A year ago at this time, I was considering the offer to come to Cairo. I did so from the vantage point of my temp job at the University of Minnesota, where I had been persona non grata since the previous September. I came to enjoy the advantages of my position. The job was so easy that I could do a day’s work in only a few hours, and because nobody there really cared about me so long as I did the work, I was almost never disturbed by anyone for any reason.

I was sitting in that lonely cubicle one morning when I learned about the Passover bombing in Dahab. On CNN’s home page, a detailed map of Egypt. Here was Cairo; over there, on the Sinai, several hundred kilometers away, was Dahab, written in large bold lettering. A part of me thought: Okay, that’s over there, in the Sinai. The Sinai is a whole different thing. It’s hundreds of kilometers away! I can just never go there! We’ll certainly not visit Dahab! People get blown up there!

But really, isn’t it always that we’re cool so long as the bombings take place “over there,” whether it be New York City (so says the Midwesterner), the Middle East (so says the American), or the Sinai (so says the Cairene). I think this need for a buffer is the driving force behind politics and war, at least in part, and it’s an idea I have difficulty accepting. My wimpiness nagged at me even after I moved here, since part of the reason I wanted to come was to see the Middle East for myself. It seemed like I was already setting up boundaries and buffer zones. Why bother coming?

Of course, as you all know by now, we did visit the Sinai. It is basically a vast, deserted demilitarized zone. Every so often you pass police checkpoints, where the poor boys are still being forced to wear their black wool “winter” uniforms despite the rising temperatures (update: they switched back to their summer whites this week). Michael told us that the US keeps a minor military presence there—350 soldiers—to help enforce the peace brokered between Egypt and Israel. We passed one of their little outposts, complete with Ford SUVs, about ten million satellites, and a sand volleyball court. “Amrika,” our crazy-ass driver Hossam told us as we whizzed past at 100 or so mph, weaving from one side of the road to the other. Then, he offered to become my personal hash connection, but that is another story.

It’s funny how much less concerned I have become about terrorism since arriving here. It’s strange that the anxiety strikes so much at the heart of Americans, given our natural geographical advantage of being really far away from everybody, and our status as HUGE WORLD POWER. Why do we feel so damned insecure?

Not only have I visited Dahab, but also the Khan el Kalili bazaar, a popular tourist spot and thusly a target for terrorists—who have indeed bombed it in the recent past. It’s not to say that I am flippant or unconcerned. But then we arrived in Dahab and saw that it was nothing more than a village, not yet overdeveloped despite its popularity (but getting there), and that everybody was so friendly and laid back, to the extent that shorts are normal and women wear bathing suits. This is a big deal because of its contrast to Cairo, where the conservative backlash is in full effect. Dahab maintains a very small, intimate, unworried atmosphere, and it’s infectious. Our hotel, the Bishbishi, was wonderfully comfortable, and the owner Jimmy—quite the businessman—helped us arrange trips to snorkel in the Blue Hole, which is a coral reef complete with tropical fish and harmless jellyfish, and, of course, to Mt. Sinai, where we suffered a la Charlton Heston and listened to a bunch of Nigerians sing Bible music.

The front shoreline of Dahab has been completely overrun with a bunch of expensive restaurants that imitate Bedouin-style seating, in which you sit on the floor, surrounded by pillows and low tables. Some very friendly Egyptian men stand outside these restaurants and try—aggressively—to woo you into their establishment. I fear that these restaurants and clubs, which have hogged all the shoreline, are pushing out the less-cushy establishments on the frontage road, including this small, delightful Italian-style restaurant where I gorged on delicious garlic pasta and pizza late at night, and where Michael ate a sausage pizza about three hours before ascending Mt. Sinai. Ouch!

Still, our boy Jimmy walked us across the frontage road, where Bishbishi is located, to a restaurant called the Funny Mummy, with a great view of the unspoiled waters of the Gulf of Aqaba and, 20 miles across, the mountains of Saudi Arabia. It’s impressive. As you can see from the pictures, it’s difficult to imagine a more tranquil setting. I drank a Stella beer and soaked up the crisp air, the bright sun, the carefree atmosphere.

James

Gebel Musa
(Mt. Moses)

When I was first rationalizing a move to Egypt, one of the things I would say was, “It’s not like we’re going to Sinai or anything.” I started saying this because we were making the decision about moving in April 2006, about the time a town called Dahab was bombed. Well, I just fell in love with Egypt a little bit more this week, and it was because we were in Dahab. J will write more about this beautiful, friendly town on the southeastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula, but, obviously, my perspective on this region has changed, which would take more than a blog entry to explain.

Before a climb up Mt. Sinai, at the Bishbishi Garden Village, our hotel:



On our first full day in Dahab, we went snorkeling, rested a few hours, then set out for an evening climb of Mt. Sinai. At around 11:30pm, we were herded into a minibus with nine other people – five Swedes, a few Chinese women, a couple of British isles chaps, and three Americans – J, me, and J’s visiting friend Mike. We slept for most of the two-hour drive from Dahab to Mt. Sinai until we pulled up to the first checkpoint outside of St. Catherine’s Monastery, where all of us relinquished our passports for inspection by a stern man in a Cosby sweater. There were a few more checkpoints before we arrived at the monastery, which sits at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

Now, I’ve never climbed a mountain before, and I have no idea what constitutes a high mountain, but I found myself inspecting mountains along the way and thinking, Yeah, I could handle that one, or No, if Mt. Sinai is that big, I’m not doing it – no way, no how.

Mt. Sinai is about 2,300 meters high, or about 7,500 feet. If you’ve climbed a mountain before (I’m talking to you, Sari and Marge), you’ll probably just laugh at the rest of this entry, because it seems that for some people (again, you know who you are) this would be cake.

When we pulled up to the monastery in the wee hours, I still couldn’t tell which one was the infamous mountain from which Charlton Heston descended with stone tablets. After paying 5 pounds for the use of the abnormally clean bathroom, we set off through a metal detector, where two soldiers gave a cursory glance through our backpacks, the luggage we would grow to despise the higher we climbed. It was here that we met our guide, an intrepid young Bedouin who climbs this mountain seven days a week and would be climbing it twice in the next 48 hours. He named our group “Ramses” and insisted that each time he called out this name we all respond so he could make sure that we hadn’t fallen down the mountain. He didn’t actually say the part about falling down the mountain. This kid was texting on his mobile the whole way, and he literally bounded from rock to rock in between smoking cigarettes. I remember at one point when I was lagging a bit, he came swooping down, grabbed my hand, and got me going like he was a personal trainer. Then he moved on to the next few people who were lagging behind.

We found out we would be going on the camel path, a lengthier but less steep route to the top – it was supposed to take 2-3 hours. It turns out that ascending the other path – 3,000 Steps of Repentance carved out by a self-flagellating monk – was not an option at night. We would see why in the morning. I can only say that I was elated to not be able to see the extent of what we were about to climb. And I fear I would have been cursing rather than repenting, anyway, if I had taken those 3,000 Steps.

The first part of the climb involved weaving through a camp of Bedouins and their camels. “Camel? Camel? Camel? Very long way. Camel?” Most of the camels were sacked out and masticating and, I imagine, thinking grumpily about how this was the day they would feign an itch and “accidentally” shake a tourist from their backs. I would have thought them adorable if I didn’t already know better. Later, one of the women in our group would try to pet a seated camel as we passed, and it would try to bite her. Don’t mess with camels. The ones in the camp seemed docile in the light of the full moon, though, and the Bedouins were adept at making a camel ride seem like a good idea. In fact, as we climbed throughout the night, we would periodically pass other small groups of camels, and the Bedouins’ suggestions about getting a camel ride were more and more seductive: “Camel? You look very tired. Camel? Camel make it easy.”

Now commenced the real climb. There was a strange logic to each group member’s approach that reminded me of when we had to run the mile in gym class. (Here comes my flashback of Miss Randall’s disappointment in my finish time.) A couple of people in the group were steady and quick the whole way. Others tried to make out like “men” and started off too fast, eventually pooping out. I took the slow and steady approach, and one of the Chinese women joined me. She is taking a year off from teaching social studies in Taiwan to travel the world by herself. J took the steady approach as well but was much quicker. However, all of us made it to the top, and no one fell off or sustained any major injuries.

