Nazli asked about the cross-cultural aspects of marriage to an Egyptian and the changes that are involved in moving to another country. In one sense, every marriage is a cross-cultural experience in that every family in the world has its own culture. No two American, Canadian, Egyptian, or Iranian families are exactly alike. Every family has its own traditions and beliefs, and every marriage involves the melding of these beliefs into yet another tradition. When you marry outside of your religious or ethnic group, this process is just amplified. Being the child of a mixed marriage myself (my mother was British while my father was American), I was somewhat aware of the process already. My educational background in the social sciences increased my awareness as well. My late husband was also the child of a similarly mixed marriage between an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father. The differences between Sudanese and Egyptian cultures are very similar to the differences between US and British, but being closer in proximity, the marriages are more common possibly.
Starting from a perspective of already mixed cultures, my family didn't find it terribly surprising that I chose to enrich the mixture. From one point of view (one that is of importance in traditional spouse-choosing in Egypt), my husband and I were very similar. We were both the oldest of four children, we both had graduate degrees from the same university in Canada, we both had Canadian citizenship, we both spoke more than one language, our fathers were both senior civil employees who had to struggle somewhat to provide for their large families, and our mothers had lived in the culture of their husbands.
But there were differences, obviously. I was from an Anglo-Irish tradition with some ties to the Anglican church, however weak, and my husband was a Muslim Arab, however liberal. After spending a number of years in anthropology and philosophy courses, I'd become interested in Islamic culture even before I'd met my husband. A course in mystic traditions in the history of Christianity and Islam had introduced me to Sufi tradition, and the very personal mystic approach to spirituality appealed to me. Thus, although it would be a very serious faux pas for a Muslim to ask someone to change their religion and my husband never did, I found that the change from a mystic Christian aspect to a mystic Islamic aspect was very little change in fact. I made the choice myself, feeling comfortable that the relationship I already had with the Almighty (however this entity might be named in another language) was one that fit as easily within the framework of Islam as it did within whatever framework had existed previously.
When we moved to Egypt, I made the Islamic label a legal one as well, since once religion mixes with law, it becomes something rather different. Had I not done this, the custody of my children might not have been with me at my husband's death. Although it is my personal belief that one's religious beliefs are the business of the person and God, it would be foolish to ignore the possible impact of the law on a family. Because there are both Christian and Muslim traditions in Egypt, there are legal differences in inheritance and such that reflect these traditions. A family that straddles the divide is likely to fall into a hole if disaster strikes, so we chose where we wanted to stand.
I raised my children in the Islamic tradition, but, like every mother anywhere, I put my own spin on things. We followed the traditions of fasting during Ramadan and so on, but for me the important aspect of any spiritual life is not the following of certain rules of when and where one prays or what one eats or drinks, but it is the deep knowledge that one is behaving in a moral and ethical manner with the other inhabitants of this planet, whether they are human or not. I honestly believe that the basis of every religion is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you can live by this rule on a daily basis, you are living a correct religious life whatever the label may be. Thus, the particular decisions as to how closely one wants to adhere to a tradition are personal ones that do not really touch the essence of religious life. In fact, I have met more rule-following Christians and Muslims that have no more connection with the deep demands of spirituality than house sparrows. They have on occasion lectured me on my dereliction of duty in certain regards. For example, my husband never made it to Mecca, preferring to spend his time on his businesses that were employing people and making it possible for them to raise their children and educate them properly. He took great pride in the fact that he provided people with the means to live and took that responsibility seriously. We both felt that this act was more important than a trip to Mecca.
The main challenge that I see in a cross-cultural marriage is in the raising of children to embrace the best aspects of both cultures. In our case, this involved placing them in French schools when they were young so that they would have the English/French bilingual tradition should they want to live in Canada, and then giving them daily Arabic lessons here to ensure their ability to get along in Egypt. At times they were a bit lost, as might be expected and they had to find their own identities within the mish-mash that their father and I provided. They are more Canadian than American or British and sometimes more Sudanese than Egyptian. Having attended French and American schools and an Ivy League university, they have a pretty good handle on North American culture but they each have a definite culture of their own. Most of their friends are similar cross-cultural offspring, not surprisingly. To imagine that a cross-cultural marriage will produce uni-cultural kids is rather silly, and it also denies that richness of life that I believe such mixtures engender. Cross-cultural marriages are not the easiest sort to cope with, but I believe that if you go into it with your eyes open to the difficulties and with a determination to create something new within your marriage, you will have a more interesting life than otherwise.
