Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Homeward Bound

Well, my last day in Cairo is slowly coming to a close. I rose early this morning to go to Giza to do a bit of riding - and to see the Pyramids, which I have so far failed to do! I walked out the dorms to get a bit of extra cash, but the ATM at the supermarket was closed. Then I walked to the next corner, where there's normally another machine - and it was gone. Simply vanished. Bizarre. So I walked to the post office, but that one wasn't accepting my card. On to the Faisal Islamic Bank's machine, but it was out of order. 25 minutes and 4 machines later, I finally managed to withdraw from the Egypt National Bank on 26 July.

I headed back to MG Stables where Thalia and I rode last time - if any of you are in Cairo, I heartily recommend it, it's a good, respectable place and everybody knows it. Ask for Mohammed Ghoneim, the owner, and Nasser, the guide. Nasser took me out and gave me a bit of tutorial riding in the desert, trying to smooth out my trot and keep the horse under control in a gallop, then we infiltrated the pyramids. We rode out to a section of wall with a little Bedouin hut next to it, and bribed the Bedouin to open up the fence and let us in. Then we rode through the dunes surrounding the Pyramids, around 8 in the morning, and got to see them up close, in all their glory, without a single tourist around. It was really amazing, to be there with nothing but a few stray Bedouin hanging around, instead of massive tour groups. The light wasn't great, but hey...what can you do?

There was a desert boy there with a camel, and I rode that just for kicks. Camels officially suck, they're the dumbest animals I've ever seen. Mine walked about 10 metres, came back, and then made a sound like a diesel engine trying to start with severe flatulence and refused to sit down so I could get off. It took Nasser and the boy to drag the stupid thing down. I hate camels. Horses are much better.

We returned, I said my farewells, then walked back to the main street where, not wanting to pay a further 30LE to get to Zamalek, I took a baffling series of buses and minbuses until I got to the train station, then the Metro back to Zamalek. Of course, the train drops you at the far end of the island from the University dorms, so I got to walk most of the length of it, shooting pictures as I went. It was a nice morning, so it was all good, and I got back at 10:30 or 11 - just as Joe was getting up!

It was really cool to get out there in the desert, with no one around, no one at the Pyramids, just me and the sky and the desert. I love riding, and riding in the desert - total freedom, total emptiness, and a real touching loneliness. I feel compelled to come back to Egypt, a country full of contradictions and bizarre sights. The cabdrivers try to rob you blind, but when I was trying to figure out the bus system, on three occasions different men flagged down the buses for me and explained to the drivers where I was going because I didn't understand the geography or which bus to take. It was a really kind gesture of them.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about this - the dirt and the irregular facilities not among them. But speaking Arabic everyday, the people, the crazy crowded rhythms, the surprises around every corner, cheap coffee, fancy restaurants. Even the slowly pulsing Nile, which I was so disappointed with at first, has grown on me and become a kind of constant navigational companion.

Tomorrow I have to get up a bit past dawn to get my flight. Tonight is my last night in Cairo. Half-sad, half-happy - I'm looking forward to going home. We'll see how I like it there.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Winding Up

My last days here are rapidly coming to an end. It's been an exciting and crazy and amazingly short semester. I definitely want to come back someday, although I have no idea when. But Cairo is too unique to just be experienced once.

Two days ago, Thalia and I went on a horse-ride through the desert - it was supposed to be an epic journey to Saqqara but we decided to make it a shorter, more efficient one. Still, riding around the pyramids, sipping tea at a Bedouin camp and generally enjoying the desert. It's a really interesting place, I love it much of the time. It's starting to get unbearably hot, though, and I'll be glad to miss out on July in Cairo.

We had a going away party for one of our friends, which was nice but a bit melancholy. Of course, there will be several more of those in the coming weeks. People are drifting away sort of piecemeal, which is always a little frustrating - I'd rather there be a big get-together where everyone says goodbye.

We've also done a lot of sight-seeing these past two days - visiting the 9th-century Ibn Tulun Mosque, the 14th-century Sultan Hassan and the 20-th century Imam Ria'f mosques. It's really cool to see how the architecture has evolved from century to century and dynasty to dynasty. So many different peoples and empires have left their mark on this city, it's incredible. It might have some of the most diverse architecture I've ever seen.

Finally, we did some shopping in the markets and the Khan al-Khalili, just getting another taste of the crazy, hassled streetlife of Cairo. I'll post pictures as soon as I get some uploaded.

Friday, May 25, 2007

The Finn, Pt 3

On the way out I wrapped myself in despair as thick and soft as a cashmere coat. I had the coat, too, a velvety job custom-tailored overseas in Hong Kong. It was like wearing a grey herringbone cloud. I couldn't afford it on what I made; and then again, maybe that was the whole point. Outside of the daily grind of my job, I took every effort to appear as elegant and refined as possible. If I had to subsist on bread and cheese for a week to afford a bespoke suit or a pair of English-made boots, I would do it.
But beneath the clothes I found myself drifting aimlessly. I once spent an hour sitting on a stone balcony staring vacantly out at nothing, not asleep but not awake, until I suddenly snapped out of my stasis. A dispassionate feeling of not caring about anything had crept over me and trapped me beneath it. Like a beetle in amber I could see myself struggling to move and slowly giving up.

