Cats, Camels, Ghosts, and More

So yes, it's been about a lifetime and a half since I last posted. And now, with just a handful of days before I head home, I'm going to do a bit of a catch-up post. These are just several vignettes talking about my last month or two in Cairo. In contrast to my last post, which was heavy, this one is light-hearted, and I won't make an effort to connect all these stories into a message or a theme because I haven't really found one that joins them. Furthermore, I won't write about one of the more remarkable weekends of the last couple of months. About two and a half weeks ago, I went to Beirut to have some meetings and try to find housing for next semester. I went right in the middle of the seven day mourning period for assassinated Energy Minister Pierre Gemayal. It was an incredible experience. But I figure I have six months to post about Beirut when I venture over there on January 10 to intern with The Daily Star.
So enjoy this post; and I'll try to finish strong in Egypt with at least one more post after this and then a third wrap-up post.

Ghosts of the Sinai
Since I've been in Cairo, I've fallen in love with the Sinai Peninsula. I've been numerous times and can't get enough. In fact, I just returned from my last trip on Sunday. Except for once, when I went with my parents to Sharm el-Sheikh, I've been going to a little strip of coastline called Ras Shaitan, literally meaning "Head of the Devil." It's a stunning place on the east coast of the peninsula, just about half an hour from Israel. It sits on the Gulf of Aqaba. Especially incredible is how at night you can see the lights from Saudi Arabia, right across the Gulf, the lights from Jordan, slightly north, and the lights from Israel, at the northern tip. You sit on these empty beaches, watching the calm surf, the jagged mountains, and the odd passing camel, you realize why this is a land worth fighting for.
I first heard about the ghosts of Sinai came when we were planning a trip there a few weeks ago. I asked my friend Tom, who's working here in Cairo, if his driver Ahmed would drive us there. He told me that he usually gives Ahmed the weekend off when he goes to Sinai because Ahmed is terrified of the ghosts there. Asking around, I found out that Egyptian legend has it that so much blood has been spilt on the land there that thousands of ghosts wander the peninsula and have been known to cause car wrecks there at night. Later, asking the Bedouins at the camp about the ghosts, they confirmed the myth. I've asked various people in Cairo, too, and found this to be a popularly held belief.
And then came our drive home from Ras Shaitan a few weeks ago. Driving back to Cairo involved driving straight east across the thick part of the peninsula, initially through about half an hour of coastal mountains followed by a four or five hour stretch of barren desert before reaching the tunnel under the Suez Canal.
We drove through the night, racing something of a night's sleep back in Cairo. It had been about an hour and a half since we'd seen our last town, or any form of civilization for that matter, when Tom got tired of driving and asked one of us to switch off with him. He pulled off the road, a precautionary but unnecessary step since we hardly ever passed any vehicles. As we all got out to switch seats, I looked across the road to see a turban-clad Bedouin man staring at us. Startled, we all rushed to hop back in the car. As I was hurrying, I said good evening to him in Arabic, to which he replied affably. As soon as all the doors to the car were shut, we raced off into the night, sure we'd pass a village over the next dune. Incredibly, we saw neither a house nor a village for another hour or two. Not only was this man hours driving from the nearest shelter, he happened to be right where we pulled over our car! While that episode didn't convince me that ghosts exist on Sinai, it sure explained to me why 75 million Egyptians think they do.
Photos in this section (in order of appearace): The town of Dahab at sunset; Me at sunset on the road leading into the mountains; Ras Shaitan and the mountains behind it; Me on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba with Saudi Arabia barely perceptible in the background.

