Headed to Upper Egypt in forty five minutes or so. Another astounding day wandering in the Citadel, Mohammed Ali mosque and a tour of an ayeesh baladi bakery, the second oldest mosque that lets people up in the minaret. And then running into a charming man who spoke good english and took us to some back alley work shops where they were making inlaid boxes. Earlier stumbled into the street of tent makers with even better quality craftsmanship. Tawfik took us to an "Egyptian Pizza" restaraunt. It was good as far as I'm concerned. Every day seems better than the last. I really do have to come back. I guess I'm happier here because I assume any misfortune is due to my own ignorance for the most part. It's not like home and I'm not sure I know anyone else who would enjoy such a loud, dirty, vibrant and exhuberant place. One foot in the ancient world and one in tomorrow. What could be better?

Hot at 9 am and when Jesse's out of the shower we'll be off to the Mohammed Ali Mosque and the Citadel.
Last night I was having such a good time I had a "raki" and two Stella beers before winding down at almost two. This morning the flies and the car horns and peoples voices woke me before eight and finally by nine we arose to the day, muggy, air cloudy and another Cairo morning. Sure to be as good as the night before. Now if I could only get some fruits and vegetables into my system, I really miss my California food at home. Tonight we head south to Aswan, Abu Simbel and a felucca ride to Luxor. Then one more day here and Jesse heads back to New York. I head east but days ago already I wished I had made another day or two here alone. Next time I'll come for a month.