Monday, March 15, 2004
Saturday, March 06, 2004
The Haramlik
I’ve finally done it and moved out of the city into a rented house in the country. The goal, of course, is to have my own house, of my own design, on my own land, but for now a rented house is fine. The garden is still sand, so the floors are forever gritty, but that will change. The house is just big enough for myself, the dogs, and a guest or two, but naturally I had no less than four houseguests within 48 hours of the main move. (Other deliveries of items from the old Maadi house have been arriving daily to be absorbed into the general chaos in Abu Sir.) Luckily, my guests were four riders from the United States, all well versed in camping, which is what it was, though with a roof and a tiny bathroom, while workmen finished electricity, windows, and installed a kitchen.
Yesterday my guests traveled to Sinai to see Sharm el Sheikh and Saint Katherine for two days, leaving the menagerie and myself alone in the house for the first time. It’s a good fit for us. The parrots haven’t entirely adjusted to the freedom of their new aviaries, but they seem to be happy with them. The cats enjoy having mastery of the laundry room and the back garden. We are making the house ours. The Cretan birds are flying over the front door to welcome visitors, paintings are being hung in all the right places and the house is gathering its soul around us. One of my neighbours rode by a couple of mornings ago and announced that he’d named my house The Haramlik, which I believe is actually Turkish, meaning The Women’s House. The Haramlik it is.
For me this is a period of regeneration, the time that I needed after losing my last life in the plane crash four years ago. I’ve withdrawn from the companies for the most part, I’m going to be concentrating on where I am, what I need to do here, and where I want to be over the next few years. I have my writing, my animals and a lot of thinking to do. So many things, many of them material such as my Cretan birds, paintings, pottery, and statues, seem to have been selected over many years just to fit into my house, that I want to go back to examine the ways that they have all come together.
This is also the Women’s House in another sense, that so many of my friends are women alone whose children have grown and moved on and who need the support and help of each other to maintain our spirits and directions. None of us are feeble, we all have our particular works, but we need that sense of community. I hope that in some respect this becomes a sanctuary where we can find a cup of tea and some peace when it is needed.
Yesterday my guests traveled to Sinai to see Sharm el Sheikh and Saint Katherine for two days, leaving the menagerie and myself alone in the house for the first time. It’s a good fit for us. The parrots haven’t entirely adjusted to the freedom of their new aviaries, but they seem to be happy with them. The cats enjoy having mastery of the laundry room and the back garden. We are making the house ours. The Cretan birds are flying over the front door to welcome visitors, paintings are being hung in all the right places and the house is gathering its soul around us. One of my neighbours rode by a couple of mornings ago and announced that he’d named my house The Haramlik, which I believe is actually Turkish, meaning The Women’s House. The Haramlik it is.
For me this is a period of regeneration, the time that I needed after losing my last life in the plane crash four years ago. I’ve withdrawn from the companies for the most part, I’m going to be concentrating on where I am, what I need to do here, and where I want to be over the next few years. I have my writing, my animals and a lot of thinking to do. So many things, many of them material such as my Cretan birds, paintings, pottery, and statues, seem to have been selected over many years just to fit into my house, that I want to go back to examine the ways that they have all come together.
This is also the Women’s House in another sense, that so many of my friends are women alone whose children have grown and moved on and who need the support and help of each other to maintain our spirits and directions. None of us are feeble, we all have our particular works, but we need that sense of community. I hope that in some respect this becomes a sanctuary where we can find a cup of tea and some peace when it is needed.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Alexandria
Nazli asked me about Alexandria. Alexandria is Alexandria and there is no place in the world quite like it. I don't know what it is about that city but it is very special. When I first moved to Egypt it was to Alexandria and it will always have a place in my heart. The history of the city itself is unique. During pharaonic times there were settlements on the coast, especially during the incursions of the sea peoples, but the ancient Egyptians were far more attuned to their river than they were to the sea. The Nile was always the overpowering force.
