Figgy Pudding

by RoseWhispers6

It wasn't difficult to put an exact date on when this world had changed. It was Christmas Day in 1984 that the plans of one Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore were thrown into chaos. It would be difficult for him to continue on the path he had set, both for himself and for Harry Potter, with me as the person who should serve as the Order's spy.

14. Hunger, Cairo

~oo00oo~

Chapter 14

Hunger, Cairo

_‗_
―==(oIo)==―
ˇ

7 February 1985

I woke up a little earlier than normal and rushed to get our breakfast and potions ready as I marveled at the full night of sleep. I had not been awoken just after getting to bed last night and that was a great sign. Harry had been doing better and better, but I worried that he would backslide with the move to a new place. Though I suppose as long as we are in the trunk we are still in similar enough surroundings.

Last night we had dinner at a restaurant within the magical area where we camped. The food was divine, but we were exhausted and had another early day ahead. It wasn't until the little one was asleep, a moon on one side of him and a little winged horse statue on the other, that I read over my correspondence. I had complete confidence in the goblins of Gringotts and was sure Master Clinkscale could handle things.

It was strange how much more I felt like me rather than one or the other person anymore, time was allowing me to knit my two lives together. My younger self had read several fanfictions that had similar things happen within Harry's family tree. Given what my older self had known, however, I had found all those ideas too far fetched to consider. The person I had become, though, still made a small list of notions and solutions anyway with all of the other plans.

Last night I had passed on some of these ideas and made suggestions in my letter to Clinkscale. He would let me know how plausible they were, perhaps expand on them, before we moved forward with this twist. In some ways it made things easier, in other ways things became much more complicated. I did suggest that when we returned Harry should have a full tapestry. I had no doubt that he and the other clans would agree. Especially after all the havoc little Harry was causing the archives.

We had stumbled into the Carriage for our early morning ride out to the Plateau where we would meet our guide. It was in the very early morning light we marveled at the sites of one of the seven wonders of the known world on the Giza Plateau. One of the oldest of those seven wonders to still stand.

The Giza pyramid complex, or the Giza necropolis, is located on the Giza Plateau a short drive from our campsite in Cairo. This is where the famed Great Pyramid of Giza is located with the Pyramid of Khafre, the Pyramid of Menkaure, and the Great Sphinx of Giza. They all date back to the fourth dynasty in the old kingdom of ancient Egypt, around 2600 BC.

We would also be seeing the Valley Temples and the Queens' Pyramids before, moving on to Memphis to see the ancient capital of Egypt. The Giza necropolis is large and awe inspiring, but unlike other places Harry and I would visit it is rather plain. In Memphis and Saqqara, however, there are many hieroglyphs.

Arriving at the Giza complex the first thing that hit both of us was just how tall the pyramids are, the reality of it greater than it had been when we had read facts on them earlier. These mountains of stone, standing more than 140 meters high, were simply enormous. The sides were not a smooth stone, a misconception I had that was probably brought on by many books showing smooth sided pyramids, instead the outer layer consisted of steps. There had originally been a smooth limestone over them, but it had worn away in the thousands of years since it was built.

A small tour had been arranged for us on camel and it had Harry laughing. Our guide Balluza was great. Not only was he informative and super entertaining, but he also seemed to fancy himself a photographer which meant that there were pictures with me in them as well.

I took so many pictures. I often forgot that it was film in the camera, but a requirement when I ordered its construction was that it would not run out of film and I would never need to put more in. I did have to take it out and have it developed, but I figured I could handle that task. While there was a way to make the camera more discreet, I allowed Balluza to use it in order to have more pictures that included both Harry and myself. I figured that he would just assume it was an advanced and expensive camera and didn't worry about the magic.

It had often been cloudy and cool in Greece, but here we were in high temperatures under clear skies. The rose granite of the funerary temple ruins was beautiful in the plays of light and shadow around the temple, the heat making the stone warm. Almost all the stones had been quarried in Aswan, a place that we would be visiting later in our trip. That's over 500 miles away!

The temple predates even the dynastic Egyptians it is so old, but no records indicate that there was any real use of magic involved in the building of it. In fact the tour books we had from the magical side informed us that many of the ancient Egyptian cultures preferred to keep most magic strictly away from the building of these places as it was seen as an insult to their gods.

I took wonderful pictures of Harry in front of the Sphinx. I am certain that he will never meet one in a maze in his whole life. I'm not ruling out meeting one entirely though, he is still Harry Potter. Weird things happen to and around this kid, even when Albus isn't involved.