Rip-Off!
As quick as Egyptians are to negotiate a good deal for themselves, they're just as quick and true in their honesty. Hand an Egyptian a 50 pound bill instead of a 50 piastre bill, they'll quickly point out your error and save you 49 and a half pounds. They'll play hardball when it comes to negotiations, but they'll always display incredible integrity when it comes down to it. I mean it: there's a heightened level of integrity here which is truly compelling. But with every rule, there are exceptions, and two weeks ago illustrated that honesty is never a universal virtue.
Coming home from classes at the end of the day, I did as normally would by hailing a taxi and told the driver my location. About two minutes into the ride, I got the typical question, "How much." You should know that Cairo taxis do not run on meters and that the prices are all about negotiations. I told him five pounds, about right for the distance. Later, we ran into incredible traffic and the driver, who was about my age, told me that five wouldn't be enough. I agreed because it's customary to pay more for trafficky rides. But I told him I only had a five pound bill and a one hundred pound bill. He told me that this wasn't a problem, to give him the one-hundred and he'd make change. He pulled out his money, and I handed him the hundred and he gave me back forty two! When I gave him a quizzical look he shot back, "You give me fifty, I give you 100." Furious, I demanded he give me a fifty. He coyly refused holding, a fifty pound bill at arms length. When I reached for it, he held it further away still. I tried again to take the money, but he wouldn't let me have it.
Sitting here writing this story, there's no good way to end it other than to tell you that we both left that taxi a little bruised (just shoving, no punching) but triumphantly holding my fifty pound note. It was only after I'd gotten out angrily that I realized I was in the middle of a bridge over the Nile with no sidewalk! It made for an interesting walk home through all the cars, and since the traffic was going about the same speed I was walking, the driver had plenty of opportunities to smirk at me from the comfort of his car. I merely waved the fifty pound note at him and smiled broadly.

Suckered by a Glass of Tea
While I'm on the subject of getting angry, I might as well tell you another story. Last week, during a five minute break in the middle of my three hour morning traditional Arabic class, I ran to the corner, as I had done so many times before, to take money out of an ATM. I used the Bank of Alexandria machine, and inserted my card. As soon as I gave it my card, the machine flashed a "Please remove your card" display, followed immediately by "Please insert your card." Just like that, my bank card was gone. My only means of cash had disappeared. Frantically, I asked the men who were sitting nearby where the Bank of Alexandria was located. One of them looked at me in bewilderment and said, "You used that machine? Why? That's an antique!" I could only roll my eyes and set off in search of the bank.
After being sent on a wild goose chase by would-be helpful policemen and doormen, I found the bank about half an hour later. I walked into the bank and told them my problem. At first they denied that they even had an ATM machine on the street I told them. After a while of negotiating, I finally obtained that admission from them. Just as quickly they insisted that there was nothing they could do, and that the confiscation of my card had been my fault for not keeping enough money in my account (I have plenty of money in my account). At this point, I flew off the handle. These people were clearly more interested in covering their own behinds than helping me get my card back. After making enough of a stink, they told me, of course, that they'd see what they could do. They told me not to bother waiting around and that they'd call me. I left and went back to class, having missed the almost the entire second half. I was steamed and more than a little nervous.
As my afternoon class began, I warned the teacher that I might have to take a call in the middle. Because it's a one-on-one, he had no problem with this. Sure enough, one hour into the two hour class, my phone rang. I answered the phone, and the woman from the bank told me I had to be at the bank in ten minutes. I asked her if I could be there in an hour. She told me, no, that it was absolutely critical that I be at the bank in exactly ten minutes or I'd likely miss my chance at getting the card back. So I apologized to the teacher and ran from school, sprinting all the way to the bank.
I arrived flustered and out of breath and asked them for my card. Sit down, they told me, it would come soon. Annoyed I took a seat and waited. And waited. And waited. About twenty minutes later, the rage in me had come to a boil. I had cut a class an hour short to make it there when they said, and they weren't doing a thing to help me. As I had really avoided doing for five and a half months in Cairo, I started yelling. I mean really yelling. It was civil, at least, but I took full advantage of the big vocal cords I have. In the middle of my rant, the bank manager looked at me and interrupted by saying, "Tea?" I stammered. "What?" I hissed. "Tea?" he repeated. I just started yelling again, "What the hell are you offering tea to me for? I just want my damn card back!" As I kept going, he gently picked up the phone and said quietly, "Lazim shay dilwaqti." We need tea now. Ignoring him, I kept on going until he interrupted, saying, "Sugar?" I just ignored him and kept howling. "Ziada," he said into the receiver. Lots of sugar. Two minutes later, an ancient little man rounded the corner with a glass of tea and pushed it into my stomach. I was obliged to take it. He then put an arm on my shoulder and gently guided me back into my seat. Before I knew it, I was drinking delicious Egyptian tea, quiet as a mouse, content with sipping the sweet tea he'd given me. Ten minutes later, my card came to me. I never said another peep.
It's hard to do justice in describing how they defused the situation, but tea is such a typically Egyptian way of dealing with a "situation" and the hospitality was so overwhelming, and the notion was so strong that you can't accept a gift from someone else and then still have them be your enemy, that I lost the rage immediately.

