Sunday, June 28, 2009

Sunday, June 21, 2009

orientalizing


ibn tulun mosque from the gayer anderson museum
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I've been a bit delinquent posting...we're getting ready to go. I'll try to put up a few more thoughts about Cairo and our last days here before we leave.
And yes, this is an orientalist photograph. Because one of the women who worked at the Gayer-Anderson museum took a break and stood for a few minutes in the striped shadows of the trellis, looking at the minaret of the Ibn tulun mosque. I'm not sure if it was the disorientation caused by the heat and chaos of Cairo, or the effect of all the the symmetry of the mosques and palaces, but I had a terrible time shooting straight during our whole visit. I kept taking pictures that were slanted. Even all the straight lines in this picture served to confuse rather than guide me.
I like the Manichean lines on her Burka - the striping of the black. And the breeze, of course. That's agency.
I read somewhere that there have been a disproportionate number of photographs of the Iranian - do we get to call it a revolution yet? - rebellion - featuring pretty women. I've noticed that as well. The revolution will be televised, and it will be telegenic. In the last day or two, the close-ups of women have switched to pictures taken from a distance featuring men throwing rocks, or the massive crowd scenes shot from above.
We're off to Tel Aviv.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

felucca


felucca
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Don't take the bus from Jerusalem to Cairo with a six year old.

But if you do, go with a six year old (seven today!) like Benjamin, who will read to himself in Hebrew for two hours and mid-way through the trip, tired and wan, will say "Thank you for taking me to Cairo - even though this is hard it's also already fun."

We arrived near midnight, and the streets were still quite busy. We took a cab over to our hotel (Hotel Osiris), on the twelfth floor of an office building and run by a French/ Egyptian couple. In the morning we had breakfast on the terrace overlooking the smoggy, multitudinous city. All the buildings have been stained the same dull brown of a smoker's teeth, so it's easy not to notice that some of them are glorious - laundry strung across elegant stone balconies. Our first day we walked over to the Egyptian museum. There is a glorious chaos to the collection, though it makes the visit impressionistic rather than educational. Dusty unpacked crates of antiquities still cluttered the corners. We saw two mummified crocodiles and several mummified kittens. A princess was buried with her pet baboon. The royal mummies had labels that identified the illnesses they suffered from in life: obesity, bad teeth, herniated scrotum, smallpox. On one mummy's leathery skin you could still see the marks of the pox. Ben sat on the floor and drew sarcophagi. King Tut's death-box still glitters.
And at night, we hired this felucca and drifted on the Nile, where we spotted "Nile Bowling." A reason to go back ,maybe?

Friday, June 12, 2009

pyramids


pyramids
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

More to come...

Friday, June 5, 2009

ben


ben
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Jeremy took this picture; Benjamin has now lost his second tooth (swallowed like the first).

jerusalem


jerusalem
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

This massive fabric mural of Jerusalem stretches around the construction site on King David street; the imagined, ideal city and the real, dusty skeleton behind it, in constant process of destruction and construction.

lev


lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

In the courtyard the mulberry fruit and the small, sour yellow plums are ripe though they're both hard to reach.

lev buttons up


lev buttons up
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

We have been having all kinds of sartorial trouble with Lev, who has very definite ideas of what he will and will not wear. Sadly, his idea of dashing tends to be soft clothing with pockets that is at least a size too small (the new sandals I bought him today had him weeping with disappointment because his toes didn't curl over the fronts). When one adds to this his insistence on (mis)buttoning his own buttons, one is faced with a morning routine that is protracted, slow and uneven in its results. He was, though, thrilled this morning with the dark green sweatpants that Jeremy cut off into short shorts (Softy shorts with pockets! he crowed).

ovadiah


ovadiah
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Mr. Falafel.

lev


lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

samar and tutu


samar and tutu
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Note tutu's shoes.

doorman at the Y


doorman at the Y
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

The most enthusiastic doorman at the Y, who is not content to wish everyone a "boker tov" (good morning) but instead wishes them a "boker nifla" (fantastic morning).

mimi


mimi
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Mimi Aboukhdair, from the class below Lev at the Y. Her mom is puerto-rican American/ Palestinian and her dad is Palestinian. She speaks Hebrew, English and Arabic in theory, but in practice doesn't speak much at all.

nidal


nidal
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I have been taking photographs of the people I encounter each day, in preparation for our departure at the end of June. This is Nidal. She is Lev's teacher in the gan at the YMCA and lives in Beit Safafa, an Arab neighborhood in South Jerusalem. She spent some time living in Saudi Arabia, and Jordan I think, but says she prefers it here. She is a wonderful teacher, and very patient when I try to practice Arabic. She is also going to bring me homemade za'atar to take back to Montreal.