Gayer Anderson Museum Photos

There are also photos on my facebook page in an album. It is hard to upload a lot of photos here, so please go have a look there.

The top part of this is an amazing ceiling from Syria or Iran. The guy who did a lot of the restoration work collected old things from around the Middle East.

A fabulous old chest.

I loved this tile.

A wonderful hallway of arches on the top floor of one of the houses. Walking along it you could look down on the main gathering room of the house. It was so women could see what the men were doing.

Another ceiling

Part of the Summer room, where the family could sit and enjoy shade but also see what was going on in the courtyard below.

Gayer Anderson Museum (Tues 26)

I went to the Gayer Anderson Museum today for the first time. Now I am really sorry that I didn't go before. The Gayer Anderson is actually two houses from the 17th century (1600s for those of you like me who can't keep that straight) and possibly the best preserved domestic architecture from that time period. You can go read wikipedia for the reason it is called that, and more background (definitely read the legends about this house), so I can rhapsodize. (yes, yes, I will post pictures, I promise, tomorrow)

This man collected mashrabiya and mashrafiya from all over Cairo as old houses were being torn down and preserved them by incorporating them into these two houses, which are connected. Mashrabiya are the fabulous old wooden window coverings that let in air and light but kept women out of sight. Mashrafiya is a variation in which there is a small window that opens in the mashrabiya screen so that the woman can peer out. Anyways, these fabulous things cover every window in the house, and create this beautiful, airy, private rooftop sitting area.

The buildings themselves are gorgeous! All stairs. Climb up, and up and up, stopping in various sitting rooms and studies and bedrooms along the way (bedrooms looked very uncomfortable, by the way). The ceilings! Imported from Syria and Iran! Gorgeous! Syria and Iran's loss! I want! Actually I just want the house. Even if it would be inconvenient to live in. I would live with that for the beautiful Iranian built in shelving, the secret room overlooking the main reception area, the summer room overlooking the courtyard, the fountain courtyard, the rooftop terrace, the hallway with four arches.... There's rugs from all over the Middle East, Egyptian and Syrian antiquities, including an early example of folding furniture that is both more beautiful and more comfortable than any folding chair I've ever met. There are all sorts of implements used by women for making themselves beautiful (for screens) and medical things, and Sufi antiquities.... And I would oil the mashrabiya and mashrafiya every 6 months so they would stay beautiful. Then there's all the mother of pearl inlaid furniture...all right, all right, I'll stop now. But really, I can't say enough.


The guide showed me around. It would be hard to figure out where to go without him. There's some signage, which is reasonably readable, but the guide helps, although he likes to take pictures of you all over the place.

There's a sabil in one of the houses, which was a public cistern for anyone wanting water. The cup on a chain next to it weighed 5 kilos (brass), which is more than 10 lbs. It makes fabulous echo noises when you clap or talk or whistle into it.


I have no idea where they cooked meals though, as the kitchen was not on display, sadly. Nor were bathrooms. Major oversight in my opinion, but maybe that's just me.

And now, for the backstory...
 The Gayer Anderson is located in a section of Cairo called Sayyida Zaynab (Zaynab was the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed and is considered like a patron saint of Cairo), which is apparently a fairly old and very poor section of the city. This occasioned a lot of concern on the part of my uncle and his driver, Zacharia (him of the many phone lines and rings). Zacharia wanted me to take off my bracelets. After I demonstrated the impossibility, he settled for me wearing a long sleeved shirt instead to cover them up. Then there was concern it might not be open, but we decided that since it is run by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, it probably was. (What kind of name is Supreme Council of Antiquities? And if they are so supreme, then why don't they do more to preserve the antiquities?) Then neither Zacharia (who lives in 6 October City) or my uncle knew really where it was and how to get there, exactly. Then there was how are you going to get back (taxi, duh). All of which I settled by saying that my uncle could just come with me (he is not a fan of museums). :-)  Anyway, we finally found it after going around in a circle to avoid one way streets. It is definitely an old and poor section, but the museum was open, and there was the sense of other tourists floating about (but none in sight). And it was precisely where it said it was, next to the Ibn Tulun Mosque. The museum actually shares a wall with the mosque, which was not uncommon at the time.

