The Edge of the Trees

I walked through the streets of Zamalek with a friend to see her new apartment two days ago. We chatted as we went, peered into doorways and shop windows, hopped up and down pavements and stepped over holes, and dodged obstacles. We walked mostly on the road in places where pavements were inaccessible. Later, after a couple of gin and tonics, I walked back alone in the dark. Students around the art school gathered in laughing groups, and with the onset of Spring the girls are wearing brighter colours - orange and green still endure from last season, but there is a lot of fresh clear pinks and blues.

Egyptians are a dear and friendly people, and smiles flash out at me, and occasional greetings as I walk past the groups. Next week is the holiday which translates as something like "Smelling the breeze" where children appear in new clothes, and windows are thrown open to blow away the fug of winter and let in the spring air. It is an old holiday - possibly Pharaonic, and not known in other Arab countries. For me it is a sense of sadness, as it signals the end of what I see as the best weather for walking and exploring, and the onset of a long, fierce and relentless summer.

It occurred to me as I walked that night that this is a dear and familiar place now. This is home in a way that I would not have imagined last year when I really struggled with the sheer difficulty of a daily walk to the shops. I did a lot of work in art school based on a quote from Rhys Jones which I think of as the 'Edge of the Trees'. He talks of the familiarity of home against the mystique of the different - and I won't even try to explain what it means to me as a frequent traveller who lives out of my own culture. I have it on my wall all the time and love it. Just for your information:

Rhys Jones - the Edge of the Trees
"The discoverers" struggling through the surf where met on the beaches by other people looking at them from the edge of the trees. Thus, the same landscape perceived by the newcomers as alien, hostile, having no coherent form, was to the indigenous people their home, a familiar place, the inspiration of their dreams.

The trees here are taking on new leaves. Winter is a short flurry here, not as distinctive as Canberra with its frosts and ice. I have even had basil growing throughout Winter on our marble steps in big tubs. However, trees still lose their leaves and it is nice to see the apparently dead branches starting to put out lacy green frills. Somehow a dormant tree here implies death much more so that at home. Even the new growth is so uncertain - a green fringe will appear on one branch but not another - that I find myself peering out my upstairs windows at the flame trees and jacarandas and thinking "Please, please, be OK!"

In Seoudi supermarket on the corner one man who works mostly inside has always worn a soft flat pair of slippers. In the excitement of Spring his plain brown leather ones have been replaced with a pair in strongly contrasted fake leopard fur, fluffy and bizarre with his neat forest green and beige uniform and cap. Every time I go in they bring me a drink immediately - Coke, or 7-Up, or a juice - which is lovely, but surprisingly awkward if I am juggling a bag, previous shopping from whatever trip I have just been on, and a shopping trolley. Philadelphia cream cheese has disappeared again, and it is a mark of my seige mentality that with the sudden appearance of a shipment of Piccalilli that I bought a bottle 'just in case'- where I don't think I have ever used it in my life!

Chicken has disappeared and we have had deaths here from bird flu. Egypt slammed down fast on the problem and banned all live birds from rooves of apartments and street stalls. Pigeon house are empty, and I miss the great swirls of birds as they took to the skies in the morning. The places that had chickens and geese and turkeys are deserted or locked, and the odd stand of quiet rabbits has replaced birds - and almost needs a sign saying "The other white meat." Most Egyptians will not eat chicken or eggs in fear of bird flu. The worst of the ban is that for many poor Egyptians the stocks of chickens provided their only source of protein, as eggs or meat. Many have been so reluctant to lose their birds that they have removed them from rooves to rooms inside the house - and increased their chances of contracting flu by being even closer to their birds. I am noticing more dead birds in the garden, and lots of small swirling clouds of feathers where a cat has found it first.

In one of the first deaths (gospel according to the press) a woman in hospital claimed to have no contact with birds so her illness was not considerd bird flu. However, as her condition worsened she asked a neighbour to go to her room as her chickens were in a cage under the bed and would need food and water! The neighbour reported her and the disease was identified. She died, and so did her daughter.

