We have Done, Been and Seen Things...

 040701 – The “We Have Done, Been or Seen” in Egypt

Whilst in Egypt WE HAVE had some amazing experiences, some of which are included below [mind you, there are many more that we've long forgotten]:

* agonized at the thought that we might not even leave Adelaide way back on August 5th, 2001 when we had to argue our way on to the plane

* been in a train which caught fire and were left stranded on the side of the road to make our own way back to Cairo as best as we could

* been in a taxi that had to be pushed by another car over the hump of a bridge because it was so broken down with wear and tear

* sat in a taxi enroute to our destination while the driver replaced not one but 2 tyres

* been in several taxis that ran out of petrol

* ridden a donkey

* ridden a camel

* climbed the Mountain of Moses [Mt Sinai]

* visited the oldest monastery in the world

* enjoyed a Nile Cruise with our Aussie friends

* had a cement ceiling in our home collapse in the middle of the night [7/3/02]

* can converse at a basic level in Arabic

* can read and write Arabic [at a basic level, that is]

* been stung by fire coral & lived to tell the tale [the burns took about 6 months to disappear]

* been the guests at a Coptic Orthodox Youth conference where only a couple of people spoke English

* been to engagement parties that are like weddings with the bride in her wedding dress and all the appearances of a wedding

* been to weddings in the Coptic Orthodox Church and also in the Coptic Evangelical Church

* visited a home in Saraqne [Upper Egypt] where the only pieces of furniture were a shelf to hold the 2 burner cooker and a bed. On the wall hung a dish rack which stored the pots, pans and panikans and was proudly shown to us as it signified that the lady of the house had successfully completed a short course in primary health care management [16/5/03]

* seen a donkey smoking a cigarette

* learnt more about what it means to be an Aussie than we ever knew before

* realized in the truth of the saying “divided by a common language”

* struggled to understand the complexities of our host culture

* learnt how to prepare, cook and eat Egyptian cuisine

* climbed the 1149 steps to the cave in which the father of monasticism [St Antony] lived for about 40 years (251-356AD)

* suffered from the distance between Egypt and Australia, especially at times of family hardships

* suffered from the effects of pollution

* taught MKs how to do Swedish Weaving

* spent many hours with Egyptian girls at an orphanage showing them how to do a range of crafts including sewing, drawing and painting skills.

* befriended many Egyptians and have had the privilege of being invited into their homes to share meals with them

* spent hours and hours walking the streets, looking for accommodation

* bargaining for the best price for our daily food

* struggled with the concept that there are 5 or more prices for goods in our host country. There is the price for the average middle-class Egyptian, another for Upper Class and another for the Lower Class, as well as another for long-term foreigners who have reasonable Arabic and yet another for tourists. For us, the challenge is always to move from the tourist category to the long-term foreigner who has "reasonable Arabic" category.

* taught English to both Egyptians and non-English speaking foreigners

* stubbed our toes on the myriad of protrusions on the road, verge and footpaths

* begun eating Dinner at 10.50pm and on another occasion at 11.30pm

* broken the fast at Christmas time with our Coptic friends by starting to eat at midnight

* broken the fast with our Muslim friends during Ramadan

* been stranded on the Nile in a feluka, with no wind and had to be towed to shore by a local ferry

* retrieved our unaccompanied baggage from Cargo Village where it took 66 transactions before we could load them onto a taxi truck

* driven in a taxi with a one-armed driver

* drunk home-made wine & home-made beer

* have worshipped in a church which seats 20,000 people [the largest in M/E] @ Cave Churches

* celebrated Anzac Day by attending Dawn Service, followed by BBQ breakfast at the Australian Ambassador’s Residence

* eaten fruit & veggies which have been washed in soapy water & then soaked in chlorox for 20 minutes

* seen the nile-o-metre – ancient measuring stick which assesses how much tax the farmers had to pay – according to the height of the Nile [as to the amount of silt which would flow downstream]

* attended Arabic-speaking church services

* [Albert has] participated in a Christmas pageant [with live camels & sheep]

* [Victoria has] been ‘assisted’ on to a train in a very inappropriate way

* had the road resurfaced out the front of our home with the workmen commencing at 9.30pm to clear the road of parked cars – worked through until about 2.00am – not once but twice

* seen the floating bible at St Mary’s on the Nile

* been to the Hanging Church which is built atop the ancient Roman towers and has no foundation

* sat and watched Sufi Dancing [or the Whirling Dervishers]

* traveled to Alexandria

* traveled to Ein Sokhna

* been in the St Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria which has been built on the site where the first Egyptian was converted to Christianity in about 62AD

* visited Attaba and survived!

