If I Can't Be At Home

When my kids began looking at universities in North America, finding the right ethnic fit was important. After all, while they both look somewhat Mediterranean, they also look and speak like North Americans even though in many respects they aren't . One of my concerns was to find a place with as much going on as Cairo, since they'd grown up with the wonderful chaos of that city around them, but also with a relatively small undergraduate school for studies so that they wouldn't get swamped in classes of 600 students. Columbia University in New York City fit the bill, and luckily they had the grades to get in. Both of them took to life in the Big Apple with the same enjoyment that they'd had in the Big Mango, so life was good. I have to admit to a certain amount of concern initially over crime rates, safety on the streets and so on, but Rudy Giuliani did a great job of cleaning up New York. When I arrived in August 1999 to settle my son in, the city was almost unrecognisable to someone who had last visited in the early 80's.

Six years on, there isn't a year that I've missed spending some time in Manhattan checking up on kids. It has the same wonderful multicultural feeling as the first time. While some of the young people I knew fled their college placements in other parts of the country in fear in the wake of the September bombing, the Arab students in New York were not afraid. The strong mix of cultures here kept people from running off the rails. So I've been back here to spend some downtime with the daughter and have been enjoying myself immensely. What are the things I love about New York?

One of them is the fact that this city is alive 24/7, just like Cairo. I went to Vienna with my husband years ago for a conference and he was utterly horrified to find that outside of the main downtown area, you couldn't find an open restaurant after 9 pm. Cairenes are just thinking about going out at 9 pm and often don't leave the house until 10 or 11 pm. During the summer or Ramadan, the major portion of socialising is done after dark. Being 7 hours off time when I arrived, I saw some lovely sunrises out of the window when I woke up at 4 and 5 am, so I took a photo out of the window to the corner of Broadway and 125th to remember.

One of the hardest things to do in Cairo between the traffic and the condition of many of the sidewalks is to take a relaxing walk in the city. You are, literally, taking your life in your hands when you step off the sidewalk into the street anywhere in Cairo. There are some traffic lights but they don't always work, nor are they always obeyed. In Manhattan, however, they are there and they are obeyed. There are also wonderful broad clean sidewalks and walking all over the place is the way to do it. Although you might not think of Manhattan as a dog-friendly place, there are hundreds of dogs everywhere and peer pressure is such that the owners never venture out without plastic bags, with the result that the sidewalks are clean. Walking here is a joy, even if the concrete gets to my legs after a while. Can't help that, since most of my walking is done on dirt.

Downtown Manhattan doesn't have the broad shady streets of the upper west side, but it has enough going on to keep any stroller interested. I have my eyes checked each year at a Lenscrafters store on 5th and 45th because they have better equipment there than my doctors do in Egypt. Happily, my old-age blindness isn't progressing much further and this year I didn't even have to change my lenses. On the way to lunch with a friend, I was waiting for the lights to change on 42nd Street and this mounted cop stopped next to the curb. Lovely horse he had and very well trained. Wonder how it would do with a water buffalo or a water pump? I have a mare that I know I could ride through traffic like this, but I honestly don't know about some of the others. But it's not optimal riding terrain, after all.

Then there are the delicatessens. Oh, wonderful deli's of New York. They aren't the most economical places to shop, however, and luckily my daughter is within a short walk from a huge supermarket called Fairway at 125th near the river. This place is phenomenal. They must have every food in the world there. Cheeses that I've never even heard of. Spices from any cuisine you can imagine. Fresh chilis of all levels of heat and flavour. Fresh baked bread of any sort you might fancy. I went in with a friend to do some shopping when we were both hungry....big, big mistake. She now has a selection of six different ice creams and her husband was utterly delighted to find pots of olives in the fridge from about four different countries. Doing a holiday shopping in Fairway is a lot of fun.

Will I miss it when I go home? No. I love the excess here, the availability of Mexican beer, all the book and record stores, when I'm here, but I don't need all of that at home. I'm happy with my more limited choices...for one thing, it helps keep the budget under control. I have everything that I really need and then some. I'm also infinitely happier where the fruits and vegetables are cheaper than the potato chips and Coca Cola. The fact that food that is bad for you is cheaper than food that is good for you drives me crazy in the US. Between that and the portions (enormous!) in the restaurants, it's no wonder that there is concern over weight gain here.

