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And yet, he seemed fascinated by all religions that day as we strolled from church to synagogue to mosque. Our first destination within the ancient city walls was the nearly unpronounceable El-Moallaqa, whose name I had noticed in my guidebook just before Winston arrived to ruin my day. Karl directed me toward a shuffling group of tourists, and as we trudged up a long stone staircase toward a set of twin bell towers, he asked, “You see how this church uses the Roman tower for some of its wall? This is the earliest place of public Christian worship. Legend says that Saints Peter and Paul both preached here.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I believe there is a festival each year on their feast day. Lots of visitors bringing lots of contributions.” He pointed to a sign in many languages and several alphabets, displayed above a rack of postcards sold in support of a children’s home. I expected him to tell me that there was no such place, but Karl dropped a coin into the box and urged me to take a souvenir. “The orphanage is real,” he assured me, “and so are the needs of the children.”
At the top of the stairs, Karl tapped the tobacco from his pipe, letting the ashes fall over the balustrade. With a wink and a finger on his lips, he picked Rosie up and kept her tucked close to his chest, hoping to sneak her in, and in the event, nobody seemed to care.
We passed through tall doors standing between chiseled pillars topped by lavishly tiled arches. Inside, three barrel vaults rested on graceful arches completely covered by gorgeous geometric mosaics and supported by columns with beautifully carved capitals. “Eleventh century,” Karl said. “A good time for masons. The icons date to the late seventeen hundreds—”
“But … I thought you said this was the first Christian church?”
“I’m sorry. I was perhaps not clear. This is the first public place of Christian worship. The church itself has been demolished and rebuilt many times. There are always fires here in Cairo, and earthquakes.”
“And conquerors,” I said, pleased when he smiled.
“Most of the wall decorations are modern Coptic, but look at that pillar. You see, third on the right? That is probably ninth century.”
“Karl, I’ve heard the word ‘Coptic’ before. but I don’t really know what it means.”
“The Christians of Egypt are called Copts. The word is a corruption of the Greek for Egypt: Ai-gup-tios. The Arabs turned gup to qop, and the medieval Latinists made that Coptus. Typical of Egypt: layer upon layer,” he said with a smile. “The Copts claim to be the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, and they may be correct. Look there! Can you see how the Egyptian ankh has become a Christian cross? Paintings of the Virgin suckling Jesus are very like those of Isis nursing the baby Horus. Most Egyptians converted to Islam thirteen hundred years ago. Coptic Christians are very few today. They have not much influence.”
Here and there, the blaring voices of tour guides competed for attention with Karl’s quiet instruction. “Now that the war is over, it seems the entire population of Britain has booked a tour with Cook’s,” he remarked. Then he leaned closer to speak quietly into my ear. “This church retains some aspects of an ancient synagogue. You see the wooden dividers?” he asked. “They are to separate the men from the women, yet the overall design is that of a basilica. The main altar is behind those screens.” He gestured toward exquisite panels of cypress and sycamore. “They are very old. The most elegant in Egypt, I think.”
We passed out of the murmuring darkness into the narrow street beyond, and Karl took me to visit two more churches. Of them, I recall only the passage from sun glare to near blindness in the shadowed stony chill inside, and the disorientation I felt until my eyes adjusted enough to discern exotic artwork in sputtering candlelight.
Far more interesting were the lively neighborhoods into which these churches were wedged. Tourists busily shopped for rugs, brasses, and ivories in little stores. Local people haggled over onions, leeks, and cabbages piled high on rickety carts. Most vivid of all were the gaggles of children who pointed and laughed at Rosie or offered to sell us freshly carved scarabs and spurious antiquities, which Karl warned me not to buy. My students at Murray Hill had seemed poor, but they were kings compared to those stunted, barefoot urchins. Many were disfigured by scabby eyes or withered legs or scarred hands crabbed by burns. Parents sometimes deliberately maimed a son to make him more appealing to tourists, Karl told me. A visibly defective child might be sold or rented out to Fagin-like professionals who sent groups of little beggars out to collect alms, which they turned over to their masters. And yet those children all smiled gloriously, teeth gleaming white in their small dark faces. They seemed to me angels, or imbeciles, or both, by turns.
Around noon, we stopped at an outdoor café tucked into a blind alley off a side street. It was patronized by Egyptians and old Cairo hands, Karl told me, and therefore of no interest to tourists or beggars. He placed our order in Arabic; it was received with enthusiasm by a thin young man, who salaamed and disappeared inside his tiny place of business.
A few doors down, a barber was sitting cross-legged on the cobblestones. In lieu of a shop with a striped pole, he had spread a scrap of cloth upon the pavement and laid out a set of archaic-looking tools next to a copper bowl filled with water. Customers appeared out of nowhere. Young and old, one by one, each shook the barber’s hand and then squatted down facing him to await their turn.
Our coffees were delivered on a beautiful brass tray, in tiny glass cups set into filigreed metal holders. Sipping at the syrupy, sweet drink, I watched the barber at work, fascinated by this example of private life lived in the open air. Mustaches were trimmed to tidy points. The sides of curly mops were clipped close until heads resembled white-walled cottages beneath thatched roofs. When the barber finished, Karl told me, each customer would pay whatever he considered the job to be worth: one piastre or two—the equivalent of a pe
“Karl, there was a beggar boy who caught my eye—he had a large square patch of hair shaved out, right on the top of his head. Did you notice him?” I asked while we waited for our meals. “Does that style mean something?”
“I suppose it is just for fancy,” Karl said, “or maybe for a wedding.”
When our plates of lamb and rice appeared, Karl spoke to the young waiter for a few minutes. Motioning at the top of his head, he evidently described the boy with the odd haircut. The waiter unleashed a broad and happy grin and spoke at length. To my surprise, Karl invited the waiter to sit with us.
His name was Ashour, the young man told me in remarkably good English, and the little boy’s unusual haircut was indeed in honor of a recent wedding, which was Ashour’s own. Ashour was twenty-three and admitted that was very late to marry. “For five years, I try to make wedding,” he said earnestly, “but I have bad luck. Each year somebody die, and I ca
“If someone dies, there are no weddings for a year?” I asked.
“Yes, madams. Each year I try, and then at the new year, a baby die or an old gentlemans, and it ca
Last month, the great day had at last arrived. Ashour’s wedding was a grand affair. “There was big tent and everybody he come. From my village. From Cairo. From American Express Company! I wait tables, and I know many peoples, madams. Everybody he come and eat and drink. Tea, coffee, cocoa. Champagne and wine, and many other things. Meat and apricots and chicken, more than you ever saw.” Eyes shut, he swayed in memory of the magnificence. “And music! For three days, with eight womans to dance. Eight! Me, I not drink, ever,” he assured us piously, “but on third night, I am so tired, I am falling like drunk. So much food and music, so much dancing womans!” And he reeled in his chair, miming the effects of the endless meal, the exhausting beat of the music, the relentless dancing.