Cairo, city of sand

Outside Cairo museum, no photographs allowed inside, so we don't have any shots of the inside exhibits. They were truly impressive. Seeing them in real life certainly has placed a certain meaning to them. The time of the Pharaohs was truly remarkable, their engineering feats and their lives revealed a truly impressive civilization. One would think, or maybe it is just me, that one would want to emulate and continue that greatness. What does one do for an encore, nothing? Life in Cairo is closely associated with the river, Nile though the city is fast expanding further away from it. There's sand, sand and more sand everywhere. There's always a layer of sand on the streets and they say, once in a while, there will be a huge sand storm that blankets the city. My face is always covered with a layer of sand and sometimes I can feel the grit of sand in my mouth.

The guy in the red wants to polish my dusty shoes. I took a picture of my dusty shoes and I gave him the thumbs up, meaning I love the dust on my shoes. He motioned back, with a polishing motion, take a picture and thumbs up, meaning it is even better taking a picture of my shoes after he's polished them.

My dusty shoes are now in my closet, dust and all. Maybe over the next few days when I don't feel so sentimental, I'll polish them.

This was taken in Giza, even though it is the desert, it is one hub of activity. There are tour buses, people from all the world, there are camels, there are horses. Even though there are various places where the pyramids are, they are in the same desert. One can opt to ride horses or camels to visit Giza and from Giza, go to Saqqara in the south. From certain areas in Cairo, one can see the Giza pyramids, it is surreal.

These are potted succulents and they are covered with sand.

I picked up an incredible book by Maria Golia called Cairo, city of sand. A description of the book, ' Cairo is a 1400 year old metropolis whose streets are inscribed with sagas, a place where the pressures of life test people's equanimity to the limit. Virtually surrounded by desert, sixteen million Cairenes cling to the Nile and each other, proximities that color and shape lives. Apart from a brisk historical overview, this book focuses on the present moment of one of the world's most illustrious and irreducible cities. ....'