I am on the point of leaving for a month. I am a bit reluctant this time. I don't really want to be away from Bob for so long. There was a freedom in having children at home that I had never really appreciated - that when you leave three people behind they have each other for company. I have had enough time in the house on my own this year to be reluctant to do it to Bob. A really big house is somehow much more lonely than a small one. Everything echoes but the rooms are so far apart that a radio playing at one end cannot be heard in another, so you move from silent space to silent space. I have at times put on TV in the study, and a radio in the kitchen, just to fill the silences. Now I do it with an Ipod (what a new toy this has become!) which has its own way of holding the whole world at bay.

I will be in Dunedin over Easter, then Canberra to see family and friends, then working in Coffs Harbour.

I will try to keep up the blog from time to time as I travel.

Syria, and Sinai

In the last few weeks I have found myself repeating previous trips. We have had a spate of visitors and that keeps me busy. Egypt is not an easy country for Australians, especially those without a lot of travel experience. After one day at the Pyramids I think many guests would decide that the spare bedroom is about as exotic as they want to be. Giza is, for me, the worst of Egypt. Crowds, dust, flies and worst of all - hundreds of people who want to separate you from your money. They often use the worst of tricks and emotional blackmail.

I would love to see huge signs up in many languages giving an idea of a fair price for a taxi ride, for a guided tour through a tomb, or a ride on a horse around a pyramid. I have heard quotes for the latter varying from forty pounds to five hundred Egyptian. Worst of all are the ones who negotiate prices, and when the time to pay comes insist on Sterling, not Egyptian - a massive increase. I feel so sad for the hundreds of thousands of good and gentle Egyptians whose reputation is forever tarnished by the sharks who go into feeding frenzy at Giza.

However, I am allowing myself to be distracted.

I have been in a blog vacuum. Parts of my blog were used in ways I never expected, and it was hurtful enough to have me curl up against a wall (metaphorically speaking) and refuse to write again. I have now more or less recovered and will continue to write, but much more carefully.

I took my visitors to Syria and they loved it. It is a wonderful place - kind and thoughtful and generous with both its treasures and the access to them. We went to the Krac de Chevaliers again and I love this place. It has to be one of the best crusader castles anywhere. We also went to Palmyra and it is years since I was there. My daughter has been visiting on her way through to a tour of Turkey, the Ukraine, Russia, Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania and down again through Poland and Czech Rebpublic. I am proud of her, but concerned and very grateful that she is travelling with an old friend.

Her old friend is a young male law student, a year ahead of Tabs in his studies, who is good looking in a tall and clean cut way.

He was very nearly mobbed in Palmyra. There was a girl's school visiting from Aleppo, and I would love a pound for every girl who wanted a photo with them both - but seemed to manage to be beside Peter. Tabbi said that it was like trying to travel with Johnny Depp. The schoolgirls were enchanting. They were noisy and effusive, singing and happy, swarming around us like clinging bees and showing off to each other. Syrian people are faireer than Egyptians, and the Crusader heritage in so many areas is obvious in the beautiful light eyes, charcoal rimmed with long lashes, but grey or ice blue or the most haunting of greens. The girls are so beautiful, lithe and sinous in their movements, and wearing surprisingly close fitting clothes even when they wear head scarves.

The best thing about the trips to Syria is sumptuous food. While much of Egyptian food is excellent it does not have the huge range of the fare available in Damascus, with the local regional variations in each different town. Also while Egypt has gone the whole hog and banned all poultry sales in the wake of bird flu here, Syria does not acknowledge a problem. It was nice to be able to eat chicken again (well cooked of course). There is a fabulous dish in Aleppo of meat balls with sour cherry saice, and I left Tabbi with enough money to provide a meal there for herself and her friend. We always come back feeling stuffed, and certainly these are two kilo trips.

We went to the MFO headquarters on the far side of the Sinai on our return, for a dining in night. It said 'Dress, Dinner Suit" on the invitation, but on walking in I was immediately concerned that someone had made a mistake. The uniform most worn by the MFO was short sleeved khaki and I felt somewhat overdressed in a long sleeved lined silk jacket which was also far too hot. I often decry men's suits as a stupid garment to have to wear even in summer - but there is precious little available to women that is much cooler in a country where shoulders and arms have to be covered.

We had driven across the Sinai to almost the border with Gaza to get there. As we reached the Peninsula black clouds were massing overhead, and the horizon glowed pale with sand dunes against the deep grey blue of the cloud. The wind was fierce over the sea and white tops capped every wave. Two large white birds were whirling about each other overhead - almost like two sets of white undies in a dryer. It was hard to work out how much of their crazed flight was deliberate, and how much was the wind.