I departed the bus and walked quickly through the stiff breeze, staring up at the Citgo sign, now glaring down at me. This part of Boston was grim and dirty, and I kept my head down and walked forward through the overpasses and the colonies of the homeless around the ATM booths. It had begun to rain now, and the drops fell in streams around me in the silver lamplight. My umbrella leaned on my shoulder without much conviction – I wasn't sure if umbrellas represented an elegant stylistic touch or a foppish, almost effete affectation. It was probably too much thought to put into such a minor detail anyways. So I waited with my umbrella, leaning against the doorway and trying to look inconspicuous.

To get into my girlfriend's dorm, I had to check through a security point run by bored, irritable campus police. It made me feel like a burglar or a rapist, as if I was a paroled felon who can't vote, drive, or visit his girl-friend. On an all-girls campus, I was the intruder, an alien element in the neatly paved, trimmed and tailored walkways of Simmons College. It couldn't have been more different from where I lived - all traditional Boston red-brick, old ivy and manicured lawns. This was what a college was supposed to look like.

I found myself wondering what sort of school the Finn had gone to. In my mind, European campuses all looked like Oxford or Cambridge or Hogwarts from Harry Potter: elegant and stately arches, bell-towers and grand halls and stuffy headmasters with antique studies. What would a Finnish college be like? Perpetually drenched in snow, surely – that was the only way I could envision the country. Perhaps they sleighed to class, or skied. I couldn't see a Scandinavian landscape that didn't involve those elements.

The academic paradises of Boston seemed blasé to me, with familiarity divorced from contempt. Harvard Yard was like comfort food – known, remembered, and somehow separate from the school that had rejected me. I could sit in the Yard and reminisce or philosophize without feeling envy towards those who the Yard really belonged to. Maybe the Finn had gone to Harvard. It would explain his presence in my slumbering little suburb.

She poked her head out from behind the door and nudged me, her hair falling like a damp picture frame around her face – from the rain or from a shower I didn't know. She was wearing a long white coat belted around the waist that made it look as if she was wearing nothing underneath.

“Hey, babe.” For such a short girl, her voice was always surprisingly deep and throaty.

“Hey,” I said, giving her a quick kiss and a glance sideways at the police. “Let's get inside, OK?”

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Compare & Contrast

I haven't written in a while...with 4 finals coming up tomorrow, I've been swamped with work. But I had two interesting meetings lately, with two different authors that I've read in my Arabic Literature in Translation class: Sonallah Ibrahim and Gamal al-Ghitani.

Gamal al-Ghitani is a reporter at the newspaper Akhbar al-Yom(News of the Day), and the Editor-in-Chief of Akhbar al-Adab(News of Literature). As such, he's definitely a part of the state apparatus, because there is a lot of governmental censorship and control of the media. His books are still critical of the government, but in subtle, round-about ways - the one we read was called Zayni Barakat and it is about an eponymous 15th-century judge in Mamluk Cairo who is a critical parallel of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Sonallah Ibrahim, on the other hand, is a real rarity in Egypt - a true professional writer. Since books in Egypt are printed in runs of several thousand, it's a hard way to make a living. But he wants to be truly independent from the government and so he has lived a very modest lifestyle, almost below the poverty line(which in Egypt is very low indeed). He was even offered a literary prize by a governmental literary body that included a cash prize of almost $100,000, but he turned it down, saying:

We have no theatre, no cinema, no research, no education. We only have festivals and conferences and a boxful [referring to Egyptian television broadcasting] of lies.

I publicly decline the prize because it is awarded by a government that, in my opinion, lacks the credibility of bestowing it.



I met Ibrahim first, last night at my professor's apartment here on the upper floors of the dorms where many of the teachers live. She has a really amazing place, with a stunning view of Cairo where you can hear all the muezzins calling to prayer at once. Most of our class was there, about 12-14 people, and we asked him some questions and then had dinner and it sort of relaxed into a dinner party. It was quite entertaining and enlightening, and though he spoke softly and alternated between English and Arabic, he was quite an entertaining guy and made a few funny quips - notably, when he heard we were studying Arabic literature, he asked "Why? What do we have worth studying?" He was a very thin, dark, mild-looking man, with an unassuming manner and a big shock of grey curly hair, almost Einsteinish. He also said John Grisham was one of his favorite American authors, although I couldn't tell if he was being tongue-in-cheek.

al-Ghitani couldn't have been more different. We met him at his office this morning in the imposing(for Cairo) main building of Akhbar Al-Yom, and we sat across the desk from him and talked in Arabic and English for a while. He was a much more imposing figure, bigger and more lively and self-confident. His great passion is Islamic Cairo or al-Qahirah al-Qadeema, and he offered to give us tours of it later - unfortunately, he's going to the US and won't be back until I have left. His office was very imposing and official, which seemed appropriate to his relatively "insider" status compared to Ibrahim.

All in all, it was an interesting and educating two days.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Friends and Countrymen

We went out for dinner last night, all dressed our best - Joe and I were rocking the suits Zaghloul made us, and the we were so convincing that Jay decided he wanted in on the action. So we went down to the tailor today and Jay commissioned a pair of suits.



