From Fez to Ispahan, from Tunis to Istanbul, hammams exist as true oases in the heart of the cities. Sensual and convivial « Temples of the body », the public baths can hardly resist the modern world and its procession of metamorphoses. Forsaken, they seem more and more to belong to the past. And with their disappearance, a whole art of living evaporates.
During the XIIth century, Abd el Latif, Bagdadi doctor, affirmed that « the Egyptian bathhouses were the most beautiful of the East, the most convenient and best laid out ». Today, excluded from the restoration campaigns of the inheritance, the hammams of Cairo are ineluctably dying in general indifference.
Muslim wedge situated in the very christian country that is Ethiopia, the Harar city has closed itself from the outside world for a thousand years. Trade exchanges with the Arabic Peninsula are over, and Harar is no longer well known as a dynamic muslim teaching centre. The « jewel of the horn of Africa » keeps its treasures secret. Those who will want to explore the Harar region will need boldness, tenacity and patience.
Who knows Doha? The capital of Qatar is exploding and reaching the same proportions of Dubai's madness, while juggling with the conservatism of neighbouring Saudi Arabia. One of the smallest countries of the world advances itself today as one of the most revolutionary. Its goal : to become the new financial, educational and sporting eldorado but also a touristic landmark.
Cairo does not know sleep. Its charmed dancers, its traveling merchants and its talkative café owners stay up until dawn. Night birds and insomniacs can not leave it: the nights of the largest city of Africa are more beautiful than its days.
Far from the heights, far from the heart. Far, even, from eyes. Nestling at the foot of the famous Yemeni summits, the Tihama, a coastal plain on the Red Sea, is little by little losing its grandeur. With its sculpted cities of a glorious yet faded past and its abandoned villages of decorated huts, this little known region breathes its last sighs to complete indifference.
Ambitious, the ultra-dynamic town of Hyderabad collects the charms to attract itself to the glances of the world. In spite of its preserving character and its situation in the middle of one of the poorest states of the country, it took the challenge to become the ambassadress of modern India.
Sand almost smothered Oualata from the memory of men. The knell sounded for this caravan stage of Mauritania with the end of the trans-Saharian trade on which it once based its fortune. Isolated, ruined and forgotten, it has just won a formidable bet, that of its survival, thanks to the initiatives of a handful of unconditional ones, fallen under its spell.
The island of Lamu, Muslim wedge on the Kenyan ground, attracts thousands of pilgrims at the time of the Mahomet prophet’s celebration. Small sister of Zanzibar with which it shares a common history, Lamu is also a formidable source of the Swahilie culture. If it did not escape from the changes of the XXth century, the old island knew to preserve intact the capacity of enchanting its guests.
Dubai with delusions of grandeur. To achieve its ambitious goal to become the headlight destination of XXIst century, the small Emirate bets on the international radiation of its ultra futuristic projects. It already shelters the only seven star hotel on the planet and is about to inaugurate the eighth wonder of the world.
Al Busayiri, unknown tiny village of the international topicality and yet umbilical cord of Iraq. Located in Syria, a few kilometers from the Iraqi border, it is the central point of trade, sometimes illicit, but also the place with the perfume of freedom for the Iraqi lorry drivers.
Overcrowded streets in the day time. Boosted atmospheres at night. It is difficult for Cairo to grant itself a moment of respite. However, to those who know how to seek, to explore, to excavate, El Qahira reveals its peaceful paradises. Luxuriant gardens, sumptuous palaces, deserted museums, forsaken hammams… many places to contemplate and resource oneself.
Redoutée des hommes de foi, enracinée dans les familles ou adulée des Occidentaux, la danse orientale suscite commentaires, troubles et émois. Au Caire, célèbre temple de cet art ancestral, les corps ondulent, les hanches virevoltent dans des volutes sensuelles… Chaque occasion est bonne pour pratiquer cette exaltation de la vie, pourtant si décriée.
If it disputes in Damas, the title of oldest city in the world still inhabited, Alep does not have anything to envy the Syrian capital. Genuine human hive, Vienna of Raising, commercial, music lover and refined, never ceased affirming its bubbling activity. Its silky memories of caravan city are read everywhere in the lanes of the « medina » . Dusty, enigmatic but so captivating.
One found the Pharaoh's gold ! Thanks to a contemporary papyrus of the reign of Sethi Ist, the geologist Sami el Raghy located in the Eastern desert of Egypt the gold mines exploited under the New Empire. Convinced by the profitability of these thousand-year-old layers located 600 km from Cairo, it predicts extraordinary prospects for the Egyptian economy.
Forgotten the « events » of the 90’s, Algeria commences its take-off. To begin this new millennium, the government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika is not devoted solely to the exploitation of hydrocarbons but also to agriculture. A chance for El Oued, oasis in full expansion.
These second homes, built with extravagant expenditure, are almost unperceived in the city which has the most cosmopolitan inheritance of the world. While waiting to find their past glory again and to belong to the hot list of the sites impossible to avoid, the madnesses of Cairo open their doors.
The Omanis of the coast have the marine foot. Formerly masters of the oceans, their ancestors hoisted the colors of their flag until Canton, Mombasa or Zanzibar. Their descendants keep the course and preserve a major attachment for their littoral. Although the former navigators disappeared to leave space to burning fishermen.
The road of the hope, Sultanate of Brunei, Yemen, Kuala Lumpur, Marrakech, Fez, Damas, Doha, Nouakchott, Tripoli of Africa, Ghadames, Khartoum, the perfume of the sultan, Mombasa, Hong-Kong, Ecuador...
From here, from other places, from there or nowhere.
Grotesque or sad, gathered by chance through the walks.