Taxis and Tea

My beautiful daughter left tonight. I am feeling decidedly flat and a bit miserable.

We have had an unbelievably hectic week.

The household is shrinking fast. From eleven - actually no - one expected guest did not come so we had ten in the house - and now we are down to only four. Our house guests are aging now as the young ones leave and older ones replace them. It has just been delightful having our young ones here - Sam and Tabbi and my grandson Michael were all here through Christmas and Tabbi has just left.

More than two hundred were at the house Sunday night for a huge Australia Week launch.We have had the the Archaeology conference - Corroboree - and a museum party for the launch of the co-ordinating exhibition tonight. With my other hat on I also walked the board and friends and some staff of the American University of Cairo through Tentmakers to talk to them about the art and its makers.

Yesterday we had a visit to Sakkara for the archaeologists to see what Professor Naguib Kanawaty has been doing in Mereruka's tomb. More on that later. It means I saw the burial chamber again - a wonderful low point!! Then we hosted a dinner with a celebrity Aussie chef out at the Intercontinental at City Stars.

We had a function today at the house - a wine tasting for one hundred - in the evening.

Busy busy week!

This morning Tabbi and I took a taxi to my dentist - the last visit for a while - and as we got in the taxi pulled out then asked if we wanted tea. It turned out that he had a mug of tea held between his knees and was happy for us to swig from it. We managed to resist. I think the last thing I would want between my knees in Cairo traffic is a cup of boiling water!

Friday Markets

In Cairo, in the City of the Dead, there are markets. On Fridays they are huge - long streets packed with structures patchworked from bits and pieces and all manner of goods laid out for sale. Some have bits of everything, but most specialise.

Some items are just bizarre. In the poorest area of all - between the railway lines - there are bags of things like hotel soaps - somewhat used - and very badly ragged toothbrushes, crusted urinals and disposable dental mirrors. These are objects that I cannot imagine ever wanting to buy. In the better areas are cages of cats, birds - budgies and parrots, overcrowded but looking pretty healthy, and the odder items, like snakes, hedgehogs, birds of prey and hoopoes - I just wanted to buy them and open the cages as I love these beautiful birds.

I have just realised that I could go on and on describing but it is better perhaps to just let you look - through two pairs of eyes. I went with my daughter Tabbi - and she is a brilliant photographer. She is better than I am so I am both proud and daunted looking at her work. Even better - she has a little camera that I lust after - a bendy twisty thing that takes images from unexpected sides and has a 10 X optical zoom - so she can take lots of portraits of people who do not realise they are being taken. While I deplore the sneakiness of this with very politically correct sensitivity I also envy the capability and the images she collects.

So - walk the Friday markets with us! Lots of photos - so be warned - but it is so hard to edit these out.

Fish - smoked and alive

Fish - sunlit and backlit

My leaping horse - and Tabbi's

One shop - two great objects - I loved the old chair with its splitting textile and gleaming gold, and the beautiful bronze lady was being used as an incense holder.

Tabbi's shoe man and a sales table complete with palm tree

Tabbi's portrait - and mine

Old typewriter - with Arabic keyboard including a single key for "God is Great"

A wonderful Circassian face, my image, then Tabbi's

His Master's Voice - mine then Tabbi's

Old machines, probably almost rusted solid, with carved marble

Old photos on a stunning wall

Same shop as the last two - the marvelous orange and blue shot from Tabbi - how did I miss that one?

Tabbi's angel - and to think I didn't bother as I didn't like it!

Rugs and the man who made them

Mannequins - Tabs, then mine

Screens and Vespa parts

shower heads and computer parts

Brushes

Hanging objects

Plates and cutlery

It is always the people that light up the City of the Dead for me - we have so many marvelous portraits. These two are mine.

And Tabbi's

Tabbi's

Tabbi's then mine (without 10x optical zoom)

Mine, then Tabbi's

Two Tabbi shots

Gas bottles and bikes

Toilets and grilles

Doors, mine then Tabbi's

Iron in the sky

Loved the kitchen sinks and the amazing thirties look of the lush mannequin

Chandelier for sale in front, open tomb behind

Chandelier specialty shop - which has bags and bags of crystal jewels

Bikes and Turkish tombstones

Tabbi's

Tabbi's

Tabbi's

Tabbi's

I thought the last shot was just spectacular. The morning left me with an sense of how hard life must be for Egyptians at the lower end of the social scale - and the huge gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. The faces though, show acceptance of what life gives them - and this is for me an overwhelming factor in Egypt - that whatever is in the bag is accepted without rancor or complaint.

I loved my morning. I almost apologise for the huge flood of photographs - but they were so wonderful. You cannot take a bad photo in Cairo.