But the evening was really wonderful - we went to La Bodega, a fancy first-class restaurant on 26th July, and ate like kings(and queens), with a 4-course prix fixe meal and wine for about $16 apiece. Really hard to complain about, if you ask me. It was a time, and we had lots of lively dinner conversation, recounting our adventures, reminiscing over our favorite moments in the month past, and engaging in a bit of spirited post-prandial debate about the role of modern feminism in American society, sparked by my - tounge firmly in cheek - comment that the men ought to retire to the lounge for cigars and brandy.

We got to the restaurant around 8:30, left around 11:30 and went to Jon's for aperitifs - or in this case, a bottle of Egyptian beer. We hung around, played some guitar, sat on the porch and enjoyed the night. Jon was rocking his new cream-colored pinstripe suit too. I really think Zaghloul owes me a free suit for all the business I've brought him.

I'm going to be sad to leave this place - I've made a lot of truly unique friendships, had all kinds of bizarre adventures and generally just lived it to the fullest, I think. While I am looking forward to returning and seeing everyone who is waiting for me there, I'm really going to miss the ahwas, the crazy rhythmic pulse of the city, the late nights and all the rest of it. Cairo's a one-of-a-kind city, I don't think anywhere else in the world could ever feel like this. I guess that's true everywhere, no two places are alike, but Cairo is like New York, like Istanbul - a truly different city.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Finn, Pt. 2

The Finn, continued:

When I returned to school I did not go back to my dorm. Rather, I walked slowly up the almost deserted paths of Brandeis to the top of the hill that dominates the campus. The buildings and trees seemed ghostly and derelict in the electric light. Its not that there
was no one about, but the palpable sense of emptiness suffused the campus. The paths were paved in a moist layer of dying leaves. All the pictures of the school show it in spring, when the trees are rich with foliage and the flowers and bushes are in full bloom. But that is only a tiny portion of the year that we spend here among the bare skeletons of the oaks and elms.

From the Castle that dominates Brandeis’ campus, all of Boston and its suburbs are spread out, the skyline twinkling on the horizon. I watched the glow of the iconic Citgo sign slowly cycling its way next to the Prudential building. Its neon brilliance seemed curiously out of place to me.

As a child, I always wanted visit the base of the sign, to see where it lived. For a long time, I thought that Citgo was the city’s real name. From my home and from the river, the red triangle seemed to hover over the cityscape, independent and above it. I still want to go it every night, launch myself from the top of the castle and soar over the woods and roads and homes. But that is for a different reason.

I stub out my cigarette – I only ever smoke at the top of the hill, leaning on the fire escape of the Castle. I don’t know why, although maybe its so the exercise makes me feel less guilty. Smoking down amongst the buildings and classes of campus it feels dirty. At the top of a stone tower at night it feels lonely and noble, like a sentry burning the night away in the red cherry cupped in his hands.

I stop in the library on the way home to look up Finland in the Encyclopedia. Actually the Wikipedia, because who bothers with paper books anymore? I find that “Finnish is one of the few European languages not of Indo-European origin.” I guess that means the Finn spoke a language nobody but Lapps and Nokia officials could understand. That’s an immensely depressing thought.

I also find that Finland is the world capital of cellphones, with 103% cell phone ownership. That 3% is puzzling. One has to wonder what would compel someone to own multiple phones that way. In my imagination, the only people who need them are the double agents in gangster films who call their Mafioso bosses on one phone and their police bosses on the other. I have a hard time imagining the Finnish mafia. What would they fight over? Snow? Reindeer? Maybe cell phones.

Also, Finland was invaded by Russia. Five times. That has to be enough to make anyone depressed. I try to imagine fighting a war in a frozen arctic landscape of ice and fir trees, but my imagine fails me. In my mind, wars are hot, brutal, and steamy, like Vietnam, or urban nightmares like World War II and Kosovo. The thought of waiting for frostbite and pneumonia to cripple your adversary is profoundly depressing.

Coming home from Starbuck’s I am dirty. Covered in sweat, shards of coffeebeans and splashes of chocolate and vanilla. I feel like a walking dishrag, studded with all the most disgusting things in the world. Lady Macbeth scrubbed at a black spot on her hands in vain – Starbuck’s partners have to rinse their whole bodies of blacks spots the same way every night.

Today, of course, was a thousand times worse – the feeling that blood was on my hands, on my shirt, on my face. We had never even touched the Finn’s body but the sensation was there. How could I help but feel guilty that a man had stared at himself in the mirror and then blown his brains out less than two yards away from me? The worst was, in the roaring noise of the Starbuck’s, we hadn’t even noticed until a customer had pointed out the door was locked for half an hour. I’m not sure why he locked the door. Was it a sense of privacy? Maybe he didn’t want anyone to walk in unprepared. He was a remarkably neat suicide.

I step into the shower and turn it up as high as it will go. The water feels like a scourge on my skin, and it is good. I can feel layers peeling away, scoured away by the blast. Unexpectedly, I am crying, the tears blurring instantly with the jet of water. I turn my face into the stream to clean away the tears, clean away my face, clean away everything until I am a soft, featureless creature.

