At our Nubian party:

Celebrations

Friday we had a Nubian party as an end of season celebration. We went to “Adams house” which is a small hotel/camp on the west bank of the Nile across from the main part of Aswan. We had been there many times before, because it is located between two of our sites. Sometimes we stopped there to use the bathroom rather than peeing in the desert. Another advantage of being on an almost entirely female team- the priority for good bathrooms. So we ordered a band and a buffet dinner and invited everyone who had been working with the excavation, about 25 people. At first the hotel was surprised that we wanted to have a party start at 6:00. I believe the exchange went something like this:

“What time can we have it?

Oh as you like, 8 o’clock, 9o’clock, as you like.

How about 6?

6! I don’t know if the band can get here that early, why so early… “etc. I guess ‘as you like’ has specific boundaries. Eventually we agreed to 6:30. We ordered the Nubian band from Abu Simbel because it included women as well. The local band was all men. We had to take two mini-busses to get everyone there. It felt the same as going to work in the morning, only the driving was even more frightening, if that is possible, since at night there is no traffic and the driver could drive as fast as he wanted.

Upon arriving everything was in full swing. I mean- nothing says traditional music like a synthesizer right? There was a guy in a galabiyya and a sport jacket on the “stage” setting the pre-made melodies on the keyboard, and another guy running around singing into the microphone, and a whole lot of other people milling about. I can’t imagine that they brought that many people with the band, I mean I know how much we are paying, and it seems like so many people that they will all practically be getting a dollar each. But they grabbed us the second we walked in the door and started dancing. There were a lot of kids with us-Fatma and Nuby’s son Sayid, Hamam’s three kids, Serena’s daughter Stella, and our inspector Hala’s son Ziad. Stella and Berenice and Sayid were into dancing, the other were too shy. At some point the music abruptly stopped and we went to eat. There were all sorts of things; including tahina of course, grilled lamb which I love, particularly good chicken, a potato tomato and onion casserole that is another of my favorites, eggplant, rice and more. After dinner we resumed dancing. There were some other Egyptians staying in the hotel who joined in too. At one point the various singers were trying to ululate, and unabashedly brazenly failing, so one of the other guests was brought up by her rather conservative looking husband and she showed them how it is done. After a while the band again abruptly stopped, and quickly packed up and left, which was fine since we still had to work in the morning. We had tea around a campfire and then repeated the breakneck journey home.

The second celebration of this week was on Sunday when Egypt won the Africa cup (again). (I was in Luxor two years ago when Egypt also won.) We had gone to have an informal look at ceramics at the German house and it just so happened that every archaeologist in town was coming that night, so it turned into a pretty big buffet dinner. The German house is on Elephantine Island and there is a really beautiful Nubian village there. We really realized that the soccer game was going on when we were walking back through the village and no one was around. Peeking into one of the shops we saw that there was a big group of men watching the game, including some that worked with us on the excavation. When we got to the ferry we were a bit worried, because the ferry was nowhere in sight, and for the first time in my experience of Aswan there wasn’t anyone around asking us if we wanted a felucca ride either. Eventually the ferry did come, but there were only three women aboard. As we were docking on the opposite bank we heard the honking, drumming and cheering start. Because it was Valeria’s last night we had already intended to go to the souk for 5 minutes of last minute shopping and to have tea and shisha. Of course this turned into an hour of shopping, punctuated with motorcycles waving the Egyptian flag zooming by, or trucks full of Egyptian young men spilling out of the windows riding on the roofs and hanging on the back, waving flags honking and chanting. There was even an impromptu parade that went through the souk. The biggest surprise was when we saw that one of these trucks of revelry was driven by non-other than the illustrious tamarro Hammam, who was driving our project- rented truck! Glad to see our money is going to good use ;) Mabruk Masr.

An impromptu display of national pride, Even the pharoahs were celebrating:

The celebrations are over and things are wrapping up. Right now there is strangely little to do. I am playing on my new computer (writing emails and organizing pictures), Sarah is asleep on the couch, Hana is drawing pottery and Stan is ‘supervising’ her, Maria is arguing with Hamam about housing for next year, Fatma is looking stressed by all the cleaning, Sayid is trying to push buttons on the computers when no one is looking, Serena and Teresa are out at the souk. Humdulilah everything goes as normal. I’m sure I should be writing reports and I’m sure I will regret this relaxation next week, but for now, humdulilah.