After exploring pyramids and temples on the Plateau we said goodbye to Balluza and got into the Carriage to see the Egyptian Museum. Learning more about King Tutankhamen than I had previously, I also found out that people used to eat mummies. Who would do that?

There was an area adjacent to the muggle museum that our guide book suggested. It was basically a museum to the magic of Egypt. Here we learned how the way magic was used evolved through millennia. Many idols and stones were infused with magics and worn on the person for protection, or healing, or even fertility. Since in those times there was no separation between those who had a great deal of magic and those that didn't, these items were gifted or sold to people without worry about an individual's abilities in magic.

Continuing through the museum we learned more about why none of the buildings, temples, pyramids, etc were built with the help of magic. It was because the priests believed that the power of their deity was already present and to invoke such magics was an insult against them. The priests focused their magics instead on keeping the temples and sanctuaries pure, they conducted rituals for the people, and they performed the festival ceremonies for the greater public.

Next to a small display of an ancient rural village was more on what Healers would have been doing during that time.

"Doctors, even in rural villages, were expensive and so people often sought medical assistance from someone who might have once worked with a doctor or had acquired some medical knowledge in some other way. These individuals seem to have regularly set broken bones or prescribed herbal remedies but would not have been thought authorized to invoke a spell for healing. That would have been the official view on the subject, however; it seems a number of people who were not considered doctors still practiced medicine of a sort through magical means."

Before we left to see the sites in Memphis and Saqqara, we watched a lesson in making papyrus paper. The instructor was a large man who spoke, of all things, American English. Harry and I had gone back and forth with our disguises today, between English and Italian usually, but we had not expected someone to speak English with such a heavy American accent when we signed up for the presentation.

Abdul introduced himself before sitting behind his worktable and arranging his tools. The long, thin wooden table held plant matter which was to be expected. There was also a press, which made sense to me. But there were little things like the hammer and the bowls that were set into the table that I didn't understand in this context right away.

"So this is the plant called papyrus," he said it slowly, "P-A-P-Y-R-U-S." He held in front of him a long narrow tube, a reed. "Notice, papyrus is not a cylinder shaft like many reeds. Instead it is a triangle. The papyrus is an aquatic plant that grows along both sides of the Nile River and is associated with the mythology of ancient Egyptians." Abdul and his helpers passed along cut pieces of the papyrus so that we could see the reed up close.

"So to make the paper we have to cut the right length from the intact reed and then cut off the cover," he brought a sharp knife down the length of the papyrus. "This part," he gestured to the outer casing, "was once used to make the shoes and baskets. This part," he held up the white papyrus, "is what we make the paper from. But you see how it is, the fibers have too much water and sugar to be paper just yet. So we take the rolling pin and the hammer to it. Once it is compressed into this flat strip, we have reduced the water that separates the fibers. Now we must take care of the sugar, so we put it in here for six to twelve days." He put the strip into one of the bowls on the table.

"If we want a light color papyrus paper we do six days, for the dark brown we leave it for twelve days. After that time the ancient people doing this would lay the strips of cured papyrus between two animal skins. Today we use thick, tough carpet." Abdul began taking strips of cured, white papyrus out of the bowl and laying it in a kind of woven pattern on top of a square of carpet. Then he put another square on top of the woven papyrus, "We take this finished process and press it here." He placed the carpeted papyrus in the large metal press. "We leave it here for six days. Because of the sugars still in the papyrus, this allows the strips to blend together until finally," he reached below the table and pulled out a sheet of papyrus, "we have the papyrus."

He held it in front of a small projector light, "If you look you can see the horizontal and vertical lines that made up this sheet from earlier cuts of papyrus strips. After the papyrus became a sheet it was polished with a rock to make it flat and smooth for writing on."

Sheets of the finished paper began to make their way around the little group. Harry and I were paying avid attention as Abdul spoke, pulling down a screen behind him. The lights dimmed and projected on the screen was an ancient scene.

"The papyrus is associated with one of the most central mythic cycles in the Ancient Egyptian religion. After Seth murdered Osiris and usurped his throne, the goddess Isis took her infant son to the papyrus thickets of the north to hide him away. You see Osiris was her husband and her brother Seth would no doubt murder his nephew as well." There was a click and a new scene was lit across the wall.

