Settling into Alexandria

There’s a half dozen ways of seeing a new part of the world. “Taking in the sights” is probably the most popular. But in the Middle Ages, tourism started with religious pilgrimages such as you find in Canterbury Tales. Another way to “see” a country is to flop on their beaches. Sharm El Sheik on the south of the Sinai Peninsula is a world class strip of sand where swimmers, divers, and floppers come. Eco tourism is a reason to go see the world “before it’s changed.” The national park in Sitka has a bird list that one can request and you can check off the species as you walk quickly along the Totem Loop. I saw a fellow sitting in the first row of the lounge of a ferry. He was armed with an expensive pair of binoculars and a secretary. He called out the bird flocks he saw, the number of specimens, and she quickly recorded what he said. A little different from the beach people are the spa people. They come for massages and to be steamed and soaked and to be mudded and cleaned and perfumed. I guess these folks have their ancestry in the nineteenth century when people who could afford not to work “took the waters” but you might trace the hot springs bathing back to the Romans. Then there is the shopper, who knows a deal when he or she sees it. The cultural visitor walks the halls of art museums, watches native dancers, and listens to the local music. In Alexandria you can enjoy Egyptian music or European Classical. The opera house is as exquisite as the craftsmanship in a Swiss watch. Then there is just cheap living and dope. This made Kodaikanal a favorite with the young people. So there are a stack of reasons for leaving home and skipping across foreign lands or stopping off for a while. You just can’t hire a camel in the Tanana Valley.
If you are a reader of many of my blog pieces, the central DNA of my travels is to find a place(s) to retire. In one blog I listed my priorities. Cheap living being somewhere near the top as I recall. The Rouda Hotel was reasonable enough but the plumbing and the hired help finally drove me to look for another hotel. When the plumbing backed up, I reported it to the unfriendly undertaker at the desk. He called in his maintenance man, who couldn’t find a plunger to fit the hole where he pumped away. The plunger he did use was made of plastic, which is not suitable to the task. Then when he, another maid, and Miss Muddy all began asking for a tip, I felt that it was time to leave. I intended to give a tip but not until the job was done and it never got done. This is not the way of the Rouda so to make a long story short, I left the room with the plastic plunger and the contents of a sewer pipe lying about my bathroom floor and I’ve moved to the Union Hotel. Furthermore, nobody got a tip. My present hotel room (two star) runs a little more than ten dollars a night, which was about the same as many of the places I stayed in India.
I just finished a breakfast of beans, bread, and a salad of tomatoes (picked fresh and with flavor,) onions, and cucumbers. There are green peppers that are about as hot as jalapeños for the adventurous. I passed on them. The price of the breakfast eaten standing up at a street cart? Less than a dollar. No tea. You have to go round the corner to El Corniche and a sidewalk café for a glass of hot tea and as you enjoy sipping, you look out over the Eastern Harbor. Tough life. Waitress’s name is Turaiya and she’s as quick witted as they come. Now by the third glass of tea you will have equaled the price of the breakfast. With tea and tip, you are up to two dollars. You can spend five times that in a sit down, look over the menu place. I like both, rationalizing that I seldom eat more than twice a day, I can afford either.
I found one sit down place that served fuul, this is the bean dish, a chunk of white cheese with sliced vegetables, the pita, and tea for about $2.50 or more depending on the tip. The hired help proved to be so lazy that I had to give up on them. I thought that they might just relax to the point of giving up breathing and performing CPR on lazy waiters was more than I can deal with before breakfast. I miss that slab of salty white cheese though.
My foreigner status makes me deaf (except to the noise of the traffic,) dumb I can say “thank you” but not much else, and partially blind (I can’t read Arabic.) So boarding a minibus for a run down the Corniche to the library was an experience with unintended consequences. I gave the guy a one pound note (18 cents) and he gave me change. I didn’t want change. The people on the bus “said” that I must take the change. If I can ride a mile through bad traffic, it’s damn well worth 18 cents. You get the driver to stop by saying, “Showk-rum.” That’s “thank you” and then I gave him back his change. I could have taken a cab for thirty-six cents but then I add in a thirty-six cent tip. Walking is good for your health unless you are hit by a yellow cab or anything else moving at 35 miles an hour plus. I looked up the street and saw about a half-dozen of these yellow and black bastards bearing down on me. Only a beekeeper can put this sight into context. But until I learn basic Arabic, the transportation system is somewhat out of reach. I think I may get a fist full of Egyptian pound notes and go down to ride the street cars. That would be a good day’s adventure. I did that in Buenos Aires and had a fine time.
The area where I live is pretty much uptown, shops, banks, and offices with just a little cracking plaster. I took a walk to the catacombs, which was too damn far for me to walk, but I went through a huge market area near Pompey’s Pillar (with no more connection to Pompey that Cleopatra’s Needle has with the last Ptolemy,) and then into an industrial section. After prowling the catacombs (second century A.D,) I walked off along a canal and using the sun for direction got lost far from El Corniche but accidentally returned the way I’d come rather than going back to the waterfront.
And the point of all this – the thesis sentence? I want to know how to use a place. I want to find a city, town, village where I can find my way around, get what I want (like some AA batteries) and enjoy the place. I do like museums and the opera house but where can you buy Q-tips?