, I

This day we started with four hours at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities that I was last in about fifty one years ago. It had changed a little in that there are now guards and a security search almost like the airport. Also no cameras inside and I have pictures my mother took inside.
The first floor is devoted to heavy objects ranging from small stone and wood objects up to rather larger like the two story high pair of demi-collossi or what ever you want to call them and the second floor devoted to sarcophogi and the Tutankamun collection which is considerably larger than what shows up in books or museum tours, in that it is the entire collection of artifacts from that collection and there are quite a few of them. They are also, for the most part, for my taste, among the most exquisit works of art and craftsmanship in the world. They take my breath away and I suspect quite a few others as well. It doesn't matter to me what the social realitites of the world might be that produced them, we would not be where we are if such had not occurred, whether there were slaves or kings that impoverished their subject or what ever the modern PC complaint might be. Complaints are irrelevant to me in the face of such astounding and exquisit beauty. We all might learn a thing or two. Ahem.
And then we got lost walking back to the hotel. I realized why I am getting lost so easily and didn't the last time or when I was a child. I was staying those first two times in Garden City near the el Tahrir bridge (the one with the magnificent bronze lions) and I had the river to orient me to the west and I always knew where I was, the Citadel in the east and the river and the pyramids in the west. Now, staying up in the middle of the city near the Ezibekeah Gardens and all the roads run in constant diagonals and little traffic circles that have six streets crossing them and I am constantly befuddled.
So we finally took a cab for an entire $1.75 or almost 12 Egyptian pounds. Sat around a while, had a beer Stella and headed out for the Muski to buy a few wanted things. I get drunk on Cairo at a time like this, wandering throught the crowds, getting denser and more dynamic and I'm walking with my eyes looking in two hundred degrees and rapid fire, thinking fast, shooting and sometimes holding the camera at waist level, wide angle open to the widest and aiming and shooting at what I want, sometimes while I look the other way to distract any subject from thinking I am paying them any attention and sometimes not caring as we are all moving so fast that even if they object I am gone in the crowd before they can complain. This is my one predatory act in such an environment. I want to catch people living, being unselfconsious and relaxed about themselves and as unaware of my presence as I can manage. Sometimes they are absolutely delighted that I care enough and are more than happy to pose or acknowlege my interest with open armed warmth.
We were walking thus, through the crowds that line the road on the way to the Muski and we wondered where those stairs went so we went up and there were other little alleys and there were men smoking sheesha (they are absolutly everywhere) and there were feral cats (also everywhere) and we were walking so fast and I was in the rythmn of seeing and shooting and also trying to anticipate the subjects ignorance, concern, indifference or otherwise noticing me and there was the woman washing her hands at the public water supply, the men smoking and the cats in the sun all in one place. Then we turned around and plunged on and took the alley that was less than a hallway up past the man selling herbs and spices and I stopped to buy some Egyptian saffron which is widly sneered at as not being "real" saffron as it is safflowers entire blossoms. But I recall it being a pleasant addition to food before and it costs a pittance so I bought a half a kilo for 25 LE which is like $5. And then we went on, more pictures and more attenae open to what might be that we were looking for and there was a man sitting by himself in a stall with a lot of tapestries that I was interested in and we went away with both of us very happy and surprised and then we were on this street in the midst of Khan el Khalili in front of a mosque and this truely charming young man did what he was supposed to do which was to say "WELCOME, what are you looking for, I'm sure I have it here..." and he did have some brass trays I was interested in and hadn't yet found and yet not quite what I had in mind and so I told him I like this, I don't like that (I like Islamic and Egyptian art, I don't like tourist art and will not buy any obvious such kitch) Some of them like that (especially if they are prepared to be able to fulfil your wishes) but I always get the self satisfaction that I am interested in their culture much more than some trinket that I could buy the equivalent of at Fishermans Wharf in San Francisco which I would never do and don't recommend anyone else do either. But anyway, he got the look in his eyes and said he wanted to take us to his shop, "over there, up stairs" so I said, OK show me and he said what else are you looking for and I mentioned a thing or two and he said lets go and so we did.
He took us across the alley and into an alley smaller than a hallway and up some stairs to another alley while telling us that this was a special alley named in the title of a Naguib Mahfouz novel and I got interested that he would so unselfconsciously site such a reference without even finding out if I knew who that was and he took us past the men smoking sheesha and drinking tea and up more stairs and down a hallway pretending to be an alley that had little stalls on it that there could really only be customers for if they were brought willing or by force and then he rolled up a metal door on a mini stall mostly filled with the kind of kitche that I don't want except for a certain item and he sat us down and asked us if we wanted tea or coffee or a cigarette and he warmed to his task. He left us there to get the refreshments and look at what ever we wanted while he was gone and then he came back and we looked at the items of interest and we took our time and he took his time and we drank tea and coffee and smoked cigarettes and told each other trivia about our lives and he could have charmed the pants off of a flat tire. He was the real deal. There is this Egyptian who it is a pleasure to deal with, he will give you a fair deal if you give him a fair deal and there is a sort of gentle dance where everyone is enjoying the fact that we're all here to come away happy. He spoke middle bad english, but made up for it in quantities of heart and soul. Of course when the one transaction was complete he wondered if there wasn't maybe another one that I was looking for. Didn't I want a brass tray? It was the first thing I'd asked about and so he had his sister go and look for the tray again. The first time she produced the required aspects of this tray but minus any ornamentation and the second time with tourist ornamentation and now, up in the secret hallway, smoking a drinking tea he has her come back again, this time with the right stuff. Two trays that looked to me like they were fifty years old, in need of a little polishing and he set about to polishing it with his bare hands. He smeared it with brass polish with his hands and then for fifteen minutes hand polished with a rag and after quoting a price readily came down seventeen percent or so and I was sold if for no other reason than he had fulfilled exactly what I asked for and put so much work into his wining and dining and finding what I wanted that my only concern finally was not money but did I want to cart this tray home. He made me answer the question in the affirmative for being such an incredibly sweet and gentle young man who obviously enjoye dealing with me and Jesse. He insisted we take pictures, he wanted to show us the cafe named by the Mahfouz novel with the pictures of the writer on the wall and insisted we walk back arm in arm. While we were sitting drinking and smoking cigarettes and making our transaction he commented in his poor english how this was a "mens thing" we were doing. And so it was. It was really fun.
There are a million more things that I am thinking, feeling and remembering constantly here. It has been Easter and the Copts are a minority here

I have no doubt that I will probably find myself falling farther behind my capacity to post reports as the amount of experiences adds up quickly.
Today we went out to Giza at eight o'clock to see the pyramids, Sphinx and then go to Saqqara to see the rest of the pyramids. A group from our hotel went in a mini van and the excursion had some things in common with a tour taken in Beijing a few years ago, in that it included a stop at the government sanctioned papyrus painting store. Ostensibly to show how it's made but mostly to sell them to you.
After that we went to Saqqara and for me it was the begining of feeling that the old Egypt I remember from my childhood still exists very much, lots of donkeys and horses and gamoosa (water buffalo), far more traditional life style in evidence with people working in fields. It made me feel really glad to be here. I wish I spoke arabic, I wish I could do a personal book of photogrpahs talking about Egypt and what it means to me, but why bother? No one would be interested in something like that I don't think. I'll have to think about it more to figure something more about it if I were to try to pull off such a project. Right now I need a nap.