When Alexander the Great's army came through Egypt in pursuit of Persians, the Egyptians were apparently welcoming to the Greeks, and it was Alexander who chose the site for the city. It lies on a rocky shelf that stretches along the shoreline and even today the city is long and narrow. The Greek city was more or less confined to what is now the downtown area and the area around the old port. During their day there was an island offshore where the famous lighthouse was built, but the Ptolemies built a causeway out to the island and gradually the shoreline filled in to make a narrow land bridge out there. During the rule of the Greeks and even during Roman times, Alexandria was one of the few great cities in the world. The French archaeologists are finding the remnants of Greco-Roman Alexandria out in the old port these days and there is talk of creating an underwater park.
When the Arabs conquered Alexandria about 800 years or so later, it was a city of libraries, baths, markets, theatres...extraordinarily cosmopolitan. The Arabs were, again, not tuned to the sea and Alexandria faded and wasted away. When the British and French came to Egypt in the 1800's to continue their European war there, the only inhabited area was the land bridge to the island that had a fishing village. The rest of Alexandria lay in ruins in the sands along the sea. It was Mohamed Ali in the late 1800's who built the modern city, knowing that Egypt needed a good port on the Mediterranean. He brought in French, Italian, and Greek architects to build his new city and the modern city core is their legacy.
The current governor of Alexandria has been working hard to restore the old lady's lustre. But I have to admit that I loved the seedy old city that slept by the Mediterranean all winter, huddled against the storms, to wake to the raucous deluge of summer-sore Cairenes in June. We used to try to get out of Alex in the summer to avoid the horrendous traffic jams that could make a winter trip of 15 minutes in the city into a summer hour.
My daughter took ballet lessons from a dancer from the Kirov Ballet at the Russian Cultural Center, an exquisite old mansion with enormous Art Decco stained glass windows in the staircase and a ball room for the ballet class. When the Soviet Union fell, the ballet classes went on, but no flag flew over the cultural centre. No one knew who would claim it and the staff were a pot pourri of the nationalities of the old Soviet Union.
We had a 10 metre cruising sailboat that we kept at the Yacht Club across the island from Qait Bey, the restored Arab fort that was built on the foundations of the ruined lighthouse in the Middle Ages. We would sail along the coastline from the old port to Montaza Palace, now a public park but once one of King Farouk's summer palaces.
When I first got my horses, I kept them at Smouha Club, an equestrian-oriented sporting club that had been established around the turn of the century by a local Jewish businessman. He was granted a large chunk of the city in a rather swampy area to create an equestrian community in Alexandria. They drained the swamp and parceled the land up with specifications that the houses could only occupy a certain percentage of each parcel in order to leave enough room for the horses. He also planned out Smouha Club with a regulation racing oval around the perimeter and a golf course in the center. I was told that at one time it had the best golf course in the eastern Mediterranean. By the time I came there, not all of the racing oval was properly maintained and the golf course had long ago fallen into ruin. The wealthy horse owners who had been members and neighbours of the club had gone into exile during the socialist times of Nasser. For me it was heaven to take my horses out there to wander in the far end of the oval far enough away from the rest of the club that it was almost like being out of the city. We used to see all sorts of wildlife and migratory birds out there.
I could go on about the beauty of this old sea lady forever. There are some good modern Egyptian novels in English translation about life in Alex, there is always Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea) about society in Alex between the wars, and Cafavy's poetry is exquisite. The best thing is just to come and see her.
When Alexander the Great's army came through Egypt in pursuit of Persians, the Egyptians were apparently welcoming to the Greeks, and it was Alexander who chose the site for the city. It lies on a rocky shelf that stretches along the shoreline and even today the city is long and narrow. The Greek city was more or less confined to what is now the downtown area and the area around the old port. During their day there was an island offshore where the famous lighthouse was built, but the Ptolemies built a causeway out to the island and gradually the shoreline filled in to make a narrow land bridge out there. During the rule of the Greeks and even during Roman times, Alexandria was one of the few great cities in the world. The French archaeologists are finding the remnants of Greco-Roman Alexandria out in the old port these days and there is talk of creating an underwater park.
