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Tag: Africa

Coptic Heritage in Cairo

Coptic Heritage in Cairo

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A stained glass window using small bits of colored glass in a plaster
framework. Mosques and private houses also use this style of
decoration, although the mosques don’t include crosses, of course

While Egypt’s ancient civilization is the main draw for visiting the country, I find its medieval and modern history equally fascinating. Cairo is full of historic monuments. Minarets built a thousand years ago rise above the honking traffic, old houses from the Ottoman period are nestled in quiet back alleys, and a medieval citadel looks out over the city.

Many of Cairo’s most interesting historic sites are Christian. Early in Christian history, Egypt started a distinct tradition of worship that developed into what is now known as Coptic Christianity. The Coptic church traces its origins back to 50 AD, when Saint Mark visited the country and established the Church of Alexandria. The word “Copt” comes from the ancient Greek word for Egypt, “Aigyptos.”

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Four Thousand Year Old Bread from Ancient Egypt

Four Thousand Year Old Bread from Ancient Egypt

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Here’s something you don’t see every day, some preserved bread from the Eleventh Dynasty (2134-1991 BC) from Thebes. I snapped this photo in the Cairo Museum during a recent writing retreat.

… and I’m afraid that’s all I have for you this week from Egypt. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m working as a ghostwriter and I have a heinous deadline for a novel due this Friday. I’m also finishing up a short nonfiction booklet and my own novel, the one I went to Cairo to write in the first place. A minor character knocked the plot sideways and added 10,000 words to it.

So if I don’t want to be eating this bread next week, I have to get back to writing. But here are some more pics because I love you.

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Black Gate Interviews Egyptian Science Fiction Author Mohammad Rabie

Black Gate Interviews Egyptian Science Fiction Author Mohammad Rabie

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51JYgQ68kPL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_One pleasant stop on my recent trip to Cairo was the American University’s bookshop near Tahrir Square. It’s a treasure trove of books on Egyptology and Egyptian fiction in translation. Among the titles I picked up was the dystopian novel Otared by Mohammad Rabie.

This novel, originally published in Arabic in 2014 and published in English in 2016 by Hoopoe, the fiction imprint of the American University of Cairo, is a grim dystopian tale of Cairo in 2025.

After several botched revolutions in which the people repeatedly fail to effect real social and political change, Egypt is invaded by a foreign power. The army crumples, most of the police collude with the occupiers, and the general public doesn’t seem to care. A small rebel group decides to take back their nation, and one of its agents is former police officer turned sniper, Otared. The rebels basically become terrorists, deciding the only way to get the people to rise up is to make life under the occupation intolerable, which means killing as many innocent civilians as possible.

The world Rabie paints reminds me very much of the insane landscape in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things, with its violence, its cruelty, and its bizarre customs (in Otared almost everyone wears a mask) that begin to make sense once you learn more about the world. Throw in a nightmarish disease that affects only children, plus a national death wish, and you have a grim but compelling read. No science fiction novel has gut punched me this hard for a long, long time.

Mohammad Rabie is an emerging force in Egyptian letters. Born in 1978, he graduated from the Faculty of Engineering in 2002. His first novel, Amber Planet, was released in 2010 and won first prize in the Emerging Writers category of the Sawiris Cultural Award Competition in 2011. His second novel, Year of the Dragon, came out in 2012. Otared was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2016 (popularly referred to as the Arabic Booker). Curious to learn more, I sat down with Rabie (OK, I shot him an email) to speak with him about his writing.

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Shabtis: Servants in the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife

Shabtis: Servants in the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife

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Some very bling shabtis from the 18th dynasty tomb of Yuya and Thuya

We all know the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death. What with their elaborate spells, mummification, and tomb preparations, you’d think that the Egyptian afterlife would be one big vacation. After all that preparation they deserved a bit of rest.

Not so. The gods subjected the deceased to all sorts of jobs and obligations. The afterlife was just like our world, where all the usual cultivation and manufacturing had to be done. If you didn’t want to spend eternity doing manual labor, you needed to have some hired help.

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Revolutionary Street Art in Cairo

Revolutionary Street Art in Cairo

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From January 25 to February 11, 2011, the world watched as Egypt convulsed in a mass uprising. Across the country, protesters from a wide range of backgrounds vented their anger at the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, which they accused of corruption and police brutality. They also protested against rising prices, high rates of unemployment, and a host of other grievances. Everyone from students to labor unions to feminists to Islamists marched to topple the regime.

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King Tut’s Treasure: The Items You Don’t Usually See

King Tut’s Treasure: The Items You Don’t Usually See

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Ivory headrest. This is used as a pillow in many African
cultures if you want to preserve your hairdo. How you’re
supposed to actually get any sleep is beyond me

King Tutankhamun (1336-1327 BC) was a short-lived 18th dynasty pharaoh who was obscure and little studied by egyptologists until Howard Carter discovered his nearly intact tomb in 1922. Since then his most elaborate burial goods have been photographed countless times, and the whole world is familiar with images of his famous death mask, sarcophagi, and other golden treasures.

