The Alexandrian Diary 7: Cairo II

“He was born around 1303 BC and at age fourteen, Ramesses was appointed Prince Regent by his father Seti I. He is believed to have taken the throne in his early 20s and to have ruled Egypt for 66 years, from 1279 BC to 1213 BC. On his death, he was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, his body was later moved to a royal cache . For the last decades of his life, Ramesses II was essentially crippled with arthritis and walked with a hunched back. His successors and later Egyptians called him the "Great Ancestor."”

The old man looked immersed in his own world, oblivious to the numerous faces that stared at him. He was visibly dead, but the skin tight over his sunken cheeks and the yellowing hair bore traces of life. I would have walked past him unimpressed. Then, there was a moment, when the years struck me. And I looked at the face through the three thousand years.

The Royal mummy room of the Egyptian museum of Cairo houses eleven pharaohs and queens from 1650 to 940 BCE. They lie there stripped off their grand lives, with their battle wounds and dental ailments laid bare for public scrutiny. One cannot but feel an unexplainable sadness. It could be for the folly of our times, for the casual manner in which we took them out of their eternal abodes; tombs that had sweated out (often out of their lives) thousands of labourers and architects and goldsmiths and sculptors.

The Train to Cairo…
Rajesh is my brother Mathew’s schoolmate. He is a chemical engineer and is in Alexandria on a project since the last three months. Strangely we seem to be the only malayalees in the city. We were to go the museum together. He had already seen it and thought I should not miss it.

The Masr train station has trains leaving to Cairo every hour. We were to catch the 8 o’ clock train. I was all ready when I was informed that from that day the clocks had turned an hour behind. It took me the hour I gained to comprehend why 8 o’clock was now 7 o’clock.

After his enquires after Amitabh Bachchan the cab driver dropped me off at the station. Masr and the other stations on the way to Cairo are strikingly similar to those in India. So much so, that I almost expected the ‘Railway Mazdoor Union slogans to appear on the walls at any moment. Once, these rails undoubtedly were conduits for the cotton factories of Alexandria once housed in the gray buildings with their dusty signboards that I see around.

The railway tracks and stations are one of the very few things that look similar in different parts of India. They look superimposed upon a jigsaw puzzle that was made all wrong. Now, if one of the trains from an Egyptian station take me all the way to Gwalior I would not be very surprised.

Unlike Delhi, the difference between the outskirts and the city of Cairo is not glaring. While there are indications of displacement, it does not look as if the city is forcibly pushing people to its fringes. The canals and branches of Nile have filled the distance from Alexandria to Cairo with patches of green. One either side of the tract fields of grain and vegetables can be seen.

La Museè
From Midan Ramses railway station, the Cairo Metro takes you directly to Midan Tahrir, the house of the Cairo museum since 1902.

From the outside, the red two floor building does not give a fair estimate of its collection. It has in its possession over 1, 00,000 items ranging from the Old Kingdom to the times of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, the number is too large, that artifacts that are thousands of years old pile up without labels in obscure corners.

I cannot do justice if I try to describe all that I saw. The five hours I spend there was just enough to appreciate the sheer number of artifacts. An entire section is for mummified animals. They range from beetles to cows. One ‘mummy’ crocodile had a baby croc in her mouth! The beetles are not the flesh eating monsters of the ‘Mummy returns’. All they do is move around pushing a huge dung ball which the Egyptians thought was the solar disc… They obviously thought there was a huge beetle somewhere that was rolling the sun about for fun!!

The most celebrated finds are the collections from the tomb of Tutenkhamun. It will take quite a few visits to believe that the multiple gold sarcophagi, the gilded chambers, the ornate bed, well, a quarter of the space of the entire museum were all meant for the posterity of the boy- pharaoh. The time of Tutenkhamun, it is believed, was one of turbulence and his death was followed by a major regime change. Some are of the opinion that all that symbolized the authority of the earlier regime were buried with the young pharaoh. It is possible that he was assisted towards a speedy afterlife.

Museums have a closing time. It is all a jumble in my mind now- Nefretiti in a Venus attitude and Pharaohs with Greek curls falling on their foreheads…

But then, I have with me all those centuries

The Alexandrian Diary 6: Une Pettite Detour

The twenty third was a particularly hot and humid day. It was our last day in the field. The water of the lake whose shore we study is polluted and brackish. This makes the air particularly heavy. By the end of the day I had a splitting headache and nausea. My friend Lucy and Athena did not look any better

Samir’s car had apart from us our Egyptian friends, Emad, Ahmed and Ehab. (Samir makes amazing tea on the gas cylinder in his boot. Those who get to go with him to the field are the chosen ones). A kilometre off to the West from our regular route we stopped in front of a small yellow painted mosque. We learned that they wanted to buy some figs. The megaphone announced the evening prayer just then. And we were left to a fifteen minutes wait.

The mosque was the face of a small fig grove. It stood out in its greenery from the occasional shrubbery and the near total absence of trees of the region. But the sight did not help us much because the heat in the parked car was too oppressive for us.

As our companions left either to pray or to pluck the figs, the gardener invited us to sit in the shade. He had spread a carpet there for us. (alright… it was a plastic carpet). The shade was cool and we discovered a breeze that we missed inside the car. Lucy immediately crashed on the carpet refusing to budge. And then the man returns with his hands full of the choicest figs…

As the queens of Arabia reclined, chatted and ate thus for a while the men returned. They had a tough time persuading us to come back.

The Alexandrian Diary 5: Ahmed al Hind

Over twenty years ago there was in Alexandria a man called Ahmed. Ahmed used to roam around the city on his motorbike. Attached to his bike was a music system with huge speakers and Hindi film music streamed out from them constantly. In the movie halls showing Hindi movies, Ahmed would sing along and dance with the songs; his steps in synchrony with those on the screen. People called him Ahmed al- Hind.

Ehab spoke with nostalgia of Ahmed and the days when there were seven movie halls devoted to Bollywood movies. (Now there are only two). Ehab works with the Supreme Council of Antiquities and is a part of our project. Father of three, he is a jovial man in his late thirties, with a ready smile. Ehab is a great fan of Amitabh Bachan and Hindi film music. So are many of his generation that I have come across.

From my day one in Alexandria I have met people, who have asked me whether I am from al- Hind. My Malayali nationalism as Neha has often pointed out is far too strong to be pleased for being included in the ‘Indian’/ Hindi rubric. But their next sentence invariably is “Amitabh Bachchan?” Well I can’t argue there. It is not Shatrukhnan Sinha after all. My ready recognition of Amitabh Bachchan brings about an instant change. It is the warmth of meeting some one from a long time ago.

I have also met a few younger people who are the fans of current bollywood. Then, that is more alien to me. At least, there is no shared nostalgia. Ri-ahm the charming ticket collector at the National Museum of Alexandria said she loved Indians and she loved Kareena Kapur and Shahrukh Khan. Shahrukh Khan is the hot favourite. (why oh why?!!!) In Cairo I went to a small souvenir shop in the medieval market of Khan el- Khalili. Sherif the salesman shook hands with me and said. “I like you; I am Shahrukh Khan”. I have found my oasis in the desert, haven’t I??

The Alexandrian Diary 4 : Cairo

Kirsten is an artist and a friend of our coordinator, Lucy Blue. She is a totally confused, lovable character. Kirsten was with us for a week. I overheard her saying that she intended to have a quick look around Cairo, mainly to shop, before taking her flight back home form the airport there. I thought I heard the word “pyramids” in between and up I was on my heels. Soon the plan was formed. I and three undergraduate students from Southampton would accompany Kirsten to Cairo; have a quick look at the pyramids and go on for the shopping bit…

