Miracles of Egypt

Red granite from the Aswan quarry used for the first chamber of the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Khephren. April 2010

Quartz chrystal from the Chrystal Mountain along the road from Bawiti to Oasis Farafra

English soldier’s button from the ruins of Fort Gebel al-Englis in Oasis Bahariyya

House-warming

Andrei Soroker is a programmer, musician and Russian. He threw these three talents into the scales when, in order to pay off the mortgage of their house, created the genre of virtual street music.

The house stands in the old quarter of San Francisco, a charming Victorian building, and as such, it has a thousand problems, accurately described by Andrei in his blog. The reason of its main problem is, however, not its age but our age, namely that as a consequence of the present crisis, it is worth only half of the mortgage that Andrei still has to pay off on it.

Andrei is obviously irritated by the fact, and he decided that before he would call in the mortgage and abandon the house with all they had hitherto paid, he would try to get some extra money to his programmer’s salary through virtual street music. On the site created for this purpose a couple of weeks ago he performs his own and his friends’ songs as well as those of classical Russian bards and of the heroic age of Russian underground in the 80’s. If you liked them, then by clicking on the house you can throw through PayPal one dollar per pixel into the virtual guitar case.


About this heroic age wrote Wladimir Kaminer in his first and perhaps most sincere book, the Military music of 2001:

In 1983 I got to know the innermost circles of the Moscow rocker world. This was at that time the most interesting society among all. My friends and I were looking for our heroes and we found them on the street. They were older than us, but they often behaved like children and they all played on the guitar. It was a wonderful time. The heroes of the 80’s simply started off and swept off the mock-heroes of the Soviet Union.

By clicking on the above image of the site you can watch Andrei singing one of the “hymns” of this heroic age, The man from Kemerovo of the legendary Akvarium group. He accompanies himself on guitar from playback, and the following English translation is also from him:

У меня были проблемы; Я зашел чересчур далеко; Нижнее днище нижнего ада Мне казалось не так глубоко, Я позвонил своей маме, И мама была права - Она сказала: "Немедля звони Человеку из Кемерова". Он скуп на слова, как де Ниро; С ним спорит только больной. Его не проведешь на мякине, Он знает ходы под землей. Небо рухнет на землю, Перестанет расти трава - Он придет и молча поправит все, Человек из Кемерова. Адам стал беженцем, Авель попал на мобильную связь, Ной не достроил того, что он строил, Нажрался и упал лицом в грязь; История человечества Была бы не так крива, Если б они догадались связаться С человеком из Кемерова. Мне звонили из Киева, Звонили из Катманду; Звонили с открытия пленума - Я сказал им, что я не приду. Нужно будет выпить на ночь два литра воды, Чтоб с утра была цела голова - Ведь сегодня я собираюсь пить С человеком из Кемерова.

I had some problems; I took things a little too far; The lowest bottom of the most-remote hell Appeared not terribly far. I called my mother, And my mother was right — She said: "Immediately, you must call The man from Kemerovo". He uses words sparingly, like De Niro; One must be mentally ill to argue with him. Catch him with chaff, you cannot, He knows how to move underground. The sky will collapse on the ground, The grass will cease to grow — He will come and silently fix everything, The man from Kemerovo. Adam became a refugee, Abel got caught in a mobile web, Noah didn't finish what he was building Got drunk and fell face-first into mud; The history of humanity Would not have been as skewed, Had they had the wisdom to connect With the man from Kemerovo. They called me from Kiev, They called from Kathmandu; They called from the start of the plenary session — I told them I will not attend. It is imperative to drink two liters of water before bed, So my head remains whole the next day — Because tonight I'm planning on drinking With the man from Kemerovo.

The identity of the man of Kemerovo is unknown even to my Russian friends who lived through this period, but this is exactly the mystery of the thing. Of course you can find the song also in the performance of the original author, the great guru of the Russian underground Boris Grebenshchikov, of whom Kaminer says:

If I listen to him now, I just laugh. Borya still lives and still sings. Sometimes I think he would do better to stop it.

But in the performance of Andrei you can hear exactly that gentle, meditative and absurd metaphysics that one loves so much in things Russian.

Andrei, his son Boris, and the house

The flat was very small, but we already knew the trick how to pack together a hundred persons on ten square meters. The youth of Kiev were even willing to stand in queue in the evenings just to listen to the play of Mammut for three rubles

– writes Kaminer. Follow their example. Shell out those three rubles, or thirty dollars or as much as you like. Or only five, but each time you regularly come back. And write your signature and address on the wall of the house. To leave your memory and to have your own little place in the house. Just like one did it in those good old time house-warming parties.

(Julene Harrison’s paper cut from Andrei’s blog)

Golden apples

Directly from the garden of the Hesperides – Vespertina, al-Sepharad, in short the Land of the Sunset –, what is more, directly from the Western Islands. The first crop.


The little tree from the garden sees the sea to the right, the mountains to the left and, down in the valley protected by the mountains, the olive tree plantation of Arabic origins of the estate Son Bunyola. In warm summer nights, when laying under the open sky near to the tree, you can hear the bells of the sheep grazing between the olive trees, and the breathing of the sea in the background.




