A Day in Cairo, Part III

It was 10:30am when I finally went back up that alley I had walked down three hours earlier, and I pulled the map out of my pocket for the first time. It took me about 30 minutes of observing and few blocks of walking before I was finally able to pinpoint my location. As is typical of a major Muslim city, there were mosques and minarets everywhere. Except here in Islamic Cairo, every single mosque I saw looked as old as the Tower of London. I later learned that most were not quite that old, but many date back 500 years or more. I found a building that looked particularly interesting, asked the police outside if there was a fee (who promptly waved me in), and went inside. At this point I didn’t yet realize it was a mosque, so I received a “hissing at” (African way of getting someone’s attention) and was reminded to remove my shoes.

It turns out I had stumbled into the mosque named Al-Azhar, the oldest Sunni (thank you, Sam, for correcting me) mosque in the Islamic world and home of the first Qu’ranic university. It was built in 970. I was circumnavigating the white marble courtyard when an Egyptian man in western dress invited me to come inside to the qibla. I stepped through a wooden door and into a stone world of 1000 years ago. The floors had modern carpets, but everything else looked more or less original. He showed me the tomb where the king and his wife were buried. I think he said this was the king who had built the mosque and raised one of the minarets. I say "I think" because I only understood every third sentence, he spoke in such a thick Arab accent. [However, I caught that his name was Osman, and he was a teacher at the university.] Still, the tour was wonderful. I paid a small fee to a Muslim man for making change of my large Egyptian pound note, made a donation to the mosque, declared “No, I didn’t want to go to the top of the minaret for another twenty pounds,” and tipped the man who kept my shoes. I laced up my travel boots, consulted the map, and set off to find the Citadel.

I hadn’t walked but across the street and past the next building when another Egyptian man stopped me and invited me to come to his shop right down the way. After all, the other shops across the thoroughfare (in the Khan al-Khalili) were so, so expensive, and his craftsmanship was very good.

“I am going to the Citadel,” I said. “I don’t have much time.”

“Yes,” he replied, “you can come to my shop and then keep going to the Citadel, it’s right on the way. You can just look, no need to buy.”

“OK,” I agreed, albeit a bit reluctantly.

We wove back through the labyrinth of narrow city streets, with men whizzing by us carrying various kinds of food and drinks on trays to one shop or another. It was lunchtime. He turned me into his shop that contained some of the finest wood and stone-work I had ever seen – mostly chess sets and jewelry boxes, carved in wood and bone and mother-of-pearl. Every piece contained intricately detailed inlay work in every sort of geometrical design you could imagine, all perfectly symmetrical. I probably stood there for 30 minutes, looking at piece after piece, each one more resplendent than the next. I was truly saddened to tell him that I was not able to buy any of them. He walked me back through the maze of shops, took a turn, then stopped in the middle of the street and pointed up.

“See those two towers?” he asked. "When you get to them, you will be at the south gate (called Bab Zuwaila in Arabic). Go out the gate, turn left, and walk straight all the way to the Citadel. Don’t turn right or left, just straight. Thirty-five, maybe forty minute walk.”

“Shukraan,” I thanked him, and shook his hand farewell. “Ma’a salaamah.” Off I went again.