WEEK IX: Countdown

The last week is very busy as there are some things I still want to do before I leave (I don’t manage to get them all done) and most importantly I need to say goodbye to all my friends. To fit all these last times – last Bible studies, last service at All Saints, last coffee with Injy, with Reem, with Effat, last visit to my first host family – into only a few days I stay out quite late for the first time while living in Heliopolis. Traffic from downtown out here is just crazy, the streets seem even more crammed than at rush hour. The bus going even further out of the city, on the other hand is quite empty and although I am more or less the only woman I feel safe.

One of the things I did manage was buying a traditional Egyptian lamp at Khan-el-Khalili and visit Al-Azhar Park. My host sister Menan and I combine this as the park and the market are both in the neighborhood of the famous Al-Azhar mosque. After a nice long walk around the green park and some fun on the playground (where we and all the other young people are told to leave by the guards although no children are around), we walk down the hill on which the park is situated and after a while we find a small gate to leave for the market. As we step through the wall we once more enter a village within the city. Narrow sandy lanes with tall houses (not so rural) with fancy facades, open workshops (mainly furniture) on the ground floor, goats, chickens, dogs and cats running in the street, people eye us suspiciously and we are quite lost. An old man carrying the wooden skeleton of a big armchair asks us if we want to go to Khan-el-Khalili and then tells us to follow him criss-crossing through this maze of lanes and alleys and trying to avoid being run over by a motorcycle we reach the main street that leads to the market after a while. I find a nice hand-made copper lamp in the shape of a star and even manage to get it home safely, first in a crazy microbus, and later also on the plane.

 Classical tourists' view on Islamic Cairo from Al-Azhar park

 

 Al-Azhar Mosque

The approaching end of a longer stay is always a catalyst for being there in my experience. By really understanding that I will have to leave soon I appreciate what I had and have and the last days I’ll be there more and also makes me use them better. In this sense, too, it will probably good to come back not too far in the future in order to build on this.

For the first time I actually get the feeling that leaving here and getting back there will not only be easy. I always knew and on the other hand I know of some things I really miss and that I will be glad to have them back: Clean air, light evenings, cool nights and the freedom to wear what I want to name the most important ones.

I changed some habits, or am underway to do so, for example, I by now nearly as often mix up the y and z on my own keyboard as on the qwerty-keyboard of my host sister’s computer.