Dust

We have Monday off because it's the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, and all I have is Arabic tomorrow, so I'm catching up on all the things I've been neglecting the past few weeks. So here's another post:

This morning my Islamic Art and Architecture class went to the Nilometer, Ibn Tulun mosque, and a shrine (all in Cairo)...

And this is none of those places. This blog doesn't make it easy to post pictures. This is a piece of fabric at the Versailles Palace restaurant in Zamalek. Variations on this fabric are all over Cairo, so I asked someone about it when we went to the tentmaker's section of the bazaar yesterday. He said it's just an Egyptian fabric that people hang up, usually for celebrations. It makes the city much more colorful, especially in areas like this...

...which is what a good proportion of Cairo looks like. There's a severe housing shortage in Cairo, and also a severe job shortage, which means that people live in some not-so-nice places, including cemeteries. But often there are some splashes of color, like laundry drying on lines outside windows, or pink and blue paint, or celebration fabric.

Here's the Nilometer, built in 861 CE by an Abbasid caliph to measure the water level of the Nile in order to keep records of the annual floods. The Arabic script at the top is the oldest architectural Arabic script in Egypt.

The dome was replaced and decorated like this in 1825, after the French destroyed the original. It's kind of strange to have a shiny, new, golden dome above an old, stone pit; it almost seems like two different places.

Ibn Tulun mosque, the largest, oldest mosque in Cairo (finished 879 CE). This is the main mehrab, which is the niche on the wall closest to Mecca, the direction in which Muslims pray. The mosque is still very much in use, so we only had a short time to look around before the noon prayer started.

Each arch and window has a different geometric pattern.

We climbed the minaret, the tower from which the muezzin calls the people to prayer. This is the courtyard of Ibn Tulun; the middle building used to house a fountain. The mosque is absolutely huge, and it's filled with all these small, intricate details, like the carving on the arches.

This might actually be another mosque next to Ibn Tulun; I'm not entirely sure. What's maybe more impressive than the mosque is what's behind it. It's just a mass of apartments in every direction, each with a bazillion satellite dishes on the roof.

After Ibn Tulun, we put on our headscarves and walked through part of Islamic Cairo to a small shrine (it's called Islamic Cairo because it's home to most of the historic mosques and Islamic architecture. It's also, in general, one of the more conservative, poorer areas of the city). The shrine--which houses the body of a grandaughter of the Prophet--is also very old, but it's in bad condition. We shared the building with men circling the tomb, praying and kissing the silver bars surrounding it. I felt like an intruder, standing there with with my AUC totebag and camera (which ran out of batteries before I could take any pictures at the shrine...blagh). The walk to the shrine was also an experience. We passed goats and horses, tried to share the narrow street with cars going way too fast, and had to move out of the way for two men who rushed past carrying a long wooden box over their heads, followed by a stream of sad-looking men and women maybe a funeral? It's a strange feeling to not know what's going on. The Egyptian students on the trip didn't know, either...I think the culture in this neighborhood was maybe as strange to them as it was to the Americans, because most AUC students are rich and don't interact with people in neighborhoods like this one.

As for the dust...it's probably almost the time of year when weather-jealousy is reversed. Cairo has been warm and sunny most of the time I've been here, or at least warmer than Rockford. But now begins the season of dust storms in Egypt. Today was 85 and windy, and for the whole fieldtrip we had dust blown into our eyes and mouths. Even inside, after washing my hands and drinking water, I feel grimy and thirsty. The worst part is the lungs...even walking up the stairs is hard, because my lungs are burning. Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler, and hopefully the wind will die down; if it doesn't, I'm spending the day in the AUC swimming pool. People say these storms don't happen horribly often, and hopefully they're right...