Things I’ll Miss About Egypt #4: Feeling Strange

My brother and certain other people might argue that I’m an odd duck, but one thing I’ve noticed whenever I come back to the U.S. is how invisible I feel. Nobody really looks or seems a bit curious about me in a place where I’m assumed to be like everybody else, whatever that means. I get stared at for pretty obvious reasons in Egypt, and it’s not that I really love it, but there is something to be said for feeling strange.

Today I went with a brown-suited man from my university to a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture in order to get the right paperwork for the cat I will be bringing back to the U.S. I had expected that we would be going to one of the fancy buildings in Cairo that are faux-ancient temples, and I was kind of excited at the prospect of going into these swamps of red tape I’ve heard so much about.

Instead, I found myself in Fustat, one of my favorite areas of Cairo. The old city, the first capital of the Arabs. Here you can find the oldest mosque in Africa and Egypt’s oldest synagogue. But these are just buildings, at least to me. It’s the people and the bustle that are endlessly fascinating. The place we needed was off a gravel/mud/dirt road that curved around garbage, donkeys pulling carts, coffeeshops, and all matter of small enterprises, from the selling of juice to the stacking and binding of feedbags.

I lugged my 80% reformed street cat in his smart and suburban-ridiculous red travel bag into the ministry branch. We sat in a room with a window that looked onto a slum house and listened to a rooster crowing as a farash brought us glass bottles of cold Pepsi and a man behind a desk handwrote a letter to the main Ministry office confirming that the cat was real and healthy. On the wall was a framed and faded poster, the glass cracked, of different cuts of veal. A ceiling fan rotated, scattering my papers across the man's desk. The man left with his letter.

Occasionally, people entered and wondered if there was a dog in the bag, and when I said, “Ota” (cat), they would say, “Kibir!” (Big!). He’s a big tom, but also he’s fed with regularity. He looks like a giant when he goes out on the street to bully his starving compatriots. Compared to the obese cats I've seen in the U.S., though, he's right trim.

Over the hour that we waited for the man to return, Mr. Yasser of the brown suit and I talked. I started with small talk, something I’m terrible at. I told Mr. Yasser I was leaving Egypt and would miss it. And he said to me that the staff would miss me. I was confused. What staff? Staff know me? Most professors don't even know me, some in my own department. I thought he was just exaggerating, which is common around here. He said, “You are too kindly and never make a problem for anyone.” (Often people here say “too” when they mean “so.”) Then he said he remembered me from 4-5 years ago and that it was too bad that I was leaving. "Four years you make no problems," he said, shaking his head.

And I suddenly remembered who Mr. Yasser was. The first time I had to have my annual HIV test (which all foreigners who work in Egypt must have in order to get a work visa) in 2006, it was Mr. Yasser who led me to the certified government worker who would take my blood.

In memory, he wears a black suit and dark sunglasses and looks like a secret service agent. In memory, he scares me a little. In memory, he does not speak to me as he leads me across the street I dread to cross and through the overcrowded medical clinic, and I sit on a dingy chair surrounded by other patients, and there are no lights on in the room, and there are children singing patriotic songs at the French school next door, and I watch a needle go into my arm and then get placed in an open trash can full of used needles. In memory, I am wondering what the hell I am doing in Africa; I have been naively navigating through each initial day, initial week, initial month. In memory, I feel foolish and diffident, not understanding anything anyone is saying and wondering if I will ever get the hang of this place. Everything seems strange, in memory.

Today I talked with Yasser about his children, about the curtain store with the spiral stairway that he enjoys in Old Cairo, about the way he loves this neighborhood, Fustat, because it is the old city, and the people are the old, the real, Egyptians. And the pyramids (the continued revisions to the grounds, the way it’s marketed, etc.), the new university campus in the midst of the desert – none of this feels real to him, and he is grateful that he was able to stay in the few offices left on the old university campus. "At new campus, no one knows me," he said. “It is too far. Where is it? What would you do if the bus broke down from new campus? There is nothing. Nothing. Even men – what would they do?”

The man from the ministry returned with a small pink square of paper. Mr. Yasser put it into a folder with my passport and the cat’s records, and he said that without this slip of paper he would never be able to get this done at the Ministry. (I should probably mention that this is one of the perks I have with this job – people wade through bureaucracy for me for a small sum, which is why someone else has my passport now.)

We left with our paperwork. Mr. Yasser would be headed to the Ministry, and I would be headed la-de-da back to my big flat. There weren’t any empty taxis coming down the dirt road, so Mr. Yasser and I walked back the way we had come. Past men in coffeeshops, smoking sheesha, playing backgammon, observing the street, laughing, chatting. Past women buying and selling vegetables, walking with arms interlocked, sometimes pausing to look at me and smile. Past platters of homemade potato chips on steel counters. Past mounds of garbage and a burned-out car straight out of Mad Max. Flies plagued all of us.

I realized the red bag on my shoulder with the intermittently struggling cat was conspicuous. Yet somehow this relaxed me. I felt a contradictory sense of belonging on this street, walking beside this man in the brown suit on a dusty road, feeling the other men look at me, feeling their curious glances, hearing the tinny recordings of Qu'ran out various windows and radios. Maybe it was a feeling that at least I was somehow in on the joke (this is the question, though, isn’t it – can an expat ever be in on the joke?). My point is that in this situation I felt just fine, and I felt like conveying to Mr. Yasser the reason for this feeling. So I said, “I must look pretty strange walking down the street with a cat in a bag."

He laughed gleefully and said, “Yes! It is too strange!”

We walked down the street and laughed together, and I smiled at any person who was looking at me.

“I guess I’m used to feeling strange by now,” I said, and shook his hand, and hailed a cab.

A

Things I Will Miss About Egypt #3: Perceptions about Language

I’ve seen a lot of complaints on facebook from my American brethren about things like having to “press 1 for English.” This is usually followed by some sort of rant about how “in America, we speak English.” Most egregiously misuse English grammar and sentence structure as they smugly defend the language.