Back Handed Compliment
Like I told you, we went to Sinai this past weekend. I couldn't drive out there on Wednesday, when my friends went in a private car because I had class on Thursday, so I had to buy a bus ticket. My roommate Sam and I headed out to the bus terminal a few days before we wanted to leave, walked up to the window and inquired about bus times. I told the man that I wanted a 10:15pm ticket on "yom il-guma." Friday. The man took our money and printed out our tickets, and then Sam turned to me with alarm and said, "Theo, we want Thursday. You said Friday!" So in a flurry of flustered Arabic I apologized and told him that we need tickets for a day earlier. The man behind the desk went absolutely ballistic. He told me that it was "mish mumkin." Not possible. I told him, in somewhat of a white lie, that I get my days of the weeks confused in Arabic. He shot back that I should have just spoken English to him, to which I responded somewhat heatedly that I had come to Egypt to work on my Arabic.
He continued to yell for a while before heading out of sight to talk to his supervisor. He came back five minutes later with new tickets in hand, but was not going to let us get away without chewing me out a bit more. After a while, a well-dressed man behind us said to the man in Arabic that he should give me a break because I'm not that good at Arabic. And then came the moment of glory. The man behind the desk retorted that I spoke Arabic very well and that I understood everything and that language wasn't a valid excuse because of this. Hearing this, I got a proud smile on my face, and when he turned to give us our tickets, he was more than a little flustered that the kid he'd just yelled at for five minutes was grinning so broadly. Needless to say, that feeling of accomplishment stuck with me for most of the day. The daily struggles to master the language are all worthwhile just for those brief moments of unrestrained joy. It's too bad that sometimes the great moments come in the form of a good raking over the coals.

First Rain
In case you didn't know, it almost never rains in Cairo. On top of that, the rain is limited to December through February. My hopes of seeing a Cairo rain storm before I returned home were rewarded two weeks ago. Sitting in my apartment after dark a couple weeks ago, I heard an unfamiliar pitter-patter outside. At first I didn't register what was going on, but soon enough the magnitude of what was going on outside hit me. Cairo's first rain of the season.
I didn't even bother going to the window; I just grabbed my keys and sprinted to the elevator. I was horrified that the rain might stop before I made it outside. To my great relief, I landed on the sidewalk with a decent steady rain falling from the heavens. It was just the kind of rain that's decent and steady, but not one that would necessarily make you want to cover yourself. I stood outside very comfortably with no coat and no umbrella. That was me. The scene around me, by contrast, was utter chaos. Egyptians everywhere, running, sprinting, desperately covering their heads, heading for the nearest shelter. I laughed heartily as the frenzied scene unfolded around me.
The rain lasted only half an hour, and the city took about three days to drain. The only remarkable thing about the rainstorm came after I had been outside for about ten minutes and was ready to head in. As I turned to head back to the apartment, I felt my lips begin to tingle. After a minute, the tingling rose to the level of a dull throbbing. It never got any worse than that, but it was in that moment that I realized that we were being treated to an acid rain storm. I assume that the source of the rain is the Nile which, up and down, from Aswan to Alexandria, is immensely polluted. It was then that I realized that there was probably more sense in running for cover than I had initially imagined.