* snorkeled in the Red Sea [Dahab]

* been on 5 Holy Family Tours Monastery of St Dimyana [twice] / Sakha; Deir Abu Hinnis [twice]; and el Qussia

* bought a Coptic icon

* visited the Shubra office of Think & Do (and subsequently worked there)

* holidayed in Cyprus

* had a brick thrown in through the stairwell window [equivalent of 3 floors up] 26/7/02

* survived days where the temp reached 48-50 degrees

* been away when a close member of our family died [4/8/02]

* survived a reasonable size earth tremor [windows shook & light fittings swung from side to side]

* traveled to the Nile barrages and stunned the local police [what do we do with these foreigners?]

* lost a mobile phone [left in taxi]

* [Albert has] been home on compassionate grounds [20/9/02 – 28/10/02]

* known the deep hurts of cross-cultural misunderstandings

* attended the 25th anniversary celebrations for Magalla

* [Victoria has] suffered with an allergy to the heavy pollution

* [Albert has] been to Manouf

* fellowshipped with MBBs

* spent Christmas singing carols around a log fire

* been to a Christmas Carols evening at the Cairo Opera House

* left green coat at St Catherine’s Monastery and retrieved it

* [Victoria] works at an Orphanage, teaching crafts

* survived the khamsiin [where the days are totally yellow, as the sand blows in from the desert]

* [Albert has] become a Cell Pastor at MCC

* [Victoria has] had stones and paper balls thrown at her

* been in a metro carriage where everyone was joining in with [loud] Islamic chants but most left the train at Mar Girgis [11/2/03]

* [Victoria has] taught Swedish Weaving at the local MK school

* [Victoria has] led a training seminar in Administrative Skills

* [Victoria has] been to a birthday party at the Orphanage [27/3/03]

* been guests at a youth camp for Coptic young adults for a weekend

* attended the youth service of young copts [6/3/03]

* [Albert has] assisted and improved the English of an Egyptian sufficient for him to pass a major test]

* [Victoria has] suffered a burst ear-drum [15/4/03]

* been to 2 different Retreat centres in the desert

* enjoyed shaam en nessim [smelling the breeze otherwise known as the start of the khamsiin] breakfast with traditional salty fish [28/4/03 – always celebrated on Coptic Easter Monday]

* [Albert has] dislocated a bone in his hand

* [Victoria] missed out on attending the Member Care Conference in Holland [14-18/5/03] due to the above-mentioned burst ear-drum

* visited a Monastery [Maharraq] which claims to be the New Jerusalem of Egypt and is modeled on Old Jerusalem

* had dinner with a family whose wife earns 120LE/month as a school councilor

* bought really good quality Egyptian tea-towels for 38c [Australian] each

Coptic Villagers of the Upper Nile

 The following is information from other writers which shines light on some cultural and religious aspects of life in Egypt.

Coptic Villagers of the Upper Nile – Islands of Christianity 

by Kenneth Cline, CNEWA Summer 1986

In the ancient Nile Valley, the past flows imperceptibly into the present, particularly for the Coptic fellahin, “the people who work the land.” These contemporary Christian peasants toil under the empty blue sky of Egypt using pharaonic-age methods, including hand operated well sweeps and single-bladed plows pulled by oxen.

Although the Coptic Church officially dates from St. Mark’s visit to Egypt in the middle of the first century, in the popular imagination Egypt’s Christianity begins with the visit of the Holy Family. In the Coptic elaboration of Matthew’s gospel story, Joseph and Mary brought the infant Jesus from what is now Ismailia in the north through the Delta to Cairo, and then up the Nile Valley to Asyut before returning to Palestine after Herod’s death.

Coptic Christians can trace their ancient peasant heritage back farther than the predominant Muslim population. In fact, the word Egyptian, from the Greek Aigyptios, derives from the Arabic word for Christian, Gibt. Copt, in turn, comes from this word. Egypt’s six million Copts, out of a total population of 47 million, generally consider themselves to be the true direct descendants of the pharaonicage people. Muslims trace their ancestry back to the Islamic conquest of 640. Before then Egypt was a Christian country centered around Alexandria’s patriarchate. Even today the Copts form the largest Christian group in any Muslim country.

Isolation has kept rural Copts unchanged for centuries. For the past 1300 years they have had almost no contact with Christians of the West. They rarely travel abroad for business or education, preferring to cling to their land. They live in remote hamlets along the 700-mile stretch of the Egyptian Nile from Alexandria to Aswan, like Christian islands in a Muslim sea.