After four years of working with kids who are fluent in a minimum of three languages as an expectation of their culture and class, I'm sad I wasn't exposed to more languages as a child. I admire those who are brave enough to come to the U.S., where they can actually be ridiculed for not knowing English or for having an unfamiliar accent. When I attempted to learn Arabic in Egypt, I was met with kindness and tolerance. I experienced language as an exchange of cultures, as a potential bridge. I can only hope to practice that kind of tolerance when I return to the U.S. Though I understand that language is a complicated subject, that it is no less complicated in Egypt than it is in the U.S., and that in some ways I simplify the situation here, this feeling of open exchange and diversity is what I learned from "foreigners" while being a "foreigner" myself.

A

Things I’ll Miss About Egypt #2: Days Like This

We went for a day out – L – an Egyptian, and E, an American expat. First to the Smart Village, a satellite world of modern buildings and kempt grass. Even the mosque was futuristic.



In the Smart Village you’ll find something called CultNat, a project working to archive all matter of information about Egypt. They produce CDs – for instance, you can buy a CD that pulls up a map of several parts of Cairo. You can click on different buildings and get the architectural context of each, zoom in on various attributes of the building, look at it in 3-D, and see various drawings and photos of the building. If you’ve been to downtown Cairo, you can see the influence of all matter of architectural styles, and even an idiot like me can appreciate this. Geography? Wildlife? Tombs at Giza? Medicinal herbs of Egypt? They’ve got it at CultNat. Another room featured a fantastic film about ancient Egypt on nine screens, and another offered an array of 3-D photos. Still another room contains working replicas of such things as the first clock to run on water.

From the strange Smart Village in the desert, we headed to Giza for lunch at the exorbitantly priced Mena House hotel (http://www.oberoihotels.com/oberoi_menahouse/index.asp). It took us a while to get there; we could see the pyramids from the Alex Desert Road, calling out to us across the brilliant green farmland, but, alas, there were no exits. Eventually we found one but still didn’t know how to get to the pyramids.



I love getting lost in Cairo. No, really. Because I am never driving when this happens. So – feast for the senses. Men selling watermelons from a donkey cart by the side of the road. A woman with a stand of drinks in metal containers reflecting the sun. Boys and men on motorcycles. Children tapping on cars in traffic jams. Frankly, I wasn’t a help to L because I enjoyed being lost so much. It’s true, though, that I had spotted the “pyramids” sign on the highway. Of course, I don’t think I was the only one in the car that spotted it – just the only one to be so proud of myself for seeing it.

We arrived at the intersection where the Pyramid of Khufu stands loud and proud.



There, we were accosted by men creating triangles with their hands and pointing, as if we couldn’t see the ancient being before us. One man knocked on the car from front to back. When L rolled her window a crack to ask them the quickest way to get to the Mena House (that we weren’t interested in the pyramids), they ignored her. Though the Mena House is lovely, it was not the main attraction. What we came for was a view of the Great Pyramid from a quiet space.



During lunch, L had decided that the watchbands on both of her guests for this outing were unacceptable. Before she would agree to drop us off on the Corniche so we could catch a cab back to Ma’adi, we had to get new watchbands. She knew where we could get them for twelve Egyptian pounds. Sure enough, soon we double-parked on a Cairo street somewhere near Mohandisseen, and L disappeared. She came back moments later with her fists full of watchbands. E quickly chose one. I, picky, insisted upon going back in with L while E’s watchband was replaced. The store was one of those pantry-sized affairs you commonly find in Cairo. Its main purpose seemed to be the selling of electronic accessories such as phone covers, and behind a counter sat three young men, too many for the size of the store. In one corner sat the watchband guy. Two boxes held a jumble of bands. To my delight, I found one. My watch was admired. The band was set.

On to the Corniche, said L. But, first, let’s drive by Manial Palace. E – who, like me, is leaving Egypt – had wanted to go there for quite some time, but it had been closed for restoration ever since she had arrived in Egypt three years before. At least you can see the outside of it one more time, said L. When we pulled onto the street, L engaged a policeman whose belly was hanging out of his white shirt, which wasn’t tucked into his pants. His belt, its buckle coming undone, was strapped haphazardly over his belly, and he waved a cigarette as they spoke in Arabic. My guess was that they were arguing over whether she could go that way down the street, but when L parked and got out, I discovered that she had been coaxing her way onto the palace grounds. Once inside, we ran into a gaggle of workers who vigorously protested our presence while L smiled and maintained her ground with her firm, charismatic tone. Finally, a man with a conspicuous grey toupee and grey moustache came out from a tent. He protested for a while, and L kept smiling and insisting. I laughed nervously, as is my wont in such situations. E said, “Oh, she’s going to get us in. Just watch.”

Soon we were following the big-bellied policeman, a self-appointed tour guide with an everlasting cigarette, and the tour guide’s friend, who helpfully gestured and served lookout since he knew there would be an inevitable tip at the end of this journey. We peered into a room with solid gold pillars. We rounded a corner, then, to the vast gardens that make up most of the grounds. The centerpiece of these gardens is the “mother tree,” a banyan that birthed all other banyans in the place.



The guide showed us how the aerial prop roots of each tree eventually droop to the ground and plant themselves, growing into trunks that look the same as the original trunk. Older trees can spread across large tracts of land. All the banyans on the grounds, then, are connected, and the mother banyan was the largest of them all.





Earlier, the guide had gestured toward the house of Muhammad Ali, Jr. It was closed, he said. As we passed an open doorway, however, the jaunty sidekick suggested we go in. Quick, they said, glancing around for...someone who doesn't allow rule-breaking in Egypt? Good luck, friends. Anyway, one of them stood lookout as we entered. The inside was covered with tiling and alabaster that looked very much like the Harem of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. So – amazing. We tipped our three guides and headed to the Corniche.

