, another group of kids would appear. i felt really guilty and couldn't stop writing my name down for them and repeating their names (which gave them no end of joy "say my name! say my name!" and since they were mostly all named mohammad, it was easy. there was one kid though who's name was Fadi Zaki. I liked saying his name as much as he liked me saying it. He said "don't ever forget that you met Fadi Zaki!" I told him with a name like Fadi Zaki, no one would ever forget meeting him.) finally, we got to the restricted area between the pyramids and the eastern cemetary where we were meeting brad and the kids could follow no longer. they ran to the bottom of a hill where they could see us and shouted "linda! linda!" in far away voices. when she'd appear at the rim of the hill and wave they'd go crazy, waving and jumping up and down. every once in a while they'd yell my name (seeing as that i have an unusual haircut, they decided i looked just like Kevin Sorbo and had dubbed me 'Hercules' which is what they shouted from the bottom of the hill. i really love this town. ana sayeed, salaam sadiki! kyle ------------------------------- please forward this to anybody i may have forgotten -- here are some very quick photos, sorry about the incompleteness of the html, but we're always getting up at 5:30 in the morning here... today is my interview with dr. zahi hawass the secretary of state in charge of antiquities -- i'm doing an article on him for the pennsylvania gazette and it should be a great time. as i probably mentioned, we saw the sphynx yesterday, it was very impressive, but not as impressive as the egyptian people, who are just amazingly great. cairo is a very livable city. we went out food shopping last night -- ramadan starts this week and everything should start getting really crazy after dark. i'm pretty excited. time to get off to work, i'll catch you all later. kc
http://hector.asc.upenn.edu/~cassidy/egypt/mail1.jpg --------------------------- november 12: please forward to anybody i forgot ... i'm writing this at 3:00 in the morning because i just completely crashed when we got home today at 7:30. we're still getting up at 5:30 to go out to the excavation. today was my meeting with Dr. Zahi Hawass, the Undersecretary of State for Giza -- you've seen him on TV. In a land made up entirely of friendly people, Dr. Zahi (in Egypt there really isn't any such thing as a last name, so titled people are called by their first, and they call brad "Dr. Brad" here too or "Dr. Teapot" because "barad" in arabic means teapot AND the "br" sound with no vowel in between is unknown in the language, so they're always looking to stick something in there. brad doesn't seem to mind being called Dr. Teapot, though mostly it's one of the other archaeologists, sarah, who calls him this.) is the friendliest. He's the best interview I've ever had, so effusive and absolutely in love with his work and with egypt. he loaded me up with books and articles, sent us off on a private tour of the excavations here so we would be better prepared to talk about them, and scheduled an interview with us for noon tomorrow. Wednesday he's taking us out to the current excavations with him so I can get some action shots. (I don't know if I mentioned before, but I'm writing an article on him for the Pennsylvania Gazette -- he's a Penn alum). we left Dr. Zahi's office with an inspector, a car, and a driver. the driver was blasting egyptian music and leaning on his horn, driving down congested pedestrian streets at 40 mph, scattering old people, children, camels, horses and busses to the side of the road -- out the windows, the pyramids and the desert sand. we saw some recently excavated statuary from ramses the II, then the solar boat, the very exciting recently discovered "tombs of the workmen" which contain the bodies of the people who died during the construction of the pyramid and, dr. zahi believes, prove that the pyramids were not built by slave labor, but rather as a labor of love by people who loved their pharoh. we got to go into a lot of really nicely decorated tombs and were given a great tour by mahaud, the director of the excavation ("Have you seen this month's National Geographic?" he asked, "there you can see a nice photograph of me!" (I checked it out later and there is indeed a fantastic photo of him in this months national geo)) who was particularly pleased to show us a curse written on the wall of a tomb ("if you disturb this tomb, the following animals will come after you: hippo, snake, scorpion") he was very quick to point out that this did not mean journalists nor egyptologists, but looters. tombs were meant as tourist attractions, as long as people were coming to the tombs and visiting them, the owners were taken care of in the afterlife. (when you visit a tomb you're supposed to say a prayer: "1000 loaves of bread, 1000 bottles of beer" and the owner of the tomb will receive those in the afterlife.) then we went to see the sphynx. normally, people aren't allowed near the sphynx and are kept about 200 feet back along a high wall. but as we are now friends of dr. zahi -- we were let in through a gate guarded by two men with ak-47's, and down a private path. it looked