If the Holy Family traveled as far as Asyut, they probably would have encountered fellahin like those surviving further upriver in Ezbat Basili, a Christian hamlet on the Nile’s west bank opposite Luxor. Here, in the plain of ancient Thebes, where monuments to the pharaohs draw hordes of Western tourists, 400 Christians live among 12,000 Muslims within the larger village of Bairat.

Ezbat Basili is one of Bairat’s poorest hamlets, perched at the very edge of the desert, far from the more fertile riparian land. The shabby mud-brick Christian houses are distinguished by crosses over the doorways. Signs of prestige, such as televisions, washing machines, and ceiling fans, are more commonly found in the Muslim homes.

Some 220 yards to the west of the hamlet in the desert sits the focus of Ezbat Basili’s Christian community. The Deir Shahid Tadros al Mahareb, “Monastery of St. Theodore the Warrior,” consists of a multi-domed church and several outbuildings enclosed by a wall. Local tradition holds that the church dates from 785. Indeed, some stone columns inside the church are embossed with Greek crosses in the Byzantine style and may be of great antiquity, but the structure itself appears to have been rebuilt many times.

Having such an important Christian institution is Ezbat Basili’s only relief from isolation. Local Copts contribute food and voluntary labor to support the Deir. Then, every January 20 a major festival is held there in honor of its patron, who was martyred during a great persecution initiated by the Roman emperor Diocletian in 303. The festival attracts hundreds of people from the Upper Nile region.

The hamlet owes its existence to the Deir. During the latter part of the 19th century, most of Bairat’s Christians lived in the hamlet of El Kom. Sheikh Balad Basili, then chief of the ghafirs (rural police), decided to move his home nearer the Deir. As a man of prestige in the village, he attracted other Christian families from El Kom to settle near him. The new hamlet was named Ezbat, “place of,” Basili in his honor.

Sheikh Basili’s son Mata went into the priesthood and became a figure of great importance to Christians in the Luxor area. When Father Mata died in the late 1970s, he was buried at the Deir in a tomb whose dome is higher than that of the church itself. Almost every Copt in the Upper Nile region knows Father Mata is buried here. The tomb is now a pilgrimage site for local Copts, who leave animal sacrifices at its entrance and write on the white-washed walls imploring the dead priest’s intercession for solving their problems. When Father Mata was active in his ministry, another Ezbat Basili family produced a prominent priest, Father Tadros, of whom the villagers still tell miracle stories.

Now these priests are gone, and Ezbat Basili no longer attracts the stream of important visitors who visited them. Only poor farmers live there, on the edge of the desert. The hamlet is quiet at night, except for cool desert breezes rustling the date palm fronds and for the desultory barking of dogs.

As they live their hard lot as fellahin, the Christians of Ezbat Basili tap the strength of their deep faith. It is not unusual to see families of villagers traveling along the desert road to celebrate feast days at shrines such as the Monastery of St. Mary at Armant. They bring their high spirits as they clap joyfully and sing the praises of Mary: “You are a good mother, Mary. You can help us when we have problems. Lovely Mary, when we have problems, we come to you and your Son.”

To see them on their small pilgrimage is like seeing the Holy Family travel that same landscape during an earlier sojourn. At the monastery the Coptic worshippers’ communion reaffirms their long-lived Christian tradition.

The Monasteries of Wadi el Natrun 
text and photographs by Armineh Johannes, CNEWA, July-August 1996

In the desert, midway between the sprawling cities of Cairo and Alexandria, lie the monasteries of Wadi el Natrun. For 1,500 years, the monks of Wadi el Natrun enjoyed the isolation of the desert. However, the construction of the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway in 1936 and the recent raising of a nearby guest house have diminished this cherished tranquility. Isolation has been supplanted by the increasing integration of the Coptic Church with the secular world. Today hundreds of pilgrims and tourists visit the monasteries daily; Wadi el Natrun may be reached in just 90 minutes by car from either Cairo or Alexandria.

The history of Wadi el Natrun, or Valley of Salt, can be traced to Pharaonic times. The region is rich in nitrate, which the ancient Egyptians extracted for their embalming process.

According to Coptic tradition, the Christian history of the valley began when an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, the husband of Mary, urging the bewildered man to take his wife and child to Egypt: “Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him (Matthew 2:13).” Finding in the desert a safe haven for her child, the Virgin. it is said, blessed the valley in thanksgiving.

Beginning in the late third century, the valley offered another kind of refuge: solitude for those seeking to flee the distractions of society, to live lives of uninterrupted prayer. Following the example of St. Pachomius, the pioneer of community life. St. Macarius established, in the mid-fourth century, the first religious house in Wadi el Natrun, a place where men and women, bound by vows of poverty, lived and prayed in community.