Days like this. Familiar and unfamiliar. I’ll miss the peculiar way I feel this in Egypt.
A

Punks

Nearly getting run down is a daily part of a pedestrian's life in Cairo. Maybe that's why so few people walk. A week or so ago, J and I were headed home after work. We were crossing a median with a rare area for parking near the Shell Building in Ma'adi. Teenagers often hang out in this area near the Shell Shop, an American-looking convenience store sans gas station. As we crossed, a grey car filled with three teenaged boys swerved into the median, stopping just short of flattening J, who moved out of the way in enough time to only receive a tap on the leg.

I don't know...had it been a long day? J slammed his hand down on the car. I flew to the driver's window, and J raced to the passenger side. J was yelling at a kid with fighter-pilot sunglasses who was getting out of the car, but I don't know what they were saying because I was shouting. I pointed my finger in the driver's face, waved my arms, said something in elderly-lady fashion about controlling oneself, and eventually flipped the bird as I might have done in high school. All of this resulted in getting called "habibti" (rough translation: my honey).

Did I mention that all three of these boys were dressed like it was 1987? Another boy with frosted jeans and a white sweatband pushing up his gelled hair emerged and pulled Fighter-pilot Sunglasses away from J and me.

A tag-team onslaught like this occurred on a recent vacation to Istanbul, when, at the end of our stay, we were charged the equivalent of $100 for two local phone calls. From two sides we simultaneously raged and delivered our personal forms of logic. For the first time, I seemed to be the impetus for a nervous sweat as the bald manager at reception held the bill with shaking hands and mustered a discount. This kind of multilateral attack is a new development for J and me, who aren't very aggressive. But it seems to be effective. In fact, I am not really sure why I am writing about it. But it seems important. I do know I am more likely to stand up for myself in public spaces than I was four years ago. I think I can thank Cairenes for that.

On second thought, I have been thinking a lot lately about the squeaky wheel getting the grease. It's something I've always hated - watching people who surface only long enough to complain somehow get what they want. You see this a lot in academia. It's not something I strive for in my job - that much of my Midwestern work ethic stays intact. But I've seen it in one form or another at every university I've been to.

I don't think the episode with the teens is comparable to the squeaky wheel. It's sticking in my head, I think, because there are these moments in Egypt where we just don't have a sense of humor anymore. I went through a persistent Egypt funk last year, and it was full of moments like these. J has noted that there are some days when I am likely to step out into traffic just to make a point (logical? smart? No.), and the encounter with the teenagers was one of those days.

A

Things I Will Miss About Egypt #1 The Call to Prayer?

We're going to be leaving Egypt sooner than we can wrap our minds around. On facebook, I've been listing as status updates the things I think I will miss. But the status updates of facebook get lost in the scroll. Isn't it strange how a blog seems more permanent?

I'm sure there will be unanticipated things about Egypt that I will find myself missing in the coming years. I understood this one night this week as I read a novel. I've instituted reading sessions at night, forbidding myself from turning on the computer when I get home at 8pm from work.

It was quiet that night. J was in his office; Bodie was sprawled on the cool wooden floor. Then came the call to prayer.

For the last two years, we have lived right next to a mosque with some mighty fine loudspeakers. We have a front-row seat to heavenward encouragement five times a day, and this includes not only the chanting of the muezzin but also the trickling of water and throat and nostril clearing from the ablutions hall adjacent to our apartment building. Some days it seems louder than other days. On Fridays, the imam's temper can be measured like a Baptist preacher's - you don't have to understand what he's saying - you only have to listen to tone. Barking and biting. Soothing. Chastising. Praising. Joyous. Preachers the world over are not so distinctive from each other as we would like to think.

Often, when I mention the call to prayer to someone who does not live in a country dominated by Islam, I get a sigh of wonder. People just love that call to prayer. It's so...mysterious? My cynical reply is to get back to me when you've lived next to a mosque.

But I have a feeling that I might miss it. That night, I had been reading a novel about the lonely lives of Americans (James Salter's Light Years). Salter's writing is pristine, but I was pretty tired of the characters and their existential concerns.

Enter the call to prayer.

As "Allahuakhbar" threaded the heavy air, I thought about silence. Nothing is ever really silent. My parents' house in the evening is the quietest place I know, and still there is the thrumming of crickets, furnace, coyotes, distant trains. Still there is your pulse, beating in your throat, your ears. But there is a difference between this and the call to prayer. I admit I've gotten into the nasty habit of perceiving the call to prayer as an intrusion. The other night, though, I remembered. I remembered I was in Cairo, Egypt, and that every time the call to prayer rings out, I know that there are uncountable souls around me, pulsing life. For me, the invocation is less about God than human beings. We exist. I wonder if I can find an analog in the next place, something that will thread the air like this. I hope it is something as unexpected as the call to prayer.

A

Lady Doctor

I was going to the lady doctor. The doctor for ladies.

I grabbed a taxi and buried my nose in a Murakami novel while the driver, turning onto the corniche, slung us around every car in his path, honking and yelling and gesturing and nearly running us into another taxi that balanced un-tethered oriental rugs on its luggage rack. Even the Egyptian drivers were angry at my taxi driver. A ten minute ride was five - I saw the pink monstrosity of the Nile Badrawi hospital before I had gotten through two pages of the novel. The driver screeched across three lanes of traffic and braked next to a traffic cop on the road to the hospital. I got out and gave the guy 10LE, which was more than fair. As I walked away, I heard, "HEY!" in all its shining American rudeness. It was the taxi driver. Disdainfully, he held out my 10LE with one hand and gave me the thumb and first two fingers gesture I have come to know can mean many things here in Egypt. It can mean "Wait." It can mean "Settle down here everybody; there ain't no reason to fight." It can mean "Get the eff outta my way because I'm gonna keep driving whether you stop or not." One night I watched two men in a heated argument. They were standing on either side of a car, and they both made that gesture at each other, reaching over the roof, hands frozen in that position, until their knuckles touched. Their hands slightly shook as they held them there, as if someone had glued them together. Eventually they broke free, exhausted as if they had actually had a fight. That's one thing about this place. I am so sick of people asking me if I'm scared to be here, if I'm scared of the people. The way I've seen people fight here looks like West Side Story. Does that scare you? The only time you should be scared is when the Egyptians lose a soccer match and you happen to be staying in the embassy of the country that just beat them.