(Footnote err…..middle note: My co-travellers: James has Scottish origins and an accent that I still cannot follow. He loves coffee .Kat (Katriona) comes straight out of the teenage movies. She s aloof and confident. She was evidently happy when she ceased to share my room and got her own space. And yes, Kat met her mathematician boyfriend at a juggling club!! Ben is frail and shy. More warm and informal than the other too. None of the three seem to have any particular liking for me. There is the huge generation gap of three years between us . And Kirsten, I told u about. Our driver, a burly, rotund man who speaks perfect Arabic. What luck!! But, he was amazing. He showed a great deal of patience and skill in deciphering the sign language and was kind enough to guide us through out the trip. His name is… well, call him X)

So at six o’ clock in the morning of 15th August I sit upright on the back seat of our cab with Ben, determined to register in the entire route. And then, I sleep the tranquillest sleep. When I get up I see the sign board saying ‘CAIRO 39kms.” The Mediterranean winds that keep Alexandria cool have disappeared. The ground has turned brownish yellow with occasional shrubs and dull buildings. The whole landscape was reflecting the sun’s rays.

I thought I saw a signboard saying Giza. Five minutes later Kat shouted “there, there…” And there it was, towering in front of us at a height of about 150 meters, the Great Pyramid of Giza.It is the only remaining member of the seven wonders of the Ancient world. My eyes glued to it through the car window we drove to the pyramids. Near the entrance we were crowded by horse/ camel ride offers. A number of peddlers and camel riders meet you in and around the area. But in comparison to a place like Delhi, they are much less persistent. I was surprised at the irritation of my European co-travellers towards them. Breaking free we got to the ticket counter. For walking around the pyramids the charge is 50 Egyptian pounds per person. According to the plans we won’t have time for much more. Armed with the ticket illustrated with the sphinx we get in to the pyramid complex premises.

Yawn…..Facts and figures…:The pyramid complex of Giza has three pyramids. The celebrated Great Pyramid of Giza (the pyramid of Khufu), was constructed over a 20 year period concluding around 2560 BCE. A few hundred meters south-west of the Great Pyramid lies the slightly smaller Pyramid of Khafre, one of Khufu's successors who is also commonly considered the builder of the Great Sphinx, and a few hundred meters further south-west is the Pyramid of Menkaure, Khafre's successor, which is about half as tall. What one sees today are the massive stone blocks that was once surfaced by white 'casing stones' – slant-faced, but flat-topped, blocks of highly polished white limestone. These are still visible on the apex of the pyramid of Khafre.

The wikipedia article will give one all the facts. What the sight gives has nothing to do with the facts. It brings back all that is romantic and fantastic in a wave. A point to the South gives a panoramic view of the three pyramids. With the desertscape sprawling behind me,my logic would not take me much beyond “The Mummy Returns”. From there we moved a 100 paces further East of the pyramids. The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Current consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre. It lies on its great paws, its nose chipped of a bit, guarding the sight… Further descriptions, alas, are beyond me

It was soon decided that it was time for us to go. It was not time fro ME to go. I felt I could spent days wandering in and around the complex. But then it could be a start, and what a start it was!! We moved towards the central part of Cairo (called Islamic Cairo).

And I, I had seen the pyramids!

The Alexandrian Diary 3

“Mafishasahena”

On the 5th of August we were working on one of the sites. A boy of about ten comes riding his donkey and shouting something in Arabic. Our Egyptian colleagues translated it as “there is NO archaeology here (Mafishasahena)”: a sentence, the European archaeologists of our team also recognise. The practice of archaeology is much widespread and visible in Alexandria, that the lay person can distinguish a professional archaeologist from, say, a surveyor who works with similar equipment. But it does not seem to be a familiarity that they necessarily treasure.

Much of the land that we are surveying is state owned. However there exists an entire system of parallel ownership by the Bedouins who have lived in much of this land over a few generations. Curious enough, they engage in transactions of the ‘state- owned’ land with big time proprietors!

The identification of archaeological potential presents a threatening situation for the local people because there are real restrictions on exploiting the land for agriculture or for maintaining livestock, and also the fear of land ‘take over’. Hence, the land is sold immediately to private firms or construction companies, who bulldoze the region. Whatever archaeological remains that are present get destroyed.