Until the Arab invasion of Egypt (640-642), Wadi el Natrun was a beehive of activity. Thousands of Copts (a name derived from the Greek, Aigyptios, meaning Egyptian), and Armenians, Ethiopians, Greeks and Latins – professors and philosophers as well as peasants – gathered in these monasteries to live and pray.

Today more than 400 monks inhabit four remaining monasteries – Deir Amba Maqar (Monastery of St. Macarius), the fourth-century Deir el Barambus (Monastery of the Romans), the eighth-century Deir as-Suryani (Monastery of the Syrians) and Deir Amba Bishoi (Monastery of St. Bishoi), reconstructed in the 14th century – faithfully follow the rule of monastic life established by the desert fathers.

“The life of the monk revolves around prayer and fasting,” asserts Abuna Sedrak of Deir Amba Bishoi, which is home to more than 100 monks. “The only prerequisite for a candidate to enter the monastery is love of God.” It is customary that a candidate enter after he has completed his university studies and his military service. Thus, many enter after their 25th birthday.

Once a candidate is accepted, he will wear the white robe of a postulant for the first year. For the second year, he will don the brown robe of a novice and grow a beard. On 25 August of the third year, on the feast of St. Macarius, as he lies on the cold floor of the ancient chapel, his head facing the altar, the monk will he formally accepted, receiving the black robe and a new, religious name, forever discarding his worldly past.

The ringing of a solitary bell at 3:00 A.M. begins the daily routine at Deir Amba Bishoi. As with other monasteries of Wadi el Natrun, a second bell peals an hour later, calling the monk from his meditation and inviting him to join the community in the chapel for morning prayer. “The monk attends his tasks, which are chores usually related to his previous profession and assigned by the superior, at 6:00 A.M.,”continues Abuna Sedrak.

In fact, a majority of the monks at Wadi el Natrun are university graduates who have entered monastic life after years in the “real world.” Agronomists, doctors, engineers, lawyers and pharmacists have all discovered a religious vocation.

After the recitation of 12 psalms at noon, the community gathers in the refectory for the midday meal, the only one that is taken in common. The other meals, which are much smaller, are prepared by each monk in his individual cell.

The 110 monks of St. Macarius, not unlike the other communities in the valley, have reclaimed large areas of the desert. Just north of the monastery, large farm buildings house more than 400 cattle, chickens and sheep, which are bred and sold. Beet fodder, introduced to the country by the monks, is cultivated on land formerly arid. The monks also grow olives, dates, melons and other produce animals,” explains Abuna Wadid, an engineer who has been charged with construction activities at the monastery.

Since 1960, the Egyptian government has attempted to revitalize the desert around the monasteries, providing windbreaks and irrigation systems. Crops of alfalfa, castor beans, tomatoes, watermelons and other vegetables are now cultivated.

In 1978, in recognition and in gratitude for its work, President Anwar Sadat (1970-81) donated a substantial portion of land to St. Macanus Monastery, as well as two tractors and a new well, drilled to obtain subsoil water.

Although the monastic life calls for silence and a cessation of worldly distractions, the monks communicate regularly with the secular world. St. Mark magazine, a monthly journal published at Wadi el Natrun, discusses topics of interest to the Coptic Orthodox Church and Egyptian society and culture. Published on a modern printing press, St. Mark is available in Arabic and several foreign languages.

Over the past few years, the number of monastic aspirants has increased and, in the last 25 years, the monastic population has multiplied tenfold. Critics point out that, although the monastic life is a simple one, it assures one some measure of peace – the monastery provides shelter and food as well as a refuge from the economic and political chaos of modem Egypt.

“If only I was born a Christian, I could have joined a monastery and lived in peace,” comments Makdi, a taxi driver in Cairo.

The trials and temptations of modern society, however, confront each monk every day. Recall the medieval and Renaissance paintings depicting the temptations of St. Anthony of Egypt!

The limitations of Egypt’s secular government in an environment of escalating Islamic extremism are but one trial. The Copts, who encompass just 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 58 million, have to act with moderation and discretion:

“Each time we have tried to claim our rights by using pressure, we have suffered,” Abuna Wadid says seriously. “We try to proceed with logic, to discuss issues cordially and gently.”

Nevertheless, the 1,500-year-old vision of St. Macarius and his desert friends does not just survive, it thrives. The monasteries of Wadi el Natrun, and the holy people who dwell therein, are beginning a new millennium with great hope and faith.

Armineh Johannes is a photojournalist based in Paris, France.