Basha
Let me take you back to the first day of Ramadan. Excited by what promised to be an exciting month, I decided to try fasting for a day or two just to see what it was like. I figured that as an aspiring Middle East historian, I should try to understand the culture of Ramadan by experiencing the fasting first-hand. I resolved only to fast for a day or two since I'm not Muslim and do not feel the spiritual element that carries so many Muslims through the month.
On the first day of Ramadan, I made the critical mistake of not getting up for the pre-dawn meal. I got up at eight, went to classes at nine, and came home by two in the afternoon. What makes the fasting so difficult isn't that you can't eat. What makes it so tough is that you're forbidden to drink. It was still very hot in Cairo, and by the time I came home from classes, I was dying for a glass of water. I'm lucky that I'm not a smoker because I can only imagine how tough going without nicotine all day must be.
By about three in the afternoon, I was not a happy camper. I was sitting on the sofa not doing anything, and so my mind lingered on my hunger. With a good deal of resolve, I stood up and went down to the big supermarket in the basement of my building. I decided that I'd spend the last two hours before the break-fast buying a cooking food. I smiled to myself because I wanted to make something tasty, but in my four months in Cairo I had only mastered the art of spaghetti and tomato sauce. Several other failed cooking adventures over the months persuaded me to stick to my one dish. On the first day of Ramadan, however, I knew things would be different. I bought sausages, egg plants, tomatoes, rice (the proper cooking of which still remains elusive to me), and a variety of other foods. I headed upstairs very pleased with myself and began to prepare the meal.
It was about five minutes into my little adventure that a terrible thing happened. I was standing in front of the stove trying to light it when a giant New York City sized rat ran across my foot and under the stove. I jumped about thirty feet in the air yelling to the high heavens. I ran from the kitchen and tried to catch my breath in the living room. I didn't know what to do since I didn't want to be in the kitchen, but at the same time I had lots of food ready to be cooked and a belly that was grumbling. I'll cut the rest of the story short, except to say that it was quite an experience cooking an entire meal while standing on two dining room chairs, leaping from one to the other to move items from the refrigerator to the cutting board to the stove. And as for how the food itself turned out, let me just say that spaghetti and tomato sauce remains, to this day, the only dish I can cook.
Over the next week, the rats, yes two rats, made frequent appearance. While they stayed in the kitchen, they would run across the floor right as I, or my roommate Sam, went in there to get something. After a little while, we decided we need to do something. The problem was that because there are so many stray cats in the city, there are hardly any rats or mice to speak of. Consequently, stores don't carry mouse traps. After a week of searching, we were desperate. Finally, one night, when a big group of friends had gathered at our house, we asked for advice. After about half an hour of discussion, we decided what we needed to do: find a cat.
That night, we spent some time trying, unsuccessfully to catch a stray. The very next day, we headed to Giza, southwest of Cairo, to a pet store that my friend, Tom, knew. The pet store had only three cats. Two of them looked on the verge of dying of some terrible eye disease. The third one, however, looked healthy and strong. The assembled group discussed the cat for a while, and after a quick bit of negotiating on the price, we walked out with her.
When we got home, a raucous debate ensued as to what to name her. Finally we settled on Basha, the title given to pre-Nasser nobility and a term still used by the lower classes when addressing the more affluent (my doorman, for example, always calls me Basha).
Basha has turned out to be the perfect cat; she's sweet and playful by day, and she's a savage hunter by night. She wasn't always that way. One day, about a week after we'd bought her, Basha had followed me into the kitchen when the rat ran through. Basha took one look at that thing and ran into the corner of my bedroom where she hid for most of the night. But then she got her sea legs. When our handy-man was doing work on our kitchen sink a week, or so, later, he came out and announced that he'd found a dead rat right by one of the little holes that they normally get into the apartment through. So not only had Basha killed the rat, but she'd left the rat right by the hole as a message to the others. Needless to say, we have neither seen nor heard from the rats since. Since the disappearance of the rats, Basha has adopted with ease her role as a peace-time pet. She's up every morning to greet me, sitting patiently on my bed everyday as I get ready for school. While she sleeps most of her afternoons away, she comes alive at around ten at night and leaps from chair to chair in the living room until I go to bed. She proved to be a little mischievous, however, one day when I was making popcorn. I was working at my computer when I got up to go take the popcorn of the stove. When I returned, I was shocked to find that my "t" key had been nabbed! I looked all over for it: under the sofa, in her food bowl (where she likes to keep little knick-knacks she finds around the apartment), and in my bedroom. It never turned up. I've since had to make due by prying the "]" key off and putting it in the "t" spot.
When I leave for the States later this week, my friend Moustafa will adopt Basha.