I'm off to Egypt again on Wednesday evening. A few more days to spend with my daughter and various friends. Haven't done much shopping since I'm saving my money for building my paddocks and a house, but I did find an out-of-print book by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture) on the local architecture used to control heat in houses in North Africa. That is going to be very useful in planning the house. A few books and a couple of new riding helmets and we should be set. The afternoon that I arrive there is a gathering at Dany Barbare's stud and I promised that I would come to help her celebrate her horses with some visitors. I think that it will be good to be home.

Please Look At A Map, Folks

88 Dead in Cairo Resort Car Bombings

88 Dead in Cairo Resort Car Bombings

The link at Google News actually said "36 Dead" which led me to wonder just where these people were getting their information. After all, there were not that many foreigners killed and way more Egyptians killed. But then I noticed the rest of the headline. What Cairo resort was bombed? Were they referring to the bomb that went off in some guy's hand in Giza? No, they are talking about Sharm el Sheikh, which is in another governorate (like a province) of Egypt about 500 km away from Cairo. They'd be better off not reporting the news than misreporting the news. Get it right, people!

Meanwhile, I'm still very happy to be living where I do as I doubt very much that water buffalo are likely to be targets in the near future. It is not going to be so great for business other than with my regulars who aren't that worried about this stuff anyway. After all, we don't have drive-by killings or gang problems or people going postal, just the odd random bomber. I guess everyone has a burden.

No One Needs This

Egypt resort bombing toll climbs to 83 - Breaking News - World - Breaking News

I'm in New York visiting my daughter and a friend told me about the bombs. Immediately we were online at Google News (http://news.google.com) to follow the developments, and messages started flashing by mobile phones, happily all confirming that the people that I know and love are all right. I'm still waiting for some news from Sharm, but I'm hoping for the best. We've owned a house in an Italian time share compound down there for the past ten years, and over that time have accumulated a lot of friends who live in Sharm full time, working in hotels, publishing magazines, running dive boats. There have been plenty of tragedies over the years, especially among the divers who have a very dangerous occupation. One of the boys who went to high school with my son died diving. His father runs a diving business and Karim spent a lot of his time underwater....that does up the odds. We've lost friends to accidents on the highway going down and to other accidents. But there is definitely something about suicide bombers that is shattering to the soul.

The first thing that most people ask is whether I feel any less safe in Egypt after something like this. I guess you could ask the same question of a lot of the poplulation of London, however. Suicide bombers are pretty random and they aren't something that you can avoid by following certain rules. They either get you or they don't. Most of the world could feel very upset about suicide bombers when they were mainly found on Israeli buses. They were the product of a twisted society or just terribly upset by the hopelessness of the situation in Israel/Palestine. Somewhere along the line, they've been exported rather widely now.

Egyptians, as a society, are not the sort of people to go around blowing other people up randomly. It has happened at odd times, most particularly during the 50's as Egypt was demanding its independence from the British. Things have had to be pretty bad before buildings blew up. The old Shepherd's Hotel was burned in the anti-British riiots. But burning a building and blowing oneself and many others up with a car bomb seem to me to be a different sort of act. In the early 80's there was a riot near the Pyramids of Giza when the police went on a rampage because someone had told them that they were going to have to serve an extra year of service. A couple of hotels were burned at that time and a few months agoI was having dinner with a friend of mine who had been staying in one of the hotels at the time. He had gone out for dinner and had to sleep in the garden of another hotel when he couldn't make it back to his own because of the chaos. All of his belongings were fine, however, and his hotel untouched. A colleague in another hotel, on the other hand, was woken by someone pounding on his door in the middle of the night. When he went to the door, he was told by the soldier standing there that he should quickly pack his suitcases and move them out because they were going to burn down the hotel. Shocked, he did as he was told and the soldier helped him to move his luggage out of harm's way. I guess the old days are gone forever.