With only a little warning, the water becomes icy, shocking me to the bone. Have you ever seen those videos of a seal lying peacefully on an ice floe when suddenly its whole world erupts and a killer whale lands on top of it? That is exactly how I felt. I flailed for the spigot and managed to slam it shut. For a while I stood there, dripping, and then I heave myself out and get ready to go back downtown.


to be continued...

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Odds and Ends

Sometimes it's the small things in life that are most peculiar. For instance, yesterday I walked out the door of the dorms into a billowing cloud of white smoke that obscured the sun and rendered the church spire across the street as a ghostly silhouette. It was strange and surreal, made more so by the fact that no one seemed to notice or indeed care. Normally when there's smoke everywhere people are at the very least curious. Apparently not in Cairo, where the catastrophic is more or less the everyday. But the oddest bit was that there was no smell of smoke or fire, as one might expect.

After the shuttle left, we found the source of all the smoke - a battered old Toyota pick-up that was spewing it everywhere out of something in the bed of the truck. It was really disconcerting, as the thick white fog totally enveloped the bus and made it impossible to see. With the early-morning light filtering down through the trees and the crumbling balconies of Zamalek, it looked like the beginning of a war movie. At one moment, I was kicking myself for not having a camera - there was a soldier pacing by his post, head bent, underneath a spreading tree in front of a little mosque, with the sun-beams refracting through the air and only the silhouette of the soldier and his gun visible. It was a beautiful sight, in a strange way, and I wish I could have captured it.

The other oddity this week is that less than 10 days from our final, our Fusha Arabic teacher injured herself on some steps and can't come in for class. So we got a substitute today, to teach until the end of the semester. Now, our original teacher was a very nice, affable, likeable lady, but while she was very good at Arabic, she didn't make too much effort to keep the class talking in Arabic the whole time. I didn't really realize until this sub showed up today and said maybe 3 English words during the whole 3-hour class. He really kept on us, never gave instructions in English - if we had had him for the whole semester, I might have learned a great deal more Arabic. Still, I find that I can roughly follow Al-Jazeera broadcasts and regualr newspaper articles, so I can't regret it too much.

Only 1 week of school to go. It's too bizarre for words - I remember distinctly arriving in Cairo, when Joe and I were baffled by the 15-second shuttle ride that was required to take us from the airplane to the gate. It's kind of a theme in Egypt - lots of effort and trouble and hassle to save a tiny bit of work. Once we got to the gate we were released to the mercy of the arcane mysteries of Passport Control, a system that would give a Byzantine bureaucrat solid cause to just off himself. Fortunately, there was a sort of pool shark of the airport there, waiting for a different group of AUC students. He was dressed in a glossy pinstripe suit and shoes so pointy you could use them like a drill. But he whisked us through, running around, waving and nodding at airport personnel and generally marshalling us through the ineffable chaos.

The real Cairo shock set in once we got out of the airport proper and found ourselves at the mercy of a pack of ravenous porters and taxi-drivers. They all but pried our luggage from our hands, and after trying to forcibly load it - and us - into a variety of increasingly alarming transports, our AUC escort showed up with a car that can only be described as appalling. Taxis are not normally the most well-maintained of vehicles, but it's really pushing the issue to have a car that does not, in fact, possess a dash-board, but rather a crumpled plastic shell covered in open wiring, topped with a fuzzy purple leopard-print rug and a box of tissues blinged-out like the cover of a Chamillionaire album.

And of course the driving was terrifying - roads no wider than Memorial drive transformed into six-lane free-for-alls. I'm convinced that no one has actually explained the concept of lane-dividers to the Egyptians...it's the only conceivable reason for the way they try to fit three or four or five vehicles into a space meant for two, passing on the right, the left, from behind. If there were a way to physically vault your car over the one in front of you like some half-ton game of hopscotch, the Egyptians would do it.

I'm going to miss this place.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

The Finn

A few months ago I posted a fragment of a story of mine that was being turned into a graphic novel.

Well, that project never came to much because the newspaper was just too disorganized and it sort of fell apart midway through the semester. But I've been playing around with the story and some of the ideas in it so I'm going to post the first portion of the story, which leads up to that point:

The Finn

The day the Finn shot himself in the bathroom was one of the worst the store ever had. It was probably fairly bad for the Finn too, but unfortunately no one had a chance to ask him how he was, or indeed why he shot himself. Mark suggested it might be because he was Finnish, a line that met with awkward laughter until we remembered that Finland had lost its quarter-final round game in the World Cup to Bahrain. After a quick search the internet to ascertain whether Bahrain was a real place, the store turned its attention to the more pressing problem of what to do with a self-created Finnish corpse.

Starbuck's has manuals and procedures for every eventuality. The company's overriding policy was “Just Say Yes,”as in 'Can I get two coffees instead of one...Yes! Can I get them for free because I had a bad day...Sure! Will you bring them to me on a gilded tray in porcelain cups and then shine my shoes...Absolutely! Unfortunately this didn't help as the only question the Finn might have asked was “Can I shoot myself in your bathroom?” and that particular path of action had already been settled.