"It was here, concealed amongst the swaying reeds whose sounds soothed him and covered his cries, that Horus grew to manhood. Horus was protected and nursed by the goddess Hathor. This goddess is symbolizes rebirth and resurrection in the celestial realm and is often shown in the form of a cow emerging from the papyrus thicket." There was another click and a new scene was shown of people holding what looked like the papyrus plant.

"Hathor was worshiped in the ritual of the Shaking of the Papyrus. In its purest form the actual stalks of the papyrus were shaken, but Hathor's primary cult instruments were the sistrum and manet which were rattled to create a rustling sound and evoke the mythical environment." The next image had a man with the head of a hawk.

"When Horus grew old enough he fought his uncle Seth for the throne. It was a long drawn out battle for dominance that led to many contests, these were judged by the Great Ennead, before Horus was eventually able to claim his throne as ruler of Egypt. This is why the pharaohs are associated with Horus. This mythic cycle is one of the few completely intact papyrus myths ever found. Which is another reason why the story is so important today."

It was a fascinating demonstration. The reasoning for the use of parchment in our magical society was reinforced throughout the making of the papyrus. Parchment, and things like quills, can be manufactured in great quantities cheaply because of duplication magics. This is because parchment is a single hide of an animal, anything that is a simple single thing will be much easier to duplicate. Quills, similarly, are a single feather from a single animal.

Modern paper is made from the broken down remains of several trees, after they have been chemically altered, sometimes with additions like cloth. Much too complicated to mass produce. The same could be said for papyrus as it took strips of the plant and forced a whole. This might be somewhere between parchment and modern muggle paper if the roll of papyrus was made from a single plant, but that was unlikely to give a large sheet. A single standard sized parchment is nearly a foot in length and its width was a little more than half its length. The parchment used by most European Magicals was easily mass produced with low levels of automated magic at nearly no cost.

We left the museum with a greater understanding of Ancient Egypt and continued our journey down to Saqqara to see Djoser's Step Pyramid in the Carriage. The areas of Memphis and Saqqara are much more navigable than that of Giza and so we had no guide for a tour there.

When we arrived at Mit Rahina Museum we found an open air museum that seemed more like a sculpture garden. The modern structure enclosed the colossal statue of Ramesses II and outside the building stood an alabaster sphinx. It may have been smaller than the one in Giza but it still weighed 80 tonnes and was 8 meters long. The sphinx was discovered at what had been the temple of Ptah in 1912.

Only an hour or so was spent at the Museum, where we wandered sedately from ancient sculpture to ancient sculpture occasionally taking pictures. It was mid-day and we were beginning to get tired, but we headed to Saqqara to see Djoser's Step Pyramid. Built about 4,700 years ago, it was the first pyramid the Egyptians built and the oldest intact building.

While the Great Pyramid of Giza is completely empty inside, the tombs at Saqqara are colorful and spent more than an hour or so just wandering around Saqqara. The Pyramid Complex of King Teti, where we crawled down a tunnel and into the pyramid to see the hieroglyphs inside the tomb and sarcophagi was the highlight of our trip there. As the sun and temperature continued to climb, we spent some time jumping from shadow to shadow trying to stay cool before I decided we should make our way back to Cairo.

Harry had already fallen asleep by the time we reached the campsite, even with the Carriage ride back taking nearly no time. We both had a good nap after drinking about half our weight in water with the idea that we would go out for lunch when it was cooler outside and we were both more rested.

A while later, we woke and took the Carriage out to Khan El Khalili, Cairo's old bazaar, and found someplace to eat our late lunch.

The restaurant we found was called Koshary Abo Tarek. Koshary is a rice dish with pasta, rice and brown lentils. It is topped with a tomato sauce, garlic vinegar and then garnished with chickpeas and crispy fried onions at the table. Hot sauce was optional.

"Hot sauce is good, but it is not necessary," they said.

"Can I try it though?" Harry asked me.

I didn't see any harm in having a little added to a small portion of his dish so he could try it. This was how we found out that Harry likes food infinitely more spicy than I would be able to handle.

We walked for a time after eating, looking into different stalls and shops. Our steps slow after having eaten our koshary. I was looking for perhaps a little treat for Harry to try after our lunch. He was doing so well as we traveled through the crowds, his hand occasionally reaching for mine. Not because he was scared, no he just wanted to hold my hand. It was very sweet.