But back to my driver. "HEY!" he yelled. Then, "Xamas-taashar!" in Arabic. He wanted 15LE for a 5LE ride. I gave him the gesture right back and yelled, "WHAT? FOR FIVE MINUTES?" And I yelled some other things before walking away.

I entered the hospital, a maze. I had already been there three times, and I had never seen a foreigner in there. By and large, I was also the only woman wearing pants and wearing my hair free besides my doctor.

In a narrow hallway, I waited for the elevator that would take me to the tenth floor. As it came creeping down, three men and two women crammed themselves into the hallway. The elder woman backed her abeya-slung rear into my stomach, slowly pushing me against the gold, cylindrical, full ashtray. As is my custom in public when not being accosted by angry taxi drivers, I looked downward and sort of shrugged to myself and politely waited for her butt to depart from my gut. "Mafeesh mish queda" (no problem), I said when they all stepped ahead of me in a 3x3 elevator, which contained an old operator on a metal stool, and invited me to join them.

In the lady clinic, most of the women in the waiting room were accompanied by men, most were pregnant, and nearly everyone was in traditional dress. The family that had crammed me into the ashtray was there. A high percentage of women in niqab filled the place. A male doctor walked through the waiting room, smoking a pipe and gesturing for a pregnant woman to follow him. The chairs were blue and attached together as in an airport. An awards show in Arabic showed interviews with Arab celebrities wearing sparkling gowns and a ton of makeup. We were all rapt.

Another family was getting off the elevator as I left the clinic. A young man was holding a baby carrier, and I looked, but it was empty. He swung it toward me and said something I couldn't understand. Then I caught enough words and enough of his gestures to understand he was offering to impregnate me. Or, if we want to give him the benefit of the doubt, he might have been asking me if I was pregnant. I don't think he was. I shook my head at him while the women looked at the floor.

A

Bodie

Pretty much, my whole autumn and winter have been taken up by a cat.

Oh, there was also the swine flu b.s., a load of applications, the production of a scholarly writing sample, an essay about Amy Hempel, a helluva lot of time at the gym, and the usual dance of Cairo, including the horrific thumping of a body against the car of the Metro we were riding in and the subsequent drag and drop of that body. We don't know what happened to that person.

The cats in Maadi are generally in better shape than the ones in our former neighborhood, Zamalek. You see more shopkeepers feeding a few select kitties. They hang in groups, and there's usually one tough boy who heads them. Usually the tough boy has cauliflower jowls from all the scraps he's endured to get his position. Curiously, the big boy in charge of the gang in front of our building has a well-shaped face. He hangs with the regulars - a white gal with a tiny head and enormous, piercing eyes (we call her Ojos Locos), another white guy, and a black and white guy. Here's the tough boy:



He started wooing J pretty quickly this autumn. "Oh, hey, buddy," James says to all animals peeping out from under cars and in garbage piles. J is allergic to cats, but he took to this guy. Or, rather, the cat chose him. He was interested in us. Most animals around here have a blank look of despair, not unlike some of the people. But tough boy was different, and he chose James. Soon, cat food. Eventual inchings of cat into doorway, foyer, dining room carpet. Me saying, "You better not get attached to this nasty cat." Me scolding the cat off the couch when he got too brave.



Me remembering the eleven or twelve cats running around outside when I was a kid, and how I had names for them and loved them all, and would go out on the patio when it was cold at night and gather as many of them onto my lap as I could until my mom made me go back inside. The cats would follow me through the woods in a long line.

I made lots of comments about how I really did not want fleas in the rug. I said, "Hey, disease," whenever the cat tentatively stepped inside. It was hard to explain my ambivalence to J. I was worried about breaking this cat's heart, which would break my heart.

But here he is, just the same. And we decided it was time to adopt him. The cat people in my department were all over this, providing us with doctors' names and numbers, advice about getting the cat to the U.S. (which is relatively easy compared to trying to get a pet into Europe and which doesn't require a quarantine if he's had his shots), and even gift bags of cat toys. We called him Bodie after a character on The Wire. Urban Dictionary will inform you that this name means a guy from the streets who is good with the ladies. We managed to get him his first round of shots, his emasculation, de-worming, and a bath. During this time, I also discovered that de-clawing is an American thing, that it is actually illegal in Europe. Anyway, it was wise not to de-claw him - it would have hurt, and, more to the point, he would have gotten his ass kicked on the first morning we left him to go to work, the day the maid came and let him out. I was devastated. Like an overly zealous new mother, I had called her to make sure the "ota"(cat) was okay. The "ota" was "barra" (outside). "Oh...sa'laam," I muttered. Peace?! My kitty escaped! I was devastated.

"Oh, don't worry," shrugged all the cat people in my department. "He'll be back. He knows where the food is."



We got back at 8pm. By 9, the cat was back, too, but wary. Wary 'til the food was presented. And so the meowing ensued as we shut him back in our apartment. We had a week of break ahead of us, with Thanksgiving and Eid Al-Adha and illogical swine flu extensions. A week of incessant howling each night, sulking and stinkeye, a few pointed poops with our names written in them, and an everlasting smell of cat piss on one of the couches. He really wanted out. After a week, we let him out. I can't explain the relief. We watched from the window as he stepped outside and rubbed against a plant and luxuriously sniffed and trotted about. We saw him periodically cruising about with Ojos Locos. And then, later, he was back. OK, so we would have an arrangement. I didn't know if it was an ethical arrangement. What about if/when we leave? What do we do? I plan to take the cat but not if he hasn't settled in with us. Besides, he hadn't even let us pet him, scratch his chin, though he was playing.

A few weeks later, I was walking down to the ATM and spotted the black and white cat, entrails spilling out in the road. All of the cats on the street were creeping toward it in a slow-motion circle. It had just happened - no doubt he had been run over. Bodie was one of the creeping cats. When he saw me, he ran under a parked car. By the time I came back, someone had scooped the cat over to the side of the road. (In Zamalek, it would have been more likely to rot there for days until it was fully pressed into the pavement). Bodie was trying to get to it, but an orange cat was standing guard over the body. Since he had been emasculated, Bodie was not one to start fights.