Oddly, Starbucks doesn't have a concrete policy on in-store suicides, so we had to ad-lib it1. The police were nearby, and after assuring the customers that everything was under control and perfectly safe, we resumed business. After all, as tragic as the death of the Finn was, it paled in comparison to what might happen if we denied our clientele service for an entire afternoon. There were recorded instances of physical violence in response to unscheduled closings.

So we called the cops and stood around awkwardly. People would come in for coffee, and, not knowing what else to do, we sold it to them. That’s what we were there for. We had been programmed, like a cadre of automatonic hipsters, to vend coffee to any and all passerby. The mere fact of life and death playing out a room over, while disturbing and tragic, wasn’t about to throw us out of our rhythm. Indeed, the police sirens, EMTs, and firemen attracted such a crowd that we did record sales that day.

As consolation, we all got $75 dollar mental stress bonuses in our next paycheck and an extra day of paid leave. I suppose that was to help us cope with the psychic damage that the suicidal Finn had thoughtlessly inflicted on us. In reality, the only lasting impression of the incident was the reddish stain we were never able to thoroughly excise from around the toilet. In what we judged to be typically Scandinavian fashion, he’d blown his brains out directly into the bowl. I guess he was trying to spare us the trouble of cleaning the whole room.

We never did figure out why he chose our store to end his life. It wasn’t as if he was a regular or anything. Or maybe he was a regular and we’d just never figured it out. I fancied that maybe his whole life was like that, a permanent fixture at a job, a gym, a coffeeshop, maybe even in his own home, never recognized from one day to the next. Just a tall, blonde cipher drifting through life.

My reverie was interrupted by the manager politely but firmly2 asking me if I didn’t have anything important to do. Sometimes, waiting at the register, watching people approach and then retreat as if testing your defenses, you doze off a little and find yourself staring into space, counting the cracks in the brickwork or the stains on the ceiling.

At Starbucks, you learn not to work too fast. I guess it’s true of any retail job. Do nothing and you’ll get something horrible to do. So you find something that’s time-consuming but mindless, and then lose yourself in it. As long as you can claim that you are busy aligning all of the cups so that the logos are straight or rearranging the bags of coffee by region, you have a protective amulet against being forced to scrub grout out of tiles behind a dairy fridge.

On this particular occasion, I was making sure that each and every tray of sticky, nauseatingly sweet pastries was perfectly straight when I turned around and bumped into one of my coworkers carrying a pot of coffee. She dropped it into the sink and breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t gone on to the floor. It was at this moment that, perhaps in response to some primitive defensive instinct, looked up and was hit in the face by an encyclopedia.

To be fair, it was only one volume. The other volumes were busy tumbling down amidst the urns, grinders, brewers, and assorted paraphernalia of the coffee business. In some distant Paleolithic era, when the store had only just been converted from Joe’s Coffee or Jack’s Beans or whatever into a Starbucks, some enterprising manager had sought to lend the place an air of intellectual authenticity by stacking rows upon rows of books in the store. At ceiling level. In rickety wooden bookcases. Indeed, it was a miracle that the literary downpour we were currently experiencing hadn’t happened earlier.

Standing amidst clouds of decade-old dust, shattered spines, and dust covers lying half-in pools of dingy water, I heard a voice oh-so-quietly saying…”excuse me?”

I turned around and found myself staring at a pretty, timid-looking young girl, half-wrapped in a bright yellow balaclava and peering at me from behind a pair of thick-rimmed, square glasses. Her hair fell across her face in a diagonal line, as if someone had been cutting her hair and suddenly slipped violently to the floor.

“Welcome to Starbuck’s,” I replied. “How can I help you?”


***


I worked but I didn’t manage to find satisfaction. That was Boston’s fault. This town had dulled me with its persistent winds, and I was slowly wearing away in the rain, the snow, the battered sidewalks and cracking roads. In this city, every thing was a defense against the elements, every day was a task. And the people, clannish and irritable, could become as cutting as shards of glass. Every one shuffled around in coats and scarves, each a castle, a fortress, with layers of battlements and almost never visible. Boston wore at my soul and I could not escape.

A vast melancholy swept over me as I sat on the embankment, waiting for the train to take me home. It was one of those cold New England nights where your breath comes in freezing clouds that glow in the stainless steel moonlight. I could see the train coming half a mile away along the tracks, its running lights reflected in long beams down the rails. The track ran straight and then curved at the last minute before the station, so as it approached all I saw a was three flashing lights bearing down on me with an increasing roar. The cars blew by in a blast of hot air and roaring diesel that splashed through my mind like an ocean wave.
On the train, I sat facing the wrong direction, watching Belmont and then Waltham slide silently by. Staring through the scratched glass of the windows, I watched the tattered remnants of New England's industrial past slide by – battered redbrick buildings covered in cracking paintwork and dying ivy, junkyards filled with rusting trucks and stripped tires, men standing around in flannel shirts and dirty workboots the color of old wheat, smoking cigarettes. I looked down at my own shoes, chestnut boots polished to a waxy sheen, and then at the shoes I wear at work, scuffed and filthy with cheap leather. Why did I feel the need to change them every day before I left?