A ways down the street we found El Karnak which sold a dessert dish that seemed to combine every regionally traditional dessert in order to make it the greatest dessert of all time. At the very bottom was a layer of Om Ali and a scoop of ice cream. Then it had basbousa, rice pudding, kunafa, and there were cold bananas and apples mixed through. It was then drenched with mango juice and then strawberry juice before being topped with a thick whipped cream. It was all in one compact bowl that we could share as we walked. The taste wasn't as sweet as one would think, given that there were at least five different dishes combined in one. It was more a honey and nuts sweet than sugary overload sweet. It was the most incredible dessert I have ever tasted.

They called it El kombela, the bomb.

As we ate we passed by a shop selling belly dance costumes and jewelry. The bright colors and the glinting of light on shining metal had caught my eye. They looked to be of very good quality, but it wasn't as though I was going to take up lessons. Harry, though, had seen my eyes stray over to the colorful fabric and asked how one can make their belly dance. I laughed and said that I didn't think I would be able to do something like that ever and we continued on our leisurely walk, our El kombela eaten up.

We picked up trinkets and books here and there as we traveled the winding streets. They always wanted to know where we were from and sometimes we engaged in a bit of conversation. Good shops were discussed. Safe places for women with children were suggested.

After walking a while a vendor walking the streets ahead of us clanging two metal rings together caught our attention.

"Nonna what do you think he has?" the young Italian boy of four asked me.

"I'm not sure Lukas, perhaps we can ask," I replied to him in Italian.

We had decided that for our afternoon adventures in Cairo we would be a Italian grandmother and grandson, speaking in Italian for everyone to overhear. Though we spoke Arabic to those we conversed with in shops. We were both getting better at our acting. Harry for the first time, but me becoming masterful once more after so much time and mistreatment.

The man that had caught our attention had a large silver pot strapped to his front that was the length of his whole torso. There was a long spout coming out of it as well as rows of plastic cups attached to one side. He was waved down by a shopkeeper in a doorway and he poured a long stream of liquid from the thin spout.

"Excuse me good sir," I said in Arabic, "What is it you are selling?"

"It is erk sous," he said with a cheerful smile.

The delight and problem with having learned the language from Euro-Glyph was that you could learn a large amount of vocabulary as well as all of the grammar in just a few days. The problem, for me at least, was that if a word didn't really translate into whatever your native language was then you had no real frame of reference. We had already found this to be the case of many food items that were local. It made it more obvious that we were tourists.

"Is it like the karkade?" I asked him. We had tried the cool hibiscus tea with our lunch earlier and I had enjoyed it.

"No, no. Erk sous, very different. Very good for you. No sugar."

I snuck a glance at Harry to ask if he wanted to give it a try and he nodded.

"We'll take two cups," I said as I counted out the money.

It was the color of cola and tasted a bit bitter with hints of licorice to it. We sipped our cool drinks as we wandered further. As we strolled we found a stall that was selling pickled lemons. They were very small and round compared to what we were used to and we gave them a try. The treat was a lovely, smooth and creamy morsel that went well with our drinks.

When we had our fill of the great bazaar, we made our way back towards our campsite. We weren't tired out again, though given all we had managed to do that must be a miracle, instead we wanted to also see the magical bazaar. The campsite was an offshoot of the magical community in Cairo and the Bazaar was hidden from view nearby.

Behind the enchantments the sprawling Bazaar of Magical Cairo was much the same as its non magical equivalent.

Both had long winding mazes for streets, shopkeepers that would lounge in their doorways, and vendors that would hawk goods from carts and stalls. Khan El Khalili was cramped, but not in a way that felt suffocating. But here, in this magical bazaar, space could be shaped to be more accommodating. The streets were wide, even the side streets had a greater sense of openness to them, and the vendors trying to catch a tourist's attention were using magic sparks and noises that would have been overwhelming in a more narrow space.

Harry and I had no particular place in mind and far too much pocket money left, so we strolled along looking for something to catch our interest.

After going through shops for glass figures that moved and one filled with copper lanterns that displayed different night skies with their light, we happened on a candy store. Here we found brands of crisps that came in more flavors than perhaps even Bertie's beans. There was El Leban el Sehry, a bubble gum that changed color as you blew it and would burst each bubble with a funny sound. There were also candies that were no doubt made with the tourists in mind. A small multicolored lollipop was an animated head of the pharaoh that was often found on a sarcophagus, luckily only it's eyes and the uraeus were animated.

Harry was a little reluctant to try anything, but with a little coaching he was filling a bag with all sorts of oddities to try later. The strangest of which were the canopic jars with candy shaped like human organs, a chewing candy that seemed to be gum until we realized that the bubbles were soap like - but not soap tasting - and would float away, and zombie food which was shaped like body parts that had red syrupy treats inside their hard chocolate shell.

