Tahrir Square and the Cairo Museum

January 4, 2012

A room with a view.

Ahhhh, broken English. It seems the concept of an international student I.D. Card, though commonly understood inside museums and sites, is outside the local lexicon. I asked the pension staff, who speak extremely good English and come in contact with hundreds of Westerners every month, where I could acquire one. They sent me to the Mogamma Building. It turned out to be in the heart of Tahrir Square. The square was quiet, except for a few sentinels in tents, keeping the inner circle, “occupied.”

3 Photos of Tahrir Square

Plain clothes police stopped me in the metro station to ask what my business was, I have to say they were very polite about it. The Mogamma building turned out to be a huge bureaucratic nightmare of bouncing from one window to the next handing me applications for student visas. I finally realized they were passing me around because they had no idea what I was actually after.



 I finally gave up and left for the Cairo Museum a couple of blocks away. It’s a magnificent 19^th century building and with a collection in desperate need of some TLC.

Cairo Museum

Why do the majority of tourists carry laptops on vacation? Not throw-away kindles or mini laptops, but full on Macs and high end PCs?! These devices are the equivalent to about 1 year's wages for the average Egyptian. My lack of an unabashedly opulent display of wealth is clearly behind the times...

I ended the day viewing a performance, (as in performative), by Egyptian whirling dervishes. VERY different from their Turkish counterparts, who move slowly and ethereally, these Sufis were jubilant and frenetic. It’s difficult to describe the dance. Since the performers are also devout practitioners of the faith; the lines become blurry. Even though they did not charge for attendance, the use of spotlight and stage, as well as the encouragement of applause certainly outweighed any religious value. It was an amazing spectacle of multi-color skirts whooshing in circles at breakneck speeds for 15 minutes or more between pauses. Certainly at times altered states of consciousness must be induced even for experienced performers, but this was a secularized context with the temple-turned-theater. Whatever, it was really cool.

Al-Tannoura at the Wikala of Al-Ghouri

Next up...Jews and Christians in Cairo!