The villages in this region are small and poor, and there is no glass in the windows, just shutters. In one village a woman in traditional embroidered dress was struggling to close her shutters against the wind, while her skirts lashed at her legs with their blue on black embroideries, and her shutters kept swinging out of her hands and back agaist the house. The light was that strange light before or after storms, so the pale mauve shutters glowed against the yellow ochre house. It was such an odd colour combination, full of discomfort and discord, but amazingly beautiful. As we went passed I had to twist in my seat to keep her in view and was so relieved when she managed to clip the shutters closed.

Just beyond the village another woman walked the skyline of creamy dunes. The edges of the dunes were lifting in the wind, with the pale sand flowing aross the edges and down the sides. She had a pile of kindling strapped together on her head. It was such an unwieldy bundle, twigs and branches sticking out like one of Andy Goldsworhty's nests, and as she walked her skirts whipped at her ankles like bad tempered terriers.

It was a lovely drive - and I really like to visit the MFO. You know, we talk so much about those of our boys in the army who are willing to give their lives for our country. When I look at places like this I wonder how many would so willingly do the far less dramatic thing of offering to live in dreadfully restricted conditions in often horrific heat, living out a year in boredom and clerical work to help to hold a fragile Middle East peace together. They are so admirable and so laid-back in their attitude to what they do that I almost burst with pride in our young Australians every time I go there.

OK. I am blogging again. I will try to do a few lines a day until I feel back into the swing of it!

Long Time No Talk

Finally I have told myself that procrastinating is only going to make things worse - I must try to catch up a bit on the last few months.

Dijanne Cevaal and her daughter Celeste are staying with me at the moment. She is here as curator for the Across Australia Quilt Show which is on in Cairo at the moment.

No - starting with now is not going to work.

I will go back to the Eid, about three weeks ago. I should know the date, but in the haze of the last few blurred and frantic weeks, I don't.

This is the Eid at the end of the pilgrimage period. All over town people are storing sheep - in courtyards, in empty apartment rooms, on roofs, in the street. Many have kept them for months in the hope of avoiding the price hike near the deadline date (and no pun was intended, but it is surprisingly appropriate). Because they are kept in a city with the area of Brisbane, but the population of Australia, there is no available food for them, and donkeys pulling carts with loads as high as a small house are seen moving through the city traffic with brilliantly green fodder piled high. It is very restful for the eyes, bright Irish green, in the dirt and dust of the greys and gingery browns of Cairo and its buildings.

On the first morning of the Eid they all die. It seemed appalling to me last year, to arrive and find fresh blood daubed in hand prints on the doors and buildings and old stone of the city. It still seems horrifying that the children who have fed and cuddled and cossetted the sheep would be willing to dip their hands in the blood to chase each other with screaming glee and daub the doors at their parents' command. It has overtones of the idea of the original passover, of avoiding plague and pestilence and all its accompanying superstition. Yet, this is a rite at the very core of Islam. The sheep are extraordinarily expensive. In a country where the average school teacher is lucky to earn 300 Egyptian pounds - about seventy five dollars Australian - a month the sheep can cost twice this each. Even more amazing is the fact that people buy them as much for others as for themselves.

One of our drivers bought a sheep for the poor in his neighbourhood because he felt himself rich in comparison - and here we would, on an Australian government salary, rate with multi millionaires. It is often called the day of meat, and for many poor Egyptians, eating meat does not happen often.

I asked how the children could join the process of killing the sheep, and it was pointed out that the animal dies for the glory of God, and it is a better death than many sheep would hope for and a glorious thing to liberate it for this reason. While I am aware that most Aussie sheep die for just the same sort of reason - to end up in a pot - it is so sanitised for us that we do not have to see our eating as depending on an animal's death. Perhaps the way here is actually better, more true and realistic.

I did not go out on the first morning of the Eid. It was a very silent morning in the streets of Zamalek. I slept late, and it was an awareness of the silence of the lambs that kept me inside. It was Monday, and on the Friday Bob and I were going to Tripoli in Libya to set up a quilt show - Across Australia - the first cultural event we have any awareness of between Libya and Australia. Our Libyan contacts were showing signs of supporting it enthusiastically. I was working on a small quilt based on Ghadarmes for the lovely man who was allowing us to use his gallery, and who had done a great deal of the organisation for us.

