Thursday, April 15, 2010

Coptic Cairo: Part 1

Cairo continues to surprise me. I think my family spent too long living in the Persian Gulf because I keep having these What the heck?!? moments. Female doctors? Wha?! Men and women holding hands in the streets? Huh?! Movie theaters? Cah-razy! And the craziest one so far...

CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT!?! NO WAY!

Yes way. A good size chunk of the population in fact. And they were here before the Muslims! Copts. Look them up. Seriously, it's fascinating stuff. Egyptian Christians. Whodathunkit. Not me.

So going to Coptic Cairo today was especially fun. I wanted to make eye contact with all the Copts and say, "Me too, me too! Christ? Yeah, I know that guy. Congrats on getting the Holy Family to come to Egypt. That must have been awesome for you." But don't worry, I didn't make a complete fool of myself. I was quiet and polite and especially grateful when two Copts let me examine their hands.

By the way, the only way I could get Booker to come along was to tell him that we were going to explore castles and find dragons. And it wasn't entirely untrue! Stay tuned...

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On the right, you can see the Coptic script.

1 comment:

sherry said...

(o.k so it has taken me a couple-few months to get to the rest of Cairo. Well worth it) I had no idea. Amazing. It seems totally out of place, yet makes sense. And I have got to see that museum someday!