Letter from Egypt - Part I

Holly and Rosalind at the Giza pyramids

The flight to Egypt from Dallas is 26 hours, and we didn't want to stagger into Cairo half-dead, so we booked two days in Paris to get over jet lag. We knew that Paris would perk us up, though we hadn't counted on the frigid weather (if we'd fallen asleep on a park bench, we'd have frozen to death). Paris is more gorgeous than ever due to the cleanup of the stone facades. After an absence of several decades, it was surreal for me to get off the plane and go straight to lunch at "my café," the Rostand across from Luxembourg Garden, where I'd done Sorbonne homework in 1973-74 and written high fashion stories in 1981!

The big change in this Left Bank student quartier is that, as one cabbie put it, "The rich have moved in."  So, the Sixth Arrondissement has gone swank, and sadly missing are the charming neighborhood services we students loved: boulangeries with baguettes right out of the oven; patisseries for éclairs; épiceries and their array of freshly prepared hors d'oeuvres, light groceries and dry goods (Lu and Petit Ecolier cookies for afternoon tea and bedtime);  instituts de beauté for our beauty make-overs; hole-in-the-wall cafés serving cheap and good Parisian fare; open air florists and newsstands on the corner. However, we loved staying and dining in the Left Bank, and on our second evening we ventured to the Ile de la Cité for a two-person concert of ancient music in a jewel box of a theatre. One of the musicians was from Austin!

Have you been to Egypt?  I fell in love with the warmth of the people and the astonishing land.  The country is essentially five miles wide - the ribbon of the Nile and its fertile borders - 500 miles long, and intoxicatingly deep in mystery and history.

Holly with Dina before the party

We stayed a week with Holly's honorary Egyptian daughter, Dina, her husband and twin babies (and full staff, oh boy!) in their spacious Cairo apartment. Before the trip, I'd coined some silly titles - Rosalind of the Desert for me, Thistle of the Nile for my cat. In Egypt, I called Holly The Toast of Cairo! Dina, a pasha's granddaughter, gave a party in Holly's honor, and the guest list was primarily Holly's, from earlier trips as a Times of London theater critic. The house that night was full of academic, media and cultural guests, some of whom I'd read about in the country's English-language press. We finished late, with the last eight of us pulling up chairs around the buffet, eating, drinking, laughing and keeping up a passionate Arabic-English dialogue into the early hours, far from the clichés of CNN and Fox.

One topic was the country's increased conservatism since the Gulf War. Traditionally a tolerant, easygoing people, Egyptians now are influenced by Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist Wasabi form of Islam.  Veiling women, for instance, is an Arab, not an Egyptian custom, but today, most women wear at least the headscarf.  In the great new library of Alexandria, we saw a young woman who may have been a fully veiled Saudi princess:  As tall and slender as a top model, she strode briskly in towering Louboutin pumps, her couture veil billowing gracefully.  She cut an arresting and sexy figure, with only her eyes visible!

Having drinks with friends in the souk

We also were entertained in other Muslim and Coptic homes ("Coptic" merely means Egyptian Christians) - a very cosmopolitan Cairo crowd, with lots of clipped English accents reminding me that we were in the former British Empire.  On January 7 we went to an elegant Coptic Christmas dinner party attended by four generations of Christian and Muslim friends, most of whom were academics.  It was very festive, but it was here that we learned of the shooting of several Copts the night before.  They were killed as they left Christmas Eve services in the provincial town of Nag Hammadi, where the Gnostic Gospels were discovered and where Holly and I also would travel.  Ostensibly a Muslim act of revenge for the rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian, the tragedy underscored the heightened sensitivity of religious relations and the sense of vulnerability among the Coptic minority.

It was a sobering reminder of the possible dangers of our trek overland across Egypt, traveling through areas closed to foreigners for many years, but rich in new archaeological discoveries, pristine restorations and the authentic village and provincial life bypassed by tamer itineraries.  We would be exploring rare areas with a very small group, far from the crowds of the high-traffic, high-security sites. Well, this is what we had come for, and we were ready for high adventure!  Read Part II of Rosalind's travelogue on March 28, as she takes us on a journey of discovery across this ancient land!

The Sphinx

Rosalind de Rolon has private French and writing students and lectures on Primordial Wisdom & the Divine Feminine.  She is the author of Prophecy of the Rose: The Feminine Face of God in Christianity & The Earth as a Sacred Realm. rosalindderolon@mac.com

Dr. Holly Hill's new book is Salaam. Peace:  An Anthology of Middle Eastern-American Drama.Holly is enjoying her retirement in Dallas after 40 years as a theater critic and drama and speech professor in Manhattan.

Copyright ©2010 Rosalind de Rolon