When he came in later that evening, he started rubbing against us, and all of a sudden he wanted a head rub, a chin scratch. I have to admit I think that the dead cat traumatized him because all of a sudden he was a lot more needy, particularly toward his buddy James. We got a vet who does housecalls, and Bodie got his second round of shots. He won't stay in all the time, but he spends more and more hours inside, and we even leave him in the apartment when we go somewhere. I am not sure what will become of this cat. But, as J reminds me, every hour he is with us is an hour of comfort for him. I don't think he has ever had such good naps, for sure, with nothing to worry about, no toms picking fights, and food at the ready.

We haven't written much lately. Part of it is that we do not have the same narrative wonder that we used to have. I could tell you about the books I have read this semester, the tedium and joys of teaching and departmental work, my waning relationship with my novel. But Bodie's really the only thing I've found worth writing about.



A

One of Those Days

It started with James almost getting run over. Nothing new. Only it was just a little closer than usual, so close that the woman in the passenger seat even smacked the driver.

The bus to school was closer than usual to a truck hauling propane tanks.

3 students out of 30 had their papers in hand. When I told them I was extending the deadline, they shrugged like, "Whatever, lady."

Someone failed a government official's daughter. They were told to change the grade.

As I was walking to my 5:00 class, a group of students laughed at a small fire they had produced on some stairs.

A

4 stops north of here

Yesterday, A & I took a day trip up to Coptic Cairo. It's just off the Metro's Mar Girgis stop--literally. I have taken the Metro north to Sadat station dozens of times, and each time I have seen the domed Church of St. George looming over the stop. First things first, though: here is a video of the Metro ride. Careful, my camera buzzes for no reason while taking videos in things that are moving.

Coptic Cairo is its own little district, made clean just for tourists. It shows me that Egyptians can keep things Western-style clean when they feel like it, although it is also a protected district and spared the ravages of incessant foot traffic. I take some comfort in the familiar parts of the Coptic iconography and architecture around here. It reminds me of home a little bit, even though Coptic Christianity is different from most versions of the religion practiced stateside. But I can't deny that it is more familiar and I take a measure of comfort in that, strangely enough. That said, the eeriness of Coptic images is compelling and unlike anything I see at home. In the Church of St. George, for example, there is a scene of a man who resembles the Joker spearing a dragon from atop a horse. I saw this scene countless times--in reprinted paintings, mostly, but also embodied in a kitschy statue wrapped in silver tinsel. It's a little bit cartoonish, true enough, but all the same it is serious business to visiting Copts, who show their devotion by touching the glass panes protecting reprinted images of their saints. I'm also unnerved by the commonness of these faces--of the saints, the virgin, the apostles, Jesus himself. Christianity is a religion of faces. Islam has no images of its prophet, and I have not seen many (if any) images inside mosques, where the space is devoted primarily to prayer (and sleep). All the faces of Christianty are eerie, especially when you are looking at 6th or 7th century artwork where the faces are strikingly similar from one image to the next--the round, expressionless faces and eyes, the full, puckered lips, the squared shoulders. No perspective, little variation, just these unblinking chestnut eyes staring out at you, one church after another, one room after another.

Also, along eerie lines, there was this:

Otherwise, I enjoyed the subterranean passages that took you to various churches and a well-preserved synagogue, which was a bizarro mix of Jewish gear with Islamic architecture. Apparently one of the most ancient Torahs was found at that synagogue, printed on gazelle hide. Gazelle hide! I'd have taken pictures but they weren't permitted in the synagogue. At least I could get inside. There is a synagogue nearby us in Maadi that is under police watch at all times. One day, I approached and roused the police into action, which meant they waved their hands and said no, then bade me good day with sleepy smiles. I saw enough of the synagogue to realize that the grounds were being kept (behind a thick iron fence, natuarlly), so I wondered if it was active. Perhaps this is where the Israeli ambassador goes to do his religious duties.

Then there was the hot, dark Coptic Museum. Truly, sometimes I couldn't really make out the artwork, and the still air made me sleepy. There were also 3 or 4 fire extinguishers per room, and yet no staff anywhere in the museum--except for the entrance, where a gaggle of men enjoyed tea and were having a boisterous conversation that followed us all over the museum. I guess it would have been left to us to save the art if a sudden fire broke out. We were impressed by the woodwork of the mashrabiya and the ceiling and would gladly have snapped photographs...but our cameras were barred from the museum. At least we didn't have to tip the staff to get them back when we were finished.

J

Bizarro

1. Apparently, no one in Egypt may educate or be educated until at least Oct. 4 due to fears of the swine flu spreading. Rumor (a freakishly powerful thing in Egypt) has it that if one percent of the population gets it, schools could be shut down for the year. People are suggesting that the airport should be the thing that gets shut down.

2. The NY Times published an article today discussing the trash problems caused by the killing of all the Copts' pigs back in the spring (a response to the fear of swine flu). The Egyptian gov't is sort of admitting that idea lacked foresight. Or logic.

3. We opened the seal on a bottle of delivered wine tonight, and ants came boiling up out of the cork.

A

Revivals

In one of my classes last week, we read Langston Hughes' "Salvation." It's a great piece for any class, but I like teaching it in Egypt because many of the students are unfamiliar with Christian revivals as we know them in the U.S., and sometimes they end up being a little creeped out by them in ways that U.S. Christians sometimes claim to be creeped out by the religious rituals of others.

So I read the piece out loud, asking the students to first describe what had happened in the piece.

Someone said it was about a revival, pointing to the word in the text.

"What's a revival?" I asked.

Most of them shrugged.

Then one student asked, "Is that like what happened in Borat?"