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Follow The Thread

End of the week, at last. It's been another long one, and the work is really coming on. Three papers to finish in the next few weeks. But relative to Brandeis, the workload is still pretty easy. Mostly, it's just the way the writing is at a much lower level here - what I would do an in-class or one-week assignment becomes a final semester paper. And the pace of reading is much, much slower.

I also went to see a play here in Egypt which my Egyptian friend Sarah was in, called The Bussy Blay. Bussy is colloquial Egyptian for "look!" or "Pay attention!" when speaking to a woman - but Egyptians also pronounce P's as B's, so it's a bit of a double entedre. The point of the play comes from a performance a few years ago of the "Vagina Monologues," which as you can imagine was a bit of a controversy. So they decided to retool the show to be more about Egyptian women.

And it's a really, really interesting and intense show, split 60-40 between English and Arabic, with lots of stories you've heard about Egypt, some you've guessed, and some you never would. I've always had trouble relating to women's-empowerment type literature - after all, I'm not a woman! But this was well-acted and well-done, lacked the gratuitous shock factor of the Vagina Monologues(although considering the culture there's some shock going on for sure!), and surprised me in many ways. The format is of students acting out anonymous monologues pertaining to particular women's issues. Two of the ones that shocked me the most were stories of girls being fondled by their Qu'ran teachers!! I guess it's not just the Catholic Church...

But there were other, lighter ones, humorous ones, personal ones, tragic ones, romantic ones - it was really quite a show and I fancy it made me a little more open-minded. But despite the one monologue entitled "Muslim Women," filled with equal amounts of rage at Islamic society and Western cultural imperialism - the show as a whole made me think the society could use just a touch of our cultural imperialism. One of the lines that stood out to me was about how "Yes, my father tells me how to dress...but so does Gucci!" Well, yes - but the difference is A)Gucci isn't supposed to be your father, and B)Gucci won't beat you for not wearing their fashion. A specious and silly comparison, to link traditional Islamic patriarchy with the much milder patriarchy of body image and advertising in the West - most often employed by Islamo/Marxo/Feminist types who need something to rail against and self-righteous suburbanites who want to pretend to connect with their "sisters" in Saudi Arabia or Sudan.

I also took Jon to see my tailor, and took the opportunity to get some pictures so you can see just how original and old-school this guy is. He really is the real deal vintage tailor, and he even does all his sewing on a peddle-driven sewing machine. Here's what his shop looks like. Click for bigger pictures.

Jon and Zaghloul.




Zaghloul's workdesk:


Works in progress.


The innards of a suit.


Waiting for delivery.


Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Round and Round...

So it goes. My friend Thalia had her birthday party last night, which was really a lot of fun - she's moved out of the Egyptian family's home in which she as living and is now in Zamalek, in our friend Nick's former room down on Brazil St. 21st birthday, the big one - although ironically, in Egypt the drinking age is 18 if any exists at all. In any event, it was a nice party - we gathered, a bunch of people collaborated under Jon's culinary leadership to make a stir-fry, and there was watermelon, cake, baclava, even a sort of fondue, as well as plenty of beer. Unfortunately, Egyptian beer is really god-awful. But it was a great party nonetheless.

Once in a while, it's nice to get away from the Egyptian-ness of Cairo and just enjoy some company where we are all on more or less the same wavelength, in a setting where we are comfortable with everything. And it's always funny the people you meet - I ran into a kid who I had never met, but who lives probably 3 minutes away from me in Watertown, and knows some of the people I do from WHS. Not quite as strange a coincidence as meeting Thalia on the other side of the world, but still pretty close.

Oddly, Thalia wasn't happy about her birthday - or rather, she was happy and excited for the party but she said that each birthday scares her more and more. I've heard that from people more advanced in age but never from anyone turning 21. In American culture, 21 is kind of the last important birthday until 30 - it signals the beginning of real adulthood, often presages the end of college and generally implies you now have to be responsible for yourself. As for me, I like the idea of getting older - I can only hope I am wiser at the end of each year.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Return from the Hidden City

Last time I told you about how getting to Petra, and everything we did there. But getting back was an adventure in and of itself. Also, this has been one of the most boring weeks ever, so I'm working the Petra story for all it's worth until something else exciting happens.

We set out from Wadi Musa to Aqaba fairly early, wanting to get the 12:00 fast ferry back to Egypt. Since there were no minibuses or public transportation, we were forced to use the hostel's pickup truck, at pricy $40 for a 2-hour ride. But it was a lot of fun driving through the Jordanian landscape, and it really had me very thoughtful and pensive the whole way. I wasn't able to get many good pictures because of how fast we were driving, but the landscape is very desolately beautiful - rolling dry plains and rocky mountains, extending onwards and onwards under a massive blue sky. Joe reminded me of a very perceptive quote - a historian who said that it was no wonder monotheism came from this land with nothing in it but hills and rocks and sky. In the fertile valleys of Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, Rome, and Mesoamerica, the people could make gods for everything - trees, rivers, sun, earth, animals, the sea, and so on. But herding sheep in the dry hills of the Levant, there's not much to worship aside from the sky.