Urban Alexandria is rapidly claiming the suburbs. On our route to the site one can see residential complexes springing up everywhere. One of the major hypermarkets, Carrefour is much off West to what is the urban centre of present Alexandria. And from the minimum interactions I have with the people here, it is apparent that the middle class frequent a place like Carrefour, thus bringing in the hitherto peripheral land within the limits of the city. Apart from construction, the land that is bulldozed is also used for cement factories. I cannot say for sure whether cement is exported from Alexandria. But, given the amount of construction that goes on, a great demand obviously comes from within.

The Bedouin claims on the land presents a very sensitive case. Quite often we encounter groups of visibly agitated villagers Many of the archaeologists I work with affirm that their ‘claim’ to the land is not legal. The destruction of the archaeology offends them. But it is the panic created by the interference of the archaeologist that prompts them to sell off the land in the first place. And could we say that the claims of people who have stayed there for a number of generations are less valid?

Work goes on here in full swing. Apart from pottery collection I did a bit of digging too. There are blisters all over my hand. My face looks quite interesting. The nose is jet black and stands apart from the rest of my face. It seems that the skin on it is about to peel off. A pink nose on a tarred face :)

Among the instruments we use, one is a magnetometer that tells you without digging whether there are any structures underneath. The person who uses it should not have any trace of metal in their body. I was on the point of shedding off, for the sake of academics, my valuable ornaments and buying new sandals and clothes which are totally metal free!! But then I realise that I would also have to knock off over 10 of my precious teeth that are filled. Tough decisions of life….

The Alexandrian Diary 2

Brazil…
On the fourth day I went for a walk with two other members of the team- Athena and Lucy- in search of an internet café. Both of them are doing Phd in Southampton. Athena is American by citizenship and Greek by origin. Lucy is Lebanese. So we got into this Brazilian coffee shop. Painted in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag and with the wall posters of the foot ball team hanging all over, you are almost at home!! The waiters are dressed in football uniform and Ronaldinho served us coffee…

Coffee and Sheesha

Alexandria has this culture of coffee shops that open in the night. These are roadside shops. At night they set out chairs all over the roadside and here you could have black tea/ coffee and smoke Sheesha. People sit there playing board games or chat for long idle hours. It is amazing, (except that its mostly a male place. But you see tourists or women accompanied with men. However once you are there people don’t bother whether you are a foreigner.) The sheesha is like hooka. There is water in the base and tobacco with embers on the top. It smells amazingly sweet. Even me, the non-smoker could not resist it. And will not in the future too!! When you are sitting there you feel like you have all the time in the world to do nothing.

The work
Our work has started. We leave at about 8am and return at about 6pm. Then have an early dinner. It is about 8 pm when we are finally done. Today was the first day of work. We are surveying the vicinity of a lake called Maryut or Mareotis. Lake Mareotis, the precursor of present day Maryut Lake south of Alexandria, was an integral part of this internal transport system and an important conduit of communication between the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea, and as such played a key role in trade and transport in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, facilitating the transfer of goods between Alexandria, the interior of Egypt and the Mediterranean world.

The exploration of this sort has no resemblance to the archaeology that is brought to us via the popular media. What you find on the surface in this site is very disturbed remnants of ancient waterfront structures and pottery. I honestly cannot identify these until it is pointed out to and explained. What I did today was ceramic survey which basically involves picking up pottery from sites using different sampling techniques. I wouldn’t bore you with the details.

The sun is quite strong, but because of the wind it is not as bad as Delhi. My face, especially the nose is already the colour of tar. I see a lot of black patches in the making which are soon to give me a jaguarish appearance. We take food along. The lunch has some Egyptian food, Falafal? which is like parippuvada sandwiched with bread/ roti. It is quite nice…

It is most likely that that the days are all gonna be similar during the coming weeks. Days when you walk and pick pottery and walk and pick pottery and walk and…until you are the expert Aacriologist . Net connection in the flat is as bad as ever. So I don’t know how often I can mail. But then, it is better than nothing. It’s a bit frustrating not being able to hear the familiar voices.

