Coptic Cairo

We prayed in the quiet of an 8th-century church above the cavern where the Holy Family is said to have hidden, fleeing the king's edict that all male newborns should be slain. We walked into the liturgical rites of a Coptic mass, the priest turned away from us. Then we wandered into the empty stateliness of a Greek orthodox church, part of a Babylon I never knew existed. From the metro, crowded but clean, with announcements in Arabic and English, air conditioning cutting the April heat, we emerged into Tahrir Square, no sign of the revolution that shook Cairo and the world a decade ago, and into the Egyptian Museum. Mummy after mummy, the entrails of King Tut's tomb, the special alabaster canisters where dissected organs remain stored, so much silver and gold, inlaid ivory, turquoise, lapiz lazuli and other semiprecious stone. Exhausted and dehydrated, we were revived with shwarma sandwiches, fresh juice and Turkish coffee heated up in hot sand not unlike the muck at the bottom of every cup.