Silence and Ghosts

It's quiet. I just realized that it's quiet.

It's mid-afternoon on the first day of Ramadan. [This post was written yesterday.]

We're in the country here on the west side of the river, among farms and also"villas" for foreigners. So the noise level is nothing like the loudness of Luxor, on the east side.

Farming is quiet here, because the farmers don't use machinery. Occasionally you see an antiquated tractor. I suppose farmers rent these as needed. But mostly farming is what it has been for thousands of years—backbreaking time-consuming labor.

But now I'm missing the background hum of voices. And animal noise. Bleating goats. Braying donkeys. Roosters proclaiming their authority. And the friendly horns of motorbikes and minibuses, from the road that parallels the canal, across the field from my apartment.

I opened the door to let the dog out, and heard the voices of neighbor children playing. And then there was the mid-afternoon call to prayer. And I let the dog back in, and the children's voices were silent again.

I suppose I should now talk about how, in our culture, we're uncomfortable with silence. And so on. Which is true, I guess.

But here, the silence is haunted.

When I first moved into this apartment, I was aware of rubbing elbows with ghosts. A vast crowd of them. The people that lived and worked here, millennia ago.

The Pharaoh's palace was here, in the 18^th dynasty, in an adjoining village. And so the west bank of the Nile was highly-populated and very busy, while the east bank was more rural. The opposite of the modern situation, and hard to imagine.

This afternoon, in the silence, the ghosts begin to crowd the edge of my consciousness. I saw one once, at night, from my bedroom, standing in the doorway. He was in the dark of the hall, so I couldn't really see him. But I knew he was there, watching, looking. Not in a threatening way. Just wondering what I was doing there, in his space, in his time, and with such unusual clothes and such a strange haircut.

This is what ghosts are, I think. (I'm not talking about malevolent entities, which are different.) They are the electromagnetic signature of people of another time. Their time and our time somehow intersect, and we have an anomalous situation.

Now that I've written my post, I think I'll turn on the TV and let noise and electronics dispel the ghostly silence.

For more on intersecting warps of time, read Louis Sachar's book Holes. Brilliant.

Mystery fruit

On the ferry there are usually one or 2 little kids selling pocket packs of tissues. Tourist price one Egyptian pound each. Locals get two packs for that price. There are roughly 6 Egyptian pounds to the U.S. dollar right now, by the way. So the price is less than 20 cents for one or two packs, depending.

For the past couple of weeks, other little kids have been selling clear plastic bags filled with laymun. The price of these is one Egyptian pound per bag.

I thought these little green fruits must be limes. The Arabic word laymun sounds similar. And these fruits look like limes, although not exactly like any limes I'm familiar with.

So I finally got up the nerve to spend big bucks and buy a bag. The seller—a boy maybe 10 years old—told me, in English, "eleven". Sure enough, there were eleven items in the bag.

So, what is a laymun? Or what are laymun? The word laymun is the same for singular and plural, I'm told.

Laymun are indeed limes. But not like any limes most of my readers have ever seen. These limes are small, and more round than ellipsoid, but not perfectly round either. The length and the diameter are each less than 2 inches (4 centimeters or less.) The color is a vivid green or yellow-green.

These limes are certainly tart! I suspect that these are similar to the limes that the children craved in Little Women, by the way. And I bet these limes would make wonderful limeade, if I knew how to make lemonade or limeade. But on the internet I found the suggestion of pouring boiling water over a lime (cut open), making a refreshing summer beverage. I'll have to try that. It should be very healthful, too. Limes are supposed to be beneficial in remedying all kinds of medical conditions.

Believe it or not, sampling these limes is also research! These tiny fruits are probably much less hybridized than their giant supermarket counterparts. (I'm just guessing about this.) In other words, these limes would be genetically more ancient. So I'm hoping that they're similar to the first limes to be cultivated in the Middle East/North Africa region, a little more than three thousand years ago. Limes were the first citrus fruit to be cultivated, by the way. I believe they came from the Far East.

I find that these limes improve a cup of tea. Just divide one almost all the way through, and then perch it on the rim of your full-to-the-brim tea cup. It adds a subtle zing.

I wish the internet could transmit flavor, so your teeth could be set on edge by one of these little babies!

A Hazardous Celebration!

There are risks associated with the Easter Monday celebration in Egypt. [See yesterday’s post.]

For one thing, you can’t have an enjoyable picnic if you’re in the middle of a sandstorm! But severe sandstorms are uncommon at this time, it seems. Sham el Nessim is at the very beginning of khamsin, the windy season.

Several people each year die of botulism poisoning from eating the traditional fiseekh, which is salted fish. Some people dispute that the botulism is contracted from the fish. Others have switched to dishes such as tuna salad—which also has its dangers as a picnic food in a hot climate! In any case, the moral seems to be that you should buy your fiseekh from a reputable fasakhani and not from your local supermarket.

They say that fiseekh was part of the festival in pharaonic times. But this can’t have been true in all places. In some regions of upper (upriver, southern) Egypt, fish was taboo and wasn’t eaten. Even then, apparently, it was hazardous to eat fish from Nile waters! [Although the other day I saw one or two people fishing from the dubious-looking waters of a canal. And people fish from the Nile even in Cairo, where the water must be really nasty. After all, not so long ago the worst danger from falling into the Thames wasn’t drowning but poisoning from the murky water.]

