Coptic Cairo

After a lovely four-course luncheon and stimulating table conversation with my Lawrence professors, Mom and I headed by taxi to the Christian area of Cairo. Unfortunately, our taxi driver dropped us off at a major intersection without any indication of the direction of the Coptic city, so we walked randomly and found ourselves at a very large mosque where we witnessed a baby without pants pooping on the grass, fully veiled women glaring at us from their eyeholes, and from which we were ultimately shooed away by large policemen with guns.
Realizing our mistake, that we had actually walked in the opposite direction of the walled/heavily secured Christian area, we traipsed back to our starting point and found the correct entrance.
Coptic Cairo appeared, as my Mom observed it, like a Disneyworld attraction. The streets were fairly clean for Cairo and besides the Coptic locals, most of the people milling about where Japanese and American tourists. The buildings were all whitewashed and medieval looking, and the rest of the town was comprised of either medieval church buildings or souvenir shops, just like Epcot.
We wound our way through the narrow alleyways, peeking into small chapels, reliqueries, and churches. The last stop on this short visit was the Hanging Church, which looked like something out of Mexico with a cactus in front of it (see picture below). It's called the "Hanging Church" because it is suspended over an old Roman fort.

The architecture inside was not very impressive, though the churches' importance lies in its role as the seat of the Coptic patriarchate. We even witnessed a priest with a chest-length beard and kind smile blessing children. The experience was an interesting one for its human factor- from the old Christian women kissing the relics of saints, to the nuns walking about, and the intermingling of Christians and Muslims, co-habiting, at least in this moment in space and time.