Three Legged Camels
I'd always heard about the camel market. Just outside of Cairo, it was supposed to be quite the spectacle. I had tried to go a couple times, but various things had intervened and prevented me from making it there. One day, my roommate Sam and I resolved to make it there no matter what the circumstances. The difficulty was that it only happened on Friday mornings and it began at six in the morning and all but finished by noon.
That morning, just a couple weeks ago, we got up around six and made it out the door twenty minutes later. Friday is a weekend day in Cairo, and there were almost no cars and no people on the road when we headed out. Because of this, we had several taxi drivers vying for our business. We ended up going with the one who spoke the best English and offered us the best price. We laughed all the way because, not knowing we spoke Arabic, had double crossed some of the other cabbies, using his bilingualism to his advantage.
The market was in the town of Ballish, just north and west of Cairo. Because of the open roads, we flew out of the city and were quickly driving through miles of farm land, punctuated periodically by squallorous villages. After about forty five minutes, we made it to Ballish. Asking for directions there, we found that the market was a good deal outside of town. It was a tricky journey out there that required a lot of turns down progressively smaller roads. But with each person we asked for directions, it became clear that we were fast approaching our destination. What let us know that we were almost there was a giant dead camel rotting by the side of the road. Before long, we rounded a corner and saw the expanse of the market ahead of us. After giving a couple pounds to mollify a man who demanded that we buy admission tickets, we began to navigate our way.
Let me describe for you the location first. On a vast expanse of dirt, two rows of ramshackle huts had been built about forty yards apart from one another creating a sort of road between them. All the business was done here. Breaks in the huts gave entrance to small side "courtyards," for lack of a better word, that also had camels.
There is one visual element that initially strikes a visitor. Most of the camels have one of their front legs folded up and tied at the knee joint. This makes it harder for the camels to run away, and astounded me as I looked out across a sea of seemingly three legged animals. The market has literally thousands of camels that have been driven north from Sudan across the desert to Cairo. Each herder has his spot on the road with between ten and fifty camels that he has either standing or sitting.
Sam and I walked down the road, surrounded on all sides by camels, trying to take it all in. One striking element of the market is the brutality with which the herders treat their animals. They all have three foot long sticks and slam their camels relentlessly with them. There's a difference between hitting a camel harder than a Westerner would like to see in order to get the camel moving from spot to another, and hitting a stationary camel repeatedly with no apparent motive.
One of the really incredible sights was witnessing the auctions. When a large enough group of people became interested in a camel, the owner would urge it away from the herd and his assistants would begin hitting it from all sides to show off its dexterity as it hobbled around. The owner would then hold court, animatedly trying to drive up the price. Understanding Arabic, it was fascinating for me to hear his tactics and listen as the price surged upwards. Twice we saw, at the conclusion of the auction, two men begin punching and shoving each other, an event that quickly escalated as men took sides and began swinging. Eventually the brawls would die out and the men would move on.
Like I mentioned, the camels are literally everywhere. At one point, Sam and I were standing on the road looking at some camels when I heard something behind me. I turned around to see an entire herd racing towards us. I had almost spotter them too late, but Sam and I ran (it was not easy to figure out where since camels were all over the place) and found refuge in a pack of lying-down camels.
Later, we found that one of the huts in the middle of the market was serving tea and shisha. The men at the market were shocked to see us come in, sit down, and order up a shisha. While we were sitting in the hut our driver appeared, as he had a couple times already, looking concerned and asking whether we were alright. He could not believe that we had wanted to come out to the market to begin with, and was constantly worried that the two white boys would be eaten up by this rough and tumble place. In the hut, we began talking to a little boy, probably thirteen years old, who was presumably the son of one of the herders. We asked him which were the best camels at the market, and at the end of our shisha he took us to one of the small side court yards and revealed to us a small herd of snowy white camels, well-fed and healthy looking. The owner looked like a king as he auctioned off one of his prized animals. No brawls here.
After this, we headed back to the car, passing by a dog that was dragging himself by his front legs, which happened to be his only two, just to punctuate the destitution of the market. On the way home, I had an interesting language issue in one of the villages. I asked the driver to pull over at a sweet potato vendor to pick up some breakfast. The man, waiting in front of his donkey-drawn stand, looked as though he had never seen a white person before. And there's a good chance he hadn't. I walked up and asked him how he was doing and then asked for two sweet potatoes. As he had his back to me preparing the food, I tried to make conversation by asking him how his donkey was doing, "Izzay homarak?" He wheeled around with a look of fury before calming down and answering when he saw me pointing to his steed. I was a bit surprised by his initial anger and asked my friend Moustafa about it later. Moustafa doubled over in laughter, explaining to me that to ask "How's your donkey?" is an expression that essentially means, "You're an idiot." Still so much to learn….

