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!! :)