But these are only a small fraction of all the finds in the tomb. A total of 5,398 artifacts were retrieved, and on a recent visit to the Egyptian Museum during a writing retreat in Cairo, I had the privilege to see some of the ones not often reproduced in books.

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The Poison Apple: Interview with a Brooklyn Vampire

The Poison Apple: Interview with a Brooklyn Vampire

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Steven Van Patten from That Metal Show

For our next “victim” of the new Black Gate column, The Poison Apple, I’d like to introduce Steven Van Patten. Steven is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association and when vampires are supposed to be sleeping, he works as a TV show stage manager. In the past he’s worked on shows such as MTV’s Total Request Live, The Dr. Oz Show, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. He straddles two extremes of a busy lifestyle but still manages to write about topics that are underexplored in the speculative fiction realm. He’s written the Brookwater’s Curse series, Rudy’s Night Out, a children’s vampire story, and Killer Genius: She Kills Because She Cares, which was nominated for the African-American Literary Show Award.

Crowens: What got you into vampires?

SVP: As a little kid and an only child, often I had to entertain myself. Back in the day, that included Chiller Theater and being inspired by movies with Christopher Lee. When Blacula was released, that stuck with me as a strong, dominant character but in a sea of stereotypical nonsense in a Blaxploitation flick. As I got older, I started getting annoyed as to what happened to the brothers in a horror movie — they were dead before the credits rolled and characters were underdeveloped.

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A Hidden Synagogue in Tangier

A Hidden Synagogue in Tangier

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The interior of the Nahon Synagogue, with lamps donated by local families

Both of my readers have probably been wondering where I’ve been the past few weeks. I just got back from one of my semi-regular writing retreats in Tangier, Morocco. Besides getting heaps of writing done, every time I go to Tangier I always discover something new in this historic and complex city. This time I found a beautiful synagogue hidden at the end of a tiny alley.

Nahon Synagogue was built in 1878 by a wealthy banker from the nearby city of Tetouan in honor of his father Mose Nahon. Or this might have happened in 1868. The plaque on the front of the building says 1868, the caretaker and the synagogue’s literature say 1878.

The history of Jews in Tangier stretches back way before the 19th century. Archaeologists have dug up potsherds decorated with menorahs dating from Carthaginian times. Nothing else is known about Tangier’s Jewish community for this early period.

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Beau Geste: Myth vs. Reality

Beau Geste: Myth vs. Reality

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Beau_Geste_novelOn my last trip to Tangier I purchased a 1925 edition of Beau Geste, one of those classic novels that I’ve always intended on reading but never had. It’s a swashbuckling tale of three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion a few years before the start of the First World War.

The novel opens with a mystery. Mild spoilers follow. A French officer in the Legion leads his troops to an isolated fort, responding to a call for help. Once there, he finds all the legionnaires dead inside, apparently shot by the warlike Tuareg. The commanding officer, however, has a French bayonet sticking out of his chest and the private beside him, although shot, has been carefully laid out with his hands across his chest. The private’s hat rests nearby, torn open. In the hands of the dead officer is a mysterious letter in English that contains a confession. . .

From that tantalizing beginning we cut to England, where three rich brothers have to flee home and end up in the French Foreign Legion. Add a cruel officer, hordes of Tuaregs, and some boon companions and you have the recipe for adventure. Author P.C. Wren writes in a breezy, wry style halfway between pulp pulse pounders and more highbrow literature. The style never feels dated although Wren’s worldview certainly does. There’s a definite hierarchy in this book, with the aristocratic Englishmen firmly at the top, the various Europeans and Americans they meet ranged further down depending on their social class, and the Arabs and Tuaregs right at the bottom. Women hardly figure in this book at all which, considering how agonizingly maudlin the one love scene comes off, is probably for the best.

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The Pirates of the Canary Islands

The Pirates of the Canary Islands

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El Castillo de Santa Barbara, built in the 15th century to protect
the port of Teguise from pirate attacks. It was extensively rebuilt in the 16th century and
now houses a piracy museum. Photo courtesy Almudena Alonso-Herrero

When I told Black Gate‘s editor, high guru, and overall generalissimo John O’Neill that I was headed to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and would visit a castle that had a piracy museum, he was over the Moon. What fantasy blog wouldn’t want an article on that?

Unfortunately for him, I spent my week eating, swimming, and learning to play Grand Theft Auto 5 with my son and nephew. When I finally got around to driving out to the castle, it was closed. Yeah, I failed in my job as a travel writer because I enjoyed my vacation too much.

But the island itself is worth a look, and its history is fascinating. Lanzarote lies in the Canary Island chain just off the coast of Western Sahara. It’s volcanic in origin, with a dramatic coastline ringing an interior that looks like something from a post-apocalyptic movie.

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