The Class

Below this post, I've put up another one with a few little updates from my life here. I just posted it yesterday. Please check it out if you have a chance.

For the past couple of months in Cairo, I've been engaged in a truly eye-opening project. I've been teaching English classes to and assisting with research on Sudanese refugees in Cairo. I came by this project through a girl I met this summer named Sarah who studies at Barnard in New York. She was working on her Arabic in Cairo this summer before heading to Amman, Jordan for her semester abroad. She introduced me Jacob, a Norwegian, who had accompanied his wife to Cairo for her new job, and he had since become deeply involved in researching the plight of the Sudanese in Cairo. The American University had given him grant money, and he has been working under the auspices of the Forced Migration Department there. He was looking specifically at, and this is what I started looking at too, the recent proliferation of Sudanese youth gangs in the city.

Before I really jump in and begin telling you about the classes I taught and about Sudanese refugees in general, let me give you a little anecdote that is really representative of the place that Sudanese refugees hold in Egyptian culture. I got in a taxi one day and began an Arabic conversation with my taxi driver. The conversation began as it always did, by the driver asking me where I'm from. I told him that I was American and he gave me a broad smile and a thumbs-up. We started talking about various world figures, and I asked him his opinion on each. He told me how much he respected Nasser and Sadat, which was pretty much a given. He told me that he supported Mubarak as well. The conversation turned to America and the driver first professed his admiration for Jimmy Carter (widely loved in Egypt because of his efforts for peace), then he began naming others like Reagan and Clinton and telling me why he liked them. Next, I brought up Bush and was astonished to hear the driver tell me of his deep respect for the current President. Figuring I had to find out what bothered this guy, I brought up my sure-fire bet: Israel. Again to my surprise, he told me that he could not harbor any ill-feelings towards Israel because the history was far too long and complicated to assign blame to just one side. Surprised, I allowed the conversation to lapse into silence. As I neared my destination, the driver asked me where I was going. I told him that I was going to teach an English class to a group of Sudanese. He only laughed. When I asked him if he liked the Sudanese, he simply shook his head and said to me "Humma ghabi awwi." "They're so stupid."

So it was in this kind of atmosphere that I began my classes.

Now a quick word about the Sudanese. Coming from the States, it's hard to imagine that Cairo would be an aspiration for anybody, but for those caught in the crossfire of Sudan's north-south civil war, this city is just that: salvation. The civil war, which ended only last year, was an ethnic struggle between the northern Arab populations and the blacks in the south. Please note, this is not the same as the conflict in Darfur which, due to the power imbalance, is not a war but a genocide. Many from Sudan's black population in the south have managed to escape to Cairo and have overwhelmed a city that is already poor and lacking in jobs. As a result, the government of Egypt has done a mediocre job, at best, at handling the influx of Sudanese. All the refugees fall into one of three legal categories. If they are blue-card holders, then they are legal permanent refugees. Yellow-card holders have been granted temporary refugee status, a legal limbo. The majority of the refugees, however, are unregistered.

While the older Sudanese associate with their tribes, many from the younger population have shed those old affiliations in Cairo. Instead, the last year or year and a half have seen the formation and expansion of gangs which provide a sense of safety through communal identity and a social network that insures nobody goes hungry or homeless. Jacob, the man through whom I was teaching a researching, was looking specifically at two rival gangs, the Outlaws and the Lost Boys, in the hopes that through a better understanding of these gangs, there might be an opportunity to replace these gangs with other frameworks that would provide the same support for these kids that the gangs currently do. What is so alarming about these gangs, Jacob told me, was how when they first formed, they used to fight with kicks and punches. He said that the fighting had progressed and that the gangs had started using sticks with which to beat each other. Just in the last couple of months, though, the gangs had begun to get their hands on swords and this had resulted in serious injuries among various members.