I checked in with Tracy in Abu Sir right away to see how she and her American guest were doing. Happily both are calm and feeling safe out in the countryside. A time like this is when you appreciate the fact that so far no one has seemed for feel it necessary to explode cows and donkeys.

I hope that everyone out there is fine and that no one has to deal with this horror anytime soon.

Missing The Donkeys

I'm not the only one in the neighbourhood who has a rather wide variety of creatures hanging about. My neighbour Babsi has a stable to die for (I'd happily move into one of her box stalls), a number of horses, an interesting pack of dogs including a rescued Anatolian shepherd who patrols her land at night striking terror into the hearts of anyone who might be stupid enough to walk in the gate, and Mabrouk the donkey. Mabrouk was rescued by her husband and brought home one day. He decided that he was either a dog or a human and made himself at home. Now he sidles up to Babsi whenever she sits down and leans on her shoulder. I think that this is his way of trying to sit on her lap. I took this shot of them one afternoon when it was too hot to do much more than just breathe, so we were all sitting around in the shade drinking ice water. However, I don't think that I'm going to be enjoying scenes like this during the next couple of weeks.

On Wednesday afternoon I'm taking off to New York City for two weeks to visit my daughter. She opted to stay in New York this summer and work for the university, so if I want to see her I have to go there. I really don't like travelling at all any more. Between the fact that anything but economy class is outrageously expensive and the general aura of paranoia in the major airports, travel is quite uncomfortable and not at all relaxing. I figure that I live where people come to spend a memorable vacation, so why should I go somewhere else for mine? It isn't as though this is a place I feel the need to escape from. So I'm off to Europe and then New York where I'm going to 'enjoy' the same heat as Egypt with a much higher humidity. Oh, the things mothers will go through for their children! (Listening, kids?)


There are good parts to the trip, however, and not just the chance to be with my daughter for a while. For an urban center, Manhattan is very comfortable. As a Cairene, I find it quite calm actually. But at the same time, there are always fascinating things going on all around you everywhere you go. There are also certain favourite cuisines that simply must be patronised on my visit, like the Taqueria on Amsterdam near 103rd. It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall diner with only four or five tables, but the Mexican food there is wonderful. I will enjoy going for walks if there is enough air to have some sort of breeze to cool us off. And the used book stands on Broadway near Columbia University will get a really good going over. There are also about five young university student friends on the east coast as well that I hope to gather for a visit.

But two weeks is enough time for evenings spent with the daughter and plenty of museum visits during the day. After two weeks, I start feeling itchy and I need to come home. Tracy will be here keeping the dogs and parrots company while I'm gone. Hopefully she'll find some time to go riding as well. So I can relax and enjoy my visit knowing that the creatures are well-cared for. But in two weeks, how much will Morgana grow? She's growing at an utterly horrific rate right now. And my own donkey, George W, is just getting to be old enough to learn to help pull the cart. He's had a babyhood as another lap donkey, but it's time to grow up and help his girlfriend Margarita out hauling the berseem and hay. I feel that I have such a good life here, it's hard to be away from it.

While I'm gone we are going to start the work on finishing the small house for the grooms and the tack. By the time we finish that the crops should be harvested on the rest of the land and we will plot out the paddocks. Once the horses are moved to the new place I will be able to see them from the stairway to the roof. Then we will be almost home.

Gonna Be Moving

If this post sort of wanders around, well that's probably because that's what I've been doing for the past week or so. The photo on the left was taken in the nursery (of plants not kids) that will be one of my next door neighbours in the next few months. I've been negotiating and arranging my meager affairs for the past year in the hopes of buying a chunk of land nearby large enough to house my horses, the dogs, the parrots, a couple of goats, the water buffalo, some poultry and some rabbits. The nursery is about 7 feddan (almost equivalent to acres) with roads lined with mango trees, flowering shrubs, cactus gardens, herb gardens, and lawns wandering throughout the property where this picture of an Egyptian movie star, Hussein Fahmy, was taken with the sons of the manager, my friend Saber. I interviewed Hussein once years ago for a local magazine about the Cairo Film Festival which he organises. He's a charming, interesting man who studied acting and cinematography at UCLA back in the 60's. The boys, Ahmed on the left and Mahmoud on the right, are a couple of characters. Ahmed is in love with all things equine and with dogs, so he and I are good buddies, even if he is only two. His father has been helping with finding and buying my land, and just yesterday we signed the preliminary agreements and transferred the major portion of the money to buy my land.