A

Forgetting

It's a hot day. The curtains help block the heat of the white sun. The sky is blue, unusually blue, January-in-Egypt blue. We woke up this morning and talked about political rhetoric, about narrative truth, as we sipped coffee. We listened to the imam next door, first praising then shouting then dropping to a soft prostrating lull. We did this as we watched 24, second season. We talked about the way that season reflected an American attitude toward the Middle East at that time, one that has changed in significant ways. I finished reading Wise Blood. J left to run an errand, and I sat in front of the computer, intending to work on a short story I have been working on since 2000. I procrastinated. I checked facebook. It's morning in the U.S. - people are just starting to rise and go to work. I was puzzled by status updates about praying for people, about not forgetting. I felt panic rising in me, and I wondered if something had happened again. It took me a few minutes to realize my mistake.

A

Chipping

You can find a piece about my Brevity 30 piece and writing process at: http://brevity.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/chipping-toward-the-center-the-art-of-brevity/

A

White

It’s time for our annual HIV test, which we have to take with a government official in order to get our work visas renewed. The blood is tapped; the passports are taken. Three to four weeks later, we get our passports back.

To get our visas renewed, we need passport-sized photos, and we had run out. So, in the midst of preparing for a class I am teaching with a theme about beauty and appearance, we headed to a photo shop down the street. It was a hot day. I wore an oversized green tee-shirt, and my unwashed hair was pulled back into a ponytail. I took this approach because I don’t think anything could match the horror that is my current passport photo, which is worse than the family passports in National Lampoon’s European Vacation.

So we got our passport photos, and, as a free gift, framed five-by-sevens of said sweaty photos. Do you want a sweaty photo of my face, with the crazy-eyed look I’ve developed whenever I try to look natural? Because I’ve got one, framed, just for you.

When we returned, I read an email from one of my colleagues informing me that if there was any photoshopping done on passport photos, the government wouldn’t accept them. I recalled the nice woman who had taken my photo. Yes, she had been messing with it, making the background whiter. I think she erased a few frizzy strands from my scalp.

Damn. We headed back to the shop to see if we could get the untainted versions.

The man at the photo shop assured us that he knew what he was doing, that it wasn’t going to be a problem with the stern Egyptian official wearing a suit who will take my blood tomorrow. He said the only thing that was different was the whiter background, and this was a requirement for a visa photo. He assured us that he knew what he was doing.

J circled his face with his hand. “So, none of this was changed?”

“No, no.”

The man gestured at our skin, and then he looked puzzled.

“Why?" he asked. "You are already white.”

A

Saturday Night

Last night, as I chopped garlic and onions, I was belting out Ned's Atomic Dustbin's version of "Saturday Night." But it just doesn't work out so well in a country where Sunday is considered to be the first day of the workweek.

A

Looking

When I was a kid, I had a book with me everywhere I went. I read from the moment I shut the car door until my parents pulled into the parking lot or driveway of wherever we were going. Reluctantly, I would leave my book in the backseat of the car as we headed into Mass, or to my brother’s baseball game, or to the grocery store. If we were visiting a relative's house, I brought the book in, which seems rude in hindsight but felt as essential as breathing at the time. I read all day on the farm as if I were some privileged lady in a grimy tee-shirt and shorts, sitting in the air conditioning with my grandmother while my father and grandfather worked outside. I still have a book on hand almost everywhere I go, just in case, even if I know there won’t be a moment to read. Maybe it’s my safety blanket. It’s not as if I were a precocious child – I was far from that – my favorite books befit my age. But there was one major problem with this childhood habit, and I understood it when I received my driver’s license and couldn’t find my way around Galesburg. The only road I knew was the self-explanatory set of roads that got me to town. Throw in blocks and intersections, and nothing made sense. I had spent all that time reading, not looking out the window, not paying attention to anything but the voices in my head.

Now I find myself in a mode that reminds me of the embarrassment that came with my driving privileges. For the first year that we were in Egypt, I felt myself eagerly taking in the things I experienced, wide-eyed and astonished, constantly comparing the things I found in this new place to the things I knew and understood in my home culture, my home country. I tried to understand why people did the things they did, tried to politely respect these decisions of others if I could not wrap my mind around them. There were things that bothered me and still do, and I was not a model of politeness or anything, but I think I was more willing to bend my perceptions then. Never an optimist, I was surprised and pleased by my capacity to adapt.

I think there is a danger in refusing to look.

I remember our trip back from the Sinai. We had to have been going over 100 mph on an unkempt desert road with no concept of lanes, even around curves, with a dude who, with no prompting, offered to become J’s personal hash dealer and wanted to know if I was J’s sister. We bumped and swerved in the heat, and I slept like a baby, unbuckled, in the back of the van. This was a prelude to my current ability to read a book anywhere in Egypt – on the speeding bus, in a taxi, pressed against others in the Metro.

I was pretty impressed with myself until I realized that reading in these situations makes me miss things, things I would have felt were important to witness and consider earlier in our stay here. In some ways I have begun to shield myself from Egypt. It is easy to do these days, having moved to a neighborhood that is so expatriate (or American?)-friendly that we have a Subway (you know, the place with “sandwich artists”) down the street and a clean, techno-booming gym. And, while our university campus had always been a bubble in the middle of downtown Cairo, its new location does nothing but confirm its otherworldly status in Egypt. At least at the old campus, you could walk a block away and find a donkey and a ragged old woman selling tissues.

We are nearing the end of our third year here, and I am not pleased with the things that I see missing from my experience. I am building a cocoon. Small things nag at me, such as leaving my Arabic lessons. Just when I had begun to comprehend the rhythm of the language, to pick out a few simple phrases here and there that enlightened me to some basic meanings, I quit. Once I realized I would have to start studying, I said it was too much to do. I keep telling myself I’ll pick it up again, but will I? In our new neighborhood this year, when I try to say some small, simple thing in Arabic, my tongue sticks, and it is clear that the neighborhood Egyptians we have met – the fruit and veg guy, various vendors and shopkeepers, etc. – believe that I am just now tentatively stepping about with random phrases, that I may eventually improve but that I must have only just gotten here. I am now at the same comprehension level as J, who never took Arabic lessons but who is suddenly quicker than me at understanding numbers, for instance.