For me, this first leg of the ascent was hardest because my brain was at its most practical. I was doing things like singing little inspirational ditties in my head with lyrics like, “Come on! You’re only 29!” Once my sense of logic crumbled to fundamental instincts, I was golden. I lost all sense of time and only cared about watching out for camels and keeping my eyes to the uneven ground.

The Bedouins have a beautiful system, though. Along the way are pit stops, where you can go into a hut, sit for a few minutes, and buy drinks or snacks. The higher you go, the more expensive the food and drink. About halfway up, sweating through our clothes, we realized that water alone wouldn’t cure the inevitable dehydration that was coming, and we bought a couple of Sprites for ten pounds apiece (normally you can get a can of Sprite for a few pounds), which had amazing, immediate results. Our guide had a wonderful way of making it seem like the next pit stop was right around the corner.

There came a point when I realized how far up we were and stupidly glanced over to see the sheerness of the mountainside. The camels we passed hugged the edge of the path, and I couldn’t imagine being up on one of those unwieldy humps, swaying toward the side of the mountain. We then decided it was time to turn on the flashlight we had bought, an enormous lamp that thereafter became the envy of all Bedouin guides. This was a fun reversal because I was asked numerous times if I would give such-and-such guide this flashlight, and I always responded with an exorbitant price.

Finally, we reached the spot where the camels will go no farther. The camel path meets up with the Steps of Repentance for a final 750 steps to the summit. On this last leg, some people literally crawled. We met a group of three ancient women coming down these steps on their canes in the dark – no guide, no flashlights. I shone my flashlight down the stairs for them until they went out of sight, but I think this just annoyed them.

There was one last spot before a final 50 steps. Because our group had become several individuals, each going at his/her own pace, our guide instructed us to meet him at “Coffeeshop #5.” J and I were proud to make it up there just after the Swedes, who proved to be the fittest people in the group. We waited a while and rented a ratty, never-been-washed blanket for ten pounds, because it was getting windy and cold. It was around 4:30am. The sun would rise at 5:50, we were told.

Finally, a last tiresome bit before the summit of Mt. Sinai. Our guide secured a spot for us which involved climbing up a “ladder” that was actually part of a fence tipped on its side. It was, indeed, lovely to watch the sun rise out of the haze and become apparent little by little.



As this happened, Nigerian groups on a different part of the summit began to sing quite beautifully. Something about this (probably the repetition of hearing this singing every day) irritated our guide, who remarked: “See? We are a good group. No Nigerians!” It was at this point that I recognized a bit of irony in the dependency of so many Christians and Jews on the Muslims who will get them up this mountain. As we left the summit, pushed by our guide to hurry, we watched people praying, preaching, photographing.

We were deliriously fatigued at this point, but we were halfway through. Theoretically, going down should have been easier. For this lady, it was the most excruciating part of the trip. Let me put it this way – my kneecaps? I lost them somewhere on the crazy monk’s steps. And today I've developed bruise stripes on the backs of my calves. The 3,000 Steps of Repentance are a jagged, steep, zigzagging path of uneven rocks, and the distance between some steps can be a few meters.

Despite my fight with the hobbling, quivering things I call my legs, I found the descent to be absolutely gorgeous. We finally got to see the thing we had been battling all night. And about three-fourths of the way down, we spotted the monastery. As soon as he could get a signal, J called his father, who was the only one we knew to be awake in the States, on our borrowed mobile. You wouldn't believe the signals you can get in the desert.

The Descent:



The view of Mt. Sinai from Elijah's Hollow, a spot about 3/4 of the way up:



St. Catherine's Monastery:



At the bottom, we discovered that the monastery was closed that day. Do you think I cared? I had been looking forward to seeing the Burning Bush, but as we walked down an endless road to the parking lot where we would be picked up, and a police truck approached us, and I said to J, “He’s just going to have to run me over” because I no longer had the capacity to veer to the right, and I watched a woman try to leap onto a ledge for a photo and fail because her body literally crumpled beneath her, I thought, monastery schmonastery. I fell into the minibus and slept the whole way back.

There were probably lots of revelations on the summit of Mt. Sinai – some imagined, some real. I didn’t have one until that next day. I was grimacing at my sore calves and sipping a lemon juice in a café called The Funny Mummy that looks out over the Red Sea. Then one of the waiters said something to me about how Egyptians understand that the American people are different from their government. For a moment, I had that relief I have always had in hearing that comment – that people can understand that citizens don’t necessarily bear the responsibility for their government’s actions. Later, though, I realized that it is extremely generous for people to go so far as to say they understand that American citizens are not to blame. Just because I didn’t vote for So-and-So doesn’t mean I don’t bear some of the responsibility for the things I wish our government wouldn’t do. Complacency can be a considerable fault. But Marx says all of this better. It's just that I started to feel like my relief at the comment I've been hearing since I've gotten to Egypt is actually part of the problem. I'm not sure what this has to do with Mt. Sinai.

In conclusion, if you visit me, I will be glad to take you to Dahab. And I'll gladly steer you toward Mt. Sinai and see you when you come back down in the morning.

A

Step Off

Sorry for not posting sooner. Last week was midterm evaluation at the AUC and this brought with it a flurry of activity. I've been half-writing an entry on the sandstorms that have blown into Cairo over the past few weeks, but that entry hasn't caught fire or held my attention like I hoped it would.

Now I'm falling behind: tomorrow we depart with our friend Michael for the Sinai Penninsula, where 3,000 Steps of Repentance await us on Mt. Sinai. (There will also be a beach, and snorkeling in the pristine waters of the Gulf of Aqaba.) This trip will warrant at least one post, maybe more. And yesterday, Michael and I traveled south of Cairo to the ancient pyamids at Sakkara and Dashur. We drove through small agricultural villages, so green and irrigated, and then as we approached the Sakkara complex, the green simply ceased, and sandy desert began.

Sakkara is best known for the Step Pyramid, which as you can see is mightily impressive. It predates the Giza pyramids by several thousand years. But the area is actually an enormous funerary complex--aside from the ruins bunched near the Step Pyramid, it seems at first as if there is very little to see. But the longer you stay, the more the eye discerns: off in the desert, you see huts that protect the entryways to ancient graves dating back several centuries. It's not surprising to me that archaelogists are still finding tombs here. Also, the vendors are much less aggressive here than at Giza--though one guy did manage to dress Michael in decidedly non-Egyptian, Obi Wan Kenobi-like garb while I had my head turned.

Dashur is best known for the Bent Pyramid, so named because it rises at a very steep angle for a time before literally bending--the pyramid's angle of incline was adjusted and the structure was brought to completion. It's a mystery why the Bent Pyramid is, in fact, bent. There are a lot of theories. Also, this pyramid had more armed guards than tourists. There were only a few of us out there. Really great. The desert is a quiet place.

Dashur also has the Red Pyramid, which more closely resembles the ones at Giza. This one you can climb into. First you climb a hundred uneven steps to get to the entrance, then you bend over and lower yourself about a hundred feet into the center of the pyramid, which smells like sweat, urine and ammonia. Then you have to come out the way you entered, and your legs feel like they are being stabbed with a thousand little knives, and the next day your ass is extremely sore. Or so I've been told.

More on all this soon. In the meantime...

James

This photo is from our trip to the Citadel. We were in a courtyard and were about to enter the Mosque of Mohammed Ali. You can see the French influence in the eave of a gazebo-type building on the right.
A

And now for something completely superficial. A few weeks ago, we got a satellite on top of our apartment building, there to join the bountiful garden of satellites that serve as a status symbol in this town. Two guys knocked on our door around 9pm, climbed on the roof, drilled a hole through our balcony wall, hoisted a long thick cable from a truck on the street to our seventh floor, and, voila, satellite TV on a cute used set with a teeny screen. TV! TV! We’ve moved the furniture in the living room so that it all points toward that charismatic screen.