The dogs are going love having twice as much room as there is in the paddock area to play in. My friend Tracy is taking a half feddan plot next to me, so there are basically almost 3 feddan to use. Morgana the Dane is growing so fast that she's really going to need the room, I think. She now towers over her partner in crime, Daemon, but that doesn't stop him from attacking her and chasing her throughout the garden at every opportunity. Then, naturally, the two of them curl up together on the sofa for a snooze. These days are so hot that the dogs just spend most of the sunlight hours lying under the fans indoors panting softly, unless there is some water in the garden to play in. With sunset the temperatures drop significantly which makes it possible to enjoy our garden and watch the canines chase each other around the parrot cages. That's also the best time to do any riding or other activities out of doors

There is a magic to the desert in the summer evening. As the air cools it almost takes on a form, a silk scarf feeling, that caresses your face as it winds around the ancient stones in the sand. Not long ago a couple of my usual clients called me to ask if I'd mind making their normal ride a jeep trek because the daughter wanted to bring a non-riding friend who had never seen the pyramids in our area. We met at the paddocks and took off in my jeep for Dahshur at about 7 pm. Driving south down the Mansoureya Road we made our way through the water buffalo, donkeys, cows and children crowding the roadway on their journey home. Eventually we arrived at the lake just south of the Dahshur complex where we took to the sand to wind northward through the desert past the Black Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, and the Red Pyramid towards Sakkara and Abu Sir. We stopped to explore rock outcroppings and to take some photos of the landscape. We've done this ride with the horses before during the winter, but this was a different experience. Driving a jeep in the desert is much the same as riding in that you have to judge the sand for its softness, you have to accelerate or slow down correctly to maintain your speed and trajectory, and you pick your way across the expanse without the benefit of a track. Sometimes I'd almost rather be driving in the desert than riding...especially when it is about 95 F outside and my airconditioning in the jeep is working just fine thank you.

After dark the desert is all ours. We share it with the foxes, the owls, and the wind. The tourists are gone with their buses and taxis, not many horsemen are out riding at night. The light pollution from Cairo gives a dawn glow to the eastern horizon that persists all night, but the sky to the west is dark and filled with stars. It might seem that the desert after dark would be a bit spooky, but it isn't at all. The pyramids looming on the horizons are welcoming presences in their rather aloof fashion and there isn't anything else out there to worry about.


For the next month I must be patient while the crops that are on the land ripen and are harvested. I may have bought land, but the crops belong to the farmers. But that isn't a problem since the crops here change every two or three months anyway. The first thing will be building the fence to protect my neighbours' poultry from any stupidity of my city bred dogs, and a small brick house on the property will be finished to provide living space and tack storage for my grooms. Then the pipe corrals that I have on my rented land will be moved and set up to provide paddocks for the horses. With inflation the cost of the metal pipe has increased significantly over the past few years, so I'd be losing a lot of money to leave it behind. My neighbours next to my old paddocks want them to ensure that no one will build right next to their house, so the land will be paid for by them for a bit and then, I suspect, bought by them. Luckily, they have plenty of cash on hand for this. The goal is to have the horses, donkey and gamoosa on the new land by September 1, and then I can start building a home there for myself. Gonna be busy

A Countryside Jewel

I have Blogger to thank for this. They've changed things so that I can now post photos throughout my blog and that has given me the incentive to work on my riding blog and now to be able to share a favourite spot in the neighbourhood. One of my neighbours went riding with me a month or so ago and offered to show me a new trail. He's known me a long time and is very aware that there aren't many trails in the area that I don't know by now, so this was an irresistable offer. What he had to show me was exquisite, a tiny patch of countryside untouched by cars, appalling villas or roads.

