Please Call Home

Telephones and a table provide a business opportunity for one clever shopowner. This is a small shop set up near Khan el Khalili where phones are used by passersby to call friends and family.

Time For Your Summer Hat

Today is Sham el Nessim, a pharoanic festival that signals the beginning of summer, the name translates to "Smelling The Breeze", and it is a day on which everyone heads for the nearest green space for a picnic of fish, eggs, onions, and lettuce. Since my farm has quite a bit of green space and quite a few people head this way, I don't venture too far. The photo is one of my young geldings who was trying on a visitor's sun hat. Wadi has always been a bit of a clown.

A Pigeon Tower

This rather medieval looking structure is a tower for the raising of pigeons. Pots and pipes are cemented together in horizontal layers with some of them opening to the outside of the tower and others to the inside. Inside the tower there is either a ladder or a stairway by means of which the owner can climb up to claim the squabs (young feathered pigeons who are not yet flying) to confine them and fatten them up for eating. Pigeon is eaten stuffed with either rice or whole wheat or it is grilled or made into casseroles. They are a dark meat bird and very tasty. Most pigeons that have any colour plumage other than the feral dark greyish blue (the wild rock dove) are owned by someone in Egypt because they are so easy to raise.

One of the most famous incidents of Egyptian/British conflict (the Dinshaway Incident) came about as a result of a group of British soldiers going out pigeon shooting near the village of Dinshaway in 1906 not realising that the pigeons they were shooting belonged to the villagers. When the villagers protested, the soldiers not understanding Arabic, thought that they were being attacked and began shooting at villagers and running away in the extreme heat. Although the villagers actually tried to assist the officers suffering from heat stroke, one officer died and the villagers were rather brutally punished for defending their pigeons, leading to a great deal of anger.

Just Waiting

Having furniture reupholstered in Egypt is fairly inexpensive compared to outside. Wood generally has to be imported, but we manufacture a lot of fabrics and for the most part the labour costs are lower than in Europe or North America. Buying furniture usually means the higher cost for the wood and such is included and sometimes it can take a while to find the particular look that you want. In Old Cairo a lot of furniture is made to order and this set was just sitting in an alleyway waiting to be collected for delivery.

The Hand

Life is tough for a Cairo cabby. He's driving his totally not airconditioned car through busy crowded streets, dealing with crabby, stressed out passengers. But without them, most Cairenes would be lost.

One Reason I Love Egypt

This is a picture of a blue sky behind thirty foot tall date palms and rubber trees. Nothing terribly exciting, but I remember being a grad student in Canada caring gently for a variety of indoor plants, including some palms and small rubber trees, to give me some green through the cold white winter. I never imagined that they could grow so big in a friendlier climate.

The Feed Man's Boy

I spent an afternoon at my feed supplier a week ago working out the best horse feed for a reasonable cost. Food prices aren't just going up for people, you know. While there, I was trying out my new little camera and taking pictures of the feed storage area for the benefit of some of my horse-owning friends in the US. The owner's son watched for a while and when I asked if he wanted me to take his picture he nodded. The lovely thing about digital photography is the fact that the kids can see it immediately on the screen of the camera.

And When I grow up....

This is one of the older stallions at Albadeia, I believe Mansour. He has a huge box stall with windows that look out over the courtyard inside and also the garden outside. Not a bad life at all. He found our little Hilal quite fascinating and vice versa. The Alabadeia horses have been sold to stud farms all over the world, including to the farm belonging to one of the Rolling Stones. Our horses of Egypt are lovely.

The Colt's Keeper

I spent my morning today at one of the world's finest Egyptian Arabian stud farms, and although I count the owner of Albadeia Stud, Nasr Marei, as one of my friends, it wasn't a friendly visit. Nasr has built a surgery room at his stud and I had a month old colt who had somehow or other managed to break his femur near the stifle joint. Hilal needed a screw in the bone to stabilise the joint and a visiting orthopedic vet was on hand to do the surgery. The alternative to the surgery wasn't at all a pretty thought. The surgery went well and Hilal is back home with his mother and a shiny new titanium screw in his leg. My groom Farag and another groom came with me to keep the youngster calm and quiet before his surgery so that he wouldn't injure himself further.

One of the things about Albadeia Stud is the fact that it and its horses are marvelously photogenic, so there will be more shots from the farm later.

And Then There Was Wood too.

The men with the sheet of wood were going in the opposite direction as the men with the ladders, so they don't seem to be related even if they are in the same area of the desert. The ladder carriers are a tiny dot on the horizon just above and to the right of the wood carriers. To give you an idea, they are about a kilometre walk from the nearest road. Not much fun in sand.