It started to rain - the first proper heavy rain since last March - and it was delightful working quietly in my room on the roof with soft falling rain streaming past the windows.

By evening we settled down to eat, and I turned on the TV. I was soon caught up in a chick flick, but Bob was very tired after a heavy week, and headed early to bed.

I was quite bewildered when he came in, fully dressed, and obviously wide awake, almost an hour and a half later. He usually drops into sleep with all the difficulty of a severed tree hitting the ground, and it was odd and very surprising.

As he walked in he said "There has been a terrible accident."

A bus full of Australians had crashed only forty eight kilometres from Cairo, on the slippery wet roads of the first rain of the year.

Most of you know all about this by now. As he spoke I realised that I was going to Libya alone, though it was not even mentioned for three days.

Bob worked on the phone, deploying his people so that while the consular people went straight to the public hospital that we were told people had gone to, others were going to the accident scene to try to check everyone had left and to secure belongings, and others to the hotel where the uninjured were staying. Mobile phones were unreliable at the scene, and for some reasonnot working well that night. As Bob started to get reports back from the consul and other staff he realised the scale of the accident and that – and remember this was late at night – he had to secure agreement of the hospital to shift people to a private hospital which was newer and more in keeping with western standards. The Department (Foreign Affairs and Trade) in Canberra had already set up the usual emergency response systems. When Bob was satisfied that he could do no more by phone he went to the hospital, negotiated the agreement with the hospitals to let them go while keeping their goodwill and co-operation, and supervised the loading of ambulances and making sure people’s medical records went with them.

Neither of us had any sleep, but this was a very small thing compared to the problems faced by our people.

I can’t tell you how wonderful this group was. They were mostly police, and emergency services staff on holiday with their families. Six were killed, and twenty six injured, and on the first night we were told that about six were critical. It was actually probably more. It was only by the sheer good fortune that it was such an experienced group knowing how to respond that we did not lose more people. They positioned the following bus (also part of the same tour) to light the scene as they managed to get people out of harm’s way. It was cold and bleak and slippery, and many people were terribly injured and in pain. We had experienced nurses and expert police and emergency services personnel on the tour who set up a triage system so that when the first ambulances arrived they were able to pick up those designated as most injured and take them immediately.

One lovely woman was injured when the rest of the roof of the first bus collapsed on her and crushed her when she was trying to help people caught underneath. Many men were killed, and one woman, and one child. It was a devastating loss to everyone as the group knew each other well. By morning all except one who was just too sick to move had been shifted a long way out of town to a new hospital.

I have some counselling experience and spent all the next two days with Jim Doust, interim Dean (and a truly delightful Australian) of the Episcopal Cathedral on Zamalek with people at the hotel who had survived the accident and been in the following bus, and with the patients in the hospital.

There are times when you seem almost to step beyond yourself when working, so that you see those you know well as new and amazing people. I watched my husband move through that day, in between talking to the bereaved and the desperately ill, organizing things on the phone, and all the while accompanying the senior doctor at the really excellent Dar Al Fouad Hospital to collect diagnoses to be sent back to anxious relatives and the department in Australia. He had had no sleep at all the night before and until 5.00 pm when he went home for one hour’s sleep he was unshaven, obviously exhausted, but still operating at peak ability. He even stood on the steps of the hospital and gave an off-the-cuff press interview as he knew the press needed something to send back. I cannot even tell you how proud I was of him. The whole embassy team was the same, stoic and hard working even while exhausted. Between them and the Australians at the hospital I have never been prouder of my country. One doctor said to me “These are very, very good people you have,” and I said “The Embassy?” and he said “Yes, but all the Australians here, even those who have come to help their friends”. He then gave me a very straight look, and said “I have not seen people like this before.”

It is an accolade I am proud to pass on as I agree so wholeheartedly.

On the way home from the hospital next evening (Tuesday) – around eight, Jim and I called in so he could talk to the lady still in the first hospital in intensive care. While the doctors told him she could not hear, he sat and talked to her and held her hand. I know she heard, she moved more and seemed restless. They were desperate for more blood for her. It is not an Egyptian thing to do – giving blood – and blood banks are often short. People will do it for family members having an operation, but large stocks are not held. They told us she had a rare type – and it just happened to me the same as mine. So I gave blood, went home for an hour’s sleep and came back to the hospital.

