Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city – half as old as time! Those are the last two lines of a sonnet by a minor Victorian poet named John William Burgon, and those words, about the ancient city of Petra, won him the coveted Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford University …
Here’s a photo of the so-called “Bent” pyramid of Dahshur. The theory behind the bend is they started on too steep a slope to finish the pyramid and corrected themselves half way up. And the steep walls are also the reason the limestone is still on the outside and hasn’t been pilfered over the years …
After surviving a dust storm in the desert today while visiting the red and “bent” pyramids at Dahshur, I had a post-lunch coffee in a cup almost as big as my head. (moment captured by Jake)
My students are full of pleasant surprises. Now that I’ve finally hit my stride, and my classes are going strong, I am bowled over every day by what I’m hearing and seeing from these budding documentary filmmakers. In the five-week professional course, the ten students are doing four short pieces that went into production this …
I’ve been getting a lot of emails lately addressed: Dear Duff. Just this morning, a student reporter, who said she would be “honored to write a profile on you” started her e-missive with “Dear Duff.” People are being polite, not informal. It’s a common mistake in a place where so many people have the first …
My colleagues at the American University in Cairo made the following announcement today: Arab Media & Society Launched Online journal will cover changing media, political and cultural landscape The Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo and the Centre for Middle East Studies, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, are pleased to announce the …
Though I have often seen the Citadel — the fortress on the hill overlooking Cairo, with its commanding towers and the domes and minarets of the impressive Mosque of Mohamed Ali — I had never before been inside its walls. I first stood outside it when shooting a documentary here in 2003. At that time, …
Taher Tourism Restaurant is in downtown Cairo about two blocks from the American University campus. I’ve been assured they don’t serve the brains and livers of real Egyptians (kind of like how Girl Scout Cookies are not made from real Girl Scouts).
It was like a punch in the gut. And it came from a 60 year-old woman, one of my students who has spent a lot of time in America, but who now wears the hijab and long skirts of the most conservative women of her Muslim sect. Though we’re quite different, we usually get along …
Earlier today, I went to a park in a neighborhood in Old Cairo, where UNICEF and a few other NGOs hosted a carnival for kids — many of them living on the streets of the city — to have an afternoon of fun.