like a scene from "gladiator" because suddenly hundreds of people could all see linda at once and everybody started shouting and waving. one guy jumped over the wall and started running up to her with a camera but the guys with the guns were there in 2 seconds and chased him back. but the whole time we were looking at the sphynx people were yelling and waving and trying to get her to turn around so they could get a picture. we've gotten a little jaded, it's sad to say, it's a lot easier to not turn and wave now than it was yesterday. after the spynx, we went into the great pyramid. our guide told us about the restoration efforts currently underway and dr. zahi's plans for conservation (which have been unique in archaeology). he declined to walk up inside with us ("i will wait for you outside!") it's a tough climb and i immagine we lose a lot of little old ladies every day. it's a 45 degree angle about 1.5 meters square, so you're bent in half going up a ladder. right now i feel like i spent 20 minutes on the stairmaster. the enterence shaft opens up into a large grand gallery with a high ceiling. then up more stairs to the burial chamber, which but for a broken stone sarcauphogas is empty. at least, it was empty for about 3 minutes. after which time it was filled with 60 screaming teenage egyptian girls who acted like they'd cornered Julia Roberts. they ran up to linda and asked the same questions "what is your name!" "where are you from?!" "do you speak english?" "how are you enjoying your time in egypt?" and once again they all needed to be photographed with her. as more people were coming up the stairs, ignoring the sarcocophagus of kufu and joining the mob around linda now about 8 people deep, we quickly realized this wasn't going to work so we beat a hasty retreat (running backwards down the stairs through a 1.5 meter shaft with 60 girls running down after us screaming "you are beautiful! can i have a photo!") once outside our guide halted their approach with a few words in arabic (i know the word for "go away!" which is "isme!" but brad says it's abrupt and he only uses it on animals, so we've been reticent to tell anybody to please leave us alone. so far, i've only said "ma salaama" which means "goodbye", but our guide knew the magic words and the girls hovered back about 30 feet and snapped photos while we got into the car and careened across the desert back to the dig site. when we got back home i fell asleep immediately. more adventures tomorrow as Gobi, one of the workmen at the dig site has invited us to his house for lunch after work. he speaks nearly no english and most of my arabic is reserved for saying "hello" and getting people to leave us alone. (one useful phrase for dealing with camel drivers is "laa oread hadad" ("i don't want this"), also, the more polite: "mish lazen" ("it is not necessary") everybody is very happy when they find out that we can say _anything_ in arabic, either that or they assume we live here and definately don't need a camel ride.) more later, i'm going to go back to bed. kyle ----------------------------- november 13: please forward to anyone we forgot. haven't uploaded photos yet, but will try soon. kc Tuesday we slept in late (until 9:00) and went for a walk in Zamalak, which is an island in the middle of the Nile where we're staying. Linda had heard there was a donut shop and we set out to find it. cairo bustles and there seem to be no traffic laws, every street corner is only a prayer away from a taxi and pedestrian accident. zamalak is a very well off neighborhood where all the embassies are (we're right next to the danish embassy and down the street from the pink building the canadians call home away from home), so there are lots of cars, but many other places in cairo people are riding donkies or pulling carts so the possibilites for mayhem become infinatey more complex. when it comes to traffic, Egyptians survive by the nike rule: "just do it" when wanting to cross a street, one closes ones eyes and runs. "ish'allah" means "god willing" and it seems to be the way that we keep from getting killed. there are no stop signs. as cars approach an intersection they honk the horn to announce they're coming through. it's very common for cars to drive between the lanes, inches away from one another. my mother always told me never to put my arm out the window of a car or it would get cut off or crushed. she was probably talking about cairo. along some places on 26 july street (kind of the main drag on zamalak) police direct traffic, basically they point at you so that you know to cover your eyes and run. ish'allah. there are many colourful markets along the streets, stores selling fruit, or meat, there are little kiosks that resemble telephone booths that sell soda. there are flower stands and cell phone stores. zamalak is fairly modern, but there are alwasy women carrying baskets of something on their heads. security is very high here because of all the embassies. on practically every street corner are a pair of guys with AK-47's. which is really disconcerning at first, until you find out that they're all _nice_ guys with AK-47's. the sternest face will turn to pure joy with a greeting. "sabbah el