Just three weeks ago, while visiting Egypt during a Society of American Travel Writers Freelance Council meeting, I along with other SATWers and tourists, plunged into the tiny "streets "of Cairo's Khan el-Khalili bazaar (below). Tourist-oriented as it has become, classic Middle Eastern market is endlessly fascinating. And endless streams of visitors flood into the labyrinth.
The narrow streets -- lanes, really -- provide abundant sights, sounds and energy, as merchants hustle to attract buyers (mainly tourists) to their tiny shops. "Hello!" "Where you from?" "Come visit my shop." "No hassle." "I make you a good price." My sense was of energy and enterprise, but not of any kind of threat.
My colleagues and I entered the bazaar from a narrow street that runs alongside the beautiful 12th-century Al Hussein Mosque (below). Like everyplace in Egypt that tourists are likely to visit or where expats live, security presence was obvious -- and there are, of course, plainclothes personnel all around too. A uniformed police officer stood at one street corner across from the mosque at one entrance into the labyrinthian market. (As you look at this photo, Khan el-Khalili is directly to the left of the mosque). I peered inside an open door to the mosque, brillitantly lit with fluorescent lights even during daylight. I would have liked to go in, but I didn't think that non-Moslems, especially a foreign woman, would be welcome there.
On another side of the mosque is the large open area with a rare square of actual green grass and towering palm trees that seem nearly as high as the imposing minarets. It is fenced off, so that no one actually walks on the grass. During the day, tour buses unload on an adjacent paved square (just behind where I stood to take this photo. In the evening, vehicles are not permitted there and traffic is kept at a distance, turning this greenspace and the blocked-off square into a kind of buffer for the mosque.
The mobility-challenged vendor below was selling some modest goods from a folding table alongside the mosque, just across from the entrance to the Khan el-Khalili market that I went into and out of.
Facing the grassy square, and therefore just steps from the mosque, a row of busy cafes (below) attracts many visitors and also Egyptians as well. On the evening of February 4 at around 7:00 p.m. (after dark), another woman and I left the bazaar, passed the mosque and the greenspace, and crossed the area where vehicles are prohibited to grab a taxi that would take us back to our hotel.
After I returned, friends who asked me about my trip and my impressions as often as not also asked whether I was nervous or afraid, and I always replied that I wasn't. I reminded them that people who go about their business at home or abroad without incident do not make headlines.
Given my recent visit, today's CNN headline, "Tourist killed, 23 others wounded in Egypt blast," and msnbc's "Explosion in Cairo Bazaar Kills 1 Injures 21," were not abstract to me, even if the news services weren't in agreement over how many people were injured. According to the report, "The explosion occurred during the height of the evening rush at 6:30 p.m. in an area of coffee shops located near the Al Hussein Mosque, one of Cairo's largest, Interior Ministry press officer Hany Abdelatif said. The bomb was left under a stone chair, a ministry statement said. An undetonated bomb was found near the mosque, which sits close to an entrance of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, a huge market and a tourist attraction, Abdelatif said."
I am not sure exactly where the bomb went off, but I certainly had a powerful picture of the lay of the land. When I heard the news, I was sad about the tourists and locals who were victims of the blast, relieved I wasn't there to witness it and sorry that this incident might negatively impact visitation to the country that has so much worth seeing. I also immediately remembered the vendor, heavily seated next to her wheelchair, and hoped that she was unhurt.
P.S. Please see this story from the New York Times.
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder