Salaam alaykum

Hey there,

After a whirlwind week of packing up and moving out, marked by such stimulating activities as defrosting the freezer, selling bikes, and wrapping a myriad of objects in bubble-wrap (the moving company delivered an industrial-size roll with our boxes), I am relaxing, and in Egypt, no less. My mom, my siblings, and I have another week to wait until we get visas for our final destination, so we're staying in Cairo. The taxi trip into the city was rather hair-raising, with 8 people, 6 suitcases, 2 backpacks, 2 violins, 1 cello, 1 bass guitar, 1 briefcase, 1 portable crib, and 1 collapsible stroller crammed into a five-seat Fiat sedan (it had a luggage rack on the roof, thank goodness), but all the more exotic for it. Cairo is a lively place, especially traffic-wise (think screeching tires, car horns, and liberal interpretations of the lane), and being a pedestrian is an adventure. Also, musicking! We saw a music/dance performance by a group of Sufi mystics - sometimes they're called whirling dervishes. The main part of the performance involved a dancer in brightly-colored clothes spinning continuously in a circle at varying speed for about 45 minutes without getting dizzy(!), all the time supported by a backing band (mostly dressed in long white robes and turban-like headdresses) with several pipers, a musician with a violin-like instrument, and a handful of percussionists (reminded me of Emma's TASP project). Before the dancer came out, though, the musicians would come forward one by one and play little solo-like riffs, often in a kind of call-and-response system with the rest of the band. The percussion in particular was fantastic -the best part was when a tall gentleman with a conga-like drum and an older gentlemen with a pair of castanets got into a sort of musical conversation. Electrifying stuff. Hmm . . . we found out that the el-Abd bakery down the street serves pretty amazing mango ice cream (maybe even as good as the Washtenaw Dairy - maybe). And we spotted a toy store that sells Barbie dolls with hijab veils. Only in Egypt. : )

I'll try and get some good photos with me and my TASP shirt.

Groetjes,
Sam