The call of the wild

Yesterday I visited the Manyal Palace, built around the 1900’s for Prince Mohammad Ali, a monarch-hopeful who never made it to the throne. The interior is a fabulous display or Turkish influenced architecture. But we’re not here to talk fabric and tile.



By far the best part of the palace is the Hunting Museum. Created entirely from animals killed by King Farouk and his friends, it’s a long and narrow corridor on the side of the grounds. It is filled with over 300 gazelle heads, 35 ducks and many other dead animals.

I understand the collection of gazelles. I am from Wisconsin, it is not uncommon to enter a friend’s home and find decapitated deer hanging off their wall. But, Ducks? Sure, maybe a mallard and a lady duck on display. Come on, King Farouk, thirty-three ducks?

Ducks aren’t that hard to kill, I’ve watched Emily try numerous times with a spatula and some raid.




Watch out ducks, she once called me sobbing hysterically cause she thought she heard a bat in her bedroom, but she’s not messing around anymore.


Now if there’s one thing we know I love its dead animals. But the display had by some of the creepiest attempts at taxidermy I’d ever seen.


If loving bad taxidermy is wrong, then I don’t ever want to be right.




What is that thing? Supposedly it's a hermaphroditic goat. Which is awesome.

Now, I’m not a stickler when it comes to displaying animals or anything, but what exactly is so amazing about all those hooves. I get it, deer come in various sizes, and you’ve killed them all. Well done, let’s move on with our lives. Please note the especially unfortunate braided deer leg. Somehow I have nightmares of hipsters sporting similar examples at NY hot spots.




“This belt? Complete vintage. King Farouk, 3rd Dynasty. Natch.” (clearly, I have no idea how indie kids speak)

At the very end of that long hallway was the best part. Roped off so you couldn’t get closer than 5 feet, was the best display of Sahara animals, ever. Obviously, I wasn’t about to let arbitrary boundaries stop me.

An up close look showed some sad, sad road kill. Despite being covered in dust, the poor bastards who set up the display seemed to have no understanding of the natural world. Foxes were chilling with sea turtles, lions were spooning with salamanders, and birds, well, they didn’t even have wings.

Animals that in life would’ve been natural enemies were forced to spend eternity at an imaginary Egyptian tea Party.

My two favorites though was the ocelot made from a saddlehorse, and the lion fighting the deer to the death.


I was just waiting for the traffic cone wombat.


I don’t know about you guys, but my money’s on the deer. Clearly that little guy has a good grip on the Lion’s neck, while the Lion only has one foot in the mouth. What is that shit? Everyone loves when the underdog wins.

Upon closer inspection I learned why the deer was so obviously kicking ass. The lion’s body had been replaced with canvas. It wasn’t even a fair fight. The lion had no arms, or claws. Well at least that also means he didn’t have a central nervous system and couldn’t feel the pain. (Or the humiliation of losing to a herbivore.)

I think the curators need to spend a little more time in high school biology before they create their next display.

Travel Tips: Being a hated American

By the time December hit I was restless. I was exhausted from all the quirks and oddities that make my love affair with Cairo as much of an abusive marriage as a youthful romance. When Simon offered to let me tag along on an 18-day trip to Syria I jumped on the chance. I immediately called my company and worked out the details- I would play editor from the road, I would see Saladin’s citadel, and I would eat an endless amount of schwarma. But, as we began researching, bumps quickly emerged on the road to Damascus.

Unsurprisingly Syria’s government isn’t the fondest of travelers with American passports. The consular section in Cairo laughed in my face when I asked for a visa and told me Bush causes 'all the world's problems'. After multiple drop-ins at the Syrian Embassy’s Cairo office, chats with the Syrian consular and calls from my father to the Syrian embassy in the USA, I had it figured out. There was no way for me to get a Syrian visa in Cairo.

Simon, on the other hand was luckier. Being Australian, he had a 90% chance of entering Syria. But, according to the visa office, he’d get through if, and only if he flew to Lebanon and entered through the land border.

This left us with the question What exactly do we do with the American? We had two options- I could risk it and hope the guards felt like letting the little blonde girl over the border with the big aussie, OR I could play it safe and take advantage of the filthily expensive Fed-ex international priority mailing.

So I sent my passport off to America, leaving me unable to prove my nationality or visa possession in Cairo. My darling, wonderful and only-getting-more-handsome-as-he-ages father happily helped out stateside, and arranged all the details to get my passport back to me.

By the next week I had in my possession a much coveted multi-entry visa to Syria. And, with visa in hand, we booked a departure date, December 21st, two days away and prepared for Beirut.

We bought an electric cooker, and a few metal bowls; packed sweatshirts and shitty mittens. I was off.

The Last Month

For the past month, I have been on the road. For most of December and a bit of January I was traveling. We flew into Lebanon on the 20th, then I did the Syria, Jordan trek back to Cairo. Every night I wrote down a few bullet points of the worthwhile things that happened that day. It started as a system for remembering, but by the end I had made a promise to myself- I will blog it. No matter how long it takes.

I arrived back in Cairo on Tuesday, January 9th at 1 am. At 12 am I received a phone call, taking me to a very old stomping ground, London. I was off on the 13th and back early on the 16th. There's a lot going on in my life right now, it seems like as good a time as any to start talking about it.