Here’s some stuff we get on satellite. The length of this list, which is only a sampling of what I watch, makes me ashamed: an Arabic version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire (good language practice), The Comeback, Prison Break, 24, Fat Actress, The Sopranos, Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show, Crocodile Hunter, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, Saturday Night Live, ESPN, the History Channel, Animal Planet…wait a minute, you say, art thou in Egypt? Why, yes, still in Egypt. We also get radio and television stations from every country in the Middle East – besides our English-language channels, there are hundreds of Arabic channels. And hardly any commercials, though one can argue that 24 is one giant commercial anyway.

Before we got the TV up and running, I was buzzing through 2-3 books a week. I’m not trying to brag, I’m just saying now it’s taken me a week and a half to get through my latest read. This gives me a good reason to mention it: Dreams From My Father – Barack Obama’s first book. The thing I like about this guy is that he shows an evolution in the way he thinks. He is complex. He understands other viewpoints even if he disagrees with them. He has visited and lived in some of the poorest parts of the world. He positively impacted the south side of Chicago. And, most importantly, he is a reasonable human being. I think it would be nice to have somebody like this as our President. OK, not just nice. Essential.

Oh, wait. Wasn’t I talking about our TV? OK, finally, for Bryan’s sake, a “bribe” story. It rained on Thursday. The rain came after a week in which we’ve had some mild dust storms – dust in your lungs, grit in your eyes – apparently it can get much worse. Anyway, as it began to rain, the girls at the school across the street screeched and ran about and slammed windows shut. I threw the windows open and, after a few minutes of acidic odor, fresh air poured in, and it felt like spring.

In the meantime, just as I was watching the dumbest flick ever, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (now that I think about it, though, the movie How High, which I saw at a dollar theatre in Ames, is probably much dumber, since the protagonists end up digging up the body of John Quincy Adams and smoking his corpse finger like a joint for plot reasons that are, as you can guess, stupid)…anyway, just as I was watching C.A. and listening to the pouring rain, the satellite went out. Now, it’s true that the satellite went out during a scene in which Cameron Diaz ditzily flings herself around on a mechanical bull while wearing a white fuzzy outfit meant to paste viewers’ eyes to her thigh, and I was cringing at myself and thinking about how it would be better for my soul to continue to read that Obama book. But it was my day off, and I wanted to watch TV. Out it went, though. No signal.

I spent a few hours reading to celebrate my victory over myself. Then I retreated and called Orbit, my Magical Provider of TV. I was instructed to “refresh” the “decoder.” This meant unplug and re-plug the fantastical cable box. Nothing happened. I was told that a technician would call to arrange an appointment. Forgetting that I am in Egypt, I figured that would happen in a few hours. When J came home from work several hours later, he called Orbit. He was told a technician would call on Sunday to arrange the appointment. All those days without TV, and I had just started watching the first season of Prison Break! Alas. J got off the phone all “Uh-uh, no way.” I’m like, “Way!”

J gets back on the phone. I’m sitting there smugly, thinking, Good luck with that. Me? I’ll just read something.

Then he’s talking to the woman who set us up with the satellite in the first place. She had told him that we should call at any time if we needed something, wink, wink – give me some extra cash and you’ll get through the bureaucratic b.s. Sure enough, within an hour, the guy who climbed on our roof in the first place was here and had our precious entertainment up and running, and we paid him about $8. I realize, of course, that there are people for whom this happens in the U.S., but I’ve never been in that position before. I’ve always felt as if I’m at the butthole bottom of bureaucracy when it comes to dealing with companies. But here – have I become that asshole I’ve always hated? Oh, I fear for myself.

Ah, but why linger? Surely there’s something good on TV right now.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A

I was leaving the Flamenco Bakery just now, loaf of multi-grain bread in hand, when I had another of those moments I still have with regularity. The moment went something like this. I exited the bakery and turned right. To my left, across the congested city street, was the Nile. Beyond that, standing in contrast to the half-razed concrete structures, was a mosque, white and proud. The air felt surprisingly light and the breeze refreshed me and sent me almost-skipping along the way. And I thought: I live in freakin’ Egypt. How did this happen?

It does seem like a dream sometimes, and in one respect I suppose it is. When I was a kid, I often kicked around the idea of living in a foreign country. When we did geography in class, I looked at the strange shape and names of countries like Jordan, Niger and Chad. (For some reason I was drawn to Africa.) I wanted to live somewhere really different, if I did it—I had this dawning realization that the planet was very large and that life is lived in a lot of different ways, and it seemed to me that I would be missing out if I didn’t see some other version of life for myself. This may be owing to the fact that I grew up in a small town, nice enough but lacking in the diversity I sensed from the world beyond my home. I understood implicitly that I didn’t have much in common with those around me, not most of them anyway, and in that respect growing up was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole—I could hold in my hand the number of people in my hometown who would willingly live in Africa, in the Middle East, surrounded by several million Muslims. Anyway, it was important then and it is important now that I not be afraid, especially given that most fear is a product of ignorance.

Now I am here. Truth is, I don’t love Egypt, don’t love Cairo. But it’s never been necessary for me to love it. Even that childhood wish to live abroad, I never needed a place to love—the idea never entered my mind. I wanted to *like* the place, I wanted it to interest me and show me some other way that life is lived—not because I wanted tolive in that way, but because I was curious. In these ways, Egypt is a raging success so far. There is no love to perpetually maintain or justify. But something interesting happens even while I am walking down the street. I really really like that.

**

We went to the Citadel on Saturday. It’s a fortress dating back to medieval times, but which shows the influence of the Ottomans who ruled over Egypt for several hundred years. It hangs out close to the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, which we visited on a trip to Islamic Cairo back in December. At the end of this post, I’ll provide a link to a website that gives some history and provides some nice pics. I’ll also include some of my own pics, of course. Note the very blue sky—this was the clearest day I can remember in Cairo, and it transformed the city.

A few highlights. First, the Citadel’s prison, where they held Sadat’s assassins in 1981. As you can see, the doors are heavily fortified—so no escape. Everyone in the group looked inside a cell and each time we came away with a bit of a fright…

Another highlight was the Police Museum, which was actually just a few rooms of framed photographs and drawings of famous criminals either arrested or killed by Egyptian authorities over the years. They even had the gun used in the attempted assassination of President Nasr! This was one of the strangest thins I have ever seen.

After that, I stopped off at the Citadel’s restaurant, which does not date back to medieval times, for a cappuccino. When the guys learned I was American, they asked if I liked Al Pacino. To which I replied that yes, yes I do, but my mother is the real fan in the family, given that she owns a framed portrait of Pacino, Godfather-era, which she hangs proudly in her home. Okay, I didn’t tell the guys about the portrait.

Then there was the nice old man at the Turkish mosque who let us into the mausoleum area. I’m not sure if he was “supposed” to do it or not, but I discreetly slipped him 2LE and he became my friend. At the tomb (of whom I do not know), which is above-ground and bizarrely covered with colorful curtain-like things, the walls had been painted. He showed me. “Istanbul,” he said. And then, turning to the painting you see below, he said, proudly, “Cairo.”

Interesting.

James

www.touregypt.net/featurestories/citadel.htm

This is going to be a mass of generalizations, so if you can’t handle that kind of thing, best to let this entry go. Or just look at the above picture, an Arabic movie poster we found at the same store where we got the pretty green lamp that lacked a proper cord. The guy with the pegleg sealed the deal on that poster-purchase.

Tonight, as I rode the shuttle bus home, a pair of American exchange students behind me spent the entire twenty-minute ride complaining about the ineptitude of some professor. There is a particular whiny, know-it-all way that American kids complain about their teachers, and I’ve certainly been a part of this when I was a student, even through grad school. I won’t recreate the dialogue because if you’ve been in school, you can guess. What was important to me is that I realized I have never heard an Egyptian student speak that way about a teacher.

I’ve taught at two state universities in the Midwest. Unfortunately, it was not a rarity to walk into a class on the first day, not having spoken a word yet, and have a couple of students already sulking and sullen in the back as if I were forcing them to be there. It’s rough sometimes when you’re unloved from the beginning.

