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366 unusual things: days 189-193

7th July – Researching the El Gala’a Bridge in Cairo for a ‘Night’ photo challenge, I discovered it opened for feluccas by pivoting the central part around to perpendicular, making two passageways for the boats.
The first photo below is my father’s (that is, it was in his album but possibly not taken by him) which seems to have been shot from an identical position as the ‘Night’ photo.  Following this are two photos (undated but taken during WWII) in the National Library of Australia collection, by war photographer Frank Hurley, of the bridge opened for felucca traffic.  When closed, the bridge seems to have been only for pedestrians in those days.  I searched for recent images of the El Gala’a Bridge and found that it now carries heavy vehicular traffic, and during last year’s revolution was jam-packed with Egyptians heading for Tahrir Square.

“English Bridge”, Cairo (El Gala’a Bridge), 1942

Hurley, Frank, 1885-1962. Feluccas on the Nile at Cairo [with city, viewed from above] [picture] : [Cairo, Egypt, World War II]

Hurley, Frank, 1885-1962. Feluccas passing through the English Bridge, Cairo [Kobri Al Galaa or Evacuation Bridge] [picture] : [Cairo, Egypt, World War II]

8th July – Bought a green leather bag which was half-price ‘because of the colour’.

9th July – Spent hours searching the Internet for an image matching my camel bridge photo.  Finally found a postcard from the early 20th century showing the same bridge.  The Internet is an amazing resource!

10th July – Tried to get out of a 3-hour free carpark.  Put the ticket in the machine and it shot out and landed in a puddle where 6 other tickets were being rained on.  Mine was the driest, so I picked it up and put it back in.  It shot out again.  I hit the red ‘Help’ button and a muffled voice announced the free parking had been reduced to 2 hours.  The boom was generously raised anyway.

11th July – Learned that Joni Mitchell’s song ‘Both sides now’ was written as a poem.  It’s great read aloud.

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Weekly photo challenge: Movement

Movement:  each of the three creatures here is raising a foot to move forward.

My father captioned this photo “Camel Bridge”.  I’ve done some research and found it is a footbridge over a boat passageway through a dam wall on the Nile.  It’s known in English as the Great Delta Barrage.  In Arabic (from Google Maps) it’s Alkanater Kheireya.  The wooden bridge was lowered for foot traffic, and when boats needed to pass through, it was folded up against the building wall.

Camel bridge, Egypt, 1941/42
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Weekly photo challenge: Friendship

I have several photos taken in Egypt of soldiers smiling together with their arms around each other, close mates in a time of war, establishing friendships unlike any they had back home.  This photo is interesting for its depiction of friends but also because of the background the photographer captured.  They seem to be standing on top of a building showing off Heliopolis, developed in 1905 as a model suburb of Cairo by Baron Empain, a Belgian industrialist.  One of the buildings he ordered his architects to design was the Roman Catholic Church (behind and to the left) known as the Basilica of the Virgin Mary, or l’Église Notre Dame d’Héliopolis, built in the heart of the new suburb in 1910.  It’s a small copy of Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.  When the baron died in 1929 he was buried in the crypt.

The mosque in the photo (behind and to the right) is described in the photo album as the ‘wailing mosque’.  It does not appear in any present day web photo search, nor on Google maps.  Many buildings have been demolished or altered during the last century, particularly during the 1970s, and this must have been one of them.

My father gave this photo the caption “S. Chambers”, though I don’t know which of them it is.

S. Chambers and friends, with the domes of the Roman Catholic Basilica and the suburb of Heliopolis, Cairo, in the background, 1941
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Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Rhythm

Ailsa proposes ‘Rhythm’ as this week’s photo topic, which is great for me!  Since the WordPress weekly photo challenge is proposing ‘Today’ as a topic, I can’t draw on my father’s black and white photos from seventy years ago!  But I can for Ailsa.

See her Rhythm story here:  http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/06/01/rhythm/

And here’s mine, the only photo from the album in which someone is playing a musical instrument.  I imagine this monkey is dancing to the beat.  It was amusing enough for a few people to stop and watch and for at least one soldier to stop and photograph.  My father wrote ‘Kan-Kan’ under the photo, so that must be the monkey’s name.

An Egyptian man with a dancing monkey is generally a beggar who lives on alms.  He is called a fakir (so I read), an Arabic word for ‘needy man’.  In Western countries, the use of animals for street entertainment is frowned upon now, though I did see some online  images of dancing monkeys in India and Pakistan.  I suppose it’s like busking;  there’s probably some talent involved in training the monkey.  But from then on it has to dance for its supper.  It’s something which leaves me ambivalent:  I have a real (Western) pleasure in Orientalist images, whether they be paintings or designs or photos like this one.  I feel the same when listening to gypsy music like that of Django Reinhardt, which makes sense:  the word gypsy comes from Egyptian.  The colourful elements of Middle Eastern life are like chocolate to me; they’re rich and mysterious.  Here’s to ancient peoples!  We owe them much.

Kan-Kan, Egypt, 1942
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Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Street markets

Ailsa (http://wheresmybackpack.wordpress.com) proposed Summer for her photo challenge last week and I was inspired to look long and hard for the right photo to submit.  There were no summery images in the war album of photos taken when my father was serving in the Middle East, during the northern winter!  So I had to resort to my own recent photos.  Now, coincidentally, here’s that summer theme again on this week’s WordPress photo challenge.  But I don’t feel disappointed because I have a photo I’ve looked at many times and wondered what theme I could use it for – and low and behold, coincidentally again, Ailsa has put out a new challenge… for Street Markets.

Cairo markets, 1941/42
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Weekly photo challenge: Hands

To an enemy, our hands are the most immediate threat.  With our hands thrust as far away from our body as possible, most of us are defenceless, except for those with awesome kicking skills.  Here, two soldiers play at war as if they were boys, except the gun and bayonet are real.  And the war is real.  But so are the smiles, for now.

AIF soldiers, Egypt, 1942
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Weekly photo challenge: Unfocused

This photo has a smudged look which resembles my own unspectacled vision of lights.  Unable to focus, I can’t tell where a light begins and ends.

The photo comes from my father’s war album and has the caption “King Pharouk celebration”, though the name is more commonly spelt Farouk.  At 16 years of age in 1936, he was crowned King of Egypt, its penultimate king.  I’ve searched through Google images for photo clues and found one showing him at a celebration of the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, standing near a huge crown with draping lights, as they are in my photo here.  The date would be in the early 1940s.

Though Egypt was neutral for most of World War II, allied troops including Australians were posted there and Egypt thus became a potential target for German and Italian bombing, so cities were blacked out at night. But the extravagant King Farouk who lived a lavish life refused to turn off the lights in his palace in Alexandria.  His fellow Alexandrians were not happy.

King Farouk celebration, Egypt, early 1940s