Category: Egypt
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Alexandria, The End of The Affair
It’s an optimistic morning as I stroll along Rue Nebi Daniel, heading Downtown from the station just as the city is waking. Egyptian cities tend to emerge slowly from slumber; nights are often long, and mornings are reluctant. I think of Mahfouz as I walk; he would have taken a taxi or carriage. He wouldn’t…
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Ripples on the Nile
I wasn’t following in the footsteps of Herodotus, at least, not on purpose, but somehow our paths did keep crossing, it was getting awkward. You know how it is when you have been stalking someone and then, suddenly, you come face to face with them. It’s been about two and half thousand years since the…
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Adrift on the Nile
Welcome to Alaska said the bleary-eyed Egyptian man sitting at the next table, my tired smirk of a reply was enough of an invitation for him to slide his seat over and join me. It was still early, the chocolaty coffee was not strong enough and had yet to work its magic, I wasn’t feeling…
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Siwa, City of Sand
Maher shuffled his way into the coffee-shop sneezing, coughing and complaining, his flip-flops hardly lifting from the dusty floor as he moved, I’m sick he announced to the waiter who didn’t look away from the TV, he sneezed again to prove his point. In Egypt the cure for the common cold is Helba a herbal…
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Middle East Print Sale
Photographs really should be printed and hung on walls; I say this as someone who loves photography not as a photographer. As I work towards launching a new website dedicated to print sales I am offering a generous discount to raise the necessary funds, buying a print will go a long way to supporting my…
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An Old Man In Cairo
Having wandered the fetid alleyways of the Fatimid’s all morning I found myself sitting in a tiny coffee shop no bigger than an average size bathroom, the old man was sitting on the opposite row of benches, the sun couldn’t quite reach over the mud brick walls of the Cairo labyrinth, it was December and…
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Portraits and Cairo Coffee
A typically beautiful Cairo morning, cool in the dusty shadows with cats basking in the warm November sun. I crossed the not yet busy square of Midan Hussein dodging a bread delivery boy balancing a rack of fresh baladi bread on his head; I slipped into my usual first port of call for coffee, one…
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Cairo Time and Tram Lines
Time for Mahfouz is a constant theme, in the opening chapter of Midaq Alley we hear Kirsha argue in favour of the instillation of a radio leaving the poet without a venue to recite his stories, “everything has changed” insisted Kirsha. The tram lines seen here along Sharia Port Said are, like the coffee shop…
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Cairo Cops
Eating my breakfast several floors up I watched the two policemen going about their business of guarding the tourists flocking to be fleeced in the Khan El Khalili bazaar, personally I have always felt a policeman should cut an imposing figure, but this pair were holding hands and gazing into each others eyes as though…
John Wreford Photographer 