For the most part, my Egyptian students are eager to learn. Sure, there are lots of things that get on my nerves (“Oh, you wanted a hard copy of the paper? Really? But – I couldn’t print it. I slept at my grandmother’s last night. She doesn’t have a computer!” – the sort of excuse that is so naively transparent that even as I am firm in class I find it adorable later), and I’m not pretending I haven’t pissed off a few Egyptian students, but a lot of these kids are glad to be here, a much higher percentage than I’ve perceived in other places. Many of them have been educated so far through rote memorization and the Qu’ran. This university, where discussions happen, where students are responsible for managing their own time, is elite in this kind of place.

Last week one of my students, Ashraf, came early to class. I asked how it was going in his first year, and he said he loved it. He said he felt so free. He said other schools in Egypt were not like this.

AUC is a place where someone from the Muslim Brotherhood, a shunned party, can give a public lecture, which happened last semester. It’s kind of freaky, actually, how different AUC feels from just two blocks away from campus – remember, this is the same country that just arrested a young Egyptian blogger for critiquing its religion and its interminable president. But that’s not my point. My point is that Ashraf is exuberant about the opportunity. I will miss that when I return to America.

So I find my students to be fascinating. They are growing up with Western values that are connected to materialism and its artificial links to freedom, while, at the same time, many are growing up with a religion that, in the last few years in Egypt, has become more conservative. Their parents grew up in a different time, a time when women were taking off the headscarves. Now the veils have made a comeback. More about “taking the veil” some other time. Most of these students live in the suburbs, where there is more room, and it sometimes looks creepily like California, and there is a mall called City Stars that is bigger than the Mall of America and has a TGI Friday’s. Their drivers take them to school and pick them up. But still, they live in a developing country, a country that has not found a really satisfactory way of pushing the poor into separate corners quite like America has. The poor are squatting in the suburbs, too – that’s how many of them there are.

If you know me, you’ve heard this story. When I first moved to Minneapolis, I would walk around the Mississippi. The St. Anthony Main/Hennepin/Nicollet area is beautiful. In 2002, I saw a fair amount of the homeless sitting on the benches by the river. Over the next few years, as more condos went up, the river restaurant scene got busier, the Guthrie theatre got rebuilt to resemble an IKEA (though it was pictured in the Smithsonian for its beauty, that theatre, so don’t trust my opinion - I'm sure a couple of my MN friends are going to disagree on this one), and it was reported that more people were finally moving in from the suburbs than sprawling out -- after all of these things, the homeless vanished. Really. Where did they go? Did they find homes? The aura of the river changed in that short amount of time. The F-You graffiti was scrubbed from the Stone Arch Bridge.

I don’t mean to sound pessimistic. It’s just that, even though I have always had a deep-seated, rather inexplicable aversion to "the rich," and these students are richer than I’ll probably ever be, their lives are complex. Egyptian youth are at an intriguing crossroads. This country has to change. Doesn’t it? One would hope. If you read the NY Times article I mentioned in the last entry, then you know that most people in Cairo are poor and that most feel absolutely no connection to the government. I’m not talking about your average “I don’t care about politics” baloney. Some neighborhoods in Cairo have had to develop their own sewage systems after weeks of watching it run by in the street with no help from their government. Yeah. That kind of disconnection. Maybe this is why these kids, even the ones who never remove the Chanel sunglasses from their heads, continue to fascinate me. I don’t know if their money makes them powerful or not. I’m just interested in seeing what they do with it.

A

Today's New York Times online has a lead story about the poor in Cairo, as well as a video of Cairo. You can sign up with them for free to view their articles.

We’ve mentioned the dangerous intersection near our apartment building, where three streets meet at once – two in a vee-shaped fashion – with no regulation except the older daytime policeman who directs traffic during the busiest times – before and after school. Near misses occur constantly, brakes screech, and cars frequently smack. But here is what’s happening right now. A group of four or five teenaged boys – joined now and then by other boys and adult men – kicks a soccer ball to and fro, up and down, right in the middle of that intersection. Cars and motorcycles honk and swerve around them. The boys play. They whoop. They laugh for joy. At home I would probably think, Idiot young’uns! Get out of the street!

Here, no. Antique Guy (who I’ve mentioned before) dawdles on the crumbling curb before jumping into the fray for a few seconds. The soldiers laugh. Throw down those broken guns and join in! It’s starting to seem simply familiar, this kind of thing, the shape and make of these neighborhood streets. Of course, the green space per person in Cairo is said to be less than the size of your average person’s foot. And boys must play. You have to pay for a park. You have to pay to get to the banks of the Nile in Cairo. Despite all of this, it’s almost as if I am experiencing an old American film set in a city neighborhood – the way people recognize each other, have localized stores, the way boys – even the soldiers with their dopey rifles – seem innocent and…well, adorable. I’m getting nostalgic for no experience I’ve had. Maybe this is just city life. Maybe it’s something I didn’t experience in Minneapolis (the only other city I’ve lived in) because of my proximity to the university. I don’t know. While I would be severely mistaken to view this camaraderie on the streets as indicative of the mood of the people, there is something to be admired about the congeniality of Egyptians. Not the pandering tourist congeniality, no. Boys in the middle of the dangerous street. That’s what I’m talking about.



Above: Shop in Old Cairo

Shops line the streets, many the size of a walk-in closet. Grocers, electricians, antique dealers, makwagis. One night we stopped in a store because we spotted a small reading lamp along the lines of what J had been looking for since we arrived. The lamp was crammed in with ancient alarm clocks, light bulbs, bits of wire with no apparent home, ink pens, batteries, a lonely stuffed bear with “I Love You” on its tummy. Some of this stuff predates Sadat, surely. Anyway, a man sat smoking in the back of the closet-shop, not interested in moving unless we moved from browse-to-buy mode.

James employed the phrase we must all learn: “Bi-kaam?” How much? The man stepped out of the store and into the street. For a minute I thought we had finally offended someone with our Midwestern Arabic. He called over his shoulder, “Minute. One minute.” He returned with a kid in his twenties who wore a yellow sweatshirt and looked as if he may have been napping. This was the first time we realized that there are people who look after the store – that is all they do. The smoking man returned to his post behind the desk and didn’t move again.

J agreed to buy the lamp. OK, great. The kid maneuvers it through the window-hodgepodge. Then he goes over to a socket on the wall. That’s when we notice the lamp doesn’t really have a cord. I mean, it has a little stub of cord, a little longer than my fingernail, and a little fray of wire emerging from that.

(You’ve probably figured out by now that electricity is simply magical for me. Flip the switch! Let there be light! This little piece of writing is by a person who thought the gas oven was going to explode last fall because it was making a crazy rhythmic ticking. The electrician/gas guy I called about the “emergency” arrived and in half a second of observation opened the oven to reveal that yours truly had somehow leaned against the button that starts turning the rotisserie. So you’ll have to forgive my lack of terminology.)

The kid sticks the fray into a socket on the wall. The lamp demonstrates its warm glow. “Tayeb?” he asks. OK?

We both sort of sputter. Um, wire. No wire? Cord? For socket? Plug-in? Plug? J starts a pantomime of plugging a length of cord into a wall. I was ready to leave. Was it a joke? I looked to the window. Nope – the other lamps were in the same state.

The kid opens a dusty cabinet and pulls out a roll of white cord. He holds it up, and we nod yes. He looks surprised that this is what we want, like he never does something like this for a customer. He actually shrugs, which makes me suspicious – is he going to rip us off, acting like this is some kind of big, extra deal – adding something that should have been there in the first place?

J chooses a length, and the kid goes to work. I don’t watch this part – an older man in a green suit has come in wanting a particular set of light bulbs, and I listen carefully to the exchange, plucking out meaning. I remember how conversations begin and end with pleasantries threaded to religious praise, and wonder how J and I come off when we forget these staples. By the time the man has left, the kid has finished. For this extra service, all he wants is LE 3.

Since then we’ve bought one other lamp, at a store that sells handmade stuff from local artists and craftspeople. It’s where we got the Egyptian shawls for some of the womenfolk we know. The same cord/wire/plug-in/doodad situation applied. For that, J went right back to his friend in the yellow sweatshirt. Here's a photo – ain’t it cute?