Anyway! I then proved (twice--once to the men taking the money and once to the lady taking the tickets) that I was Egyptian so I only paid LE2 to get in. That's, let's see, 30 cents. Foreigners pay LE30, which is $4.50, roughly and a steal. {please excuse me while I rant about Egypt's lost opportunity to charge more and actually, I don't know, preserve more monuments! Foreigners would happily pay double or triple or quadruple that to get into monuments! Take advantage people! And have gift stores! Sell gorgeous postcards, and catalogs, and books, and fake mashrabiya and all sorts of dumb knicknacks that make tons of money. Tshirts! anything! I want to be supreme person in charge of all Egyptian antiquities so I can make these sort of decisions and then take all the lovely money and make signage, and walking routes, and restore more monuments, and employ people. I think this is my dream job--take over the supreme council and rearrange all the museums and monuments and fix them up and charge appropriately for them and then use leftover money to make living conditions better for ordinary Egyptians}

I got home by finding a taxi, which was relatively simple as there's a little square outside the mosque. I overpaid by, let's see, about $1.25. Taxi driver loved me. Except he didn't like that I had to tell him directions along the way rather than just saying exactly where we were going, but he got over that. I took the taxi to Manyal, which is where my grandmother lived, so I am fairly familiar with the area, and mailed my letters and picked up passport photos (in preparation for getting a NEW, fancy passport). Then I took another taxi home, for another LE5, or .75 cents. I would have walked, as it was nice, but the khamaseen was kicking up dust and I didn't want to eat dust all the way across the river.

This evening I went over by myself (my uncle had a dentist appointment at 9 PM...can you imagine in the states?) and visited my aunt Zizi. By myself, I was delighted to discover that I could actually mostly hold a conversation, and convey meaning, even when I didn't fully know how to say things. She's not good at correcting, or understanding my questions about how to say things, but she tries hard to understand my accent. My uncle says my accent is quite good, just Jordanian (well, I wonder why!), so sometimes it is hard to understand. I did manage to ask about some money my father had, and how she had distributed it, and was happy with her decisions (it went to some poor families he has helped for years). She's going to teach me to make couscous from scratch! Friday!

Ibn Tulun Mosque

This was my second stop today. The Mosque of Ibn Tulun was completed in 879 AD. All I can say is...wow. I've been in older mosques--the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus comes to mind, and it was an amazing space as well--but this one is just lovely. I love the open feel to it. It was completely restored in the early 2000 so much of the decorative work is visible.

The mosque is around a large central courtyard, and the walls around it are all arched like this. Each arch is decorated differently. Inside the arches, there are 2 or three more layers of arched walls.

The small building in the center is where you used to wash yourself before prayer. It is sadly the only part not fully restored, so there is no water in it.

These windows are to the outside, and let in light and birds (no glass). Again, each one is different.

The square minaret in the background was also restored. The dome and the minaret to the right are a different mosque.

A sense of the size of the place. I bet it is fabulous on Fridays when people come to pray. Following are some closeups of the arch decorations. I took pictures until my battery gave out.

Answers to FB questions

A couple of people left questions on FaceBook so here are some thoughts:

Does everyone walk around with mobile phones? oh, my yes. Bling-ed up, too. Even my uncle's phone has gold on it. And they are on them constantly. What I notice is that there is none of the manners and etiquette that we attempt in the states. People take calls in the middle of conversations during visits to other people's houses, and that is considered completely acceptable. They play on them all the time. Phones are interesting here. All of them are "unlocked" which means that the system they use here is very different from the US. You don't have a contract with a carrier, you purchase SIM cards. You can install any carrier's SIM card into the phone (this is what is meant by unlocked) and prepay. No one has voicemail here--they just return missed calls. However, switching SIM cards does have a downside--you can't take the number with you. My uncle's driver has one phone that takes 3 SIM cards, so it has three lines (and about 8 rings--the most interesting array of American music ever) that ring on it. This means also that it is very cheap to have a phone--for LE30, or under $5, my uncle set me up with an old phone of his and LE20 in calling time. So far I've used about LE3. It is mostly so family can call me.

Are people happy? Not so much as they used to be, I think. The economy is bad; politics are hard and unfamiliar and for those interested in change, not changing enough. The streets are not as safe as they used to be. People are having a harder time making ends meet as the government loosens controls or stops subsidizing basic items. For decades the government has controlled the prices of bread, rice, sugar, tea, cigarettes and probably some other things. Now it no longer has the money to do that, and prices are high for people who are poor.

One thing to know about Egyptians is that they love to laugh and joke and have a good time. It's one of their best qualities, I think, and something that sets them completely apart from other Arab peoples. The other night there was a gentleman on TV who spent 1.5 hours mocking the president and other people in power....well, they are doing things like our last president Bush (contradicting themselves, using words oddly, being inarticulate). They have a long tradition of mocking people in power which, I am sad to say, received a blow the other day. A group of conservatives attacked some of the TV studios and did a lot of damage.