Let me explain the role that the English classes play. They serve, essentially, two purposes. First, by bringing the gangs into the controlled environment of the classroom, they make for good research topics. Through conversations before and after class and through various writing and speaking exercises in class, it is possible to get a pretty good read on them. The second reason for the classes shows how this is a perfect example of service-learning, a concept that I was deeply involved with at Middlebury. The researchers, headed by Jacob, ask for a lot from the refugees. Even though the project seeks to improve the conditions of these displaced people, it asks from them a lot, it asks for them to open up and trust these outsiders with their inner-most workings. In a country of tremendous hostility, that sacrifice is more excruciating than one might imagine. In return, we offer these English classes as a hope for a better future. The bottom line is that the English classes provide a portal through which to do research, but they also provide a serious service to the refugees.

There's one more important point to make. Because of the influx of refugees, the Egyptian government has a near zero-tolerance policy towards them. This means that if the refugees are arrested for any reason, including inter-gang violence, they are sent back to the Sudan. Here's the catch, though. These southern Sudanese are sent to Sudan's capital, Khartoum, which is in the north-central part of the country. Essentially, these southerners are sent to the northern capital, the enemy capital from the civil war. There they are treated as hostiles and taken into custody, where they are likely tortured and killed. It would be as if we arrested a Sunni Iraqi and handed him over to local militia authorities in a Shiite region of Iraq. What's more, it doesn't take a lot here for the authorities to arrest Sudanese. They'll look for any reason to scoop them up and get them out of the country. The point is, keeping your nose clean as a refugee is no guarantee of safety. But if these refugees can learn English to a level of decent proficiency, then they stand a good chance of being selected in the government's relocation project, through which they will have the opportunity to start a new life in a more free English-speaking country like the U.S. or Australia.

It was with these stakes, with these people straddling the line between a painful demise in a dirty Khartoum prison and a new life in America, that I entered that classroom for the first time.

I was teaching to members of the Dinka tribe, one of southern Sudan's largest, at the their tribal house, the Twic (pronounced Tweech) House in the lower-middle class neighborhood of Abasiyya. Not everyone in the class was a gang member. Some were older, maybe late twenties or thirty, and worked menial jobs around Cairo. Many in the class, though, belonged to the Lost Boys gang, and they were easily identifiable by their Tupac shirts, football jerseys, sideways hats, and occasional smell of beer. Jacob had decided to include some non-gang members to act as leaders in the class. Either way, either by blood or by affiliation, they all belonged to the Dinka tribe. Going to the Twic House is really the one place I've been in Cairo where I really turn heads. I'd always take a taxi as close as I could and would end up walking the last few blocks down a tiny road with closed down store fronts, a few shisha cafes, and a handful of auto-shops. Walking down this street, I'd see every eye lift because they were just that un-used to seeing white people in that part of town. The Twic House is a massively rundown apartment on the second floor of a crumbling townhouse. I would always walk in, at first with a co-teacher and later by myself, to a front room packed with people watching whatever junk television they could find. I'd then be ushered into the office where I'd sit with the directors of the house, chatting and drinking tea for a few minutes before heading into the classroom.

I'd always teach in one of three classrooms, all about the same size, while the other two were always filled with dozens of Sudanese huddled around a game of backgammon or poker. When I began my first class, the director followed me in and gave a prayer of thanks for my presence in the class and then left. And for the first time, I was alone, facing a class of expectant students. I also noticed that they were all standing, and they didn't sit even when I started teaching. I had to implore them several times to take a seat so that I could proceed. I would come to learn that this was a sign of respect that they would afford me every time I walked into the classroom. Also, they all called me "teacher" because after weeks of trying to say "Theo," they resigned themselves and never tried again.

The class was about twenty-five students and met twice a week from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. The range of English ability was pretty substantial, so it was a challenge to meet everybody's needs. I taught from two text-books and I would plan lessons meticulously beforehand. One of the most popular exercises was doing error sentences, in which I'd write something on the board like, "The students is doing his homework," and I'd ask them to find the error. The first few classes proved to be the most difficult because people weren't comfortable participating, but after a couple weeks, a sentence like the one above would cause an eruption of debate and conversation as several theories would swirl around the class. It was typical that after a minute or two's discussion, two possibilities would be posed to me. Usually, one would be the correct answer (remove the s from "students") and the other would be some far-flung idea, like re-ordering the sentence strangely. It's amazing to me how predictably lessons like this would play out. It was always easier for me to explain why the one answer was right rather than making them understand why their other ideas didn't work. But I made do.