When the Arabs conquered Alexandria about 800 years or so later, it was a city of libraries, baths, markets, theatres...extraordinarily cosmopolitan. The Arabs were, again, not tuned to the sea and Alexandria faded and wasted away. When the British and French came to Egypt in the 1800's to continue their European war there, the only inhabited area was the land bridge to the island that had a fishing village. The rest of Alexandria lay in ruins in the sands along the sea. It was Mohamed Ali in the late 1800's who built the modern city, knowing that Egypt needed a good port on the Mediterranean. He brought in French, Italian, and Greek architects to build his new city and the modern city core is their legacy.
The current governor of Alexandria has been working hard to restore the old lady's lustre. But I have to admit that I loved the seedy old city that slept by the Mediterranean all winter, huddled against the storms, to wake to the raucous deluge of summer-sore Cairenes in June. We used to try to get out of Alex in the summer to avoid the horrendous traffic jams that could make a winter trip of 15 minutes in the city into a summer hour.
My daughter took ballet lessons from a dancer from the Kirov Ballet at the Russian Cultural Center, an exquisite old mansion with enormous Art Decco stained glass windows in the staircase and a ball room for the ballet class. When the Soviet Union fell, the ballet classes went on, but no flag flew over the cultural centre. No one knew who would claim it and the staff were a pot pourri of the nationalities of the old Soviet Union.
We had a 10 metre cruising sailboat that we kept at the Yacht Club across the island from Qait Bey, the restored Arab fort that was built on the foundations of the ruined lighthouse in the Middle Ages. We would sail along the coastline from the old port to Montaza Palace, now a public park but once one of King Farouk's summer palaces.
When I first got my horses, I kept them at Smouha Club, an equestrian-oriented sporting club that had been established around the turn of the century by a local Jewish businessman. He was granted a large chunk of the city in a rather swampy area to create an equestrian community in Alexandria. They drained the swamp and parceled the land up with specifications that the houses could only occupy a certain percentage of each parcel in order to leave enough room for the horses. He also planned out Smouha Club with a regulation racing oval around the perimeter and a golf course in the center. I was told that at one time it had the best golf course in the eastern Mediterranean. By the time I came there, not all of the racing oval was properly maintained and the golf course had long ago fallen into ruin. The wealthy horse owners who had been members and neighbours of the club had gone into exile during the socialist times of Nasser. For me it was heaven to take my horses out there to wander in the far end of the oval far enough away from the rest of the club that it was almost like being out of the city. We used to see all sorts of wildlife and migratory birds out there.
I could go on about the beauty of this old sea lady forever. There are some good modern Egyptian novels in English translation about life in Alex, there is always Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea) about society in Alex between the wars, and Cafavy's poetry is exquisite. The best thing is just to come and see her.
Friday, February 13, 2004
February Ride
When my alarm clock went off at 8:30 this morning it dragged me out of such a solid sleep that I had thrown myself into my riding clothes, loaded dogs into the car, and headed for the horses before I was really aware of being awake. Friday is the first day of the weekend in Egypt and there are a group of people in Abu Sir who meet Friday mornings to ride in the desert. I wasn't meeting the main group today because I had opted to go out later with a couple of women who ended up not coming out for various reasons. Instead I loaned my younger gelding to a French woman for a desert ride with her husband and another riding friend.
The ride was gorgeous. The air was clear, crisp, and all of the pyramids from Giza to Dahshur could be seen almost to the individual blocks of stone. This is the kind of morning that causes an addiction to Egypt. The horses were energetic to say the least and we enjoyed a number of good gallops across the desert on our way out. As we turned home the wind shifted to come out of the west and the palms turned inside out like forgotten umbrellas over the fields and horse farms.
Palms are amazing trees. Arab tradition is that the palm was the tree in the Garden of Eden, and this would make a lot of sense to me. There is no part of the palm tree that is not usable by man and/or beast. Ask any Arab horse. They love the fresh dates that fall in September, the dried dates that we give as treats for the rest of the year, the fresh fronds that hang down over the paddock, and even the bark of the tree. It's all good to eat as far as they are concerned. I love the grey sea green colour of the branches and the red, gold and brown of the dates.
