
{"id":558,"date":"2007-09-16T16:36:03","date_gmt":"2007-09-16T23:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=558"},"modified":"2007-09-16T16:36:03","modified_gmt":"2007-09-16T23:36:03","slug":"coptic-cairo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2007\/09\/coptic-cairo\/","title":{"rendered":"Coptic Cairo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My Ramadan resolution this year is to see a new neighborhood of Cairo every weekend. Yesterday was Coptic Cairo&#8217;s turn, a minuscule walled clump of houses a little to the south of central Cairo that houses a Christian enclave.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest draw there is the Coptic Museum, which had already closed when I arrived in the early afternoon, on account of Ramadan. (The guards are Muslim, and Cairo office hours tend to shorten during this month.) I&#8217;ll need to go see that next time there is a visitor. In the meantime, I went for a walk down the back alleys and the poorer end of the cemetery. As always, it&#8217;s where the tourists stop going that the (albeit decrepit) charm begins.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"context\"><span class=\"sg-marginalia-250\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"1387014199_44e7407f77_m.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.stefangeens.com\/1387014199_44e7407f77_m.jpg?resize=180%2C240\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p><\/span>Almost all the religious iconography revolves around St. George and the unfortunate dragon he slayed &mdash; each depiction tackier than the rest. He also seems to have been tortured rather gruesomely &mdash; how gruesomely exactly is driven home by an elaborate display of iron shoes with spikes pointing upwards and a rack, proudly displayed by the local church guardian.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Orthodox cemetery was perhaps the place with the most character, a very serene place away from the typical Cairo bustle. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/stefangeens\/sets\/72157602021664950\/\">I&#8217;ll let the photos speak for themselves<\/a>. Also, see the path I took (and the photos) in Google Earth: Just download <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stefangeens.com\/Cairo.kmz\">this file<\/a> and open it in Google Earth; it contains all my georeferenced content for Cairo. (No Google Earth? <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=http:%2F%2Fwww.stefangeens.com%2Fcoptic.kmz&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;ll=30.006235,31.23188&amp;spn=0.00412,0.004782&amp;t=h&amp;om=1&amp;source=embed\">See the content in Google Maps instead<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Ramadan resolution this year is to see a new neighborhood of Cairo every weekend. Yesterday was Coptic Cairo&#8217;s turn, a minuscule walled clump of houses a little to the south of central Cairo that houses a Christian enclave. The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2007\/09\/coptic-cairo\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-90","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}