Have some (more) irony, it's good for your blood...

So this morning I'm sitting at breakfast in the hotel, here in Alexandria, Egypt.

The second-floor restaurant has a glass wall looking directly onto the beach. So I'm watching a couple walk barefoot in the Mediterranean surf (before 7 AM!!!!). Since this nation is 90% Muslim, the woman was wearing long black clothes and a head-covering. I was afraid she would get pulled under and drown from all that weight.

And at that moment, what song comes on the sound system, admittedly in a horrible Muzak format?

Imagine there's no Heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No Hell below us,
Above us only sky...

:rofl:

much variety in the amount of clothing women wear in public?

It ranges from full-face-and-hands-covered to just normal Western-style clothing. The majority of Muslim women here seem to just wear a head covering. The woman I saw on the beach had her face uncovered but otherwise was covered head-to-foot.

There's also a big difference in the age at which females adopt the covering(s). I see some very young girls already wearing it. But every morning I see female rug-rats of all ages waiting for their rides to school. Many of them wear a school uniform with no head covering. Or just the Universal Kid Uniform of jeans and a shirt.

Part of this may be Alexandria itself--a city which has always been proud (if not wonderfully defiant) of embracing such horrors as diversity and multiculturalism. Things are a lot more conservative in the little farm villages we pass thru on the way to work.

Since you're a Book Lover (like me!)...

Here in Alex, one of the local characters is a 90-year-old Greek woman who still runs the Elite pastry shop downtown. She personally knew people like Lawrence Durrell and the poet Constantine Cavafy.

People like that shop owner can be such treasures. How neat is that :-)

As for the chador/abaya thing: another thing I'm curious about is the color of the cloth - is it always black? I mean, I wear loose and billowy linens in hot weather and because I am fair-skinned, I cover nearly all of my limbs. But it's linen color, so it's cooler. I imagine wearing everything except the headgear might not be so bad from a comfort POV. OTOH, wearing the headgear must suck in hot weather. I wonder if the women keep their hair short or cropped...

The Muslim women here wear all different colors of head-coverings, some of them gorgeous and elaborate. Seeing a group of women on the street wearing them is colorful and quite beautiful, IMO, until you think about the reasons they're wearing them.

The ones who wear the abaya also wear colors other than black. Often white or tan.

Now some things are truly the same in all cultures. Like teen-agers. It's not unusual to see a bunch of teen girls wearing that traditional head-covering over form-fitting sweaters and extremely tight jeans. They are also every bit as giggly and flirty as Western teen girls. And the males are just as loud, obnoxious and testosterone-driven as ours. (I vaguely remember that, even though I was a teen when Julius Caesar was dating Cleopatra here...)

When I lived in Saudi Arabia, you very rarely saw any color other than black.

I went on a tour today with a young Muslim woman as my guide. She explained that, in general, Egypt has never followed the more hard-core Muslim interpretations.

I told her about seeing funerals in the little farm villages on my way to work. It's incredible. A whole procession of women, carrying glittering silver trays full of food and drink on their heads, going to pay their respects in much the same way we do in the U.S.

She told me that sort of thing, strictly speaking, is forbidden in Islam. It's an old rural Egyptian custom that has been integrated into the Muslim religion.

Fascinating stuff!

and tradition. Guess it must be true.

I went for another long walk all over downtown Alexandria today. At one point I was outside a university as classes were letting out. Some female students were covered completely except for their eyes, some were dressed like Western college students.

As I've mentioned before...it's a real kick to see a woman wearing traditional Muslim garb, driving her own car while yakking on a cell phone. I see that a lot.

If you've ever heard about Egyptians being very hospitable, that's certainly true too. I can't walk 10 feet down any street without someone wanting to chat with the Goofy American.

In a park today, some people who looked fairly poor tried to share their picnic lunch with me. That's happened several times. It's a pretty humbling experience.

the U.S..

It is interesting to see people picking and choosing which parts of the religion and culture to keep and which parts to leave behind. I guess that's how they open the door to opening their minds.

Alexandria: I'm so jealous! If there are sacred places in the world, that has to be one of them!