Do they grow their own vegetables? Maybe in the villages, but I have seen no gardens or any attempts on balconies here in Cairo. Honestly it's hard. Everything is so dusty. There is nearly no open land for gardening or even just park space. It is dry dry dry--more so than Wyo or CO. And vegetables grown outside of Cairo are readily available and very very good. I love Egyptian cucumbers...and tomatoes...even my uncle and father always comment on how much better these are than US grown counterparts (they don't eat organic). They grow enormous cauliflowers and cabbages--they look like they are on steroids. My family just does not seem to eat much in vegetables and I really miss them.

Could you describe and/or photograph the street you are staying on? It's a small street, only about 1 block long, and about 2 car widths wide. There's a cul de sac off the middle of it. On one end is the kornishe el Nil (the Nile street which is 4 lanes of madness) and on the other is a street that is indeterminate. (By that I mean it is also two lanes wide, one of which is taken up by parked cars. It is unclear which direction it is supposed to be, but people go both ways on it, which provokes traffic issues regularly. It comes out onto another major street.) The street I am staying on is also interesting. Parking takes up at least one width. The cul de sac is full of parked cars--to the point where it can be a challenge to go inside the apartment buildings, as they park them about 1" apart. However, the street also serves as a pass-through for cars wanting to go between the kornishe and the other major street. People mostly drive on this street, although other streets have a lot of people walking on them.

But this brings up something else of interest. I never really noticed parking before this time, but parking is a little industry. On my uncle's street, there are a group of men, maybe 6, who manage parking. You pay something each month for this, and they also wash your car regularly (like every day or two). When you drive up, you leave the car somewhere with the keys in it and they park it. If you want to leave, you retrieve the keys from whichever guy is around. This way, they can move cars around as they are often parked 2 deep in the cul de sac. My cousin's building has the same system.

Sunday photo series

This is a series of items from my Sunday outing walking up the Kornishe el-Nil.

I loved this abandoned boat. Across the river is Manyal Island, where my aunt Zizi lives in my grandmother's apartment. My father and uncles also lived in Manyal when they were going to university.

I missed taking pictures of the couples who were whispering and kissing when they thought no one was looking all along the walkway, which boasts a wide sidewalk of consistent height (no steps up and down every few feet) and benches periodically). I find it fascinating that these women all cover their hair, although they do not wear the jellbab (long cover-up dress) but form fitting western clothes. My uncle says when he was in college, he would bring their girlfriends to this area to walk along the river, drink beer, eat treats and generally be romantic. And no one was covered, like the women who whisper to their sweethearts now.

Sitting in the Trianon, a cafe on a boat on the Nile, I saw the following go by:

He was disentangling trash from the net.

Several feluccas went by.

A pair of ducks.

A sad sign of how polluted the Nile is.

More fishermen. I missed the two fancy yachts that went by, guess they weren't as interesting to me.

An ibis, the iconic bird of Egypt that was a major symbol during Pharaonic times.

One of the many broken down cars occupying precious parking space, right along side the Nile walkway, for some odd reason in this parking-desperate city.

Fabulous (-ly ugly!) platform heels in the Trianon. There were actually two sets, but you couldn't see the other for the floor sweeping (cantelope colored jersey) skirt. I later saw these heels go by on a private yacht which took off close by. 

Miscellaneous from days I didn't post

Here's a quick run down on other things I did in the days when I didn't post.

I found a place to make lenses for my glasses and to buy a pair of frames. For $400 total, I have 4 sets of glasses with the new prescription, one of which is new frames. That's less than I paid for my last set of glasses, after insurance, in the States. Lovely!

I also purchased some Czech crystal cups which will match exactly some that my parents bought in Prague before I was born. Kind of expensive, but I care not. I got 5, each a different color. They are a different size than the ones I have, but will make my collection much more gorgeous. I had to have them. I found them in a funny little antiques store that specializes in European antiques. If the store was organized in any way, I could not perceive it. But the cups jumped out at me. As did two Syrian embroidered robes, which I am still thinking about.

Egyptians are very wonderful at fixing things. There are actually people who make a living altering and mending clothes. There is one of each of these people--the tailor is the terzie, and the mender is a rafa'a--in Manyal, and of course they both knew my father well. He always brought lots of things over for them to fix. My uncle took me to the rafa'a to get two sweaters fixed. Even with the huge hole, he says it will be unnoticeable...I can't wait. My uncle was disgusted that he couldn't get the price under LE80 ($11) but I don't care because one sweater is linen and the other is cashmere and they would cost far more to buy. The catch is that he is very slow, and one has to remind him. My uncle dropped off things to be fixed 2 weeks before and they aren't done. Which is why we went early in the visit. :-)

I also visited a lovely bookstore, which had a great deal of Arabic literature in translation (I bought 4 books, and I hope to find one of the short ones readily available in the US for book group next year!). They also had postcards and books about the revolution, so of course I had to have some of those as well.

