It’s another beautiful day in Alexandria. I am sitting on the balcony of my room in Hotel Egypt (the one I will be staying in for the next 8 weeks) in the mid-afternoon, listening to The Mixed Tape by Jack’s Mannequin while looking out at the Mediterranean. From here you can see not only the glimmering sea, but also some of the tallest buildings in Africa, minarets of mosques piercing the sky, cars zooming by on the Corneish, the large crosses at either ends of the harbor, and Fort Qaitbey (also known as the Citadel) on the eastern shore. I’ve been in Alexandria for just over a week now, and I am just beginning to settle in.
On my second day in Alexandria (a Sunday), I visited an Evangelical church here with the group from Sahara Challenge, which was an incredible experience. To listen to and participate in worship in Arabic was an awesome experience (especially because I could understand a good bit of it), and I was particularly struck by the the contrast of our worship to the evening call to prayer, which began as we were worshipping. At one point the lights went off, but as the locals will affectionately say, “this is Egypt,” and here you are ready for anything and everything. The boys of the congregation came down the aisles placing candles on the benches, dripping some wax on each bench beforehand for the candle to settle in, and in no time the service resumed. Afterwards, all the members of the congregation greeted us so very warmly, and we were invited to enjoy drinks and snacks with them down in the courtyard. Here the adults caught up with each other, the younger crowd hung out, and the children played football. Spending time chatting with each group and getting acquainted with all the generations there, it was incredible for me to see the spectrum of personalities, knowing all the while that the same God saves us, keeps us, guides us, and inspires us. Incredible.
After the second day, the Georgetown program that I am here for started up. I moved hotel rooms, the Georgetown students moved in, and in no time we were in class at Alexandria University’s TAFL (Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language) Center. The third-year Arabic class has only four people (me, my roommate, Brandon M., Grace N., and Hanna C.), and we have two professors (Duktura Iman al-Gamal and Ustez Yasser Mokhtar). We meet for class four hours a day and have a reasonable amount of homework each evening, and I am very happy with everything about the program. I am already seeing myself make incredible leaps in my Arabic, and while I feel that I’m being pushed constantly, I am still enjoying myself and relaxing a good bit as well.
One of the things that has been very difficult, though, has been keeping in good health. The food here is much different (there’s much more oil and fat in everything) and thus I expected that my stomach would have a difficult time adjusting, which has taken less than the whole of this week. The incredibly loud environment has also given me my fair share of headaches (everyone speaks very loudly, honking your horn is a recreational activity, and sometimes the phones sound like fire alarms), and the pollution and second-hand smoke is doing a number on my already frail respiratory system.
This past weekend, our program went on a very cool bus tour of Alexandria. First, we visited Pompey’s Pillar (a 30m column in the ruins of the Temple of Serapeum), which looks over the ancient settlement of Rhakotis, from which Alexandria first came. Erected in 291 AD, it is the only monument in Alexandria intact from antiquity. Then, we went to the Catacombs of Kom Ash-Shuqqafa, which to me was by far the most interesting part of the tour. First discovered when a donkey disappeared through the ground, they are the largest known Roman burial site in Egypt. It is an incredible piece of architecture with different rooms, each serving different purposes (such as the triclinium, which was where the relatives of the deceased would have meals in commemoration of their beloved), but the most interesting thing to me was the fusion of ancient Egyptian style of art and the Roman style of the time. Roman and Egyptian gods were depicted in the same friezes and murals, some of them even being joined together to form mixed gods, and there were also statues done in the rigid manner of ancient Egyptians, but crowned with Roman locks of hair. Haunted by story after story of ancient characters, the Catacombs of Kom Ash-Shuqqafa are definitely a jewel of Alexandria.
Next we went to the Alexandria National Museum, second in Egypt only to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The basement houses Pharonic artifacts, the ground floor has Graeco-Roman art (as well as underwater excavation findings that, like the Catacombs, synthesize ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art), and the top floor houses Coptic and Islamic art. I found it very interesting that our tour guide, a Muslim woman, gave very little attention to the Coptic parts of the tour (they actually had original biographies of the lives of saints from the early Church) and didn’t even acknowledge the existence of Israel (“Egypt is bordered to the west by Libya, to the south by Sudan, to the east by the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia, and to the north by the Jordan and the Mediterranean,” and apparently there’s a big conflict between Palestine and Jordan…).
After making a quick stop at the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre called Kom al-Dikka, the only known Roman amphitheatre in Africa, we finished our tour of Ancient Alexandria. Suffice it to say that too little is left of what was once the New York City of the ancient world; much of the blame rests on the Europeanization of Egypt and the Islamic conquests, but a good deal of it rests on the people of Alexandria themselves.
We then headed to the palace gardens of Montazah, and after some exploring we headed back to Mahatat Ramla, the heart of modern Alexandria and locale of the Hotel Egypt. While the rest of the group went to see the Citadel and the Library, I went to Mahatat Sidi Gaber to catch a train to Cairo, where I met up with my Sahara Challenge friends one more time in Heliopolis. The extent of my trip went something like this: I got on my train at 3 PM, arrived at Cairo around 6. I took the metro to Heliopolis, met up with my friends, and we waded through some mad street party that was going on. We sat down for dinner between 7:30 and 8, and by 9 I was on my train back to Alexandria. I got in around midnight, did some homework, and went to class the next day. Suffice it to say, that’s about as busy as a day can get, and it was certainly the most eventful one so far since my first day.
But as for today, with a little less than half the day to kill, I think I’ll go out and finally buy a much-needed pare of shoes at a local knock-off store, look for Al Maaref Bookshop, get dinner to go at insanely popular chain restaurant Gad for the millionth time (yes, I’ve been here for a week), do homework, and watch the Spain-Portugal Round of 16 game. Alas, just another day in Alexandria…