Last night after Jesse and I restored ourselves we walked toward the Muski and Khan el Khalili Bazaar. I have always loved this intense maze of alleys and cul de sacs filled with every imaginable kind of dreadful tourist crap as well as superb craftsmanship and all manner of basic needs as well. A mixture of the fabric shops on Orchard street in New York with the huscksterism and hustling of the Beijing dirt market. I wanted to find a few things to take home and I did, I'll go back tomorrow, but it was getting lost after we ate dinner at a cafe in the market that held the best moments.

We began to walk back after a marvelous dinner of shawarma, falafel, ayeesh baladi and mango smoothies at Fishawis Cafe. We stopped for a roasted yam earlier and the sweet burnt sugar of the yam had only wheted my appetite. So we walked away and confidently plunged into the traffic that could only have been invented by a modern day Dante writing mischievously about a hell on earth made up of automobiles that drive with their lights off, under over passes with cars driving without any regard for lanes or signals. At the side of the road are old men sitting smoking, vendors of cigaretts or roasted seeds, lemonade or fireworks and poor women sitting on the sidewalk covered except for their face with a display of cheap toys while a loudspeaker is calling the faithful to prayer. To walk through the traffic you engage as a pedestrian partner in the slow motion dance of the the traffic and watch other walkers as you thread your way through cars that are all in motion and anticipate their moves to time your own to get where you want to go. No one gets hurt but you should not try this at home. We kept walking, we looked at the map, we asked directions and thought we were approaching Ezibikeha Gardens several times, once passing a delicious smelling bakery and men roasting meat on the street for a cafe and endless cafes with men smoking and sitting and watching in the warm night. We kept walking and finally we stopped to reconoiter and deduced we were maybe a couple of miles off in the wrong direction. So we started again, retraced our steps and corrected our route and found ourselves passing shops selling serious musical instruments, guitars, ouds, tambourines, drums and there in an alley was a man working on a guitar and a man next to him on an oud and I told Jesse I had to stop to take a picture. They were so happy they led me into the workshop and showed us every stage of production of the oud, rows of staves being formed in a press and a room with a stack of built but unfinished instruments floor to ceiling. I was enchanted and they were so happy that I was interested and they made no effort at all to sell us anything. This is Cairo at it's best. Incredibly warm and hospitable, amazed that you care and responsive to your interest.
I took more pictures than I needed but better than not enough. I want to go back, I want to find some live music. I came here wondering if I would ever come back again, after being here now three times and I could imagine staying here for a few months at a time. No one else I know cares if I'm in the states enough to miss me more than in theory so what difference does it make if I am in Emeryville or Cairo, my social and personal life would be little changed as far as I know. And I would be in a place where would have respect if for no other reason on earth than that I am a man and a father. After that it's up to the fates isn't it?
Today, driving back on the Saqqara Road, past the Ramses Wissa Wassef tapestry school that I still hope to visit, past the enless canal, watching the felahin, I felt so happy to be hear. I don't know a soul here, but somehow it's far less lonely than California is sometimes.