By the way: Happy birthday, Dad!!

A

Wake Up and Smell the Bird Flu



Last week we took yet another university-led trip into Islamic Cairo. This took us more deeply into what seemed like the interior of the ancient parts of the city, even though I have no idea if this area was in fact considered more interior, or not. Space was even more cramped on the sidewalks, our cracker-ness was even more evident and was cause for people on the street to pause and gape at us. Many times, we had to dive into semi-packed alleyways so that our guide could tell us about a mosque we had seen, or the historical significance of one building or another. While we stood there, listening to her, Egyptians would start collecting around us. Sometimes, they also listened to the speaking woman, although they clearly did not understand a lick of English. I would stand there, listening until my mind wandered, as it so often does, and when I would snap back to attention, a young boy or a couple of older women would have appeared next to me, craning their necks to see the speaker—or, in some cases, talking amongst themselves about us.

The sons of a librarian who often brings his family on these trips have the misfortune of having red hair. And not just red hair, either, but we’re talking about two beautiful carrot tops—deeply orange hair, like I have never seen before. When these boys are walking down the streets of Cairo, they do me the favor of being a lot more conspicuous than me, and by being just tall enough that any adult can reach out his hand and pat their beautiful red manes as they pass by. I saw one old man do that, in a perfectly natural way, as if one pats the red hair of strange boys on the street all the time. His expression was one a man might give to his own grandchild.

We had seen some parts of this area when we had visited the Khan in December, and gone off the tourist reservation, wandering through areas less frequented by tourists. This is where we encountered men on motorcycles driving into crowds (who casually parted in the nick of time), and herders with their sheep, being led off to a date with a January Eid. This time, while we waited on a couple women who had wandered away from the group, to the consternation of Louise, whose job it is to arrange these outings and chaperone them (and to make sure we all get back in one piece), this time, a young man serenaded me by singing a couple verses from Lionel Richie’s “Hello.” I am not joking. This ranks up there with the soldier on the corner who, last week, asked me to give him one of the bunch of flowers I was brining home to help decorate for the party. Also not a joke.



There were two other highlights to the day’s trip. First, we visited an old mosque that had been restored and was officially part of the tourist line—things people see when they come to this part of the city. We climbed up to its roof, where I took one of the photographs you see—that the Citadel off to the left, in the haze. We’re taking a trip there very soon. This gave us some amazing views of the ancient city, as well as the interesting realization that a lot of buildings in Islamic Cairo don’t have roofs, and that wherever there is a roof, there is garbage. Then we climbed a minaret, which is the very narrow tower you often see rising from mosques. We were probably only another fifty or sixty feet higher, but the sensation of vertigo was severe when we emerged from the dark, narrow winding staircase and stood on a small balcony that encircled the minaret.




The second most notable thing was walking down a street lined with markets and butcheries. We’re talking about butcheries where they keep the poultry and, yes, the rabbits in cages just outside the shop itself. A customer can peruse the selection, choose whatever bunny or chicken he might like, and wait as it is removed from the wooden cage, taken inside and slaughtered, skinned, and otherwise prepared according to the customer’s specifications. I found myself really curios about these places and kept hanging around them, hoping I’d get to see a chicken get its head whacked off. I think I wanted to see it because I eat meat and it seems unfair to ignore the process that brings a steaming plate of General Tso’s chicken to my dinner table—you know? It’s like I have no right to be grossed out, since my demand helps create places like butcheries. Then again, I did hear a bunny squealing as it was about to get the Big Chop, and it was no pleasant sound, so maybe I’m glad I missed all the beheadings going on around me.

That said, I’m not sure that I would ever eat a chicken purchased from such a place. They are not exactly clean—the tiled walls were speckled with blood, you can see the bloody knives resting on dirty tabletops, and so on. Plus, there is bird flu in the country—yet, interestingly, the poultry industry is in no danger. For all its lack of sterility, it’s still not dirty enough for the virus to fester among the birds, much less transmitting it to humans. The real danger comes to poultry farmers, mostly outside Cairo, who live among their poultry in fetid conditions.

One final note. One of my favorite things to do here is wonder what friends and family back home would think of this place, and what the place would think of them. I’ve finally figured out what Egypt would think of my stepfather. One of our colleagues has a husband who, in reality, looks nothing like Dan, except that he has a bushy goatee, long, pony-tailed hair (we call this guy Pony Tail), and that he wears some version of the straw cowboy hats my stepfather so enjoys wearing atop his noggin in the summer months. These similarities alone are enough. As we are walking back to catch the bus to Zamalek, some Egyptian men call out to this guy, “Hey man, where’s your horse?” His wife explains: “Oh, he gets that all the time. It’s the hat. They think he’s a cowboy.”

There you go.

James

Man on a roof in Old Cairo. Click for a closer view.

A

All of a sudden today, Cairo turned red. Hearts. Flowers. Taffeta. Even the pet shop, with its sickly animals, became a den of love, selling bouquets and stuffed bears holding stuffed hearts.
I said to one of my classes, "What's the deal? You celebrate Valentine's here?"
"Only in the last few years," one student said, rolling her eyes. "It's SO commercialized."

A

It was comforting to return to Egypt, to hear “hamdillah-a-salaama” (the way you say “welcome back,” which means, almost literally, Thank God for safety) and to have a momentary pause, courtesy of not hearing a word of Arabic for 5 weeks, before replying, “Allah-yi-salaam-ak” (God keeps you safe).

You cannot escape God in Egypt unless you want to never speak to others or look at anything. Besides, the ubiquitous floral phrases that might seem a burden when translated into everyday English are lovely in Arabic. Admit it – the name Allah has a much better ring to it than God. (I cannot say this about the call to prayer. We live close to a set of loudspeakers that infiltrates every room in the apartment, so I stopped having notions about the ethereal nature of this daily occurrence.)

Yes, yes, this is my apartment, and this is my neighborhood, and these are the guys who hang out on the street, and there’s that stern traffic cop with the hoary mustache, his hands wrapped behind his back, who will not speak to a lady. When I could be awoken from my jetlagged hibernation, we took walks back out into Cairo, relearning the bumpy landscape with its unpredictable holes, bumbling into the dust-laden streets, laughing at the cars and motorcycles fluttering our clothes through proximity. On our walks, J cheerily hallooed any leering soldiers, which has the effect of making them forget about staring at me and becoming sweet chummy boys with J. Even the shoeshine guy in front of the President Hotel profusely greeted us.

We witnessed a car accident with a certain amount of comfort, too, watching the men get out of their cars, discuss/argue, and honk, as onlookers stared in no simple rubberneck fashion but with obvious enjoyment at the narrative unfolding before them. I don’t want to start proselytizing, but (here I go) there is a certain part of the Egyptian culture that seems to believe in accepting whatever life decides to pile on its collective lap and on finding ways to enjoy whatever can be even minutely enjoyed. Maybe this has to do with religious belief. Maybe it has to do with the seemingly unbreakable schism between classes. I'm not suggesting this is a better way to live one's life. I can’t pinpoint any of this because I am a classic worrywart, an anal retentive, as we like to say, and I am from the planet of “Amrikka.” When I’m out in the world in Cairo, though, I find that I worry less. When I was in the U.S., relaxing before a television and a fireplace and mesmerized by commercials, I still managed to get that old stress ache in my back, that one that, honest to Allah, I have lost in Egypt. There’s something in the air, and it’s not just a veil of pollution.

The other night I was walking home from the grocery and came upon our bawaab standing with the guy who sells antiques and parks cars in front of our building, the young muscular bawaab-in-training, and an old man (“haag”: which sounds bad at first but is a respectful term meaning one who is old and wise enough to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca, In’sha’allah or God willing) whose only role I know of is hanging out. Neghi (our bawaab) extended his hand to me. I had greeted Neghi about an hour before on my way out, but I had rushed past at the time, just saying “Izzayak” (how are you) and moving on without really waiting for a reply. What was I up to? Oh, just going out to buy some bread. Not on a schedule in the least.

