{"id":561,"date":"2007-04-22T23:23:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-23T06:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=561"},"modified":"2007-04-22T23:23:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-23T06:23:00","slug":"of-dust-storms-and-close-shaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2007\/04\/of-dust-storms-and-close-shaves\/","title":{"rendered":"Of dust storms and close shaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cairo is such a vast, overwhelming place, so full of contrasts, that I’m finding it hard to render the place accurately on this blog. It doesn’t help that work is keeping me very busy — I haven’t even managed to start my Arabic lessons, and in a few days I will again be in Sweden for a week. In other words, Cairo requires that I pay more attention to it before I can start writing engagingly about it.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday I experienced my first real sandstorm, Another blogger recounts her experience<\/a> in the same sandstorm.<\/span>and it was a good one, the locals agree<\/span>. It arrived with a gust; the sky turned yellow, the air turned to dust, and within hours everything in this city was covered in a layer of sand. I ventured outside, my eyes blinking with the frequency of windshield wipers in a downpour, and everything around me looked like scenes from a sepia-toned movie. I ended up at the Marriott, where the pool had sandbanks in it<\/em>. Yes, I went for a swim. No, these photos do not show you what it really was like:<\/p>\n

\"duststorm1jpg.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"duststorm2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

On Sunday I went to Islamic Cairo, the Cairo that incubated Naguib Mahfouz<\/a>. There are touristy parts, but further out there is that now-familiar juxtaposition of ancient architectural gems swamped by poverty.I mapped out the walk on my Cairo layer for Google Earth<\/a>. Download it if you don’t already subscribe to it.<\/span> The streets are dirt-covered, and it was hot today, but I managed to veer my way through the back alleys. I also managed to get some mint tea at Fishawi<\/a>, Mahfouz’s favorite haunt, so it wasn’t all one continuous effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier, I had wandered into the barber shop around the corner from where I live and asked tohave my head shaved — I thought with an electric shaver. The barber had other ideas. For the first time ever, my head got shaved with a switchblade, and I must say that in this weather, having your head lathered with cool shaving cream is quite a luxuriant feeling. I felt like a new person. Total cost, including tea and water: \u00a3E 15, or \u20ac2.<\/p>\n

I think there is a theme developing here in the rhythms of my daily life. There is a lot of venturing out into dusty, busy Cairo, and then there is a lot of cleansing, bathing, rejuvenating — in the Marriott’s pool, in a shower, or with smaller luxuries like that barber. Get dirty. Get clean. Get dirty. Get clean. Have I mentioned that we have a cleaner for our apartment? She comes twice a week. \u00a3E 40 (\u20ac5.20) per 4-hour session.<\/span>You pay more attention to the pleasures of cleanliness here.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cairo is such a vast, overwhelming place, so full of contrasts, that I’m finding it hard to render the place accurately on this blog. It doesn’t help that work is keeping me very busy — I haven’t even managed to … Continue reading →<\/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-561","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-93","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","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=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}