By the time we finished our ride and I was headed for home, the wind had shifted a bit again, and was definitely not from the usual north west. My clear beautiful day had turned cloudy, dusty and ultimately rainy. Welcome to Amsheer. That is the month of the year if you ask one of the farmers, while if you ask a taxi driver he is likely to tell you the name of the month in the Islamic calendar, and if you ask a businessman or a visitor, you'll hear that it is Friday the 13th. We have an abundance of calendars, just as we have an abundance of almost everything in Cairo.
When I lived in Alexandria, most people kept track of what they called the Alexandrian fisherman's calendar, which is the same calendar that the farmers use because this calendar did the best job of predicting our weather. I looked for information on the web about this calendar so that I could give a better explanation, but unfortunately didn't have much luck. I'm going to have to do better research on my own, I guess. The fishermen/farmer's calendar is similar to the Coptic calendar which is similar to the ancient Egyptian calendar, but there are some differences.
To go back to Amsheeer, it is the month of changeable weather, when it may be sunny in the morning and stormy in the afternoon. Monday might be foggy, Tuesday blazing hot, Wednesday cold and windy, Thursday clear and cool. Amsheer is our transition into summer and for the fishermen on the North Coast it is a month to be reckoned with, as the storms at sea can be violent. For myself, the main question is how many layers will I wear tomorrow morning when I go out to ride and the definite hope that the sandstorm will have ended by morning.
The ride was gorgeous. The air was clear, crisp, and all of the pyramids from Giza to Dahshur could be seen almost to the individual blocks of stone. This is the kind of morning that causes an addiction to Egypt. The horses were energetic to say the least and we enjoyed a number of good gallops across the desert on our way out. As we turned home the wind shifted to come out of the west and the palms turned inside out like forgotten umbrellas over the fields and horse farms.
Palms are amazing trees. Arab tradition is that the palm was the tree in the Garden of Eden, and this would make a lot of sense to me. There is no part of the palm tree that is not usable by man and/or beast. Ask any Arab horse. They love the fresh dates that fall in September, the dried dates that we give as treats for the rest of the year, the fresh fronds that hang down over the paddock, and even the bark of the tree. It's all good to eat as far as they are concerned. I love the grey sea green colour of the branches and the red, gold and brown of the dates.
By the time we finished our ride and I was headed for home, the wind had shifted a bit again, and was definitely not from the usual north west. My clear beautiful day had turned cloudy, dusty and ultimately rainy. Welcome to Amsheer. That is the month of the year if you ask one of the farmers, while if you ask a taxi driver he is likely to tell you the name of the month in the Islamic calendar, and if you ask a businessman or a visitor, you'll hear that it is Friday the 13th. We have an abundance of calendars, just as we have an abundance of almost everything in Cairo.
When I lived in Alexandria, most people kept track of what they called the Alexandrian fisherman's calendar, which is the same calendar that the farmers use because this calendar did the best job of predicting our weather. I looked for information on the web about this calendar so that I could give a better explanation, but unfortunately didn't have much luck. I'm going to have to do better research on my own, I guess. The fishermen/farmer's calendar is similar to the Coptic calendar which is similar to the ancient Egyptian calendar, but there are some differences.
To go back to Amsheeer, it is the month of changeable weather, when it may be sunny in the morning and stormy in the afternoon. Monday might be foggy, Tuesday blazing hot, Wednesday cold and windy, Thursday clear and cool. Amsheer is our transition into summer and for the fishermen on the North Coast it is a month to be reckoned with, as the storms at sea can be violent. For myself, the main question is how many layers will I wear tomorrow morning when I go out to ride and the definite hope that the sandstorm will have ended by morning.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Avoid Allergies, Live Dirty
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Researchers have apparently decided that children who live with a dog in the house are less likely to be allergic than children who live with a cat.
"Gern explained that dogs may help curb allergies better than cats because dogs tend to be dirtier, and exposure to dirt early in life may help kick start the immune system into fighting allergies.
"Along this line of thinking, dogs are larger, and are more likely to lick you in the face compared to cats," he added."
SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, February 2004.
I quite like the idea that dirt is actually somewhat healthy. The current fascination with sterile environments seems to me to be part and parcel of the idea of risk-free life, which is itself something of an oxymoron. Life by its very nature is random, spontaneous, and therefore risky. The concept of a risk-free environment or life is one that I find actually abhorrent. This is probably one of the reasons that I like living in Egypt. Risk is part of the life here. We don't have liability insurance for every little eventuality, and that is just fine with me. If people want to ride with me, they wear a helmet, I make sure that we don't do anything truly stupid, and if they fall off, I'll get them medical attention but suing me is not part of the bargain. Riding horses is a risky activity.
Likewise, having a spotless house in Egypt is a hopeless task. With the quantity of dust that circulates 24/7, everything that you eat, drink or breathe is going to be somewhat contaminated. This doesn't mean that it's all right not to wash or to clean the fruit and vegetables. I take care that my food is as clean as possible, and visitors to Egypt who stay in my home have never come down with the dreaded intestinal diseases that so many seem to expect. It's just that the PERFECTLY clean surface is a pipe dream. And now the doctors are there to tell you that this is probably a very good thing.
I have an instant allergy prevention at my home with my ten dogs. I don't lock them up when people come over, which bothers some people. They are welcome not to visit. The dogs do not bite, don't chew on visitors' shoes, and the ones who are likely to try to sit on someone's lap are, on the whole, the size of cats, so this is not entirely inappropriate behaviour. It's nice to know, though, that they are serving a higher purpose than keeping my kitchen floor free of any dropped cookies and keeping my lap warm while I type.
Researchers have apparently decided that children who live with a dog in the house are less likely to be allergic than children who live with a cat.
"Gern explained that dogs may help curb allergies better than cats because dogs tend to be dirtier, and exposure to dirt early in life may help kick start the immune system into fighting allergies.
"Along this line of thinking, dogs are larger, and are more likely to lick you in the face compared to cats," he added."
SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, February 2004.
I quite like the idea that dirt is actually somewhat healthy. The current fascination with sterile environments seems to me to be part and parcel of the idea of risk-free life, which is itself something of an oxymoron. Life by its very nature is random, spontaneous, and therefore risky. The concept of a risk-free environment or life is one that I find actually abhorrent. This is probably one of the reasons that I like living in Egypt. Risk is part of the life here. We don't have liability insurance for every little eventuality, and that is just fine with me. If people want to ride with me, they wear a helmet, I make sure that we don't do anything truly stupid, and if they fall off, I'll get them medical attention but suing me is not part of the bargain. Riding horses is a risky activity.
Likewise, having a spotless house in Egypt is a hopeless task. With the quantity of dust that circulates 24/7, everything that you eat, drink or breathe is going to be somewhat contaminated. This doesn't mean that it's all right not to wash or to clean the fruit and vegetables. I take care that my food is as clean as possible, and visitors to Egypt who stay in my home have never come down with the dreaded intestinal diseases that so many seem to expect. It's just that the PERFECTLY clean surface is a pipe dream. And now the doctors are there to tell you that this is probably a very good thing.
I have an instant allergy prevention at my home with my ten dogs. I don't lock them up when people come over, which bothers some people. They are welcome not to visit. The dogs do not bite, don't chew on visitors' shoes, and the ones who are likely to try to sit on someone's lap are, on the whole, the size of cats, so this is not entirely inappropriate behaviour. It's nice to know, though, that they are serving a higher purpose than keeping my kitchen floor free of any dropped cookies and keeping my lap warm while I type.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
A Good Mare is Gone
One of the reasons for my wanting to move to Abu Sir has been the wish to be able to spend more time with my horses. I have a small herd that I keep together in sand and grass paddocks with a large run-in shed for shelter. I started out with one chestnut Arab mare who was a present, the proverbial gift horse. Dorika and I had a rocky start because I'd spent twenty years out of the saddle when one of my husband's friends asked him if he could give me the mare. I had to re-learn to ride and no one in their right mind does this with an unbroken Arab mare. I had help in training her and a couple of calmer mounts to get me back into riding, so we both survived.