We got home that night at three – and that is the longest I have ever been without sleep. It was still hard to fall asleep. There was such terrible misery and so many strong and brave and damaged people.

Thursday I stayed home as Tabbi was flying in from Australia at the beginning of a visit. It was lovely to see her, but it was not the joyous homecoming I had hoped it would be. Friday we both went to the hospital to visit. In the afternoon we went to Libya to set up the Across Australia show.

I had intended to go straight on to telling you about it, but in fact I am weary and need a break. Talking about the hospital has stirred it all up again in my mind, and I am going to do something mindless like play FreeCell – so the Libyan exhibition will have to wait.

It will not be so long before I write next time.

Tea and Tuaregs

Ever since I saw my first photograph of a Tuareg, and heard about the legendary blue men who wrap their heads in indigo cloth which dyes their skin I have wanted to see Tuaregs. Hollis Chatelaine made a beautiful and haunting quilt called Blue Men. I kept running into images. I even bought Tuareg photographs from a lovely photographer in Tripoli.

I even have the beginnings of a collection of Tuareg crosses - and these shapes are fascinating. They have no relationship to the Christian Cross and actually predate it. There are many different types, and different tribal groups use different cross styles - like Aran sweaters and families from Aran Island.

We drove out one evening while in Libya from Ghadames to visit a Tuareg camp. This was undeniably a good attempt to link to some tourist possibilities by one of the local men and his family. The tents were actually more Bedouin in style but they were in the process of building small round huts with palm fronds - and they were really interesting, especially since we had been looking at exactly this in the National Museum in Tripoli. Even the axe they were using was interesting, with a wedge shaped narrow head that went right through the handle - so every blow wedged it tighter.

They drink a really unusual tea. It was heavily minted and boiled several times and sweetened, then poured from pot to pot really high so it foamed and frothed. This was poured over a cupful of peanuts - whole, and unsalted - in small glasses. Then the foam - greenish and looking like the froth on surf on a heavily windy day - is scooped onto your tea. I still haven't decided if I liked it. I had an oddness to the fact that the tea was very sweet and sugary, and the mint accent was terrific, but it was a bit like finding sardines in the bottom of your cornflakes bowl (don't ask). The peanuts were quite a nice snack, but I think I prefer mine not sogged with mint tea. There was also that uncertain moment when, stuck to the bottom of the glass by left over sugar and tea, you give it a sharp shake while hovering the glass over your open mouth with your head tilted back. Other than the fact that the glass jolts somewhat unpleasantly against your teeth there is a split second when you wonder how to stop the spray of peanuts from going straight down your throat unhindered.

They also made up bread - and that was fascinating. It was unleavened and very like damper, but coated with flour and with sesame seeds and anise seeds and fennel pushed into the crust so it was very aromatic. It was quite dense, and patted into flattish rounds about an inch thick. The whole thing - quite amazingly - was then dumped into the sand and ashes and covered with more sand and ashes. I could hardly believe that it was not full of sand. There was the odd patch of ash scraped off - but otherwise it came out completely clean, hard on the outside and soft and steamy in the centre - a dense and delicious bread. Not one tiny bit of grit was in the pieces I had. I could quite easily have eaten the lot.

As the sun dropped, Bob and Sam decided to walk to the top of the dunes that backed the camp. It was high - dune after dune loomed above us in a seriously photogenic curvilinear landscape. Even the footprints of previous tourists looked good.

I have lumped the photographs of the rest of the camp, some images of one very impressive young man in an amazing lime green (these were somewhat urban Tuaregs who see no reason to wear only blue when there are other colours available) and an image of the patchwork at the back of the tent into one Flickr set. Clicking on the images below will bring up others.

Bob and Sam stood on top of the world and watched it all change colour. I walked halfway up to a point where I could look over the top at Algeria. The dunes' shadows lengthened and went silvery mauve, then purple and blue and the tiny ripples in the sand etched with the sharpest edges in gold and the shadows in deep dark purple. It was utterly beautiful. Sam and Bob were silhouetted against the sky so far away that they were hardly visible in the lens of my camera. To cap it all two young men came charging across the desert on horses. They were so at ease on the animals that they looked like centaurs and gallped straight up the sides fo the dunes to whirl around on one of the ridges and ride the ridge as black shapes against the flaming sun. Then they wheeled around and came past me.