Apart from fiseekh and boiled eggs, traditional foods of this season are onions and scallions and garlic, as well as tirmis, a kind of bean (legume). One source also lists molokheya, a dish prepared from a kind of green leaves. But Egyptians eat this all the time anyway.

Many places in Europe have special Easter breads. No special bread is reported for Egypt. But bread is special here every day. So many kinds, all absolutely fresh and delicious. The wheat is grown in the fields all around Luxor.

As we’ve seen, the word sham means not only smelling or breathing, but also life and resurrection (shemu in ancient Egyptian). The word sham must surely be related to shams, the sun. The sun gives life. Without sun, the crops cannot grow. (In ancient times, remember, shemu was the hot, dry season, the season of harvesting crops.)

Of course, the sun also gives death. We all know that the desert sun is deadly. So the ancient Egyptians often depicted the sun with a cobra at its heart. It gives life, but it carries a deadly poison. The Pharaoh was the sun, giving life to his people and bringing death to evildoers. (Well, in theory, anyway.)

Here’s a happy thought. This is one picnic where you don’t have to worry about getting rained on. Oh dear! That’s not a very happy thought for people living in the English climate, enjoying a picnic of soggy sandwiches, crammed inside a car because the grass is too wet.

Happy Sham el Nessim, everyone!

Sham el Nessim

Or, more correctly, Sham en Nessim. [For you linguists, the definite article el changes to en, for reasons of euphony or ease of pronunciation, because the noun begins with the letter n.]

This is the holiday celebrated on Easter Monday (the day after Coptic Easter) by people of all faiths in Egypt. Like the Easter celebration most of our readers are familiar with, it is associated with colored eggs and family get-togethers, especially picnics.

In his book Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1834), Edward William Lane reports:

A custom termed “Shemm en-Nessem” (or the Smelling of the Zephyr) is observed on the first day of the Khamaseen. Early in the morning of this day, many persons, especially women, break an onion, and smell it; and in the course of the forenoon many of the citizens of Cairo ride or walk a little way into the country, or go in boats,…to take the air, or, as they term it, smell the air, which on that day they believe to have a wonderfully beneficial effect.

[Note: the Khamaseen or Khamsin (fifty )is the wind which often brings sandstorms, and also the windy season which typically lasts around fifty  days. And the festival is celebrated everywhere in Egypt, not just Cairo.]

This celebration is roughly 5000 years old! The name comes from ancient Egyptian shemu, which was the harvest season and the first season of the year in the ancient-Egyptian calendar.

The first day of Shemu was believed to be the anniversary of the day of creation. This was the day when the benu bird (gray heron, symbol of life and resurrection, and probably the prototype of the phoenix—the Greeks borrowed almost everything from the Egyptians!) sat on the first mound of earth that rose out of the swirling waters of isfet, or chaos. So, even in ancient times, eating and decorating eggs was an integral part of the celebration.

The ancient word shemu was not only the word for the harvest season, but also the word for life, renewal, resurrection. So it is probably the origin of the modern word sham, which means smelling or breathing. After all, if you can't breathe you aren't alive! So, then and now, the whole festival is a celebration of the breath of life and the breath of renewal and the bounty of the earth.

So, when you enjoy an Easter egg of any kind—chocolate, painted, etc.—just remember that the ancient Egyptians started this whole thing of celebrating with eggs.

Well, that’s enough information for one day. More tomorrow or Thursday, inch’Allah.

I first learned of this holiday only about a week ago. (After all, this will be my first Easter in Egypt.) I read about it on page 22 of Egyptair’s Horus magazine, April issue.

Internet sources are Wikipedia and:

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/shamelnaseen.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/sham-el-nessim
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Sham_el_nessim
http://www.realalternativesite.com/coptic-easter-monday-sham-nessim-a-2887.html 



 

Herbal Remedies from Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians used a wide variety of herbs medicinally. Here's a list of some well-known herbs and their ancient medicinal uses:

Garlic was believed to provide vitality, soothe flatulence and allow digestion.
Onions  prevent colds and act as a diuretic.
Honey and milk were used for the respiratory system as well as throat irritations.
[I would guess this would be cultured milk such as yogurt or rayeb.]
Honey, a natural antibiotic, was also used to dress wounds.
Dill was used to soothe flatulence [and] also for its laxative and diuretic properties.
Aloe vera was used to treat worms, relieve headaches, [and] soothe chest pains, burns, ulcers and skin diseases.
Camphor tree was used to reduce fever, soothe gums, and treat epilepsy.
Parsley was used as a diuretic.
Mint was used to soothe flatulence, aid digestion and as a breath freshener.
Sesame was used to soothe asthma.
Thyme was also used as a pain reliever.
[Quoted from Horus, the magazine of Egyptair, March 2011, p. 24.]

The ancient Egyptians used many other herbs whose English or botanical names have not yet been identified.
It sounds as if the ancient Egyptians, like us, had lots of digestive problems!