As I returned with my bread and a bag of carrots, Neghi stepped forward as if he were about to tell me something important. I shook his hand. (This is something he used to reserve for J – that loose shake-slap between Egyptian men.) He said very slowly, “Inti quayesa?” and I froze. You are well? It was the most basic of Arabic phrases, but I couldn’t think of a reply for a couple of embarrassing seconds. Antique Guy sipped at his glass of loose tea, and young muscular bawaab-in-training lit a cigarette, leaning against the potted plant Antique Guy uses to reserve parking spaces. Haag grinned.

When I did respond, Neghi laughed. “Sabah-il-xeer,” he said, again very slowly, holding up his palm. Since it was early evening, and he had just told me “good morning,” I realized we were having an Arabic lesson and replied, “Sabah-in-noor.” Antique Guy joined in then, he and Neghi teaching me more words than I could absorb, and I jumped up and down proudly whenever I got something right.

I’m sure that this was simply amusement for those guys, since they giggled cutely as a group when I said goodbye and walked into the building. But, really, Neghi made me slow down: Welcome back, Amrikkeya. What’s the freaking hurry?

The next afternoon when I came home, I saw Neghi squatted against the wall. This time I stopped. It was not all that impressive, what I did – good afternoon, you are well?, Allah be praised, goodbye – but I felt a different cadence take hold of me just then, as I looked Neghi in the eye, and we smiled at each other. Yes, he really was well, and so was I, God be praised.

A

I was waiting at O'Hare for the plane to London when I sat next to a group of undergraduates about to catch the same plane and embark upon their Semester Abroad. Funny, I thought. These kids were probably juniors in school, which is downright grown-up by the strange, hyper-aging logic of the university, where you’re a doe-eyed freshman one year and an “experienced” adult just 24 months later. And I can’t say I had much in common with the kids in question, who were reading Teen Beat or some such and talking about American Idol (the latter of which, as you all know, is so very beneath me). It matters because I was the one heading out on my Semester Abroad, 10 years ago almost to the day. My destination had been Liverpool, not London, and my US layover had occurred in Newark, not Chicago. And like the kids waiting to board the plane with me, I had bonded with a few of my Wittenberg peers who were catching the same flight, and together we had dragged our jet-lagged asses to the campus of Liverpool Hope University.

My journey to the UK was, in fact, full of reminders of past journeys and other times and places in my life. I took the train to Liverpool and met up at Lime St. with my old buddy Mark, who was a 25 year-old university freshman ten years ago. His classmates called him Grandad. Now he is a schoolteacher in Liverpool. He lives in a flat above Otto’s Pizza and beside Steve’s Chip Shop. Throughout my two stints in Liverpool this time, I: 1) ate heavily at pubs, 2) slept a lot, 3) drank a lot of Carlsberg and Carling and 4) had a strange craving for chocolate. Mark drove me in his sweet Ford Focus station wagon over to the campus, which he told me is in a neighborhood called Allerton, which he informed me is full of Jewish people. I had not known that. We drove past the campus and I saw for myself that lovely old Sherwin House, the dormitory where I made my first foreign friends, had been razed and a more contemporary suite-style dormitory was being erected in its place. This also has thematic connections to other buildings from my academic past that have been, or soon will be, eliminated. Wittenberg built a beautiful new humanities building after my graduation, tore down half the old humanities building, and farmed out the remaining half to the computer nerds of the Solution Center. And my dear hometown public schools will all soon be replaced, each and every one of them. Their replacements are already functioning, in some cases, and looming in others. My old elementary and middle schools are now defunct, I believe, replaced by shiny new schools that my niece and nephew now attend. My high school, named Tecumseh High School after the rich Native American heritage of my hometown, is growing a malignant tumor off it backside. They have elected to keep the gymnasium from which I graduated and the auditorium where my sister performed in the theater and I first got all teary-eyed watching a grown woman perform an interpretive dance to “The Rose.” As for the rest of the building, as well as the adjacent Oscar T. Hawke building, it will soon meet with the wrecking ball. What might the fine campuses of Iowa State and the University of California have in store for me next?

Mark asked me what I might like to do when I was in Liverpool, and I mentioned, half-seriously, that I might take a ferry around the River Mersey. It’s a regret of mine that I did not spend more time around the river in 1997, when I had the run of Liverpool. After all, I like rivers. They figure prominently in my fiction. Alas, it wasn’t to be. I suffered through some hellacious wind walking down to the river. I had chosen a day of particularly high winds across all of Europe. All I got was a lot of salt water in my beard, and this:



My next stop was at the Lake District, the site of a particularly difficult past failure. I hadn’t been there since 1999, when I was little more than an unemployed 23 year-old with a bachelor’s degree and not enough money to survive. I had taken a job at a restaurant, decided I didn’t like the tight slacks or the Hawaiian shirt they required, and ditched, but not before brooding at Churchill’s pub, writing letters home while drinking a Heineken. This time I stopped at Churchill’s only once, on the first day of my arrival, to write postcards and drink a Beck’s vier. That’s what it said on the glass. Is that even German?

My real hangout this time was The White Lion, a hotel and pub that employed a fetching young woman who looked like a cross between Sara Robinson and my sister Aleana. Who could have known? It was there that I reached the terminal stages of nerdiness, by: 1) drinking alone, 2) writing in my journal, and worst of all, 3) reading a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, which I had discovered at the hostel. Really! And it wasn’t even a good novel. I was disappointed because he was supposed to be up there with Ray Bradbury as King Shit of science fiction.

Throughout my stay in Ambleside, I had to fight the specter of the bad memories at each turn (it’s a small town). Here is the restaurant I ditched, here is the crappy flat I would have lived in, here is the street where I froze my ass off walking around and trying to figure out what to do. That said, it was nice to return under favorable circumstances.

My highlight was the walk to Grasmere, where one William Wordsworth is buried. Did you know he had at least two homes in the vicinity? There is Dove Cottage and there is the home at Rydal Mount, which is situated at the dead-end of a steep road that gives way to the walking path where hikers can continue on up the Mount. Me, I just broke into Wordsworth’s back yard. You’ll have to forgive me. I saw no armed guards so I figured it was okay. This is part of the way I live in Egypt. If it’s guarded by armed soldiers, I’d best avoid it. If not…

Besides, Wordsworth’s yard wasn’t even locked. There was simply a gate that read CLOSED in big block letters. But the gate also had a latch that opened quite easily when I tried it. And literally there was nobody about, so I spent a few minutes walking around the beautiful back yard, peering into the picture windows of the house, and sitting on a back bench that looked out over what I believe was Derwent Water.


The walk to Grasmere was marked by a beautiful stretch along a stream, a smiling, posing sheep, a brief hail storm, and spots of sunshine, two of which I have decided to share. The gravestones are close to the Wordsworth family’s (they have a modestly sized but fenced-in plot complete with a tree they planted, apparently in their own honor). When I was aiming the camera, it was cloudy. And then, as I pressed the button, the sun emerged and seemed to shine only at the place where I was taking my photograph. I don’t extrapolate anything spiritual into that, since I am just some asshole taking a picture of some graves, but it made for an eerie photograph, I thought.




Then it was back to Liverpool for two nights before finishing my journey in London. The River Mersey was much calmer this time, but I was too broke for the ferry. Instead, Mark and I ate fish and chips and got a serious jones for some chocolate. This is how it ended for me, the two of us scouring the aisles of Tesco, indecisivly weighing the various advantages and disadvantages of dark over milk chocolate, Minstrels over M&M’s, Galaxy bars over Lion bars, our mouths watering as we sought our fix.

Not a bad trip.

James

We're back in Cairo. Above: tired donkey in a traffic jam. From our trip to the Khan.

A

In Cairo you can get a big ol’ satellite on the trash-strewn roof of your apartment building and start watching the Cartoon Network that very day. Super-fast wireless. Microscopic mobiles. In Heliopolis there’s a huge new mall with bomb-sniffing dogs that beats the pants off the Mall of America, and Starbucks is opening soon, so watch out, KFC. You can get yourself a Hummer with flashing lights in the ceiling. (When I saw that ludicrous yellow Hummer I am referring to, J and I were riding in a Peugeot with an Egyptian friend, who glanced at the gas-guzzler and muttered, with disgust, “Saudis.”) You can shop at a supermarket (“subar-market”), and they will deliver your groceries, and you can’t be offended if someone with a head of cabbage takes a look at your loaded trolley and decides to butt in front of you before you can suggest it. When I say “you,” I mean someone specific, of course. The experience is tailored – as if we’re on a two year safari and are paid up, so everything will be taken care of.

