Tunis Village, El Fayoum, Egypt – February, 2009
In February, 2009, JoAnn, Kirsty and I traveled to the rural town of Tunis in el Fayoum which is about an hour and a half’s drive heading southwest out of Cairo. We met up with Kirsty’s husband Tim and our friend Islam who’d arrived a few days earlier to help build a well at the Fayoum Art Centre, a place that Islam, also an artist, often visits. Our friend and driver, Mahmoud, decided to stay for the weekend as well. He was even inspired to let his creative juices flow through some chunks of charcoal onto found pieces of wood.
It was a lovely weekend that brought us some much needed respite from our busy teacher lives in busy Cairo. We spent our time relaxing at Zad al Mosafer ecolodge; we went for walks, horseback riding along the largest lake in Egypt, Lake Qarun, and at night sat under the stars in the chilly February air curled up next to a warm fire. On Friday, JoAnn and Tim serenaded us in an intimate domed clay room, part of the art centre. Over the weekend Islam introduced us to a small group of artists from all over the world gathered together to create new works of art and learn from one another’s individual areas of expertise. Islam also showed us the collection Faces of Fayoum, a series of portraits created in Fayoum using traditional Egyptian painting techniques. Part of the artists’ process is to make the paint themselves by mixing colour pigments with melted beeswax.
On our drive back to Cairo we ended up in the thick of a wicked thunderstorm – apparently the worse rain/hail storm Egypt has seen in over five years! Naturally, Mahmoud wasn’t accustomed to driving in a torrential downpour, but his expert wet-weather-co-pilots instructed him in the fine art of defogging the windows. Our fantastic weekend retreat from Cairo climaxed as were heading back to Maadi through Giza and saw dramatic forks of lightening shatter the dark night sky and illuminate the great pyramids.
It was a weekend I’m sure none of us will soon forget.
M.
