Carpets for Sale in the Alleys

I arrived at the language center where I teach English early today, so I decided to use the rare bit of free time that I had to sit down and type up a post about my trip to Syria and Lebanon. Just as I was about to start, however, I heard shouts echoing through the alley outside the building. I stepped outside of the classroom and onto the balcony, and looked down into the street to see a group of four men strolling through the alley with giant carpets balanced on their shoulders. They were repeating a chant which I at first couldn't understand, but I soon realized that it was their way of getting the residents of the alley to come out to their balconies and take a look at the carpets. I don't have a precise translation of the chant, but it was something along the lines of "Carpets for sale! High quality! Cheaper than you'll find in stores!"

The sellers' strategy soon became clear as I noticed how densely populated the alley was. There were high rise apartment buildings on both sides up and down the street, each building generally consisting of six or seven floors with two apartments on each floor. Assuming that at least one or two people would be home in each apartment (the time being 5:30 or so in the afternoon), the sellers figured that they would have at least several dozen prospective buyers who would at least take a look at the carpets. When the sellers reached the middle of the alley, they stopped, unloaded the carpets off their back, and continued their calls to the residents of the alley to come out to their balconies and take a look.

As people slowly began to emerge on their balconies, the sellers then unfurled their carpets in the middle of the street! They then proceeded to try to convince a few of the residents that seemed genuinely interested, but unfortunately today was not their lucky day. From an aesthetic perspective, however, I loved the contrast between the colorful carpets and the street and the general oddity of seeing a carpet unfurled on the street (although, in fact, there are carpets rolled out on the street every Friday for the spillover from Friday prayers). Yet another unique image of Alexandria. Furthermore, when I peeled my eyes away from the sellers themselves, I stepped back to take in the sweeping views from the street to the sky: starting with the colors of the carpets, up to the colorful clothing and other laundry hanging from each floor of the high rises, and finally to the slim sliver of sky that was just visible above the buildings. A lot of times I feel like Egypt lacks color, which seems to be primarily a consequence of not washing buildings that are covered in a thick layer of dust, but the laundry hanging throughout every alley in the city, and especially this alley in particular, provides evidence to the contrary.

After rolling up their carpets once again and loading them up on their shoulders, the sellers continued their walk down the street. Certainly not an easy job, but I imagine that it has to be somewhat lucrative because at least a few of the hundreds of the alley residents that come out to view the carpets each day might decide to make a quick and easy buy.

Images from Alexandria

As I said in my last post, there have been some images of Alexandria that I have seen in the past few days that I hope will give you an idea of life in this city. I don't usually take my camera out with me, so I will have to rely on my descriptions to illustrate the scenes.

Lunch at the "Mohamed Ahmed" restaurant
We went to eat at a restaurant called Mohamed Ahmed which specializes in Ful (a dish made from fava beans) and falafel. It was absolutely delicious. My lasting image of the restaurant is a large pile of falafel and pita in the middle of the table that all of us proceeded to dig into with pleasure. I'm not sure what kind of reputation Egyptian cuisine has internationally, but I have found it so far to be quite good. I generally like bread in all shapes and sizes, and so I have been voraciously devouring pita from day one here. Falafel is quite good too, and I had a delicious grilled and stuffed cauliflower last night (karnabeet in Arabic) that I will definitely be on the lookout for again.

The bouncing train
During our orientation we visited a place called Muntaza. It was located right next to the Mediterranean, and we spent a very nice afternoon in a park about a quarter mile from the shore. To get there we took the local train (probably the equivalent of commuter rail as opposed to the tram in Alexandria). The train was very emblematic of Alexandria's feel on the whole: it left on time and got us from point A to point B, but it wasn't necessarily in the greatest condition and the doors didn't close. But, as I thought to myself on the train, the fact that the doors didn't close didn't really mean anything as far as our being able to get where we needed to go. The funniest part of the ride was when we hit a bouncy stretch of track (I don't know how a train track can be bouncy, but this one certainly was) and some young boys in the car ahead of us started jumping up and down as if they were on a trampoleen. Quite a funny sight.

Walking down the alley
As I mentioned yesterday, I went on a meandering walk through Alexandria as I was walking from the girls' dorms back to the boys' dorms (they are about 15 minutes from each other by car, 40 minutes walking). I happened to walk down a narrow alley just to see what was there. There were tall apartment buildings on both sides (there are almost no one or two story buildings in the part of Alexandria that we're in), and the narrowness of the alley made the buildings seem even taller. It gives you the feeling of walking through a narrow, deep canyon. At any given moment, dozens of people are looking out their windows or sitting on their porches looking down at the street. The streets never feel deserted. I happened to look up at one point and I saw a woman in a full hijab (nothing showing but her eyes) peering over her balcony and slowly lowering a basket to ground level from her tenth floor perch. I'm not sure what she wanted put in that bucket, but it remained about 10 feet above street level while she rested her arm on the balcony ledge and looked down at the street. From my perspective, with my head tilted all the way back to see high enough and with the tall buildings on both sides of the streets framing her, the woman cut a striking yet absolutely mysterious figure. My trip down the alley ended with my realizing that I had gone the wrong way, but after I asked a man working on his car in the alley for directions back to my dorm, he asked me to sit down for tea before I headed on my way. We had a nice chat (albeit in my somewhat basic Arabic) and, after meeting and talking with a few kids who had been milling around us, I walked back to the dorm just as the evening call to prayer sounded.

I'm sure that there will be many more stories and images like these, and I will try to write about them throughout the semester. For tonight, I have to finish a little homework for my "Media Arabic" class and then some of the Egyptians and some of my friends on the program are going to head to a coffee shop to chat and play backgammon (my new favorite game). إلى لقاء