Some Things Never Change

Cairo's bridges are more than just ways to cross the Nile. They are parks on summer nights, sites for protests, and more than anything else a public yet private space for a young couple to meet and talk about life.

A First

At about 3:45 pm today at the height of the usual rush hour virtually everyone in Egypt was somewhere sitting in front of a television set waiting to hear the announcement of the first (hopefully) democratically elected president in its history. The choice was a tough one for many people here, between an ex-cabinet minister from the Mubarak regime who was also a member of the military and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Surprisingly the unofficial vote count showed a clear win for Mohamed Morsi of the MB, and many people expected the military to push through a win for the ex-regime member, Ahmed Shafik, when the announcement of who won was postponed by 5 days. So the tension in Egypt was enormous. This shot of the roads going into the city from Giza was taken during the press conference announcing the winner. Empty roads like this are nothing short of miraculous.

Silent Vigil

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the death of Khaled Said, a young man in Alexandria who was beaten to death by the police in that city. A lot of people have tried to analyse why his death so shook the people of Egypt and I suspect that much of it had to do with the fact that he was very largely and Egyptian Everyman, someone who in various ways was much like many other young people here. After his death in 2010 protests were organised in which people wearing black or dark colours would simply stand about four or five metres apart and they wouldn't speak to each other or to passers by. The spacing was important because in 2010 protests were illegal and broken up, but if each person was not in contact with his/her neighbour, it couldn't be called a "group". Yesterday along the bridges of Cairo and the corniches that run beside the river and the sea, people gathered again in the same way to mark the anniversary of his death.

The photo is thanks to Zeinobia, who talks about the events of the day in her blog.

Reprise With Fuzz

Many mornings while crossing the Nile on the Moneeb bridge we've seen the invisible basket bicyclers completely hidden by their load of baskets on the way to Maadi or Garden City. Today I was driving in and we were talking about just that image when what to our wondering eyes should appear... an over the top bicyclist carting in FUZZY baskets. Kelly Anderson got the shot while I tried not to run into the car in front of me.

A Suitably Heroic Pose

There was a horrible duststorm blowing across the Nile from the west and traffic was pretty much at a standstill. The erection of huge concrete block walls on some of the main downtown streets has really put a nail into Cairo traffic's coffin. A group of young men were laughing and horsing around as we were stopped in traffic and one got up on the railing by the river for the appropriate male Egyptian portrait in a mobile phone.

If Ever There Was A Bridge For Trolls

Houses along the Mariouteya front on the road, but a drainage canal runs behind them. This family made themselves a bridge across the canal but I don't know if I could ever walk across it. Aside from the distinct possibility of a troll living under it waiting for one of the family goats, I'd be terrified of falling into the canal.

Using Every Corner

Under a busy bridge in Maadi, you find some space where women selling homemade bread sit hoping people will buy. A fruit seller with a cart of rather enticing bananas is there as well. People find any spot at all to conduct business.

To Market To Market

The Moneeb Bridge is a treasure house of fascinating vehicles. You might see horses and carts, donkey carts, animals in pickup trucks, families including children and poultry on motorcycles. On this day there was a basket seller with his stock of baskets somehow bound up together in a huge basket-ball pedalling like mad across the bridge. Rear view mirrors need not apply.

Death Defying

So the boss said that one of the lights on the overpass wasn't working right and I should get out there and fix it. So we drove the truck out and parked it next to the overpass blocking the left lane of traffic and all these people kept getting upset with us, but there I was standing in a metal basket working on 220 volts of power. All in a day's work.

Staring Into Space

The bridge over the Metro tracks is usually bustling with people on their way somewhere from someplace, but the young man in the red shirt just stood for a while gazing south along the tracks.

The Bridge

I love checking Mohamed's photos when he hands me his camera. I get the chance to see Egypt through someone else's eyes. This countryside woman waits on a bridge for someone.

Wooden Bridge

The farmers here make pretty much everything they need themselves. In this case it was a bridge to get to the other side of the canal. Sometimes they are made from palm logs, sometimes concrete, sometimes from random scraps of wood.

The Air Up There

Living around Cairo, one spends a lot of time in the car. I'm constantly amazed at the odd things that I see simply crossing the Nile on the Moneeb Bridge. On this lovely clear crisp day a group of men sat, stood, and worked on top of an immense advertisement for Vodafone. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing there, but I was glad that it was them and not me.

Night Traffic

I lost my little Sony camera that is so handy for my daily photography and a friend who was in Dubai for a business trip picked me up a new one. The big camera is great when photography is all I'm doing, but multi-tasking photography is better with a smaller camera. So as I was out doing various errands all day in Cairo, I was trying out the new toy, and coming back to Giza across the Moneeb bridge after dark I played around shooting the traffic out the front window. No, I was not driving at the time.

Bridge Season

When summer comes, Cairenes head for whatever cool air can be found in the evening, and the best place to be is near the water. The banks of the Nile are fairly built up, but their are walkways along the water in most areas. One of the favourite places for getting a breath of fresh air is the nearest bridge, however and summer nights see picnicking families, fishermen, and young lovers hanging over the railings watching the Nile flow by on the way to the Mediterranean. This photo was taken at 2 am. Enterprising businessmen rent chairs and tables, sell food and drinks all night long.

A Bit Of Ingenuity

A pair of young men have opened a portable business under a bridge with a handful of mobile telephones. For 50 piastres or a pound you can use one to make a phone call. Why wait for a phone booth? And since most Egyptians carry mobile phones, calling from one makes more sense, since the phone booths can only call land lines.

Something Cold?

Temperatures are cooling off but by most people's standards it's still hot in Giza. This gentleman is running what is basically a lemonade/anise juice stand just outside of the Beni Yusuf army base near the pyramids of Giza. Business will get better when some of the soldiers leave the base.

Bridge Fishing

It was 2 am and I was beat. My daughter had to catch an early flight to Amsterdam and then on to New York, so she had to be at the airport at 1:30 am. On the way back, the people on the Moneeb Bridge, the southernmost bridge across the Nile in Cairo, were still enjoying their picnics, tea, and fishing, so I pulled my jeep over to the right and took a few photos. I'm obviously not the best at night photography. Balancing car lights, advertising lights and the darkness is pretty much a mystery to me, but I liked the way the light caught the fishing lines.

Bridge Season

I came to Egypt from North America where bridges were mostly a way of going from one place to another. In fact many of our bridges had minimal pedestrian walkways. In Cairo during the summer, bridges are parks. Even bridges that have virtually now pedestrian areas accumulate summer visitors at night along the sides. This is a family fishing during the day on the wooden bridge. They may catch some Nile perch, which will put up a good fight and probably have some accumulated toxins in the system this far down the Nile. If they come from upper Egypt, they are superb fish and grow as large as 150 kg in Lake Nasser. The bridges have the best breezes in summer, so every evening they are crowded with families and during the day there are the diehard fishermen.

The Wooden Bridge - Part 2

This is another view of the wooden bridge between the corniche of Cairo and the island of Manial (Roda). It's a favourite haunt of lovers and fishermen, as witnessed by the declarations that "Ahmed loves Fatima" on the concrete walls leading up to the bridge. Despite it's lovely lines, I can find no information on who built it or why. There is, however, a similar structure just inside one of the main gates of the Giza Zoo. If it was built at the time of the zoo's construction, that would be about the turn of the last century.