Today I set out with a couple of friends, one of whom hadn't seen this wonderful little patch of land. It's been hot lately, in the high 90's F or high 30's C, and we set out about 10 am which seems late to avoid the heat but actually the timing was good. About 10 am the air in the valley floor begins to heat up and rise, which in turn causes breezes to set up in the open areas. As we left the more confined area of the paddocks where buildings cut off the airflow, we all sighed with relief at the refreshing wind. We still rode relatively slowly at a brisk walk, however, because the heat index was real even if we felt cool from the breeze. Children from the village were either helping parents in the fields or playing beside the paths in the shade of mulberry trees or the shelters built for the animals. One of the joys of riding in the countryside is the fact that one can ride every day on the same trail and never see the same thing twice. Today one of the first encounters that we had was with a donkey left hitched to a cart. Usually they are left tied to a tree or hobbled because donkeys, having extremely independent natures, are inclined to head home if they get bored. We had to walk carefully past this one to be sure that some poor fellow wouldn't have to be running after his donkey and cart in the heat.

This particular donkey was happy to rest where he was as we passed and we continued on our way past a group of homes belonging to some farmers and grooms for horses in the country club just down the road. Flocks of geese paddled happily in the canal as a couple of girls tried to coax them out and back to their pens. The geese weren't having any of it and the girls were helpless to get them out of the canal, so they sat at the edge of the canal tossing stones at the opposite bank. Other children tended flocks of goats and sheep who were mostly resting in the shade. Some of the families in this area collect wood from people who cut down trees and then burn it slowly in pits to produce charcoal. The piles of wood make marvelous climbing places for human kids and the four-legged kind as well.

We made our way past beside some of the enormous villas that the city folk are prone to build out here. These ghastly piles of brick are a blight on the countryside, but on the other hand, their presence has kept away the random low-rise apartments that are the hallmark of the expanding villages. At least the countryside will be transformed into large gardens rather than solid chunks of brick and concrete. Finally we found ourselves at the entrance to the path within the gardens. From the herbal tea factory there is a dirt road that cuts into an area in which there are stables and country houses, but if we continue straight ahead rather than turning left, we find ourselves on a narrow dirt track that winds through a mango grove.
The mangoes are almost ripe and we were thankful that we were wearing helmets because if one of these hard green fruit smack you in the head, it is memorable. The horses, on the other hand, were dying to stop and graze in the tall green grass. From the mango grove the path winds along a bamboo wall that separates the farmland from the back of the tea factory. The other side of the path could be a scene from an illustration of Egypt one hundred years ago. There is an area of about 20 feddan (roughly 20 acres) surrounded by mango and palm groves, within which a few families farm plots of corn, peppers, berseem, okra, and other vegetables. Scattered through the plots are small shelters for the farmers and their animals over which banana trees lean and grapevines wind. If I were wealthy, I'd love to buy the land and leave it to be farmed just as it is for a sort of agricultural museum to remind the people who are living in the increasingly crushing, stressful city of what they've lost. But I'm not wealthy and can't possibly buy this land or even a part of it, so I try to ride through as often as possible to soak it into me before it disappears like so much of our farmland.

Leaving the area we travel through another magical passage, this time along a shallow irrigation ditch that waters a grove of pear trees on one side and small vegetable gardens on the other under the towering palms. The richness of the land is unmistakable and impossible to ignore. I've taken many of my riding students through this land on their lessons and as many friends as possible to let it live at least in the memories of others.

Fooling Around On A Thursday Afternoon

Egypt is really hot during the day and it's pretty amazing how little you can get done. I was supposed to be taking some friends riding this evening, but they had to be home by 9:30 pm and at 7 pm it was still 30 degrees C...way too hot to ride in the desert. We postponed the ride to Saturday and Tracy and I hung out in the garden instead. I cut some dried sunflower heads for the parrots, pruned some bushes and trimmed some shoots from my white mulberry tree. The parrots also got the mulberry branches since they are a real treat for parrots. Someone told me that the bark and wood of the mulberry have medicinal value to birds. I don't know if it's true, but they certainly love chewing on them. The dogs thought that it was great having everyone home in the garden in the afternoon and they ran about barking at whatever nonsense that was occurring outside the fence or chasing the hoopoes that were mining grubs in the lawn. Morgana, my Great Dane pup, wrestled with Daemon, my last Rat Terrier pup and her boy toy, all over the grass. The two of them are the original odd couple as Morgana grows larger and larger.