On Sunday, I went to a boat cafe on the Nile and had juice and mille fait and amused myself by looking out the window at the river and observing the other cafe goers. And wrote thank you notes for CLICK! I think the juice made me sick, as I threw up that night. Fine now, except that I sort of ache (when I laugh or cough) from throwing up and my throat hurts. I am pretty sure it was the juice, as I started feeling funny nearly immediately but of course, I ignored it. First time sick in Egypt, but it was bound to happen as I've eaten out more than ever before.

My uncle Ibrahim (age 87) is not feeling well. That's my aunt Zizi's husband. This has meant that my cousin Mahmoud came from Alexandria to take him to the doctor last week. This week, my uncle Nabil is taking him twice. Each of these trips is approximately a 6 hour experience. I'm sorry he isn't feeling well, since his son Ahmed is coming this weekend from the states.

I am actually reasonably impressed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities website. It has big holes in it (for example, nothing about the Egyptian Textile Museum, which is listed and which my cousin mentioned). But still, it is pretty nice and informative and not even too hard to read.

Monday 25

Today we went to get me a government ID card. Apparently you can do nothing in Egypt without this ID card, but I don't have one, and neither did my father. I can't quite tell if this is a new thing, but I think not--my uncle says it functions like a driver's license in the states, except that you can't use it as a driver's license. This was an adventure in Egyptian bureaucracy!

First, my uncle was resigned to discover that he had to come along as a male in the family to verify that I was indeed who I said I was. Because females cannot verify their own existence, being something other than fully functional, even with documentation. He finds this as ridiculous as I do, and professed himself reluctant to verify anything, particularly that I am his niece! I am bribing him with a Moroccan dinner on Thursday.

Then there was the paperwork. In addition to the passport and birth certificate, and also my uncle's government ID, they wanted proof my my education and my job. Which we got around by saying that I was a homemaker and uneducated. Annoying and untrue, but far simpler. If we had insisted, I would have had to acquire paperwork from every college and my job, had it certified by someone official in Wyo, sent to the Egyptian Consulate for approval, then the Embassy, then brought to the Ministry of Interior, who would have wanted it translated...and then verified....you see why we decided I was an uneducated homemaker. Just the thought of having my educational documentation certified by someone was enough to make me shudder, never mind everything else!

My uncle had arranged for us to meet someone there to help us. This man, named Osama, works for another man who is very high up in the Police (my uncle said like a general). The man does favors like this for my uncle, because he has a son who has a gluten intolerance and my uncle brings over suitcases of food for them from the states regularly. It is hard to find food for these kinds of intolerances here. Anyway, Osama was there to smooth the way through the process of getting a card. Now, you're probably thinking that this is like applying for a drivers license. Go to the office, fill out paperwork, stand in line, get your picture taken and pay some money. On the surface, yes. Except that you have to go to multiple offices, which are unmarked and on different floors and in different buildings. The Egyptians are amazing recordkeepers, and have been for millenia. This means they are very fond of documentation, and they like everything just so.

Our first stop was in the office of the first assistant to the Minister of the Interior, where we purchased the form (LE 70, about $10) and my uncle filled it out. We then got a stamp excusing my "old" passport and birth certificate. My Egyptian birth certificate dates from sometime in the 2000s but it is handwritten. Now they are all computerized, and handwritten ones are no longer acceptable. My passport, while still valid, is the old kind issued before the change in government. I was fascinated to discover this rendered these documents all but invalid! I mean--the revolution has only been around 2 years. Could everyone have already switched their paperwork in that time? 90 million people??

Once everything was filled out and stamped, we then followed another man from the first assistant's office down stairs to another office, then across the alley and upstairs to another office. I don't know what happened in the intermediate office, as we stood and waited outside, but something mysterious that allowed us to move onto the next. Apparently the man from the assistant's office job was to make sure there were no arguments with the stamp from his office, and to get us to the front of the line, which he did very efficiently (in brown elf shoes, Mark will appreciate that--although the best pair I've seen in Egypt so far were on my cousin Gina's husband. They were positively pointy! Elf shoes, for the uninitiated, are men's shoes which narrow significantly at the toe, sometimes to a definite square or point, and sometimes curling up slightly).

