Venturing into Islamic Cairo
We spent two afternoons last week exploring Islamic Cairo (the name kind of implies that the rest of Cairo isn’t Islamic. That’s not true). Our first day was limited to the streets of the Khan al Kahlili bazaar, home to hundreds of stores where you can find gold jewelry next to plastic Pyramid piggybanks, intricately carved bronze lanterns, large bath towels printed with Cleopatra’s image, or a wide array of colorful plastic buckets.
I wasn’t sure we’d actually make it out of this street. There was no conscious movement of your legs; you were just carried along with the crowd.
The Khan al Kahlili bazaar at night took on a festival atmosphere, although that didn’t make me want the King Tut pen set any more than during the daylight hours.
The next day we wandered south of the Khan al Kahlili bazaar into a neighborhood in search of the Museum of Islamic Arts. We found the museum, but it was closed for renovation. However, when one door closes, another opens. As we stood outside the museum wondering what to do next, Mohammed walked up to us and suggested that the city around us was better than what we would have seen in the museum as “Islamic Cairo is a living museum!”
We followed Mohammed to a local mosque and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon with him, drinking Egyptian yellow tea, walking through the vegetable market to the marble market, into the shoe market, through the carpet market, and finally through a series of small alleys to the spice market where we got a lesson on the spices necessary for keeping a good Egyptian kitchen (and a happy husband!).
View of Mohammed’s neighborhood from the mosque’s minaret. The collapsed buildings in the foreground are due to the 1992 earthquake.
Mrs. T and our new exploring-Cairo buddy, Angela, on top of the minaret.
D and Mohammed taking Egyptian yellow tea at a local cafe. Soccer on the tv, man smoking shisha in the background (a tiered cage with chickens, ducks, and rabbits for sale is out of the picture, but thought I’d mention it for ambience).
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September 25th, 2006 at 1:33 am
Hola
Just drinking beer having been at the Nile Valley restaurant for dinner and have decided we might come and see you for new year or just after…. what do you think? Might spend a month if we can and travel about. K& Exxx
September 25th, 2006 at 2:27 am
Yes, please, come! It would be a good excuse for us to go see the Pyramids. 🙂
October 20th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Can you write a few words about the Egyptian yellow tea? I bought some in Luxor but it’s not real tea. What is it made of? Very curious!
Many thanks!
October 21st, 2006 at 5:26 pm
[…] Occasionally, we receive comments on our blog from people we don’t know, and it always comes as quite a surprise to us (someone other than our moms and a few close friends read this?!?). One such anonymous commenter recently asked us to write a bit more about the Egyptian yellow tea, known as helba (or hilba) which we mentioned last September in our posting about Islamic Cairo. […]