haer!" which means "good morning!" (literally: "morning, the goodness") instantly provokes a beaming smile and a reply of "sabbah noor!" or "welcome in egypt!" or "hallo!" everybody wants to say hello. while crossing the street people wave and yell out of passing trucks at us: "hello! do you speak english?! hello!" they're overjoyed at anyone who can speak even the tiniest bit of arabic and they all want to practice english. so on the way to the donut shop, one of the guys with the AK-47's says: "are you having a good time in egypt?" we assure him we're having the best time in egypt. "are you having any problems? if you have any problems, please just tell one of us, we are here to make your stay happy." now where in america do people act like that? we find the donut shop, "america's best donuts since 1950" the sign tells us. it's decorated with paintings and sports an internet cafe. a chocolate cream donut and a 7up costs us six pounds ($1.50) this is a pretty tourist area. at 11:00 we get in a taxi and drive out to the pyramids ("al ahram") which runs us 20 pounds. that's the hawagi price. "hawagi" is a word left over from the british occupation, it's a vulger term for forigner or tourist. i've never heard anybody say it except the other hawagi's. hawagi's pay 20 pounds for a ride from zamalak to al ahram, though the meter on the cab said 50 piesters (fifty egyptian cents or 1/40th of what we paid) which is the price for egyptians. this dual standard makes a lot of sense, though it must make cab drivers extremely wealthy people. 20 pounds is still a bargan (about $5), even for a hawagi. as we approach the pyramids a bunch of guys run out into the road and stop the cab, putting their hands on the hood and shouting at the driver, finally he relents and one of the guys jumps into the front seat -- hoping to be our guide when we stop. once you're _at_ the pyramids you're fresh meat in a pack of hyenas. it would have been intimidating if we hadn't been through all this before. when the cab stops i hand the driver 20 pounds and get out we ignore the guy in the front seat who is now asking if we need a camel, as are about 15 other people right now. if you know a couple words of arabic they usually leave you alone, but as soon as we tell the guard at the gate why we're there ("ihna hafyeen -- "we're journalists") and who we're going to see, "dr. zahi hawass", they scatter. dr. zahi hawass is egypts big man. arguably the most fameous living egyptian, the secretary of state for the monuments of giza, he controls everything at giza and to annoy somebody who was going to see him would not be a good thing. we discover that his name is a magic word. it opens doors, removes gates, and, scatters camel drivers. zahi has scheduled a three day interview with us, which began with monday's tour of giza by one of his inspectors, continued with a lot of reading homework, then with today's interview and finally with tomorrow's tour of the monuments with zahi himself. zahi hawass is the busiest person i've ever seen and in a land of extremely friendly people, he's the friendliest. his secretary remembers our names and we wait in his antichamber for about 20 minutes before we're shown in. i'm full of questions generated by yesterday's tour and by my reading assignments. he answers them all remarkably well, especially questions about using history as diplomacy and his hopes to bring east and west together and end hostilities by using the history of egypt. in a world that is falling apart, zahi hawass is holding east and west together with his love of history. after the interview we go and meet brad at the western cemetary where they've uncovered another three bodies. they have very little time remaining to get them out, so everybody is hurried. i help brad bag bones (he hands them up the shaft: "put these in the vertebras bag", "put these in the arm bag") and linda draws skeletons. i also photograph some of the finds. at 3:00 our real adventure begins. one of the workers, a really nice, friendly kid about 16 or 17, named "goma" has invited linda and i to lunch at his house. one thing -- goma doesn't speak a word of english so we communicate mostly by intonation and waving our arms around. we mostly don't understand one another, but it's easy to communicate that we like one another, and i do like goma. http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/travel/egypt-11-2001/goma1.jpg i like goma a lot. it's impossible not to like goma. he bursts into song while working (either something arabic or michael jackson, one of his personal idols -- he asks everyone if they like michael jackson: "michael jackson, quaies?" ("good") i don't know how to explain my complex feelings about michael jackson, so i just say "quaies") he smiles constantly, he gets really excited when i try and say anything in arabic. so the three of us leave the plateau and walk towards cairo. along the way the tourist police grab goma and drag him into a kiosk -- we don't know what's happening but it all seems very serious. they take goma's papers and examine them carefully. we're forbidden to follow. finally, a policeman comes out and says "who -- he?" i try to explain that he's a friend, "saditki" i point