Anafora

I had hoped to visit the White Desert this time, as it doesn’t work out I go to Anafora with some girls from church. Anafora (Coptic for well) is a Christian retreat place a one hour bus ride outside of Cairo close to the Cairo Alexandria Desert Road.

It was first built because women could not stay in the nearby monastery as far as I understand. By now it has developed into a large compound with guest rooms, fields, gardens with small canals, a main house with a library, kitchen and large dining room and, of course, churches and chapels. Some sisters live here permanently, take care of the buildings and prepare traditional Egyptian meals from the organic vegetables grown on Anafora fields. Many more women work as assistants or produce scrap rugs (they are EVERYWHERE) and other craftwork sold at the gift shops. We literally buy baskets of them, the most astonishing items being Coptic priest hand puppets.

The surroundings make us feel very holiday-like. We spent the days outside on the terraces or roofs (or sometimes inside when it gets too hot) reading and singing, use the chance to get some exercise and take walks through the fields and to other parts of the compound. Sometimes we meet young guys walking around dressed as Roman soldiers and even Jesus himself seems to have fuul and tameya for lunch (we are told they are from a church in Heliopolis and are preparing the annual Easter movie). The other guests are mainly Egyptians and Swedes, so there is some language mix around at meal times. Coming from Cairo, of course, it is very quiet or rather, a different kind of noise created by the strong wind.

The air is fresh, but in this second week of March the sun is already strong enough for hot early afternoons – and I get some sunburn to take home to the German spring with its 8 degrees.

To me both the palm trees and the buildings where we sleep remarkably resemble drawings from children’s books: The branchless straight trunks crowned with the prototypical leaves brushing the roofs of playfully arranged two room apartments, every room topped by its own high cupola with five small colored glasses in it.

At night the only sounds are the wind, the mighty rustle of the palm trees, a faint sound of the road in the distance and occasional barking of dogs from far away. In the second night I take a moonlight walk on the roof of our house. Unfortunately I don’t know my camera well enough to make it actually take pictures here, but apart from the light the most eerie thing was the wind. I don’t think I can catch that on photo anyway.

Returning to the city I actually get more of a Cairo shock than when I arrived here ten days before. Probably because I don’t know this part of the city. Entering from the desert road under a grey sky that today seems to end not very far from the endless blocks of half finished houses, all concrete skeletons and brick fillings in various states of completion, it feels like descending into a different world. Soon the scenery changes  to somewhat smaller houses, more busy streets with vendors and people spending time outside in the small patches of greens in the center of roundabouts. When we reach and cross the Nile the world changes again, green, open, but very urban. From the car I see some parts of Mohandeseen and other neighborhoods not at all far from where I usually go, but I haven’t been here before. Banks, embassies and private schools in sleek glass skyscrapers and beautiful old town villas right next to each other face the riverside street, the restaurants on the ships are getting ready for the summer, the rush hour traffic leaves no empty spaces. I get of the car at 26^th of July Bridge and walk home, feeling a bit overwhelmed although this is my usual way back home from school. But as soon as I reach the guest house and the balcony, things are back to normal and the sound of the city doesn’t seem that loud anymore.