I am soon to have a room mate. She s landing tomorrow; an undergraduate from Southampton. Every one here seems to be a bit scared of undergraduates. My future room mate apparently juggles with fire as a pastime!! :)

The Alexandrian Diary 1

Waiting for my first international flight at Delhi airport, I realise how bad an observer I am! I was too much engrossed in finishing step by step the official procedures that would take me out of the country that it slipped my mind that I am supposed to behave like a tourist. At the moment of realisation I get up, walk about, go to the café coffee day stall and ask for an Americano. The shop person says, “That is black tea, without sugar…etc. (Are you sure?)” Usually that is enough to embarrass me, but I assume a lot of air and declare, “Then, I would like something strong but with milk, please.” Aha! Perfect. It is fun to feign confidence and especially when you are completely the opposite inside. I find a chair sip my coffee write, read, work on my lap top, and window shops till my flight is announced. (Delhi duty paid sells Kajah beedies for $20 a dozen; If you ever want to gift some one “Indian- made hand- rolled cigarettes”!!)


Dubai…
The emirates flight is a world apart from the domestic flights. It is almost like a big hall with multiple rows and cabins. My window seat was in the fourth Cabin. There was no one to share the row. The next half an hour I try to figure out where to plug in my earphones. A curious passenger from the farthest aisle was eyeing me with amusement. The tele screen shows you at given time your position above the map. However I slept off a good part of the flight.

Dubai looks like a game form above; full of square block buildings and alleys. Brown and grey are the prominent colours. The view from above tells you the drudgery of finding a space in the monotony and nostalgia sets in. What would it be like for a person who comes to work here all the way from Kerala?

At the transit in Dubai there stood a number of officials with the gloomiest expressions possible. It seems given a chance they would kick you back all the way you came. One of them barked at me “Bangles nikalo!” as I proceeded to the screening. A man (European?) offered his hands to the officials post screening and the woman official declined from taking it.

To repeat the cliché, Dubai airport is a “big shop.” It sprawls out with over fifty gates queued on either side of the duty free market. I find my gate first and roam around. The liquor cum chocolate cum cigarette section is a delight! The collection of Cuban cigars in wooden boxes pulled even the non-smoker me towards it. People were lying down, covered with blankets all around waiting for their flights. It was much like Delhi railway station. It was my first exposure to multi ethnicity at this level. A number of lovely women and (unfortunately) not so handsome men from around the globe. Of course the whole multi ethnicity was sprinkled on a vast spread of Malayalis!


The Way
The flight to Alexandria was at 9:15 am (IST 10:45). Instantly, I slept off in my window seat. This time also the whole row was vacant. When I got up the landscape below had turned to a dull brown with ocean in the fringe. In a while I was crossing the Sinai. You could almost see Moses and the sons on Israel moving about…Then the Red Sea which was blue… the Suez Canal that I could not make out. The map said Cairo is to the West of the route and we were moving in a north westerly direction past the Nile to Alexandria. The landscape was now a bright yellow. It spread out vast below interspersed with dunes with not even a tinge of green anywhere. To my side far below I spotted two pyramids standing side by side!! And those could be the only pyramids that I would ever lay my eyes on.

Alexandria is a Ptolemaic – Greco Roman city… Our project is covering the late centuries BCE to early centuries CE. That is exactly the time frame of my interest. But try as might I cannot pretend that I will be deeply disappointed if I cannot encounter one of those mummies or the magii standing guard of the great pyramids in the valley of the dead!! Let no academician hear me.