Finally back in Cairo for the first time since 1976. My first impulse was to taste the ayeesh baladi (native bread) that I never shut up about complaining that American "pita" bread is as anemic and tasteless as Wonder Bread. Guess what, my memory didn't lie. The bread is unbelievably good and totally unlike any of the American crap.
We arrived in town after over nine hours from NY and immediately set out for Garden City, where I lived as a child and stayed when I returned in '76. Due to the fact that the entire side of the street where Moreland House stood in the sixties had been replaced by the newly rebuilt Hotel Semeramis it took me a while to recognize and find Garden City House. I saw the building built in 1958 (along with the then new Hilton) and now it looks as incredibly tired, worn out and shabby as though it had been through a war in the Balkins. We spent some time and money in the tourist shop downstairs out of pure sentimentality on my part as they didn't sell anything I would ordinarily buy, but I allowed it this one time. Then we walked back and stopped at Groppi for coffee and a snack to recharge. Groppi had been a white table cloth Swiss owned restaraunt that now also looks incredibly shop worn and faded but, again, had to make the pilgramage. Then back to the room to leave off the tourist chotchkes from Garden City House and gear up to go find the Muski.
We walked past Ezebekaya Gardens and out towards Al Azhar University (that's where they invneted algebra by the way) and wandered into the maze of alleys and hallway sized passages filled with endless stalls selling every imaginable kind of garment, houseware, fabric, ribbon, button, tassle, trim and item other than what I expected that Ibegan to wonder if this too had changed. There are now massive amounts of overpasses and "fly overs" of an expressway nature all over and yet they seem plopped down on the city that still is simultaneously embracing the middle ages (in all the cultural best ways that to me that implies) as well as the world with cell phones and email.
So we wandered endlessly in a world that made Orchard Street look like preschool. We wandered and wandered, stopped for cigarettes (and water) Jesse commenting that at 12.5o LE it cost us about $2.40 US and I mumbled something about any one of the items costing us that at home. We wander up onto a walk over (due to the chronically choked streets) and I start taking pictures at night and have trouble stopping because of the grear vantage point. I restrain myself and we walk on, ducking into another lane of vendors and are stopped by the delicious smell of something roasting. There is a vendor with a cart piled with yams he's roasting. I tell Jesse Iwant to take a picture here and I'll pay what it takes. I ask the man and he says ONE DOLLAR and I think, no problem here for me, so we each order a yama and give the man an American dollar of which there are 5.61 Egyptian pounds each. I don't care, a man who makes his honest living selling roasted yams in the market place in Cairo gets my vote for who I want to support as what is perceived as a "rich" American. I am far from rich at home, but I have been lucky and had amazing privledges of class, a term that embarrasses most of us at home. Here in what can only be seen as barely crawling out of the third world (do I hear two and a half?) my most level of privledge American style makes me almost as rich as Croesus here. I don't like the feeling and I have to steel myself against the manipulative child beggars coached to look sadly at me and motion that she (no more than five) is hungry. She may be, but she's been give a job to hustle western tourists with the con and I won't buy the rap. Show me a man, no matter how poor who has some dignity and self respect and I'll give him a reward unasked for. I thought that as I passed a boy no more than nine sweeping the water out of a flooded drive in bay of some industrial space. So Jesse and I wandered on and I suggested we take a chance at an imposibly small passage (one person each way really) that looked promising to me and now I could see we were in the land of the gold workers, Jesse hadn 't quitw picked up on it and I told him to look at what they were doing in each stall, they all had scales and were either working or weighing or in one case sorting polished stones. I told him that this was approximately where I had bought his mothers wedding ring when I was here last in 1976. Again, an entire neighborhood of tiny stalls and each one occupied by only one or two men at most, no frills, no tourist hustle here, this is serious business the world over. I knew that now we were getting close to what I wanted to show him. I said at one point, "this is what I've wanted to show you ever since I was here" the smell of dust, butane, dung and a million undefined odors and twenty million friendly people who keep calling out, "hallo, Welcome to Cairo" over and over. A few of them want to hustle you some how, and so would you if you lived in an economy as tough as this and since I don't I'm soft hearted but I don't give away the store. I can't afford to. I love Cairo back as hard as it seems to show it's love. The bakeries we pass I swoon at every time and want to stop and buy one of every thing and then we begin to wander into the neighborhoods where the stalls start to have crafts and tourist items and though they aren't exactly what I want, we're that much closer. I have walked Jesse for hours and he's an incredibly good sport and begining to understand, I think, he says to me, "I think this is the most intense city I have ever been in" and I say, this is what I've been trying to show you all my life.
So finally we wander into to area where the crafts begin to look a little more serious. I dicker with a man about a tambourine he wants to sell me that is poorly made. He wants 60LE an I tell him it's really poorly made but I'll give him 100LE if he can show me one that's better crafted. He gets really excited and sends a boy out to get a better one. He gets one, I don't think it's worth the difference but I pay it anyway to get away, and it's OK because it's only $18 anyway.
Then we wander on and finally wander into both the more tourist oriented as well as more quality crafts. I keep saying that I don't want the tourist crap and to show me the better Islamic crafts. They like me because I tell them I want the truth of their culture, not the whoring for tourists. Finally we stumble upon Cafe Fishaway which is listed in a guide book as a trip for being so diverse and bizarre across the board. They're right. They seat us and immediatly there are beggars trying to sell us wallets and Korans and god knows what. But the waiters realize I want REAL native bread, not the white bread shit, also some felafal,shawarma and a couple of mango drinks. We find a shop with Islamic ceramics, and some applique tentwork that is better quality. They don't hassle me when I say I'll come back, they don't pressure us and I make not of where to come back to tomorrow or Monday.
Jesse and I discuss the fact that we should skip Alexandria in the interest of more leisurly passage. We have reconcled that we will skip Alexandria and have less stress. He goes to the bar to settle up our bill while I am writing this and I hear extended discussions about the bill. I assume it just has to do with the exchange rate and his confusion. He comes back chagrined that the fact is that I drinking Arak and he Johnny Walker black label. Our drinks, five shots each, a single and two doubles each and we realize that mine are a local product and his are Scotch. Mine are about $2.20 each and his are about $9.00 each shot. His cost us about the same as a night in the hotel and mine, being a local product, something less. They did give us a lovely plate of fava beans (called fule locally, a staple of the fellahine, the Egyptian peasant that makes the country function). But we are rich Americans, chagrined or not and can take the sting. As I explained to Jesse, this is why I usually travel with a bottle in my room for far less. This is how you teach your children how to travel I guess. I think we are having an incredibly good time, alcohol or not. More to come as we experience it. This first day was, obviously, delerious. It would have been my mothers 93rd birthday. But now she's gone and I'm here with my son and that's really cool and it wouldn't have been possible without my mother in 1957, no matter how strange I might have ever thought her. This is her unwitting gift to me and to my children. On the sound system is someone singing something to Brahms Lullyabye in French. My mom used to sing it to me. Sweet dreams. Tomorrow the pictures of the Oud factory we stumbled on.