Yesterday was Friday prayer-time. The men line up on our street and spread the rugs diagonally toward Mecca and slip off their shoes. They fill up the outdoor foyer of the apartment building across from us. At one point during the hour-long session, I glanced outside to see a worried-looking Asian man standing with his briefcase just in front of one line of men and boys who were praying. He was trying to get into the building across the street. You could look at this two ways – first, the man didn’t need to stand right in front of them and keep glancing at his watch with a pained look on his face. He should have known that on Friday, mid-day, you’re bound to run into a cluster of Egyptian men meditating with God since mosques are ubiquitous. He should have known that, while Egypt is moderate in comparison with other Arab countries, this type of devotion is one thing that will not change. But the men were blocking the front entrance to the building – the Asian man would have had to step between them, on their prayer mats with his shoes on, to get through. Perhaps the assumption made by those blocking the entrance was that everybody should be praying right now. Who would need to get in? Focused on praising God, it was as if they couldn’t even see that man, who only wanted to get through.

A

 

 

Brevity

You can find one of A's pieces about Cairo in the new issue of Brevity 30, along with other pieces about departure and arrival:

http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/index.htm

Spring Tree

James thinks this is an appropriate metaphor for our feelings about Egypt.

You Stop For Us!

Before we went to Athens a few weeks ago, we had read about the volatile traffic and pollution. These days, most of the travel guidebooks we pick up are geared toward the expectations of people who are no longer us, people who might get horrified, for instance, with the idea of a rickety donkey cart toddling down a highway along with buses spewing black – no, really, black – exhaust and racing BMWs and men in gallabeyas perching on the median before plunging out into the road…to get to the other side and men sitting on the tailgates of speeding, swerving trucks as if the trucks are at a full stop in some pleasant farmer’s driveway in Iowa. 

When we got to Athens, the air seemed pretty damned fresh, the traffic downright reasonable. Everyone stopped at the stoplights and colored within the lines. They just drove fast. I was so calmed by it that I almost got run over once.

I know there are far worse places for traffic and for nearly everything that bugs me about Cairo, so I don’t mean to sound as if I think I am worldly or have seen the worst shit there is to see. Of course not. But I thought of the surprisingly logical traffic of Athens today for two reasons. First, this morning, as J and I commuted to school, the bus suddenly slowed. Peering over the broken-down median to the other side of the road, we began spotting wrecked car after wrecked car. I don’t know how many there were, but they seemed to stretch half a mile or more as the bus crept along. The term “wrecked” or even the word “totaled” doesn’t suffice for what we saw, actually. Some of the cars were only grotesque twists of metal and dust and shattered glass, and, because they had been shoved onto the sandy roadside next to the skeletons of hasty construction sites, looked as if they had been abandoned years ago. They hadn’t. One of those buses that spews black exhaust had been part of the pile-up, and it had a disintegrated front. Worse, the side of the bus was gone, peeled off, to reveal a set of empty olive-green and pink seats.

Everyone was rubbernecking, but no one looked really horrified (or, rather, no one was pretending to be horrified with hands over mouths for the benefit of other rubberneckers). Some kids on my bus even looked rather amused. I don’t know how to explain that. On the way home, as we passed the same horrific metal clumps, an exchange student whipped out his camera and flung open the dingy blue curtains of our bus, proceeding to gratuitously snap. For a few seconds, the bed of a truck, yellowed with bananas, got in the kid’s way, and he held his camera with an irritated poise. It’s not that I blame him – I wished at that moment that I had a camera, too. But it wouldn’t have sufficed to take a picture, just as it doesn’t suffice to explain it here. Besides, why would I want to scare the bejabbers out of my mom any more than I do? That’s how I’m beginning to feel about so much of my time here, and it’s not as if my experiences have been that unique. There are a ton of expatriates here, and you can bet we are not the only people self-congratulatory enough to feel as if we should write about this place. I am being too harsh, I think.

Anyway, the second reason I was reminded of the seeming ease of Athens traffic: I get off the bus at a place called Midan Victoria. “Midan” means square. I think you know that Victoria was a queen, and our neighborhood this year is very British in its labyrinthine roundabouts (“Look, kids! Big Ben! Parliament!”). It’s a fairly busy roundabout. Today there was no pause in traffic. None. So I started across, holding out my palm. Some people muttered their irritation to me as they drove past. One car came to a stop but not before pushing into my hand. Another taxi driver wanted to know if I needed a ride. Another managed to expertly maneuver his car and be lecherous at the same time. As I made it across in one piece and reflected on my good luck, a fat man standing on the curb looked me up and down and made smarmy comments. Sometimes I feel like punching every Egyptian man I see and shaking every woman – no matter what her nationality – until she joins me with her own fists. That makes me sound intolerant, I know, and sometimes I feel exactly that way.

A few weeks ago I was crossing Midan Victoria with a more hardened and much taller expatriate, and he whipped into the street as a cab sped up (People often speed up here when they see a pedestrian. It’s not an exaggeration.), and he stopped in front of the car and pointed his finger at the surprised driver, who brought his car to a halt.

My normally calm friend then yelled: “NO! You stop for us! You stop for US!”

After we crossed, my friend fumed, and I giggled, as I almost always do when someone surprises me with volatility. When it comes to volatility, most members of my family barely have a pulse, and we like it that way, and we’ll keep it all inside until we take our bitter vengeance on you without you noticing, thank you very much. However, since living here, I have been more forthcoming about my feelings. You can ask the teenaged boys who screeched to a halt in their souped-up car one day in order to make inappropriate comments about my body and who got an earful of my best American expletives and universal gestures of rage. The poor man who was sweeping the street next to the curb wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Moments such as that result from an abnormal amount of suppression that bubbles up every once in a while with an overreaction. Most of the time I walk down the street with a “don’t fuck with me” frown but keep my eyes downcast. It takes a while to shake that off whenever I leave Egypt. It takes a while for me to feel normal around male strangers again, to feel as if I can look at them plainly without sending the message that I am willing to have their babies. It’s a relief to only be looked at appraisingly on occasion; it’s a relief to feel invisible, normal-looking, just a person walking down the street. Men and women have a lot of work to do in all parts of the world – witness the hateful criticism of Hillary Clinton’s outfits rather than her policies or beliefs, or the interchangeable blonde anchors on Fox. But, really, the gender crap here is…too much to go on about at the moment. I’ve written before that I don’t entirely approve of foreign women who go on and on about harassment here to the point of obsession, who respond by egregiously covering themselves and acting fearful (perverts feed off fear) and staying inside all the time and sometimes feeling as if their lily white skin is very precious and exotic indeed when, all the while, veiled Egyptians are harassed as much as they are. But I do understand. I understand how my daily decisions, my small adjustments to my manner of walking and speaking and wearing simple articles of clothing could be insidious. They are habits even now.