Behind the mountains there live bears. Nobody has seen them in daylight, but at sunset they emerge from behind the mountain to the sky.


As Wang Wei dispatched the first fruit of the little tree from the Western end of the Mediterranean, so at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean a bottle with the majestic fruit of the Golan Plateau also set on the way thanks to Gyuri. The two ambassadors of the South met halfway, on our Christmas table.

The third ambassador of the South is the Iranian spice blend for the rice with almonds that we had received as a gift in the Isfahan bazaar. “Here only foreigners are served, or also Iranians?” a woman asked half-amusingly after the grocer having enthusiastically described to us for more than twenty minutes the subtle nuances between the different sorts of saffrons. “Only Iranians!” shouted merrily the grocer. “Cant’t you see that he’s Iranian, too?” he caressed with love my thorny beard, and he slipped a package of seven spices blend into the bag with the saffron.

The gorgeous wine of the Golan Plateau – according to Gyuri the best wine in Israel – perfectly matched Iranian rice and the fish steamed on ginger according to Zhen’s Chinese recipe.

And lemons were as tasty as no other we have hitherto tasted.

On the occasion of the New Year we hereby want to say thanks to all our friends for their love towards us. May God give all the best to them, and to us the possibility of meeting them several times on this or that navel of this world.


Odysseus Elytis: Ο Ήλιος ο Ηλιάτορας (The Sovereign Sun). Music by Dimitris Lagios, sung by Giorgos Dalaras (1982). First piece: The song of the Sun (omitting from the translation the two first lines of the introductory choir).

Εσείς στεριές και θάλασσες τ' αμπέλια κι οι χρυσές ελιές ακούτε τα χαμπέρια μου μέσα στα μεσημέρια μου «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!» Από τη μέση του εγκρεμού στη μέση του αλλού πελάγου «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!» Με τα μικρά χαμίνια του καβάλα στα δελφίνια του με τις κοπέλες τις γυμνές που καίγονται στις αμμουδιές «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!»

You rocks and seas vines and golden olives hear my word as I follow my course: I turn above all places but I love this only one! At the middle of the universe among all the islands of the sea I turn above all places but I love this only one! With its little rascals riding on dolphins with its nude girls laying on the seashore: I turn above all places but I love this only one!

Tea Day

Kam, as it is attested by the welcome brainteaser of his web teashop, is a cheerful and meticulous person. The parcel sent by him from Hong Kong with not exactly two and half kilos of tea is covered, to all intents and purposes as a second protective layer, by a mosaic carpet carefully composed of seventy-five stamps of a total value of three hundred nine Hong Kong dollars equalling to some twenty-five euros. Fifty-one stamps of five dollars, twenty of two dollars and sixty cents, and he has even taken care to stick four pieces of fifty cents on the bottom of the parcel, to bind the carpet as it were.


However, the quality of the teas is no laughing matter for Kam. He personally travels about all the tea-districts of China for his ware, following the harvest calendar that he also publishes on his site, including detailed description on the quality of each harvest and on the best way of preparation of each tea, for example like this:

2007 is a hot year, weather-wise. We are getting 30C temperature even in Oct. So Kam wasn't expecting good Autumn tea at all. First batch of 2007 Autumn TGY came out around mid Oct. but Kam found it very unimpressive. Then came the 2nd harvest. Kam test drank, and jumped out of joy through the roof!

This Tie Guan Yin Oolong – that is, half-fermented – tea is one of the standard brands we have been ordering for years in large quantities from Kam. It has a definite, elegant taste with a fine shade of orchid – or, according to others, orange-peel. Another fix item is Jasmine tea. This does not belong to the favorites of tea’s fools, but whoever is fond of it (for example us, boldly confronting the taste terror of Gyuri) is warmly recommended to order it from Kam, because his one is a thousand times more fragrant than anything you can get in Europe. The third brand that we have tried now for the first time is Qi Men Red, the only red tea that figures in the list of the ten most famous Chinese teas. It has a wonderful taste, like fine warm milk, perhaps with a little bit of chocolate. It is very similar to that Caspian tea we have brought from Iran (and about which I will write later).


Our fourth favorite is Dragon Well Before Rain. This is an easy, nevertheless very fragrant green tea. It reminds me of the scent of tender corn cooked together with its fresh leaves that I liked so much in my childhood. We have not ordered of it now only because green tea is the better the more fresh it is, and the new harvest is almost here. And as in Kam’s shop the price of the tea also includes shipping, it means no extra cost if we do not order everything at the same time.

All the four kinds of tea – as it is minimally expected of any good tea – lasts at least three or four boiling, the Qi Men even more. Therefore these teas are in the reality much less expensive than any tea sold in Europe for an apparently lower price. Or even less expensive than the cheaper teas of Kam himself.


It is always a festive day when the yearly tea delivery arrives from Kam. In this year the feast is further enhanced by the fact that two days later a new parcel arrives from the web teashop of Mrs. Jing Lu in Guangzhou. This is the first time we order of her. We do not know yet how it would taste. We will report on it. The package is promising anyway.