Bwana Papyrus in Cairo

In Cairo, the Mother of the World.

Seven million people live here inside 83 square miles, no wonder there's so much traffic.

Today I watched papyrus paper being made by Egyptians using 5000 yr old method. This is, or should be, a humbling experience.

Staying at the Windsor Hotel a colonial landmark in the back streets of Cairo not far from the train station. Formerly the British Officers Club. It features a dark, carpeted lounge decorated with mounted animal heads on the walls from desert hunting forays years ago and expatriates who gather here for drinks every evening. Staff are very polite and I get free internet. Food is nothing special except the babaganoush, which is world class, and the beer which is really cold and tasty. On the whole the Windsor is charming but seedy, just my cup of tea.

The taxis here twitter. That is, they keep beeping while driving simply to show everyone that they are alert and in contact or they do it to warn pedestrians or they just do it out of habit. I caught a cabbie today looking left, while driving right and beeping at something straight ahead, all the while driving like a bat out of hell.

Many here remember Dr. Hassan Ragab who brought papyrus back to Egypt, I met him several times when he first started out planting and nurturing papyrus cuttings. He was trying to build up a crop to use for paper making. In previous lives he had been a civil engineer, then an officer in the Egyptian Army where he rose in rank until he was a General, then he went off to Grenoble to take a Ph.D. with a special interest in the history of papyrus paper making. He died in 2004. Curteous, civil and with a sense of humor, much like many Egyptians I've met so far. He must have been quite a role model.

Tomorrow I travel by train to Alexandria to see papyrus restoration in connection with the new Library of Alexandria. It will be quite a thrill to stand on the same site as the former Great Library of Alexandria, the one that is said to have contained a million papyrus scrolls. Can you even imagine such a thing?

I hear the muezzin from the local mosque calling the faithful to prayer, almost feel I should respond.

More tommorow from Bwana Papyrus in the Great Library.


© Copyright 2009 John J. Gaudet, All Rights Reserved