Not all of them were so chaotic, instead we found a few that were simply interesting. There was smoked lamb flavored caramels and little gummies that would randomly light up and hum. In the end we bought some that were strange, some that were gross, and some that were just interesting.

We traveled back to the campsite for a rest after having explored the many shops. Having gotten up nearly at dawn and walked so much, we both needed the break. We would be traveling out to Alexandria soon. I was really looking forward to seeing the library in all its magical glory. After that it was a long drive out to Siwa, a place widely heralded for its unique magics.

For our last dinner in Cairo we made our way out to Hawawshi El Rabea to try hawawshi and other dishes. The restaurant had perhaps a dozen or more flat grills working at all times. The meats come from the butcher shop that the restaurant owns across the street. This seems to make the area feel more communal.

It felt as though it were a last minute street party, people moved between the different areas on both sides with the tables and seats in between the shops and looping around the corners in the streets. Laughter and sometimes singing, made it feel even more lively.

We had a number of dishes laid out on the table. The hawawshi is minced meat with aromatic spices and onion and garlic in the baladi, a bread that is toasted around the grilled meat. We ordered the regular hawawshi and the one made with local sausages too. There was a similar dish called kebda, garlic and seasoned liver with hot peppers, lemon, and grilled green bell peppers. As Harry had proven he could handle hot and spicy food, I let him get the spicy one. He ate the whole thing.

When they brought out the Molokhia they poured it between pans and sang before putting the dish together at the table. Harry, who had heard this same thing done at other tables, tried to sing along with them when the men encouraged him.

My camera, which has a small button I can press to make it less interesting and visible to others, was out and taking pictures of a Harry singing along in Arabic. If he noticed that I had brought it out to take, yet more pictures, he didn't say anything.

We dipped our hawawshi in the tahini. Eating a little bit of every flavorful dish, though Harry keeps the one with hot peppers to himself.

It was late and dark by the time we reached the campsite.

We sat in our library and read for a time. When Harry started to drift off I had him get ready for bed and tuck him in. The bedtime story was a fantastical tale that he smiled through as he held Thumper, the winged horse statue, before he fell asleep.

_‗_
―==(oIo)==―
ˇ

8 February 1985

We both woke up early again in order to enjoy a traditional breakfast of Ful Medames at Ful Walheed. Ful is a dish of stewed fava beans with tahini topped with spices, oil, and peppers. Creamy, a little spicy, and more than a little pungent, we gathered up our ful in fresh pita. The tables were laden with dishes as we sat to eat, tomatoes, cucumbers, and more. We came to this place because they make "shrimp fries" with their breakfast. The dish was named that because when covered with their seasoning they looked like bright pinkish orange shrimp. They tasted like Cheetos though and that makes them the best breakfast ever.

I would have gotten us some kind of tour of the Egyptian capital, but apparently it hadn't even been built yet. I hadn't even seen anything to suggest that they were thinking about moving their government elsewhere. Not that the capital I was familiar with was all that far away, but it was just one more thing on a long list where my future knowledge led to confusion.

It was almost as bad as looking at or touching my wrist. I had to get a simple watch to cover the gesture as I would appear slightly insane to continuously check my wrist for messages and alerts that were never going to be there. I had mostly stopped touching the side of my face near my eye, but when I caught that gesture I could pass it off as pulling back a loose hair. I'm not sure how long it will take for me to lose these small things from the future, but I hope no one asks me why I'm doing them. If they do, I hope I can lie to them well enough.

Cairo had been extraordinary, but it was Alexandria that I was looking forward to exploring. We would only be in Alexandria a day as the trip to Siwa was three hours long even with the magic of the Carriage.

We used the hour drive from Cairo to Alexandria to nap for a while. The large and comfortable compartments in the Carriage allow us to lay down separately. The Carriage will alert us when we are ten minutes from our destination. I had received a very stern warning from the people of Princely Carriages and a much longer lecture from Avira about going into a space expanded place inside of a space expanded place, such magics are just too complicated and far too dangerous if something should happen when one is inside them. As such the suitcase stayed zipped up and we dozed for a time in the comfort of the Carriage instead.

_‗_
―==(oIo)==―
ˇ

Author's Note:

In celebration of having been on for so long, I will be posting the next chapter on 4/25. It's my 20th anniversary.