I complain about these things knowing full well that my foreignness offers a measure of safety (some of which is simply psychological) that an Egyptian woman, veiled or not, probably doesn’t feel. I complain about these things knowing how little I have to complain about.

But I started this entry thinking about those desolate cars. They have surfaced for me throughout the day, as they will continue to do. So many cars, and what happened to all of those people? How many are dead? 

Once we got past the rubbernecking point, our bus driver and the guy with the truck full of propane tanks and every vehicle on our side of the road floored it. Not your version of “flooring it,” I’ll wager. The Egyptian version. You just had to be there.

A

 

A Week of Endings

This past week, I would rather have been at home. It’s not that my vague desire to return home, which is always with me, suddenly welled up to form something more concrete or resolute. It’s not that anything in particular happened here that was bad—just the usual garden-variety stuff for a fairly garden-variety semester. In fact, things are good. My job is going well. I enjoy a flexible schedule that most people my age would love to have. Reading and writing comprise huge chunks of my life, just as I always wanted them to. I work out a lot and I’m getting into pretty good shape. Even my psoriasis is in recession.

But, well, there are times when I feel a tangible tug to be at home—to stand in solidarity with others in honoring a mentor, or in mourning an uncle. That was this week. I learned last Sunday that my uncle had died of pneumonia. He was 41 and suffered from a fairly severe form of Down’s syndrome. He had been living in a group home for many years now—I only remember him from my childhood, when my family would make the begrudging trek down south to visit my grandmother. At that age, I was scared of my uncle. He was unable to speak, but he made grunting noises mixed with high-pitched squeals. He was almost 9 years older than me, a lot larger, and he didn’t know his own strength. More than once had I been caught in his smothering, forceful embrace, as he squeezed more tightly, refusing to let me go until my grandmother or my father forced his arms away.

Still, when I heard the news of his death, I felt the loss. My family was one person less than it had been. I called my father and roused him from Xanax-enhanced dreams, and he told me that he and another of my uncles, Tom, had been in the room when Kelly had died in his sleep. There was no bucking, no death rattles. He just stopped breathing, the end result of his final illness. My father was…sad, in a way that is difficult to characterize. He clearly felt a loss, too, even though Down’s syndrome had rendered my uncle Kelly unable to maintain familial relationships in the conventional sense—although his mother, my grandmother, visited him every Sunday, took him to Ponderosa, and let him wander the aisles of Wal-Mart before returning him to the group home. None of us really knew him because he was locked inside Down’s syndrome, and yet it was clearly a blow to my father, who had lost his half-brother, to my uncle Tom, to my aunt Darlene, and most of all to my grandmother, for whom my father felt genuine sympathy—remarkable if you knew anything about the history of their relationship.

When I talked to my father, I told him I wished I could attend my uncle’s funeral. I felt wrong carrying on with the business of work while my father’s side of the family gathered en masse to mourn, and just like when a childhood friend died in 2006, I spent the day wishing I was at home. I felt the stirrings of a kind of solidarity that have taken root only since I moved here.

In other news, in another stratosphere of life, one of my mentors is retiring at the end of the school year, and yesterday was her surprise party. She is the director of Wittenberg’s Writing Center, has been for nearly 30 years, and writing tutors from all eras descended upon campus yesterday to surprise her with a show of support and appreciation. I was not there. This bothered me a great deal because, well, Maureen was one of the first people to take me seriously. She did so without ceremony, without any of the bluster you see in corny teacher-changed-my-life movies: no howling Morgan Freeman, no streetwise Michelle Pfeiffer. I think this is one of the most important things a mentor can do for a student: you can take that student seriously. Too many teachers are self-absorbed, or burnt-out, or otherwise ill-suited to this aspect of the profession, but Maureen, she was selfless. There was nothing grandiose or self-serving in her taking me seriously. I think she saw a young man—a boy of 18, really—who wanted to be taken seriously. She recognized what it was even before I recognized it myself, although, in looking back over old essays from freshman year, I see a boy trying on words too large for him, striving to show he belonged. Maureen had at least an inkling of this, and that alone is more than you get from most teachers. It’s something I’ve been mindful of lately, in my own teaching: only this week I encountered work from a student who clearly wants to be taken seriously, and I tried to follow Maureen’s lead, by giving this student’s work serious, rigorous and fair treatment. I think this is one of the ways you take a student seriously—you reciprocate that seriousness in your approach to their work, without assailing their rookie mistakes, lack of perspective, or adolescent bluster. These things, one hopes, will pass on their own. My job is to show them another path, just as I was shown. I only needed somebody to recognize that I was searching for that other path, and Maureen was among the first.

This is something I would have liked to tell Maureen in person yesterday. Instead, I am left to deposit this missive ruminating on her and on my dead uncle, shouting at them both from a far distance (in the case of my uncle, a far, far distance). This is something about life abroad I hadn’t considered, the curious immobility of being away. It’s the opposite of conventional wisdom, that life abroad is the ultimate independence. Sometimes it’s about being on the run, or taking refuge, or starting anew after one thread in life has run its course or been ruined. I’ve seen such things in the expatriates here. All of these paths begin with an impulse toward liberation, but they have their own deterministic pitfalls. Me? I can feel the constraints of the ex-pat life this week, keenly. And I know I would have to go on living with these constraints if I were to stay here much longer.

James