It was a spectacular evening.

Bawiti and the Camel Market

We spent New Year in the desert. About five hours drive from Cairo is the oasis of Bahariya, with two towns, and the larger is Bawiti. I have written about the White Desert before. While this doesn't mean that I will not succumb to the temptation to throw more photographs at you, it does mean that I am skirting the actual camping in the desert bit for another post.

I am even going to resist telling you that this was camping with a difference - the sort where you slide sideways in four wheel drive through sand and over humps as the sun throws long shadows from pure white formations like a huge yard of Rodin's cast-offs.I will not go into the fact that, unlike most camps where you have to haul everything out of vastly overloaded cars and start to pitch tents, this time it was set up. A whole line of small neat tents awaited us, with married couples sharing and singles on their own, and there was even a big elaborate and decorative tent for eating and drinking and general lounging - complete with marvelous tentmaker fabrics and mattresses, and a campfire sending plumes of fragrant smoke curling into the desert icy air. The smoke was fragrant because the cook, who had arrived earlier that morning to set up, was already grilling the chicken for dinner.

On second thoughts, I will relent and throw in a few images to whet your imagination. Don't forget that you can click on one image to open a set in Flickr.

Next day we spent most of the day exploring the White Desert and Crystal Mountain, but that you are definitely waiting for.

When we returned to Bahariya and the International Hot Springs Hotel the sensible people went to their rooms for a much needed shower and nap. The rest of us went off on a door search. I had seen one particular door - and could not for the life of me find it. Rumor says that it has since been repainted. However, we found lots of others and I took a huge number of photos while Bob did his best with a low slung white Mercedes on rough village roads.

I have always loved photographing children and old men, and managed to find both.

We spent the evening in the hot pool, and drinking beer and wine until it was 9.00pm and time to go to dinner. New Year's Eve was marvelous - good food, and local band with its peculiar combination of handclapping, toe tapping rhythm, and the overlaying drone of pipes and a strange string instrument that looked like a chair back with a strings. I have talked before about the camel dancer - and I stick with my original description of two wombats in a bag.

New Year was counted in with every guest in a manic conga line (no hands touching each other as we needed both for the Arab style dancing) which switched to a lyrical Viennese Blue Danube waltz when people stopped kissing. It was a great combination of local and expatriate celebrations.

Today we went to the camel market which is now miles out of Cairo. So far out in fact that I have no idea where we were - except that you drive to the pyramids and turn West. I found my hopes of what it would be like sinking with the Mercedes into bump after bump as we saw less and less people and not a hint of a camel.

Then suddenly there were camels. We swung through a gate, and Ashraf, our driver (Sudanese-Italian, elegant, with a cousin in the camel business)drove through swarms of camels for what felt like ten minutes, until he pulled up in front of a small concrete building. We had tea and set off to explore.

The camels are strangely hobbled. I guess you need to keep thousands of camels under some sort of control, but it looked cruel at first, Each one had the front right leg tied tightly up, with a hobble keeping the joint fully folded. It made them look like tripods, and strangely surreal, like triffids. I half expected to see molten watches drooping over ledges, Dali-like. Instead there were absurdly picturesque men, in loose galabyiehs and kaffiehs wrapped into turbans, romantic, Orientalist, and very much exuding a 'let me toss you over my camel and take you to my tent' air.

Camels are big. They loom over you, and dribble occasional lumps of greenish cud. They are surprisingly unsmelly - compared to the liquid that would have flowed out of cows in a simialar situation they really didn't urinate much, and the ground beneath our feet was dry and dusty. I would not want to know what the dust was made of, but it was not too bad. We all fell in love with a beautful brunette, with eyelashes the length of my whole hand and dark glossy curly hair. She was gentle and affectionate and all the market seemed to like her.

I am weary. It was an early start, and my bed is calling. It is now after midnight, and while there is more to tell I am going to let the photographs do the talking.

I suggest you click on the link to the side of the blog on Sam's Grand Tour and read his description. I know it will be better than mine.