In the next office, where the first guidance on how to get a government ID (12 steps) appeared, a lady reviewed the paperwork and asked if I was really Egyptian, not naturalized. Apparently, only "real" Egyptians can have this government ID. My uncle and Osama assured her that my father was an Egyptian and I was therefore eligible. She then passed the paperwork to her boss, who verified everything, asked lots of questions, and viewed my uncle's government ID. There was then a  moment of tense concern when they needed my signature, as they could not accept one in English, but...thank you Peace Corps...I was able to sign in my very schoolgirl Arabic. A picture later, and we were given a receipt and told to come back in 3 days. To Abbaseyea, which is of course across the city from where we live. But whatever!

We then went to the office which gives computerized birth certificates, but, hah! they would not exchange my ancient! birth certificate for a new one until I had the government ID, which I practically was unable to get due to said ancient birth certificate! Personally, I think they make these things up. This office was also fascinating. There were probably 50 men in there trying to do something, and I guess you could call them lines, but really, they were swarms of people pushing to get to the front window. Smoking, and loud talking and gesticulating all the way. My uncle said not to take pictures (I took one, below, but it isn't very good--people are crowded around the policeman's desk at the doorway) in case the policeman on guard decided I was spying or something. Spying on what? Lack of organization? It wasn't like there was signage, or anything of a secret nature going on. At the same time, better not to annoy the police.

By the time this was over, and thank heavens we went early as the traffic was horrendous on the way back, I was ready to retire for the day.

Wednesday 20

Time disappeared or something! Let's see.

On Wednesday I went to Khan el Khalili, which is a major souk in Cairo, as well as a very old marketplace--parts of it date all the way back to 1382. I love this souk. It is a warren of tiny alleys stuffed with all kinds of things, and it spreads for quite a long ways. The souk is in sections, and the part that most people see is the touristy section, which includes sellers of perfume, spices, gold and silver, antiques, mother of pearl inlaid boxes, and a large variety of tourist items. However, if you penetrate further, you can find everyday items, an ancient meat market, and items from other parts of Egypt. I went primarily to the gold market, because I have jewelry of my father's and my own which needed repair or to be sold. There's a jeweler we have been going to for years. As I worked my way through the alleys, I was saddened to see it empty of tourists--practically no one was there. It is weird to say it, because it always annoyed me in the past, but I kind of missed the aggressive salesmanship of the local men! It used to be when you walked through you got catcalled, and jillions of invitations to view this, see that, buy this...in all sorts of languages. This time they mostly drank tea and watched me go by. There were also a lot of shops which were closed.

When I walked into Michel Nasser's gold shop, it was a bit of a shock to see it completely empty of jewelry with him sitting in the back. Michel has run the shop for years, and his father owned it before him. He's one of the few jewelers in Khan el Khalili who designs and creates his own jewelry--most of it comes from factories, or from outside the country (Italy and India are two main candidates). The quality of the workmanship is noticeably different in his shop. Over a soda, Michel told me that the day after the revolution started, 73 gold shops were robbed. He was lucky and his shop was not hit, he thinks because there was nothing in the window. Other shops have been robbed since. Gold is at an all time high, and so robbing one gold shop can result in a significant amount of money. It is also hard to trace once it is melted down. Since that time, he has kept his jewelry in a vault offsite, bringing it by appointment. He still comes to sit in his empty shop though, partly from habit and partly because that's where his customers expect to see him. I think also he is sad about this change--that it is no longer safe to leave jewelry, that he can no longer display his beautiful work without fear. He looked so alone in the shop without a thing around him, and the shop, which had always sparkled before, looked shabby and sad. As I walked away, I noted a lot of other shops which were also empty but open, and a few which still displayed a lot of gold--apparently they had made expensive security upgrades to continue to be safe.

I'll post some pictures of the market later. Another thing that has changed is access to the market. Usually I have approached the market from downtown, which means the taxis let you off by a group of mosques and then there's a bridge over the street to the gold section. As we approached, I was shocked to see the bridge gone and people crossing the street and going though a knocked-out section of fence. This is one of the busiest streets in Cairo, with 3 lanes on constant traffic on both sides. It is madness not to have a crossover! Apparently, there was an electrical fire even before the revolution and the bridge simply melted and has not been rebuilt, for reasons unknown. There's a tunnel, further up the street, but people simply go across (since they do that everywhere else in Cairo, there's no real reason not to I guess, but it makes traffic very freaky between cars, donkey carts and humans). My cousin's office driver took me up there, and picked me up, which was really nice--he dropped me on the correct side.