Sitting here in this Starbucks, the only place I can get my online connection, the one business I have resented for a long time, the aggressive cut throat appearance of competition, perhaps now one I must embrace. I find the notion of ignoring my roots, fragile as they seem at times, ignoring my loyalties and the few familiar talisman of culture that I can grasp at, something to be engaged in at my peril.

I long for community, but seldom feel either invited to participate or else I exclude myself, consumed with my own self centered bewilderment at the vagaries of my existence. Few of us want to be alone, yet we all want to dictate the terms of engagement. And why not, otherwise we are merely the ornaments for others to embellish their lives, or so it seems.
My loyalty was to Peets Coffee, if I had to choose, because they were there first, he opened his first shop in front of where my dad had his studio in north Berkeley when I was a child. So of course my loyalty was to this sense of community and personal connection in a life where there has seemed to be few loyalties granted back to me and fewer personal connections as time passes.

And yet, and yet, it begins to all seem ephemeral. I'm to take what's in front of me now, accept graciously the wax fruit of relationships that once ripened on the tree in the sunlight of my life. I find this hard to digest and must ultimately accept that this indigestible offering has nothing to nourish my needs and those needs must now only embrace that which selfishly and without consideration of loyalties will enrich my personal needs. Life as a cost/benefit ratio, not the one I believe in in my heart but the one I feel driven by exclusion to accept.

In stead of the personal, the business, instead of the heart, the intellect, instead of the gift, the product and the merchandise. I seem to have fallen by default into the very world values I have so despised, the others became too expensive and too fraught with loss.
So, away now, across the oceans and continents and memories. Across the decades and politics, to another look at the past both personal and vastly publicly historic. Perhaps to have reinvented myself when I return. Like all of us though that depends in part on what I find.

I have long felt that the experiences in our lives, be they education, visit to a museum, a book read or music heard, is dependent entirely on what we bring to the experience. Our contribution to every new experience is 50% of the total received because it is the consequence of the combination of our past and selfhood with that of the new and the spontaneously experienced that creates what we describe as having understood. I am no different.