Hanging Church

Despite the protests of our jet-lagged bodies, Dan, Agnes and I all dragged ourselves out of bed this morning and made our way to Coptic mass at the Hanging Church. As Dan said afterward, "There's nothing like a three hour liturgy to start off your day." Although Sunday is the big day in America, Friday is the traditional day off in Egypt, and thus the day for major religious services. When we arrived, the man at the door initially waved us off because he didn't think we would actually want to go to mass, but we convinced him to let us in.

There were only a few people in the pews when we arrived, with a small group of men chanting up front. I don't know Arabic, but I could tell they were going through their lines as quickly as they could—so would you if you were performing a three hour service! Everybody who was helping with mass got a chance to say a part, even a little boy, but there were only about two microphones so they had to awkwardly pass them back and forth. After this prelude, the chanting group donned these white liturgical robes decorated with gold and crimson crosses and sashes. The best part about these was that the collars of the men's dress shirts, inevitably in clashing patterns and colors, were poking out! Dan initially sat with Agnes and me but one of the priests scolded him and sat him on the men's side of the church. Oops. I was happiest when they recited the Coptic sections, since I could pick out some words.

At first I thought there would not be a very big crowd, but during the first hour congregants started to stream in, men on the left and women with small children on the right. It's hard to make kids sit still for a 30 minute church service, much less a three hour one, so there were lots of kids shuttling back and forth between their parents and crawling all over the place, much to their elders' chagrin. One little girl found Agnes and me so interesting that she marched right over during the service and held out her hand for us to shake. Later she brought over a loaf of bread and tore off pieces for us. People were in general very friendly—at one point people were all formally supposed to greet each other as part of the service, and the women around Agnes and me turned to greet us as well.

The women all covered their heads with stylish scarves in a variety of styles. Some were lacy, some sheer, but my favorites were white with images of saints on the back. I spent a good portion of mass seeing which scarf images I could identify. Mary was extremely popular, but I also saw Jesus, Paul the Hermit, Pope Shenouda III, and a fancy embroidered St. George. The clothing styles were all over the place—some people wore jeans, some dresses, and some of the guys wore clothes so tight they looked like they were going to a Jersey Shore casting call. But the mood was serious, and that headwear was fantastic!

Relics and icons are also clearly important and are incorporated into the service. At one point there was a procession around the church with incense (LOTS of it) and men carrying a cross and various images of Jesus. As the line of icons passed by, churchgoers would touch the images and then kiss their hands. One of the women who sat next to us during the service wrote prayers in Arabic on scraps of paper and inserted them into the relic boxes along the walls. I hope she gets what she was asking for.

Towards the end of the mass, a very irritating thing happened. A tour group came barreling right in and started taking pictures of the service like everyone there was part of a zoo exhibit. Even worse, despite the "no flash" signs hung up all over the place, there were flashing lights coming from every direction. Not cool. There was a redeeming moment, however: One of our pew neighbors had left to take care of her kid for a second, and a tourist had hopped into her place. She marched back over, glared at the tourist woman until she slunk away, then plopped down next to us with a sigh of satisfaction.

After we stepped blinking into the light, surrounded by incense haze, we went to have a nice lunch at the St. George cafe. I hadn't realized how intense the incense was at mass until I coughed twenty minutes later and tasted incense! We also went into the St. George chapel, which received plenty of visitors today based on the lit candles inside.



The icons were also getting a lot of attention. Check out the money slipped under the glass at Archangel Michael's feet:



Now I am relaxing at the Anglican guest house on Zamalek until it comes time for us to drive out to Anafora. You'll hear more from me in a week!