Did you know that Mohammad Ali was an Egyptian ruler? He solidified power by killing 400 rival princes over lunch. They fell for the old, “Come over to my palace for a few days of partying, and I’ll have you slaughtered over lunch” trick. Needless to say, this sized ego produced a stunning mosque in the citadel hill overlooking Cairo. The Mohammad Ali mosque is actually an architectural copy of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.
Technically, Mohammad Ali was a regent of the Ottoman Empire, but he ruled Egypt, Sudan, and the Middle East all the way to the holy city of Mecca with little Turkish interference, so long as the annual tax tributes were paid.
The rest of the morning was a mosque review, most of which were over 1,000 years old.
The Egyptian version of the Blue Mosque was nearly destroyed by the 1992 earthquake and has been under UNESCO reconstruction efforts for the past three years. What technically makes this and the other blue mosques “blue” are the blue glazed and fired tile-covered walls. Aside from the tiles, what I enjoyed most was the hike up the minaret. It is amazing what access five Egyptian pounds or $0.87 USD will provide. The climb was dark and steep but the views incredible.
One surprise, looking down on the city’s roof-tops, is that the flat roofs serve as open refuse pits for anything not quite small enough to toss in a public trash can. The aerial view of this tightly packed city simply revealed a sprawling, hidden, urban garbage dumping site. The other theory would be that the rubble from the 1992 earthquake was simply too great to remove from all the rooftops, so the easy answer was to leave the debris in place.
After lunch Yasser and I ventured to the Coptic part of town that is center for the 15% of native Egyptian Christians. It was intriguing to see the second and third century artwork of Jesus and his disciples. In case you are wondering Jesus did not have long straight blonde hair and blue eyes, but short dark curly hair and brown eyes. The Coptic experience made me feel closer to the reality of Jesus’ existence. There is even a site where Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were to have hidden for the years when Herod was trying to catch and kill him.
While wandering the city together I noticed that many men had a black/grey smudge on their foreheads, so I asked Yasser what it meant. He told me, "If a man is very strong in his Muslim faith, during the five times a day that there is prayer, the forehead will meet the floor many times, creating a mark." Yasser also said, “That many years ago a man with a mark could be trusted, but today many people make the mark by hand and then will steal your money.” He had a good point. As I watched foreheads the rest of the day, there were definite “thumb prints” on many foreheads. Then the density of color was called into question. What was the floor of the mosque made of coal? Now this was really becoming a joke, as some of these charlatans had made marks on their forehead where it was anatomically impossible for it to have met the floor, without seriously breaking the nasal bridge. No concussed black eyes to match the forehead smudge. Busted!
The evening was filled with a dinner cruise on the Nile River. The equivalent of $25 USD will buy you a two-hour cruise and a solo seat at a table set for sixteen. This was not by design and was the result of me traveling alone and all the smaller window "river view" tables being taken by families. It made me chuckle to think that this setting was completely comfortable now, when just a few years earlier I would take dinner in my room on business trips, for fear of the inwardly awkward situation of eating alone in a restaurant. Now not only was I seated with fifteen empty seats but was situated in the middle of the room and it didn’t bother me at all.
An interesting event was to watch two fully covered Muslim women eat dinner with their children. The husbands ate at a separate table. The wife with the more gruff husband, partially undid her veil and turned to face the river for each bite. Turning back toward the plate, her face was fully covered again. The other woman, simply removed her veil for eating while her husband was facing away from her. If he happened to turn she would snap up her veil to cover until he turned again, then continue her "open face" dinner. After dinner, both husbands went to the buffet to bring deserts for the wives and children. There appeared to be an honest affection, as the more relaxed husband took his daughter into his lap for desert sampling with Dad.
The trip was beautiful, not only for the river and night skyline, but for the dinner.
I ate more vegetables in one setting than in three months in the other African countries. Veggies just don’t seem to be available in quantity for the poorer nations. My "veggie cravings" were well sated.
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