Tag: egypt
-
Book of the Month
So here is an exciting new feature-well a feature at least. Drop by Strabo’s Bookshelf on my home page for more travel orientated book recommendations Red Nile A Biography Of The Worlds Greatest River by Robert Twigger I had not heard of Robert Twigger until a serendipitous moment when his book Red Nile fell off…
-
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…
-
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…
-
That Time in Cairo When I Met Mahfouz
Cairo, a steaming mess of a city that has the capacity to at first seduce and serenade you then almost immediately slap and violate you, and yet, despite it all you keep coming back for more. And here I was, back again. On the balcony of my scruffy room in the Hotel Hussein, the hotel…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Cairo Hara Tea Boy
My friend Gomer had some business to attend to and asked if I wanted to tag along, we set off along a side street from Darb al Ahmar and meandered through the alleys, we climbed a low wall and threaded our way carefully through a smoldering rubbish tip, I wasn’t sure what Gomer’s business was…
John Wreford Photographer 