Egypt… 
Land of the Pharaoh's

By John Huddleston

If we hadn't gotten lost we never would have met the holy man. But considering Alexandria's bewildering maze of ancient, dusty streets, getting lost was a foregone conclusion. Several friends and I were visiting the city and heading for our final destination, St. Mark's Cathedral, which contains the tomb of the Apostle who brought Christianity to Egypt in the first century. We drove through the city fortified with both a guidebook and an Egyptian guide, but much of Alexandria seemed to have been declared a cathedral-free zone.

Actually that was fine with us because as we pursued the elusive cathedral our meanderings carried us into vibrant working class neighborhoods where we left tourist Egypt behind, and slipped into another era. We got to share the narrow crowded street with motor scooters, donkey wagons and camel carts. Most people wore the traditional, loose fitting cotton galabayyas - blue or white for men and black for women. Every road doubled as a bazaar, with sidewalk merchants loudly selling fresh vegetables, polished brass ornaments, and huge piles of red and blue carpets that spilled into the street. Strolling vendors sold glasses of karkaday, Egypt's deep red hybiscus tea, and herb shops brimmed with woven baskets of pungent basil and garlic. The air was also fragrant with spiced lamb, tomatoes and onions being grilled in open-air restaurants. And above it all was the plaintive wail of the five-times-daily calls to prayers from the towers of scores of mosques. 

We found this to be a wonderful adventure. And at no additional charge! Our driver certainly didn't care. At each blind alley he simply shrugged his shoulders and said "Al insha'Allah."- "It is the will of Allah." But as we crept along, our guide, a Coptic lady called Sahar, was experiencing professional embarrassment. No amount of reassurance could convince her we were really enjoying the lengthy detour.

Sahar was even reduced to doing the one thing guides avoid at all costs- asking directions. At an outdoor cafe three old men sat smoking their bubbling sheesha water pipes, drinking ahwa turki (dark Turkish coffee) from tiny brass cups, to the quavering sound of a dhikr, the neighborhood Remembrancer, who chants the praise of Allah. They each wore a tarbouche, the round Turkish cap of red felt with a flat top and a tassel, a remnant of the centuries when Alexandria was under the suzerainty of the Sultan of Constanople. 

When Sahar asked directions they flashed gap-toothed smiles and vigorously nodded "yes!" in response. Unfortunately each of them pointed in a different direction. We entered new realms of lostness when we found ourselves driving past the same street corner where a group of uniformed Moslem schoolgirls stood chattering. The third time we passed their corner they giggled and waved at us. The fourth time we laughed and waved back. Sahar averted her eyes.

It was mid-afternoon and the heat was building. Above the desert outside the city we saw a spiraling gray shroud of sand hang in the air, raised by the Khamsien, the hot dry wind that blows from the south in April and May. We pulled beneath the cool, sheltering arch of an abandoned railway station to once again consult the yellowed map. A sleeping man had been roused by our entry; the old station was where he made his home. His once-white robes were tattered but he gathered them around him and surveyed us with impoverished dignity. As he walked around our vehicle his expression changed from curiosity to amazement, his eyed opening wider and wider. He began pointing to us and repeating "Khudr! Khudr! Intu kulluku khudr!"

Sahar deflected our questions about his oration. She said she had seen him before and was a sort of a fortune teller or a wandering mystic. "This man is being mentally unbalanced, please be paying to him no attention. This thing that he is saying, it is not making sense." Of course that made us all the more curious to learn what the seer was saying about us. We pestered her until she translated. "He is pointing to you and saying…'Green! Green! You are all green!'."

We roared with delight. It made perfect sense to us. Everybody knows that colors have meaning. Green is a color often associated with change and growth. The old man saw a group of people, each displaying the same transformative color of green in our auras, the energy field surrounding the body. He wasn't crazy. He was right. We were green. 

We had a million questions, and wanted to get out and talk to the old gentleman, but Sahar knew that somewhere a cathedral was beckoning us, and she had our driver back out of the archway and headed off again. But as we went, we watched him out the rear window, and he was still pointing and exclaiming as we rounded a corner and lost sight of him. And the cathedral? We found it. A nice cathedral with a nice grave. But for us the day was really about the many pleasures of being lost, and about the not-so-crazy man who read our colors.

John Huddleston is a free-lance writer and world traveler. These are his writings viewed from a different angle in the exploration of Egypt. 510-704-8728 email johnhuddleston@California.com