to him, then me, then the pyramids and say "zahi hawass" trying to explain that we work together. at the mention of the big man's name, the guard lights up, hands goma his papers back and sends us on our way. later we learn that it's illegal for private guides to make off with hawagis, one needs to be licensed to do that sort of thing. but as we're friends, all is well. We take a bus to Goma's. It's really a van. It works like this: A van sits on the side of the road and waits for people to come along and get in. When it's packed so tightly that you can't fit a mounds bar onto it, they wait until that many more people get in it, and then they drive off. we ride the bus for about 20 minutes, off into the nowhere of the remote outer edge of Cairo. Everybody on the bus is very pleased to be in the company of hawagis, but nobody speaks English. We do our best and get along fameously. The digital camera is a big hit. Finally, the bus stops in the absolute middle of nowhere. Goma and Linda and I get out and walk down a street where everybody stares at us in disbelief. You wave and say "sallam!" (peace!) and their baffled looks turn to smiles and they say "sabah el heyer!" or "ahalan wa salahan!" ("welcome and good health!") and the mystery is over: goma is walking down the street with two aliens from Mars, but they speak Arabic. Now it makes sense. Goma's house is kind of what I was expecting in a vague sort of way. along a narrow alley, a grey iron gate opens up into a court yard filled with chickens and geese. Beautiful light streams in from overhead. On the porch we take off our shoes and go into the living room where Goma's mother and father are sitting on hard pillows, making tea and watching arabic television on a small black and white set. We are introduced around and we sit on the pillows. Goma's father makes tea, his mother brings out dinner. Which is rice, beans, vegitables, bread, chicken (probably very recently alive) and macaroni. There is some difficulty in explaining that we're vegetarians, but goma's father eventually figures it out and we have a splendid time. We're asked about which american presidents we like, which egyptian prime ministers. everything is swell. after dinner, goma takes us upstairs where they're painting the second floor, which looks very nice. The third floor has an open ceiling, well, it has no ceiling. just brick walls and sky. we can see the minerette of the local mosque which begins the call to prayer. and also on the third floor -- goats. About six of them. the goats run around. goma's little sister runs around, linda and Irun around, i'm taking pictures of the goats ("gedge") in arabic, life just doesn't get better. goma's mother is so happy that we like the goats. She shows us their pidgeon roost, also on the roof-floor. And she explains to us that when Goma gets married, he'll move up here with his wife (presumably they'll put a roof on it and move the goats up a flight). none of the houses here are complete, each has iron concrete reinforcing rods sticking up from the roof and some half completed walls. I'm not kidding when i say each either. one of the archaeologists believes that it's because you don't have to pay taxes on your house until it's complete, but she's not completely sure. i kind of like the idea of just being able to slap another floor on your house when you fill up the downstairs. something very lego about the whole thing. http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/travel/egypt-11-2001/gedge.jpg After the tour of the house it's time to go home. It's also time for goma to show off his hawagi friends, so we march through every street in town and children come pouring out of doors to see us. They're shouting "said! said! said!" (happy! happy! happy!) and they all want to shake hands. Linda says she feels like the pied piper and this is true. Every once in a while someone yells "America quaies!" or "America number one!". They're all amazed that we can talk. I'm sure that this will go down in the village folklore as the time Goma brought some hawagis home. He seemed to get a lot of points from all of his friends. He'd point to some guy sitting on a step or driving a donkey cart and say "he's my friend" and I'd wave to Goma's friend and say "sallam!" and everybody would be extremely happy. "Hey, Goma taught those apes to speak Arabic!" we get back on the bus and return to the pyramids (no taxi's in Goma's neighborhood) say goodbye to Goma (i offer him 1 pound to pay for the bus and it's as though I offered him a severed human head: "no! no! no!" he pushes the money back at me.) We give him a chicago bulls baseball hat, which makes him really happy, we shake hands and say "ma salamma" ("goodbye") and we're off. Probably never to see him again, which is the worst thing about traveling. take care all, kyle & linda