About a year after Dory came into my life, an American friend in Alexandria brought a lovely grey mare down from a stable in the Pyramids area. She had bought the mare for jumping, having been told that the mare was about 9 years old. When her mare refused to jump after about 3 weeks, Betty asked a British vet who was living in Alexandria to check her over. Rebecca checked as asked and announced that the 9 year old mare wasn't a day under 15 years and that, even more important, she was at least 5 months pregnant, which was why she refused to jump. Betty was at a loss as to what to do because she really didn't want to take care of a horse that she couldn't ride in the way she wanted to, but she couldn't exactly turn her out on the street either. Luckily for all of us, I'd fallen in love with this mare and I offered Betty to buy her for a relatively low price and the promise that I'd never sell her. Nimbus was mine. Six months later she delivered a mule that was the delight of all the children who frequented the stable and she and Dorika became inseparable companions.
Nim lived with me from 1991 until January 12, 2004. She taught innumerable children to ride and was my first choice of a mount for any friend who didn't know how to ride at all. Invariably, she was an honest, kind babysitter for the worst rider, and she was an opinionated, bossy, stubborn mare for those who were foolish enough to think that they knew more than she did. As far as I can tell, she had done everything that a horse in Egypt could do before she came to me. If the mood was upon her, she was quite capable of strutting her stuff in dressage, especially if there was a goodlooking stallion watching. Riding her clockwise on a grass racetrack in Alexandria past an empty grandstand, she showed me that she could remember very well what her job as a race horse had been. It didn't matter that she had no one to race with, the ride was hair-raising and wonderful at the same time. After that, I made sure that I rode in the opposite direction.
When we moved to Cairo, Dorika and Nimbus came with us. They each gave me a son after breeding them to some purebred Egyptian Arab stallions, and they raised their sons together in a small band that insured the boys learned their manners very well. By the time that we started doing a lot of desert riding, Nimbus was probably quite close to twenty years old. She never was as fast as the Red Rocket, Dory, but one time she got the chance to race her stablemate and win, and all of us who were there that day remember her happiness at finally putting Dory in her place. I never knew that a horse could gloat before that day.
For the past few years, Nimbus had been retired to the pasture for the most part, but she still enjoyed getting out for a nice ramble once in a while. We saved her for children who were small, light and willing to be cared for. Her snowy white winter coat was always a source of joy and delight as we never clipped her and left it long to keep her warm during the winter months. This year I'd noticed that she was losing some weight although she was healthy in every other way. We tried to tempt her with favourite foods, but she was just gradually withdrawing from life. During the week before she died, she asked to be moved into a paddock on her own away from Dorika and she decided that she didn't need the grain portion that she'd always gotten. We respected her wishes and granted them, moving her into the sunnier sand paddock, giving her a blanket against the chill, and letting her enjoy her sunny afternoons in her own way. The day before she died I was there checking the horses, and she was lying in the sun on the sand in her blanket. Usually she greeted me with a whinny when I showed up, but that day she rested there quietly, her legs drawn up under her and her elegant white head just gazing in my direction. I could feel that she didn't want to be disturbed so I greeted her from a distance, knowing that if I approached her she would have felt it necessary to rise.
The next afternoon I got the call that every horseowner dreads and that I'd been expecting. I was already on my way out, so I called the vet from my cell phone to tell him to come to attend Nim. She was in some distress, almost as if it were colic, but the signs were that her cardiopulmonary system was shutting down and her heart just couldn't pump the necessary oxygen to her body. We gave her an injection that would let her go without the pain of a full blown heart attack and I sat with her head in my lap while she left.
I still look for her when I go out to the paddocks. I know that she's not there and I'm thankful that I have her son and grandson, for Dorika foaled a chestnut colt by Nimbus' son about 18 months ago. She was a grand old lady. She did know everything.
Fixing Two Houses
A letter from a reader of my blog asked me today if I'd quit posting because she hadn't seen anything new since the end of December. The time has been slipping past me so quickly that I haven't even noticed. January was a busy month for me. I found a place to live in Abu Sir so that I can finally move out to the country with the menagerie and I found a tenant for the lovely old house in Maadi that is much too big for me now that the children are living outside Egypt.