When I say that I feel safe in Egypt, as safe as I do at home in terms of the relative risk of being “terrorized,” I’m not sure that I am believed. One day at the university, I mentioned to an Egyptian colleague how safe I feel walking on the streets in Cairo (at least the ones I frequent). She smiled. “That’s because you’re a foreigner,” she said. “Those soldiers are here to protect you, not me.”

I don't entirely believe her claim, since I have no connections, can't get into the front door of the U.S. Embassy unless I have a damned good reason, and have been serenaded and whistled at by many a bored soldier (in the choice between resting your eyesocket over the barrel of your gun or chattering at a passing woman, what would you do?), but I think I see her point.

My particular foreignness means that I don’t have to see what I don’t want to see. Well, that’s not exactly true. You can’t spit (and spitting is rampant, by the way) without running into a beggar. You can’t cross a crowded street without seeing children missing limbs. We’ve mentioned the polluted air, the dangerous driving (there are no rules – only instincts), and other effects of the infrastructure. But my heart has not yet broken – not at scruffy children who clamor for pens and piasters, not at camels and donkeys beaten by sticks, not at the leper who hunches in Tahrir Square, not at the peanut-selling kid with hands already as large and calloused as my grandfather’s were after a lifetime of farming. (By the way, I cannot speak for J on this front because he is always generous to people on the streets.) As I ready to return to Egypt, I wonder what I have really seen, what I have truly felt. I’ll have to reflect on the fact that I haggled with that sturdy-handed kid over a sack of peanuts, and the fact that he was amused by me, and called me "Madam," and laughed when I cut the nominal cost in half.

Amanda

After being two of the thousands of people stuck in the London fog, we finally made it home just before Christmas, where we came bearing Egyptian, British, and duty-free gifts. Now that all the gifts have been opened, I thought I would write about our trip to Khan-il-Khalili.

Khan-il-Khalili is an ancient marketplace in Islamic Cairo. The Khan is probably the second largest tourist site in Cairo, after the Pyramids of Giza. J wrote about Islamic Cairo in the last entry, but let me just say that it is like a step back in time (excepting the ubiquitous motorists and the flashy gifts made in China). The best way to get to the Khan is via taxi. We chose to bring one of our Egyptian friends, Ahmed, thinking he might be a handy translator and buffer. (Turns out Ahmed, who is a suburban kid, hadn’t ever been there, and he was mistaken for a tourist almost as much as we were.) We were let off amidst speeding traffic at a green footbridge, which you cross to enter the main part of the Khan. We weren’t sure at first that we were in the right place, but we knew we were golden when we spotted a white lady with whiter hair wearing salmon-colored culottes.

We turned onto a narrow path that was unwieldy with piles of trash and dirt. Scrawny cats picked through the rubbish. To either side, several small shops belched out smiling Egyptian men who proclaimed, “Welcome in Egypt!” There were several hookah shops crammed next to kitsch – glass pyramid trios, pharaoh statuettes, amulets to ward off the evil eye, wooden boxes with Islamic designs representing eternity. There were many gold and silver stores, and other places selling precious stones, most of which are imported since Egypt has been mined to exhaustion. Several antique shops sported beautiful lanterns and dusty relics that looked as if they should have been piled in a barn. Here we found a similar sort of hawking as went on at the pyramids of Giza, though not nearly as persistent or irritating. Men walked out of their shops and promised, “Everything is free!” It seemed pretty tame to us, but perhaps we were simply more prepared for it, and we had a few more polite Arabic phrases under our belts.

We picked our way around trash as the paths became increasingly more winding and shadowed. Men and boys, hauling carts and carrying sacks many times their weight, pushed their way through the crowd, giving short whistles to indicate that they were coming. We learned to move quickly because they had no intention of stopping. (Later, Ahmed got smacked by the side mirror of a car as it passed. Many of the side mirrors here fold back, and that is what this one did.) One of the men said in Arabic, “Watch your back, woman!” just before he swept by me with what looked like heavy sacks of concrete mix over his shoulders. The further in we went, the dustier and mazier it got. Motorcycles sped through, as well as trucks spewing fumes and hip-hop. We asked for directions a few times and found people offering to share their food and drink.

Finally, we found the place I had been looking for: Casa Fernando – a papyrus shop owned by a petite man named Mohammed who speaks Spanish. He was wearing a denim shirt and chewing a small piece of gum. We informed him that one of our friends had recommended the place. He chewed suspiciously, looked us up and down, then invited us inside his shop, which contained stacks and stacks of papyrus with questionable stamps of authenticity. Two boys were arranging sheaves of papyrus on the floor, and Mohammed sent one of them off for drinks and made us sit down in chairs with seats the size of half my rear. They came back with a tray holding Lipton for James, water for Ahmed, and cold hibiscus tea for me. Then Mohammed pulled out a stack of papyrus and began rifling silently, tossing pieces haphazardly to the floor when I shook my head no. We were looking at dark brown papyrus on which there were traditional paintings of ancient Egypt – the papyrus was framed and supported by jute.

Once I started to show my interest in a few, the bargaining commenced. The first thing Mohammed did was quote a ridiculous price. Being somewhat stingy all my life, I was unimpressed. Then I offered a price I considered to be more reasonable, and he looked at me like I was crazy. “This is very old,” he said rather irritably. “That’s too expensive,” I said, wondering just when that paint had dried – was it last week, or last month? It was a lovely little dance. In the end, I got “ripped off,” but I managed to be firm about what I was willing to pay, and when it became clear I wouldn’t budge (to the point of my putting the papyrus on the pile on the floor), Mohammed gave me the price I had eventually quoted. It was great fun.

Tired of the Khan, we forced our way through a much more crowded area on the other side of the street. To each side in the narrow alley were all matter of fabrics – women’s clothing, blankets, rugs, etc. We had clearly left the tourist zone, as there were no culottes to be seen. We paused in a more open area where, in the span of a few minutes, we watched a motorcyclist ram through a crowd and a flock of sheep barrel past. Up to this point, I had been suppressing all references to misinformed films about the Middle East but could not help but remark here that this could have been the setting for the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones shoots the sword-wielding man in the streets of Cairo.

This open area brought us away from the crowded marketplace and into the streets of Old Cairo. We immediately found ourselves walking through a traffic jam, where a donkey pulling a cart leaned its head into the back of a honking Nissan truck. In one shop, a man made cast iron skillets, while next door another man wove baskets. Almost every shop, emptied of patrons, boasted beautiful handmade items – from intricate wooden chairs to walking sticks. I saw just one store that was full of people – this store had enormous sacks brimming with spices and herbs – ginger, cumin, hibiscus, mint. We stopped at a small grocery store for a drink and had to stay there with our glass pop bottles until we finished and could return them, and, as we sipped, we surveyed the place. Out on the street, the donkey still leaned its head against the Nissan, and horns continued to honk. On the way back to the main thoroughfare where we would catch a taxi home and pick up some roasted corn, I witnessed a man leaping onto the hood of a moving, honking car. Ahmed and J were ahead of me, and they didn’t hear me gasp. They also didn’t see the driver of the car laughing, or the man on the hood guffawing, nor the man who made cast iron skillets chuckling and shaking his head.

On Saturday, we took a university-sponsored trip to Islamic Cairo. I know what you're thinking: "Really, isn't it all Islamic Cairo?" And that would be true, from a certain point of view. But Cairo is a very ancient city, and each neighborhood embodies some sort of historical period. Zamalek, for instance, is not only the "exclusive" part of town, but it's also one of the most recent: Gezira Island only firmed up enough to become inhabitable in the 19th century. Islamic Cairo, which is in reality on 5 or 10 miles from where I currently sit, was once the ancient center of town and the center of Muslim life in the city. We walked down a narrow and boisterous street that was once the main street of the city, running from north to south (the city didn't actually approach the banks of the Nile until more recent times). Today there is barely one lane, even though it is apparently a two-lane road, given the traffic in both direction. Trucks, motorcycles, horse and donkey carts--you name it.