One day I walked west on El Corniche, around the curve, and to the Pharos, the site of the Lighthouse. Long walk, good tan, a most interesting fort built about twenty years before Columbus sailed for the West. The fort was made of limestone but unlike those built in acid rain country, it looks to be built yesterday. I suppose Egypt has its quota of acid but to date, I’ve been in the country for a month and a half, not a drop of rain has fallen.[Since writing this, it did sprinkle enough to give the cars dust spots and the street people who take it upon themselves to wash or wipe off your car. Should you find your windshield wipers pulled away from the glass, you’ve been cleaned and in time will be asked for a tip.] Perhaps the fort gets restored after every shelling and is sandblasted now and then. One aspect of the design is that at the center of the keep, there is a mosque. The mosque is at the center of many things Egyptian. But even better were the kids. This was a class trip destination up to what I guess to be about the tenth grade. The fort has several levels and is essentially a square which means that should you and I meet each other going opposite ways, if we walk far enough, we’ll meet again. And little girls and boys can not resist testing what they learned on page one and two of English class. “Hello.” “How are you?” “Which country are you from?” “Welcome!” and if they got all the way to the end of that chapter in the English book they ask, “Your first trip to Egypt?” “How long have you been here?” “What do you like best about Egypt?” I tell them, “Kids who ask questions.” So we see each other at the other side of the fort and by then they remember other questions to ask. The kids are worth a lot of interestingly masoned limestone. Magic tricks go over big with them. They remember but are still not sure how you make a rock disappear. The walk out and back to the pharos was a long one but worth the effort.
Another day I went to the Odeum. This is a small amphitheater the Romans built, which served as a showplace for music and poetry performances. Since its unearthing along with the clearing of the Portico that approaches to one side, a more recent government has built a second amphitheater facing the first. In other words, when you looked at the backdrop of the modern theater, you see the Roman structure. The modern theater is a little larger than the first and so an impresario can choose the theater to fit the crowd. Furthermore if you have an overflow crowd, seat people in both theaters, which then makes a theater-in-the-round. Pray for performers with strong voices.
In this section of town there are several acres of ruins that go beyond the boundary of the Odeum. Excavation continues in the Roman residential area near by.
The opera house has presented a company of mimes and the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. It was definitely a kids’ night with the mimes, who did put on a good performance but with the orchestra, there were about the same number of people on one side of the footlights as the other. I’m in a city of five million. A near empty opera house is not a good sign. The music was very good. The Cairo Opera Ballet Troupe will present “Odessa Ballet” this Friday. I hope to be there. Since I don’t wear a tie and a tie is required to get inside the theater, I leave my Alaska Driver’s License hostage with the ticket seller while I borrow a tie. The lady matched the NPS green of a jacket I bought off the street in India with a tie of her selection. I was disappointed on my next visit to find that someone had already made off with “my” tie. The tickets so far run from $7.50 to $10.00 U.S. [Sunday, it didn’t happen this way. One, the published schedule was wrong and secondly, the ballet is “Odysseus – The Hero”]
I spend the lion’s share of my time writing and rewriting the blog. A few hours a week go to checking email. I take leisurely breakfasts and luppers. I stop on the street and visit with people. There are about a million cats here in Alexandria. Almost no dogs. Two street conversations came up about cats yesterday. There is a beautiful tabby who has been treated well. It is not at all wild and lounges on hoods of cars and it waits to be scratched. I try to keep my hands in my pockets. But I haven’t seen the cat in several days so I asked the lady who runs a hole-in-the-wall shop about the cat. I petted an imaginary cat to get the question across. She was amused that I had missed the cat. After calling over several young men, I was informed that the cat was not really hers. Like the other million cats, it wanders the streets but she keeps some cheese for it when it comes by. Something works. Unlike the others, the cat is not feral.
Then a little further down the street a cat had taken up a defensive position under the back axel of a parked car. That’s where they all take shelter when auto and foot traffic get heavy. The young man thought the cat should come out from beneath the car. This time a young lady was my translator and I told them that they should take a squeegee with a long handle and “urge” the cat gently from beneath the car. This didn’t translate. I got the squeegee and carefully demonstrated. The cat moved, I was thanked, and I walked on. With their denning up beneath cars, the cats are pretty rough looking. Then there are some who are missing tails and other body parts. Mange is common. No fun being a cat in Alexandria unless you’ve got a nice lady who feeds you cheese, a warm automobile hood to relax on, and a foreigner who knows better to come by and scratch you behind the ear.
One day I was on my way down Rue Nabi Daniel and saw a crowd gathered round a black sedan. I don’t do crowds and surely not agitated crowds as this one seemed to be. I thought at first that the gathering had to do with a labor dispute. The police were there as they had been during a wage protest in another part of the neighborhood. Nobody getting too wild at this point. I watched from across the street. Finally I asked two pretty women, one pushing a stroller, if they spoke English. They did and spoke well. “What’s going on over there?” “There is a baby locked in a car.” It was getting on into the afternoon and the sunshine cleared the tops of the building on my side of the street and fell on the car. I walked on. This was a problem that I couldn’t solve with a long-handled squeegee. I had a meal at the Bistrot and then came back. The crowd and the car were gone. In a shop I asked the owner what had happened. He too spoke English and said that they got the baby out. The parent/guardian did finally return. The crowd gave the baby back and the car owner drove away with a broken window. Alexandria has its problems. It has strong points as well.
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