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------------------------------- november 15: Just a quick note -- yesterday we went back to Giza to photograph Dr. Hawass. he's great -- he said that sometimes when big things are happening, as many as 21 photographers show up in a day to take a photo of him. He knows all the best places to stand. So we went from the pyramids, to the sphynx, to the tombs of the workers, i got some good stuff. Then we came back, went to bed. Today we went to Saqquara to photograph the step pyramid and some of the new kingdom tombs, really neat, lots of paintings. We actually went into the step pyramid of king Zoser, which, had I known how rare an event that was, i would have taken more photographs inside -- nobody here has actually been inside and everybody was full of questions. I liked the step pyramid more than the great pyramid, less climbing, to be sure, but it's less modified as well, fewer iron gates and foot rails -- though there's not much to see inside, some columns and then a deep 28 meter pit filled with boulders. tonight we're going to see a play with friends at the british school. tomorrow ramadan starts. we have some egyptian friends we're going out with tomorrow night (when the festivites really start), they're renting a boat and we'll cruise up and down the nile feasting (oh joy!) maybe the cairo museum too. gotta run. play starting. kc ---------------------------------- november 19: one of my camera lenses stopped working. when i turn it it makes a grinding noise and desert sand oozes out of the gaps. one of my other cameras has sand in the gears and the film refuses to advance. my digital is, so far, blissfully chugging along. we leave tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., will be home by 9:00 p.m. your time. see you all wednesday. or some of you wednesday. yesterday we went to watch zahi open a tomb in al-materia, which is a neighborhood in northeast cairo -- the dirtiest place i've ever been in my life. mounds of trash several feet high, people rooting through them, donkies eating out of them ... but still charming in some cairo sort of way ... the tomb was discovered when someone was building a basement for a new house. it's greco roman, made of giant stone slabs. we got there about 10 in the morning right in the middle of a media circus. t.v. news crews from all over the world surrounding the place, hundreds of locals clustered at teh edges of this giant pit and zahi in the middle of it all saying things like "you never know what the sands of the desert will reveal" -- he's very melodramatic. i've come to love the guy. we climbed down onto the tomb and i got some shots of the media swarming him. after about 30 minutes, he rushed off, t.v. crews following him leaving linda and i in the absolute middle of nowhere. all the locals were happy to have us around and we photographed some turkeys and ducks and rabbits at a roadside shop. the guy who owned it kept http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/travel/egypt-11-2001/turkey2.jpg asking us if we wanted one of the turkeys. everybody wanted to help us out and finally we figured we'd like to get a taxi rather than be the last hawagi's left in the middle of nowhere. the locals fanned out to track down a taxi, made sure that it would take us back to zamalak, and then waved to us as we rode off, kids running down the road after us. afterwards we went to iftar with some of our egyptian friends -- iftar is the meal at the end of the day during Ramadan -- as you no doubt know, nobody eats during the day during ramadan. they get up at 4:50 (hearing the call to prayer from 40 minerettes at the same time is something i'll miss about this place, oddly enough, even at 4:50 in the morning), pray, and eat a huge breakfast before the sun comes up. then they spend all day cooking and thinking about food that they can't eat. by 5:00 the food is out and everybody is stairing at it -- long tables of food are set up on the streets and everybody is just ogling them, waiting for this cannon they fire to let everybody know the sun has set. at our iftar there were nuts, dates, and spinach sandwitches to "break the fast" then there was about 15 minutes of prayer, followed by a huge dinner and ping pong in the garden. linda saw a mongoose running along the garden wall. after iftar we went out with our friend mohammad and his friend mohammad (there are so many people named mohammad that if your name is mohammad, nobody calls you mohammad, they call you something else, so our friend mohammad is "hakiem") to a coffee shop on the nile (it was outdoors) and stayed up talking until midnight. it was great fun. on the way home we came across a group of about 8 soldiers with AK-47's sitting in the park near our house. when they saw us they jumped up and ran towards us shouting (getting tense yet?) they shouted "welcome to egypt!" "hello! how are you doing!" "what is your name?" "can we help you to find some place?" "we hope you are having a good time in egypt! welcome!" -- it's odd enough to find eight guys with machine guns in a park at midnight, it's even odder that they're all tripping over themselves friendly and so glad to see you. we're going to go out to some art galleries today and to visit fish gardens, which is right across the street (and where you'll no doubt be very excited to hear, we yesterday saw Hakiem, the Egyptian Michael Jackson, filming a music video) and then search for some Ramadan lamps. we'll see you all soon. take care, kyle and linda
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