And it really hasn't changed that much...we drove for an hour without seeing much more than hut-like homes and black Bedouin tents with their herds. The same sense of wide-open wilderness still prevails in many places. It's a land that makes you feel very small and alone, out beneath that immense sky.

But that ended as we drove through the desert valley leading into Aqaba, finally culminating in the sprawling, modern port city. A massive Jordanian flag easily 50m across waved lazily in the breeze. We got to the ferry-port - and there were no spaces left on the fast boat. This condemned us to the "slow boat", a conventional ferry that departed at 3 - nominally - and took 3 hours instead of 1. So standing around the port at 10 in the morning, we prepared to wait.

And wait.

All told, we were there for 7 hours before departing. We sat in the cafeteria, hid from the sweltering sun and heat, and tried to pass the time, reading all the books we had, writing in journals, talking, drinking coffee, and staring off into space. There were really two ways it could go: sit there in utter misery at our predicament, or laugh it off as one more ridiculous 3rd-world transit adventure. Fortunately, we chose the Douglas Adams-esque latter option, and ended up having a pretty good time just laughing and chatting. Never underestimate the presence of a good travelling companion - without Joe to converse with, I would have gone totally bat-shit.

And speaking of Adams - although he said "always know where your towel is," in the middle east I think that gets translated to "always know where your kaffiyeh is." I've heard the epithet "towel-head" used for Arabs and now, frankly, I don't think it's insulting at all! A kaffiyeh is the world's most useful garment. Wrap it around your head to keep the sun or the rain off, around your shoulders as a shawl for the sun, around your face in a dust storm, use it as a towel after washing, pile it beneath your head as a pillow, put it over your eyes to help you sleep, and of course it's always a stylish scarf. I used it for all these things in the course of 2 days - it's my new favorite item of clothing. It would seem Adams knew what he was talking about!

Anyways, we also spent part of the time at the ferry part talking to two travelling companions, a Saudi entrepreneur and a taciturn Japanese retired engineer. They fulfilled their stereotypes perfectly - the Japanese man was a prolific traveller, very polite, with limited English, and when I mentioned Boston he got really excited about Matsuzaka. The Saudi was a loud, arrogant man in a brilliant white robe and mirror shades, who talked incessantly about money and the correctness of Islam, and used one of his two camera-phones to show us pictures of his horse, his motorcycle, his farm, his daughter, his car, etc., etc. Yes, he really just mixed his daughter in with all his other possessions. As a sociological sample, he was interesting, but as a person he was dreadful...I can only hope all Saudis are not like that. He also had a weird way of shifting from telling dirty jokes and making crass comments about women to talking about how shameful the way Western women dress is and how terrible alcohol is.

We boarded the boat around 4, and spent another hour and a half waiting for it to leave while they loaded trucks, cars, and so on. I tried and failed to take a nap, so I spent the time just conversing with Joe. Our conversation lasted almost two hours, so we were well on the way by the time it ended. We decided to get dinner, a not entirely dismal affair, and then were ambushed by the Saudi guy again. We went to the top deck to chat, and when I got sick of him, I went down to a lower deck to nap, which lasted until our arrival.

But a bizarre thing happened on our arrival - we were on the upper uncovered decks, enjoying the fresh air, and they locked the doors. Every single door leading down into the ship was chained shut. Though probably just for crowd control, it was very disconcerting, and we joined a couple of sheikhs in yelling at the officers until they let us out. Sometimes being an ajnabi, foreigner, really helps. We finally shuffled out through the car deck, almost unbreathably inundated with diesel fumes, and slid through customs in tenth of the time it took back in Jordan.

It was now about 9:30 or 10 at night, but fortunately there was a night bus to Cairo. While waiting for tickets, we met two travelling Libyan entertainers - one was a singer, the other an actor. They were really fun and funny guys, who spoke very clear Arabic. One of them was even diabetic, and we commiserated about that. As Arabs often do, they bought us water and food without even asking, and we passed the time chatting to them until the bus left. It was a welcome change from the Saudi bore.

The ride itself was weird, but not bad. My seat "broke" - which meant it reclined 90% into an almost perfect bed on which I slept for about seven of the ten hours. Unlike the journey to Nuweiba, which had shown an ancient C-quality Sinbad movie and The Man in the Iron Mask, the movies on the inbound bus were bizarre Arabic drama/comedies with lots of yelling. I put in my earbud headphones, wrapped my kaffiyeh around my head, and slept.

I woke in Cairo, feeling cheerful and rested, and though we had to argue at the bus station taxi drivers about prices, we eventually beat it down from 50 pounds to 20. The taxi driver even brought me a glass of tea, which was pretty difficult to drink as he careened through the streets. But my lightning reflexes kept me from spilling any, and we arrived in good enough spirits to not collapse for the whole day.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Voyage to the Hidden City, Pt. 2

Sorry I've been gone for so long - I try to put something down every two days, but the past week has been crazy. Anyways, last I wrote we had just got to the town of Wadi Musa, which occupies the valley outside Petra.

