A Visit to Masaraa Monastery

Today one of our teachers arranged to use our school busses to take us to the Masaraa Monestery in a poor section of Cairo south of Maadi on the way to Helwan. This monastery is the seat of the Bishop of the Coptic Church for the area. On the grounds are various buildings dating from the 11th century. Once upon a time the Monastery owned land all the way to the Nile River. Much was approriated for public use after the revolution in 1952, when Nasser took control.

Our teachers have supported this monastery over the years with donations earmarked for their kindergarten/daycare program. We have donated money to purchase a bus, playground equipment, repair and repainting of the kindergarten rooms, and most recently the purchase of a microbus or mini-van, as we would call it. This is Sister Christine. She seems to be in charge of much of the goings-on here. This is a view of Sister showing the teachers the new construction for housing for orphans and the blind that the school supports. I never did find out the name of the religious order these Sisters are affiliated with.


Here is the bishop with Santa Claus and some AIS teachers. Today was the Christmas Bazaar hence the Santa. In the background is the mini-van bought with the charitable contributions of the AIS teachers, the monastery just took delivery of. Unfortunately the bishop turned just as I snapped this picture

The Monastery is founded on the site of a miracle attributed to this saint. It is told that this man, Abba Barsoum, referred to as St Barsoum, El Erian (the naked) because he shunned earthly things and wore only a goat skin for a covering, was praying on the roof of a church. People came from all around to pray with him and the Bishop feared there was not enough food to go around. So Abba asked that a bit of the soup being prepared be brought to him. He prayed over the soup and then instructed the monk who brought the soup to mix this small bit of soup with the rest of the soup being prepared. Miraculously there was enough soup to go around.

The picture most often seen of the Saint is of him scantily clothed with a snake wound around his feet. The story goes that this man shunned his earthly possessions and went to live in a cave that would now be in old Cairo. In this cave was a snake that Abba Barsoum prayed over and 'tamed', so that it would not bite and kill him. One of his many miracles.

This is the current Bishop of the Masaraa Monastery.

Rug Repair

While wandering around Zamalek one evening last week after school, I came across this little shop that repairs oriental rugs.

The were three men working there. This one graciously allowed me to take his picture. They were busy repairing and reweaving what looked like serious problems with rugs. Some of them they had waiting to be picked up looked like nothing had ever happened to them. Others were obviously repaired, but still had lots of life left in them. Much depended on the tear and what was needed to repair the rug.



This is a closer view of the little man working on the rug. He used a variety of common tools to do the job, but mostly he matched colored wool yarn to the rug colors and worked the stitches in, retying them as in the original. He had to make a new foundation and weave that in and then format the repair. He did a wonderful job, but it looked like tedious work.

The shop was just a teeny-weeny little place; couldn't have been more that aobut 15 feet wide by about 25 feet deep. Inside it was stacked with work waiting, and as well as work that was taken apart for materials to be used to repair other rugs.

Zamalek is a large island in the Nile. It is fairly upscale. There are embassies there as well as dignitary housing. The American University of Cairo also has a dormitory there as well as one of their marvelous bookstores. The new Cairo Opera House is also on Zamalek as well as wonderful waterside restaurants, as well as lots of shopping. It is a fun place to wander.

A Wedding

On my street are two Christian churches. They are always busy with one activity or another. Tonight at the church two buildings down from mine, An Arabic Evangelical Church, it was a wedding. There are weddings there often and I always miss things. When I look down from my balcony the trees obstruct my view. So tonight I grabbed my camera and went down to have a closer look. This is what I saw.

The bride and groom are up on the altar, turned into a stage. They faced the congregation. The minister? is on the right side of the picture and the videographer is on the left side, video taping the entertainment. Yes, entertainment. This wedding lasted over an hour and had singers and a guitar player. On the walls to the right and left of the central cross, you can see big video screens, where a live feed from another camera was projecting the whole ceremony onto those screens. Down the center aisle all that white netting is hiding the myriad electric chords that go to the various cameras, lights and recording devices.

This fellow was outside in the courtyard, connected to the inside by all those chords covered in white netting. He has four scenes he is monitoring on the screen to the right as well as a fifth screen which is focused on the singer who is entertaining at the moment. He is directing his team on the inside via the microphone. It was a very sophisticated set up. I have seen set ups like this at this church for other weddings as I have walked by. I can only surmise that video taping the wedding is an important thing to do here. I slowly walk by and gawk and the stuff that I see.

After the ceremony the bride and groom get into a decoratd car like this one. There will be several of these decorated cars carrying the family and friends to the reception, often held in one of the big hotels nearby. The car with the bride and groom will have some of that white netting connecting the flowers on the hood to the flowers on the trunk, and wrapped around mirrors and handles. I have seen cars on the street after a wedding with so much netting that you wonder how the driver can see where he is going. There is lots of horn honking and noise making as the wedding party proceeds to the reception.

This isn't about Egypt today. It is about my mother. You see it is her birthday, and I know that she is missing me. I miss her too. Although I am not able to be with her, I do think about her often. I especially remember and think about her today, on her birthday.

This is the woman who got me through high school English class, editing my papers so they were coherent and eventually made a writer of me. This is the same woman who taught all my brothers how to iron their own shirts--a feminist before her time. (She got fed up with their fussiness and decided that if they wanted the ironing done in a certain way they could just as well do it themselves.) This is the woman who, when my dad and us kids brought a goat home, milked her twice a day religiously--something we kids thought she would NEVER do. We drank the cold milk at the next meal and she made goat cheese of the leftover. This same woman planned all our family trips, packed us up and got us moving. I have such fond memories of all those trips. Between my mother's organization and my father's wonderlust we traveled a good part of the Europe as kids.

Mom is very up to date, especially when you consider her age. You cannot pry her computer away from her. She keeps in touch with family and friends via the internet, does her banking via the internet, downloads her beloved New York Times Crossword puzzle weekly, and is quite put out when things are running a bit slow. She loves to write and the word processor was a Godsend to her. It sped up the writing / revision time.

My mother is 89 today. She was born the year the women got the vote in the USA. Her doctor tells her that she will probably live to be 100. She isn't so sure. She is slowing down a bit these day. She has seen and experienced so much--so many phenomenal changes over the span of her life. I just hope that she has it down on paper or stored on her computer so we can all benefit from her life story. And I hope she has a very pleasant birthday today. I love her.

Rain

Today a short cloudburst come over Cairo and unloaded a few raindrops--just enough to slick up the roads and necessitate a quick wipe of the windshield with the wipers. Cairo only gets about 1/4 inch of rain a year, so rain here is something to rejoice and sing about. People go outside and revel in the few drops that reach the ground. However be careful where you stand.

This car was clean this morning, but parked under a tree. Now I have been warned never, ever, ever, to stand under a tree when it rains in Cairo. You end up filthy from all the accumulated dust and dirt that runs off the leaves. This car shows you just how dirty you will get if you stand under a tree when it rains. So never ever ever stand under a tree in Cairo when it rains, unless you like doing laundry.