The Welcome!
The HBE airport is tiny in comparison to the Delhi airport. In the place of the tubes that directly take you from the aircraft to the terminal, they have the airport buses. The passengers enter a modest room and I queue up for the passport checking. After an hour or so my turn comes and of course, they don’t let me pass!! I could not understand what the man was saying but knew that I had to wait because my passport was with them. Looking around at my co- ‘waiters’, I realise what we had in common. They were all Asians. Most of them had beard. Mind you, we may be in the Arab Republic of Egypt, but in a globalized world, prejudices also are globalized! Waiting there I could feel anguish and anger building up within. Then I thought “let it be, just pretend to be an observer”.

“What if Emad who is supposed to wait for me at airport leaves?” Then I see guy come up with a placard with my name on it and I realise that Emad is intervening. I might not end up in an Egyptian jail after all. The officials made stern, not so polite, enquiries in monosyllabic English and then let me go. (When I called up Chacha’s friend Rajesh in Alexandria later, he told me that this practice of detaining Asians is routine here.)

Alexandria

Emad was waiting outside. He seemed to know the officials well. Emad is a big man. His manners are warm and informal. He apologized for the problems at the airport which were no fault of his. The cab driver’s name I think was Samir. He seems to be Emad’s friend. They were speaking in Arabic, and I could not make the head or tail out of it. Emad told me that Alexandria is not all a desert as it seems to be out through the car window. I had seen green patches near Alexandria from the aircraft. The vegetation was mainly palms. There was a patch of sunflower. I don’t think they are grown widely in the region, though.

We took the Desert Road to Alexandria. On our way we passed the lake Maryut. The project covers the vicinities of the lake. The lat two seasons covered the Northern bank and an island that is in the middle of the lake. This year we will be working on the Southern coast. There is no actual digging involved but survey.

On the way Emad breaks the news that due to problems in paper work Lucy (Lucy Blue is faculty at Southampton and the project co- ordinator) will be coming only on Sunday. Some of the team members are to arrive on the 1 st of August. “So you have the flat for your own and you can look around the place.” Great!! Here I am; the most ill prepared tourist with all the time in the world. I don’t even have a proper map of the city, no idea of it history or geography.”

We stop at a huge shopping area which is in the suburbs of the city where I get my currency exchanged, take a phone connection and buy some provisions. The weather s quite hot, but there s a breeze blowing constantly that it is almost pleasant. We drive into the city and Emad drops me off at the flat. The flat is owned by a French archaeological group. They rent it out for archaeological projects. It must be atleast 50- 60 years old with four large bed rooms, tall ceilings and window panes, wooden floors and bath tub in the bath. Emad familiarises me with the immediate geography. The street where I live is called Abdel Megid Morsi. The flat is on the third floor. It faces East. To my immediate south is the National Museum of Alexandria. If I walk north I reach a garden called the green house and further north is the Mediterranean.

After a bath I get out of the house at around 6: 30 pm and take a west turn from the museum to the city centre. The street is lined with tall buildings (4-5 floors on an average). They have a distinctive European touch like the building I stay. Even the newer buildings are modelled on the older ones. The men are usually dressed in pants/jeans and shirts. One occasionally sees a person dressed in long single piece attire and turban; like the friendly care taker of our building with whom I communicate via smiles. Most of the women cover their head. Some wear hijabs. The younger women though mostly wear close fitting full sleeved long tops with jeans or skirts.

I walk over to a shop called Radioshack and ask for an adapter for my three pin plug. We chat pleasantly a bit. The adapter costs 45 Egyptian pounds. (Some quick calculations: 1pound is 100 piastros and 1 $ is approximately 5 pounds. I have converted around 200 dollars and I have a little over thousand pounds with me. I am not a rich tourist).

Two hours of walk leave me very tired. I get back to the flat. Drink milk with bread and cheese. This is exactly the kind of food I’m not fond of. But the store we went seems to sell only these. And, Emad says there is nothing which you could call a staple diet here!! Alexandria is too close to Europe, I guess… Well, I have nt had much of European cuisine either. Then I discover that some of the doors that open to the balconies does not close. Alone in a big open house I am scared. But too tired think of it I sleep of in the only room with proper bolts.