Our first decision was also our best one - Joe and I decided to get up and over to Petra as early as possible, and we arrived about half an hour after it opened, at 7:30. There was still a greyish early-morning glow and as we walked down the road to the entrance of the Bab Al-Siq(literally Door of the Shaft), the Bedouin were just bringing out their horses so they could try to get tourists to ride them. But we passed on that and headed into the narrow valley that leads into Petra. The Siq is a narrow, winding passage of crimson sandstone warped into bizarre whorls by some ancient stream.

We walked down, taking pictures, and the walls of the canyon began to close in. Then, after at least a kilometer, we saw a crack of light. As we approached, we saw the classic shot that any photo-series on Petra has - the facade of the Treasury gleaming in the sun as we walked down the path. You know, the Indiana Jones thing. But it comes at you as a surprise, and it really is breathtaking.

We admired it for a while, having the place almost to ourselves aside from a few camel, two tourists and some Bedouin. It was really amazing - the peace and quiet, the solitude all contributed to the majesty of the sight. It wasn't nearly the same at the end of the day when it was swarmed with people - much less stirring. Anyways, we moved on - we were planning to do the Lonely Planet guide's two-day itinerary in about eight hours.

We walked down the valley, passing more tombs and carvings on either side. There are almost no buildings as such in Petra - just magnificent Classical Greek-style facades that the Nabateans carved for their tombs, store-rooms and palaces. They actually lived in tents, and I can't blame them - I wouldn't want to live in those artificial caves. The more I thought about it, the more I realized things haven't changed that much in 2000 years. There are still Bedouin with their camels and goats, still open-air markets in the middle of the city, still people coming from a long way to see the tombs and temples.

We passed the Ampitheatre and the Tombs of the Kings, all of which were almost entirely abandoned. There were a few other people walking around taking pictures, and lots of goats. Then we set off down the old Roman rode that runs down to the only free-standing structure in the area, the Qasr al-Bint: literally, Palace of the Girl. I have no idea why. Really, it's not all that impressive -although from an engineering standpoint, it's more difficult, the cliff-side facades just look so much cooler. And over time, the soft sandstone from which they were built has slowly eroded, leaving them with a weirdly melted look.

After a quick stop in the Nabatean Museum, we set off down the Wadi al-Deir, the long canyon at the end of the Petra valley. At the entrance to it their was a sign warning "Danger! Do Not Go Beyond This Point Without A Guide", in English. We were skeptical, and looking around, we didn't see any guides! So off we went. The climb was really nice, winding up through the sandstone valley, with a little side hike to a hidden, forested glade with the "Lion Tomb." We wound up further and further, catching glimpses of stunning vistas and marvelous sandstone formations, and making more than a few wrong turns. I guess if we had been blind and stupid, we might have been in some danger - there were a couple of paths that dead-ended into sheer drops. But it was no more perilous than your average hike.

Finally, we saw the summit of the climb in sight, with a tent set up to serve tea, coffee and hookah. It looked interesting, but not all that great - the view had been better further down. A British guy who had climbed the last five minutes with us quipped "I've half a mind to write to Lonely Planet about this."

Then we turned the corner. And there it was, "The Monastery", another facade easily the equal of "The Treasury"(both those names are misleading, they are neither!), but with a much more commanding view. We rested at the summit for a while, snacking on bread and peanut butter(a cheap traveler's best friend!) As we headed back down we ran into two of our travelling companions sipping tea and shisha, and talked to them for a little while. Their plan was even more ambitious than ours to go overland to Amman and then Damascus!

As we descended, we began to see more and more tourists. Then the donkeys laden with overweight Latino tourists - as well as other AUC students(not overweight, though) - started passing us, hogging the whole narrow stone path. By the time we got the bottom, the Wadi was flooded with tourists heading up to the site that we had enjoyed in relative peace and solitude. And of course, there were "guides" and touts offering to lead people up what was essentially a totally linear hike now filled with people going both ways, and offering the "official" warning sign as evidence of the danger!

We made our way against the stream and then headed for our final destination, the High Place of Sacrifice. This was essentially a cliff in the middle of the Petra valley with a long, long series of steps leading up to it. We made our way up, the sun now blazing down on us, and probably drank a good .75 litres of water apiece making it to the top. By the time we got there, 45 minutes of stair-climbing later, we were pretty beat, so we decided to make the High Place of Sacrifice the High Place of Lunch. Yeah, you guessed it - pita and peanut butter! And the best part - we'd done the Lonely Planet's two-day itinerary before lunch.

The view of Petra was pretty spectacular, but unfortunately the haze made it a lot less photo-genic than it could have been. I guess the valley kind of traps the hazy moisture. Finishing our lunch and finding ourselves surrounded by Russian tourists, we made our way down the other side of the cliff through another little valley with smaller, more finely-carved tombs and relics, including the house of the man who controlled the water cistern for pilgrims on the pilgrimage route.

Reaching the bottom, we had walked over 12 miles. We had to plow our way through tour groups to get out, and some Arab film company was even setting up a film shoot in front of the Treasury facade! It was utter madness getting out, and then we had to walk another mile to the town center to get money from the ATM. The fudgesicle thing I had on the way up was the best food I have ever tasted!!

We were so tired, the evening was pretty low-key: nap, wake up, eat dinner, have drinks in a 2000-year-old Nabatean cave tomb, a bit of al-Jazeera and then bed.