As the sun set about 8 pm, the heat finally dropped to bearable levels and a couple of neighbours dropped by to have a cup of tea in the garden. We sat and talked about medieval history, horse training and gardening as the sky darkened above us and the music for tonight's wedding began wafting from the neighbouring village. Every night during the summer there is an engagement, a henna party (local tradition has the women dye their hands with henna just before a wedding) or a wedding in the area. Years ago I was visiting Sudan and one of my husband's enormous family in Khartoum was going to be married in a few days. I was invited to the henna party for his cousin and the family insisted that I try the full henna treatment. The Sudanese paint intricate floral designs all over the bride's feet, hands, legs, and arms. The part that I thought was really nice was the fact that having all of this herbal paste painted all over her hands and feet meant that the bride could not even feed herself for a number of hours while the henna dried and the design set in full strength. Therefore on this day, the bride was waited on hand and foot (pun intended), not even having to feed herself. In the villages here, none of the women can be out of commission that long and most of them simply dye their palms black or red. During wedding season you can find all the little girls sporting red palms.

Unfortunately, one of the other wedding traditions here is the firing of pistols or automatic weapons in the air. My son was horrified to hear that there were guns in the neighbourhood, but weddings are the only things that they are used for. My difficulty with them lies in the fact that my dogs all go rushing out into the garden barking like maniacs when they hear the report of a gun. I can live without that.


By 9:30 pm or so, the neighbours each had to go off to do errands or deal with things, so Tracy and I packed up the tea and cookies and headed into the house. She just arrived from California two days ago and is suffering from major jet lag. We've been joking that her body may be here but her brain has only made it as far as Labrador as yet. She's wanting dinner at breakfast time and breakfast at dinner time, and she falls asleep every couple of hours. I can really sympathise with the falling asleep part. I have no air conditioning and the fan keeps the house at perfecct nap temperature.

We realised this morning that it was the end of the month and I needed to collect some cash from the bank for my grooms' salaries and for my housekeeper, so we grabbed a bottle of cold water from the freezer and headed into Maadi to seek out friendly ATM's. On the way into town, as I was driving along the Mariouteya Road with the canal on my left, I noticed a red VW Beetle come zooming up behind us to pass us on the left. As the car was just behind me and to my left, it suddenly veered severely to the left and sailed off the road into the canal. We screeched to a halt along with all of the other traffic on the road and everyone ran back to make sure that the driver was all right. One of the other drivers had already jumped down into the canal to help the driver out of his car and was assisting him in climbing the bank. The car was rather dinged up in the front, but otherwise man and Beetle looked pretty good considering what they'd just been through. One of the nicest things about Egyptians is that they will almost always stop to help you if you have any sort of accident.

After searching out a variety of ATM's we finally found one whose system wasn't down and which also had cash so that I could pay my grooms and housekeeper. Electrically speaking, today wasn't the best day for ATM's. We then went hunting some minor items that were needed at home and for the horses. A jerry can of disinfectent for washing down floors was requested by the grooms. I needed to find some decently priced rubber thongs, and there were a couple of items from the grocery store. When we finished the errands we were so happy to be home.

Tracy (on the left with our friend Merri) came to Egypt about a year ago last February with the endurance women and, as she puts it, realised that there were things she needed to do here. She explored possibilities for a year then went back to California for her sister's wedding in June. She was amazed at what a great conversation starter "I live in Egypt" is. Everyone wanted to hear about Egypt and how she found living here. Not everyone could understand her decision to come back to work here, but I suspect that we are going to have some more American visitors next winter. That's great from my point of view, since the more people who come to Egypt to visit us, the more will go back to the US and tell others that it's really a lovely place. Especially on a Thursday in the summer.

By the way, many many thanks to Blogger for organising the ability to post a number of pictures in one post. Wow! This is fun.