Naturally (for anyone here in Egypt at least) that meant that first I have to arrange with the owners of my leased house in Abu Sir to finish the portions of the house that were still unfinished in some kind of reasonable time frame. Since the house was essentially unfinished, this has been rather instructive. Having gone about all the negotiations through the area omda (family head, boss, capo da capo, take your pick) I could be fairly sure that items agreed upon would stay agreed. Luckily for me (and the omda family too) they also take care of much of the local construction, happily at fairly high levels of competency. So I had to pick tiles for floors on the owners' budget, arrange for elecrical outlets, have a bedroom cupboard constructed, order a small kitchen, measure all my appliances (Hooray! everything fits!) and the furniture that I want to bring, design new flight cages for the parrots, pursuade the landlord that they REALLY do want to build a small laundry/storage/freezer room out back, look for curtain materials, reupholster furniture, and pack a seven bedroom three story villa into sufficiently small boxes to fit into a two bedroom cottage. Not much going on, really.
The packing of the old house has been going on apace with both of my children's rooms almost finished. The main thing to pack has been books, which in itself has been very satisfying, not to mention the thrill when yet another of my missing treasures has shown up in a child's bookcase. Some of these books will go to the house in Sharm, while the second bedroom in Abu Sir will be a library to house my personal collection. Over the years I've accumulated rather a lot of Arabic literature translated into English, Egyptian history especially as related to some of the odder aspects of the British occupation and the peculiarities of cohabitation that evolved, and some very good literature in general. I think that the time has come for me to re-read a lot of my books. I bet they will have new meaning for me.
Then there is the renovation of the Maadi house to arrange. The new tenant is an English engineer for a multinational oil company and this is his second stay in Cairo. He fell in love with the villa and fortunately his ideas and my own are very much in synch with regards to the renovation. We've found contractors that both of us are comfortable with and now I just have to get out of the house to be out of the way. Right now I feel very much like someone with one foot on a boat about to set sail and the other on a dock that is fixed immovably to the shore. Someday very soon I will get both feet on the boat and be underway, but right now I'm getting very good at doing the splits.
Naturally (for anyone here in Egypt at least) that meant that first I have to arrange with the owners of my leased house in Abu Sir to finish the portions of the house that were still unfinished in some kind of reasonable time frame. Since the house was essentially unfinished, this has been rather instructive. Having gone about all the negotiations through the area omda (family head, boss, capo da capo, take your pick) I could be fairly sure that items agreed upon would stay agreed. Luckily for me (and the omda family too) they also take care of much of the local construction, happily at fairly high levels of competency. So I had to pick tiles for floors on the owners' budget, arrange for elecrical outlets, have a bedroom cupboard constructed, order a small kitchen, measure all my appliances (Hooray! everything fits!) and the furniture that I want to bring, design new flight cages for the parrots, pursuade the landlord that they REALLY do want to build a small laundry/storage/freezer room out back, look for curtain materials, reupholster furniture, and pack a seven bedroom three story villa into sufficiently small boxes to fit into a two bedroom cottage. Not much going on, really.
The packing of the old house has been going on apace with both of my children's rooms almost finished. The main thing to pack has been books, which in itself has been very satisfying, not to mention the thrill when yet another of my missing treasures has shown up in a child's bookcase. Some of these books will go to the house in Sharm, while the second bedroom in Abu Sir will be a library to house my personal collection. Over the years I've accumulated rather a lot of Arabic literature translated into English, Egyptian history especially as related to some of the odder aspects of the British occupation and the peculiarities of cohabitation that evolved, and some very good literature in general. I think that the time has come for me to re-read a lot of my books. I bet they will have new meaning for me.
Then there is the renovation of the Maadi house to arrange. The new tenant is an English engineer for a multinational oil company and this is his second stay in Cairo. He fell in love with the villa and fortunately his ideas and my own are very much in synch with regards to the renovation. We've found contractors that both of us are comfortable with and now I just have to get out of the house to be out of the way. Right now I feel very much like someone with one foot on a boat about to set sail and the other on a dock that is fixed immovably to the shore. Someday very soon I will get both feet on the boat and be underway, but right now I'm getting very good at doing the splits.
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