Joking aside, not every week here is just as exciting, and I guess this has been one of the more uneventful ones, at least the beginning of it. Except from spending some time with good friends, I have mostly been doing schoolwork. I have been a bit frustrated with school as I have felt that some classes have been way too difficult and some way too easy, and that the workload has been quite heavy, not leaving me a lot of time to practice my speaking. However, after a few feedback sessions it seems the teachers are beginnning to figure out which level we're actually on, and things are starting to pick up. I am therefore much more optimistic now. Chiara and I have also started taking private lessons in 3ammiya, which I think will be really helpful - if you don't know what 3ammiya means, you haven't been doing your homework and need to read my blog more carefully! Shame on you. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Last Friday I went on a walking tour of our area with a group called "Alexandria Scholars". The idea was to see Alexandria in the relaxed atmosphere of a Friday morning. Friday is a holiday here, and early in the morning the streets are quite deserted, as everyone is at home sleeping. Unfortunately most of the Alexandria Scholars were also at home sleeping, so apart from the woman organising the tour I was the only one to turn up. However, the private tour I got was definitely worth waking up early. The woman giving the tour is very knowledgeable about the area, and I got to know many interesting facts, for instance that Fouad Street close to where we live is where the Royal Quarters were situated in the Roman era.
It was great getting to know the area a bit more. Our neighbourhood is dominated by Italian architecture, and used to be the Latin Quarter of Alexandria. The houses here were the villas of the rich and cosmopolitan Alexandrians, whereas their servants used to live in the less affluent neighbourhood of Kom El-Dikka, situated on a hilltop nearby. Entering Kom El-Dikka is like entering a completely different world, but even though the buildings of Kom El-Dikka are less extravagant than those of the Latin Quarter, to put it mildly, I still found the houses here far more charming than the houses in many of the newer neighbourhoods. You can say what you want about Kom El-Dikka, but the steep streets here have history - it is an old neighbourhood where several of Alexandria's artists have grown up, the greatest among them Sayed Darwish, the city's big composer.
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| Steps leading from the Latin Quarter to Kom El-Dikka |
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| Bakery in Kom El-Dikka with proper bread ovens |
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| Italian Architecture in the Latin Quarter |
After walking around for a bit we went to see the Roman Amphitheatre nearby. The amphitheatre, which is from the 2nd century, is not very big, but it is quite well preserved. It is surrounded by some other ruins, possibly of Alexandria's ancient university. There are believed to be quite a lot of ruins from the Roman era in the city, but as the Romans apparently used to build their houses down into the ground, new buildings have long since been built on top of them, and not many of the old ruins have been excavated so far. People therefore say that there is a whole other Alexandria underground.
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| The Roman Amphitheatre |
I really enjoyed the walking tour, as you see an area in a completely different light after getting to know a bit about it. Alexandria is also extremely peaceful an early Friday morning - such a contrast to the normal hustle and bustle. One of the nicest things about the tour was that it proved a great opportunity for me to practice my Arabic. The woman giving me the tour is a professor at the University of Alexandria, where she among other things teaches 3ammiya to foreigners, so she both had the ability and patience to speak to me in slow, clear and simple 3ammiya. This meant that I could actually understand her quite well, and at times I even caught myself just listening to what she was saying, without thinking about the fact that she was speaking in Arabic. Small victories.
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| The view from our flat in one of the Italian style villas |
Wednesday was our last day of school in a week and a half, as we are lucky enough to have an extended Eid holiday. This weekend Muslims all over the world celebrate Eid al-Adha, in remembrance of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail to God, and of Ismail's stoic acceptance of God's will, even when it meant he had to lose his life. However, God rewarded them for their faith and loyalty, and let Ibrahim sacrifice a ram instead. As a symbol of this each family is to sacrifice a domestic animal on Eid al-Adha. A third of the meat they keep for themselves, a third they give to friends and relatives and the last third is to be given to the poor. You know Eid is coming when truck after truck drive into town with animals on their flatbeds, and you can hear cows lowing through the night. And there's nothing like waking up to people cleaning blood out of the streets and dead sheep hanging everywhere.
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| Dipping your hand in the blood and putting your fingerprint on the wall is supposed to bring good luck |
We spent the day at the villa of Madam Magda, our course director. She has a beautiful holiday villa by the beach on the edge of Alexandria, and had been kind enough to invite us there to have Eid lunch with her and her family. While it might be a little bit of a stretch calling a meal served at 5pm "lunch", we had a wonderful day. Most of the time we spent sitting around in the beautiful garden chatting to people from school and making new friends, and we also went for a swim at the beach. The water was still surprisingly warm, and I think our swim lasted almost an hour. I heard it snowed in Norway yesterday, by the way. How about that.
When the food was finally ready, we had many delicious dishes to choose from, most of them based on the meat from the sheep we had slaughtered in the morning. As the fussy westerner I am, I am of course used to meat being something you get vacuum packed from the supermarket, far removed from any thoughts of real, living animals. Meat comes from animals, you say? What a ridiculous thought! This was therefore my first time seeing an animal being slaughtered. It actually bothered me less than I would have imagined - I guess I figured that this is what has happened to an animal every time I've had meat on my plate, and that it really doesn't make much of a difference to the animal whether I see it or not. The worst part was seeing the sheep lying there scared before being killed: as soon as it was dead, it was much easier to watch. It was a little bit weird having the meat on my plate afterwards, however. Not mainly because I had seen the slaughtering, I think, but because the streets had been smelling strongly of sheep's blood all day, which the heat does not make more appetising, and the smell of the cooked meat faintly reminded me of that sickening smell. The food was very nice, though, and my first experience with the more bloody part of Eid went much more smoothly than expected.
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| Some of the students who turned up to the Eid lunch |
As usual, I enjoyed the drive home quite a lot as well: there's always so much to see from the bus window. Alexandria is squeezed in between the sea and a row of lakes, and our route took us past the lakes on our way home. The view of the thousand lights from the city reflected on the smooth surface of the water was beautiful.
By the time we came back to our flat in the evening, we were full, exhausted and happy. All in all, I think my first Eid can definitely be called a success. The celebrations go on for two more days, but they will have to go on without us, as we will be going on holiday tomorrow.
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| Me dressed up for Eid in a gallabiya Chiara lent me. A gallabiya is a traditional garment worn many places in the Middle East |
Now excuse me while I go chill on the beach for a week.
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