A Day Out to Om Kalthoum Museum in Cairo

Today me and Shannon went to the Om Kalthoum museum in Manial. Neither of us had been before and I don't know Manial too well. As is de rigueur in Cairo now several taxi drivers didn't want to take a passenger but finally we found one with a old white cab and got in. When we got near to the zoo we saw why possibly there had been some reluctance; for there was a quite large protest on Giza Street but it wasn't the protesters that caught our eye; it was the military police who were in a tight formation of several rows, jumping up and down with their riot shields and chanting something. And whilst they were doing that an older policeman was walking around them saying things to them. It was totally weird. And I could only imagine that after this Maori like war dance they were going to run into the protesters and attack them. Across the road I saw water everywhere and some tanks, don't know what was going on with them. Anyway we continued and it was a bonding moment between us and the cab driver who said loudly 'Rabena Yostor!' and talked about how he hoped Egypt would be calm again and kissed his hands in a salutation prayer.

We drove on and then it seemed he didn't really know where we needed to be, and as previously said neither of us knew the place ourselves, only the address. I called my usual driver who talked with the taxi driver and then we were all set – or so we thought. We ended up going in a big loop, but passed by 'my' shop, the shoe shop in Manial called Linda, and then he asked someone who said it was still several streets away and one of those streets was za7ma central so he dropped us off telling us that after we crossed the road it was the 3^rd house along, the white house and then he counted the houses again and said it was the 5^th house along, then he exclaimed several times that it was the white house – which I could see - but my counting was something other than his but I couldn't hold on to that. 

We crossed over and started walking down the counting houses road and the museum was nowhere to be seen, but at least the road was quiet and there were no idiots anywhere. We saw a computer shop and I said we should ask there as they probably had someone inside with a brain. Shannon had wanted to ask a man who was putting a tiny baby into a wooden crate but I thought the computer shop was a better bet. Anyway, elhumdililah, they told us it was right at the end of the street. So we continued walking and one of the soles of my red shoes fell off, but that was OK. 

We got to the end of the street and mafeesh, nothing, just some kids and dogs and a water station. We walked around the side streets and asked a man who was having his sandwich, because he looked comfortable and made me feel comfortable. He was very helpful and told us where to go but all his food was bulging out of his mouth as he spoke, and later I told Shannon a story of three fat butchers in Zamalek who I saw sitting on their little plastic chairs outside their shop as they were eating their meat and their cheeks were crammed full of food pushing their eyes up and how they continued to talk with each other like that. I said 'It's like an Egyptian Dickens'. And we laughed.

After walking past some more dogs we found the museum and I immediately felt happy and rested upon seeing the gardens and Nile view, we went into the entrance to the sound of tinny Egyptian pop on someone's phone, which was a funny mezancé in the context. 

The tickets were only 6 LE which I thought was pretty amazing and we had a look at Om Kalthoum in her early years and all her years and her stage dresses and her sunglasses and her house shoes and her black handbags and her brown handbags. We saw all the medals she had been given and the keys to cities. We watched a film about her which seemed to have been made by filming a film that had perhaps been on TV originally, so a second hand film feeling, as the picture was a bit vague and the sound was muffled a little. The opening was a load of war planes flying over Cairo and I said to Shannon 'Oh, look, it's just like now.' Shannon was hoping the film would show Om Kalthoum's early life where she was dressed as a boy (I have no knowledge of this). At one point I said to Shannon, 'Can you imagine if you were Egyptian and you said you hated Om Kalthoum? It would be like saying you hated God, right?' Shannon looked a little bemused by my talk and smiled. Then we watched her funeral and the huge crowds downtown and gathered on their balconies and on the bridges, crazy amounts of people, and it was impossible not to think of the 18 days and protests since and I said to Shannon, 'I wonder if there was any harassment then, in those crowds? Or would that have been 'unthinkable'? But didn't everyone say it was unthinkable now too?' The film finished and we went on to look at her record players and radios and then we realised it was the end and we heard a man shouting that the exit was back up at the entrance. As we walking towards it a man came and said he knew me from watching films at the cinema at the Artistic and Creativity Centre at the Opera House and that he works there also. I didn't recall seeing this man in my life. But it seemed nice to be recognised and I said hello and hoped he was well. Then he said he would put on the 'panorama' for us. We waited and he came back with a remote control that he was angling above and some rather gallant music started playing and then on the huge wave of white panel in front of us an image appeared of Om Kalthoum like Cristo Redentor of Rio looking over the entire cityscape of Cairo. 'Look, Shannon,' I said, 'there's the byramids'.

Then we went home.

Correction; we left and walked for a while and went over two bridges and finally got a taxi and then sat in za7ma for 2 hrs and then we went home.