Travel

Home is where your heart breaks

I went to Khorramshahr by train and took my nephew’s wife because her mom is from Abadan and she had never seen that area. My cabin had all Abadanis which included a police woman. When she took off layer of black clothing the true Dokhtar Abadani was revealed. I was shocked to see latest skinny jeans, revealing top with English writings, and a fancy belt. I chuckled because looking at her chador and the head covering, I would have never guessed such fasionista existed underneath all that clothing>>>

The Museum that is Luxor

Luxor is where Egypt showcases its antiquities. In what is called the largest outdoor museum in the world, the monuments to life and afterlife in ancient Egypt are on display. There are temples to worship gods, temples to worship pharaohs, and tombs of pharaohs so designed as to enable them to travel after death with gods in the underworld. The monuments were built over many centuries in this long-lasting pharaonic religious capital. Their remaining walls, columns, statutes, and reliefs stand as witness to times long bygone. Even the scars they bear tell tales>>>

A thousand years later

Aswan is a rare place. It’s a living community amidst the ruins of old settlements. It was a strategic gatekeeper at ancient Egypt’s southern frontier. Yet it absorbed the very people it aimed to keep out. The Nubians of the south are now almost indistinguishable from the Egyptians. They were the early Christian converts in this corner of the world who were later integrated by intermarriage with the Egyptian converts to Islam. In this largely Sunni city, the legacy of the Shiite Ismaili rule still competes with those of the Romans and Greeks. All of these relics are ingénues compared with what is left of the Pharaonic age. In the ruins of Abu one finds the magic of this place>>>

Extremism Alongside Moderation

The story of today’s Cairo is writ in the past. It is not just the Pyramids and the Sphinx of ancient times, it is also the monuments of Cairo’s Islamic history that make it so “now”. Here lie the double-tale symbols of the Sunni-Shiite clash and co-existence, as well as the fault lines of both “extremism” and “moderation” in a resurgent Islam that now preoccupies the concerns of much of the world. The visitors who flock to see the likes of Tutankhamun’s jewels are at peril of remaining innocent for ignoring all others that Cairo has to offer>>>