The first and largest thing we did was visit the Mosque of Sultan Hasan. I don;t now much about the guy, but his story has an interesting end. Apparently, he constructed the grand mosque that bears his name. Unfortunately, poor Hasan was never buried in his own mosque. He was murdered while out in the desert and his body was hidden, and to this day nobody knows where he is buried. To this day, Muslims use the story as a fable to warn their children against greed and hubris.

Two of the pictures direcly above this section of the post are pics from the mosque. I was struck by the absolute quiet of the place (excepting the children who had tagged along), the hushed reverence of a group. It reminded me of visiting grand cathedrals in England: Canterbury Cathedral comes to mind. Also Stonehenge. I'm not a religious fellow, but certain places have a shine to them, and big old churches and mosques have that kind of presence for me.

One difference between a church and a mosque--and there are many--was the amount of open-air space in the mosque. Churches generally are closed structures. Mosques seem to revel in the open air, especially as a place for worship. You can see this in one of the pictures above, as well.





A lot of the professors who went on the trip have children, and these children were our constant companions throughout the day. Most parents let their children traipse freely among us. Only one parent felt compelled to scold her child, but she was only mad because he did something that got his hands dirrty. "You wonder why you keep getting these diseases!" she said.

The little girl above was quite the ham. She skirted that delicate line between charming and annoying, never quite tipping the scales into annoying. At least for me. She wanted her picture taken, a lot. I never could figure out who she belonged to. I finally acquiesced to taking her picture when she picked up a colleagues backpack. Little girl! Oversized backpack! (Containing expensive computer equipment.) How cute.

And finally, you see me. I actually felt a lot worse than I look in this picture. Notice two things. First, I am wearing a new shirt I had purchased a few days earlier at a shop on 26th July St. The shop is named Dandy. The tiny place was staffed by three nice men who asked M if I was her brother when I retired to the changing rooms to try the shirts. I don't think they meant any harm. It's just normal (see: green card). Second, see the woman with the cell phone? She was like that all day. The damn thing kept going off. I think I was trying to look pensive in the picture, but as I look at it again, I can't help think I was just annoyed at her.

James

It’s raining! We’ve thrown open the windows. The air is cool and even slightly fresh. Down below, the street is covered with water – there are no gutters, which tells you how much it rains here. It’s the second time it's rained since we’ve been here – and the first time was for a span of ten minutes. J just pointed out that we are able to see a building in the distance that has never been clear.

Last week the bawaab brought us the census survey. It felt strange and rather exciting to fill in the “foreigner” bubble. It felt doubly strange to give the survey, complete with an estimation of our annual salaries, back to the bawaab rather than an official census taker. As we ready for a visit home, we’ve been thinking a lot about the aspects of Egypt that intrigue, baffle, irritate, and amuse us. Today I’ll focus on the good. The food. Ah, how I love food.

Let’s start with the vendor of sweet potatoes, typically a man in a gallibeya pushing a cart down the street. There is a smoking barrel of an oven on this cart that looks like a chimney. In this oven, sweet potatoes steam and smoke. As the vendor rolls the cart down the street, occasionally setting up on corners, people buy a potato or two for a pound. He wraps it in newspaper and hands it to the customer, who eats it as is. Sometimes the vendor stops and peels blemishes from the raw potatoes before putting them into the fire. A wintertime treat – cheap, easy, delicious, calorie-rich, warm.

Then there is koshari, another carb delight – a big bowl of macaroni, rice, vermicelli noodles, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions, and a bit of tomato sauce. There are numerous koshari restaurants around, but the one we like gives you a little plastic bag of vinegar sauce and a container of hot sauce, and this really makes the meal. There is a man in charge of tying up the bags of vinegar, and he does so between pulls on his cigarette. Six pounds for two enormous bowls.

As for the fruits and vegetables, they are almost always delicious. Cucumbers are small, crisp, and available year round, as are tomatoes, which vary in taste but are much better than the nonentities we buy in the winter in the Midwest. I buy yellow peppers, which are so expensive at home, for a few pounds. Onions and garlic are sweet and fragrant. The cantaloupe here has the rind of the cantaloupes at home, but is green like a honeydew on the inside. I could go on and on. I remember the first few disorienting days I was here – when we passed a green grocer, flies were swarming the grapes, the money was confusing, and the shop was situated next to a pile of trash sweating in the heat. It seemed at the time that I might never eat anything nutritious again. How wrong I was. In fact, we’ve come to find that even the canned or frozen foods often have no preservatives, or “without conservatives,” as the mozzarella cheese package says in the photo above. This is not to say that we are totally naïve. Pesticides are used; food sitting out all day in the street cannot help but absorb the immense pollution, etc. I wash everything with soap and water. Some people go so far as to put it in diluted bleach. All of this does not diminish the fact that the fruits and vegetables are delightful.

Our first real experience with an Egyptian meal was at our friend Ahmed’s home. Each time a space would open up on our plates, Ahmed’s mother would hurry over and spoon more on. “You’re not eating enough!” she said. It is common for Egyptians to do this to you, and I have been warned that you must strike a delicate balance – you must eat enough, but you must not eat too much. If you do not eat enough, they will think you are rude. If you eat too much, you are a pig.

I had explained weeks before this dinner (so as to lessen my offense) that I am a vegetarian. Vegetarianism often baffles Egyptians. It did not make sense to Ahmed’s family, and they questioned me about it off and on through the night. In fact, Ahmed seemed a bit disappointed in me when I thought I was being polite in telling him in advance. I brought out my "I grew up on a farm and we would eat off one cow and one pig for a whole year" story, which seemed to improve my standing. Now that I think about it, though, I did mention eating pork to a group of Muslims. Nonetheless, vegetarian dishes appeared – steamed vegetables, bean salad, potato salad, coleslaw, pastries stuffed with spinach and flavored with lemon, a casserole dish of Chinese noodles and vegetables, rice with vermicelli noodles, and several others. Delicious! The amount of food was dizzying. Dessert consisted of a homemade cheesecake, a fancy store-bought chocolate cake, and a chocolate mousse with walnuts.

Later, Ahmed’s mother and father brought me into the kitchen to show me their fuul pot and explain how to make fuul. The fuul pot (at least the smaller family-sized version) resembles a carafe, and it steams and simmers all day. A regular fuul pot is enormous with a thin neck, almost like a symmetrical gourd. I cannot remember the exact recipe for fuul, but it involves hours of cooking after hours of soaking. It was the way they told me about it that was so beautiful. Ahmed’s mother pulled out a handful of beans to show me as she explained how long to soak them, when to change the water, etc. She moved these beans from hand to hand as she spoke, and she made me grab a handful of the beans as she explained their properties. Ahmed’s father picked up some lentils and broke one of them with his teeth to show me the inside (a small bit of lentils can help the flavor of fuul). Then he lit the gas stove and demonstrated the exact level the flame should be at. They did not simply tell me how to do it – they acted it out. The fact that I can’t remember the recipe only reflects badly on me. Fuul, though, is another typical Egyptian dish made of slowly cooked fava beans. The flavor is mild but hearty, and can be paired with lots of other foods but is mainly eaten with bread.

The meat in Egypt? J can tell you all about it.

I have always had a simple taste in food, so it should not be surprising that I love the staples of this country. Actually, I've heard and read many complaints about Egyptian food, all lodged by foreigners. The odd complaints of resident Americans, as a matter of fact, is another Egypt thing on my brain. Anyway, rest assured that the mozzarella was lying -- there are, in fact, some conservatives in Egypt.

In writing this, I have realized it is time to get some groceries. Here is a sad little picture of some of the food in our apartment. You will see a can of strained fuul on the left and spicy peeled medammas (another kind of fuul) on the right. Of course the canned stuff is not worth mentioning after having the real thing. Enjoy!

Amanda