Other lessons included simple reading comprehension, two-man conversations in which they had to use new vocabulary, listening to songs and understanding the lyrics, and dictation to work on their spelling. In the first class I taught, I brought in a Beatles song with the lyrics printed up. They loved so much listening to the song and figuring out its lyrics that from then on various members of the class would come up to me an beg, "Teacher, teacher, can we please listen to more Boogies songs?" After explaining for the hundredth time that the group was actually the Beatles, I gave up with amused frustration.

The first few classes were especially nice because I got to teach with my friend Sarah before she left for Amman. She was great because she spoke much clearer than I did. I'd ask her to do the difficult grammatical concepts because she was more measured and more comprehensible. Once she left, understanding that I spoke too quickly, I asked the students to just raise their hands if they couldn't understand me. Always, when I'd be discussing grammar, there would come a point when I realized that they were close to understanding. Predictably, I'd get excited and start speeding up and speaking louder, words would tumble out on top of one another, and then I'd see that first modest hand start to rise, followed by about a half dozen more. I'd have to stop, apologize, regroup, and try again.

These students were some of the most devout Christians I've ever met. When asked to form sentences, they would typically include prayer or church in their writing. After a lesson about direction, I asked them for homework to write out directions from one place to another. Only a small handful had something other than the church as their destination. One of the most amazing things about teaching is that periodically, probably five or six times in total, a different member of the class would raise his hand at the beginning, stand up, and talk about how my presence in the classroom was a gift from God, and that it was a sign of peace and of brighter days ahead for them. Imagine all of that coming from a guy who has Tupac on his shirt, a hat pulled down so low, you can't even see his eyes, and is a member of a violent gang. In the States, he's known as a dangerous punk, but add religion and he becomes a Christian struggling for survival and to stay on God's path.

Aside from various details of gang life, all of which I've passed along to Jacob for his consideration and inclusion into his reports, I got to understand the struggle that these gang members face between God and survival, two elements which are often contradictory in this city. The right path versus the necessary path. Conversations with the gang members reveal that this struggle is constantly simmering just below the surface.

To conclude, I want to tell you about one of my days teaching. This experience was one of those hauntingly inspiring events that I know will stick with me for a long time. I began my usual Thursday class at 7:00pm, going through all the usual types of lessons. We had begun a lesson on movie vocabulary (comedy, thriller, tragedy, laugh cry, exciting, etc.). I knew that movie vocabulary wasn't the most important thing to them, so I tried to steer away from that and teach them how each word was relevant in other ways, independent of film.

Because of the intense heat, I always began my classes with the lights off. By about 7:30 that night, it was getting dark, so as usual I walked over to the switch and flipped it. No lights. I tried again and again without success. I told my class I'd be right back and left to find the director. After asking him about the lights, he explained to me that they hadn't been able to pay their bill quite yet and that while I'd have lights by the next time I returned, tonight I was out of luck. I went back into the classroom and explained this to my class. The problem, too, was that because we were on a very dark street, we wouldn't be helped at all by light from there. And so I suggested to the class the next logical step. I said to them that we should leave it here for the night and pick up where we left off next week. I started gathering my things to leave while all the students huddled in intense discussion. Then, one of the better English speakers stood up and said to me, "Teacher. We need you here tonight to teach us. We need to learn English and we need you here by the grace of God." I considered this for a moment and saw that it had to be done. The desperation with which these people needed to learn English was too much to turn my back on. And so I closed the notebook on my meticulously planned lesson, put the chalk away since they would not be able to see the board, and began to teach to them as they faded into total darkness. Their skin was so dark that I literally could not see them, but for a couple who, by virtue of sitting next to the window, were illuminated in profile. And so that night, I taught for an hour and a half to a classroom of ghosts, people I could not see, but whose energy I could certainly feel. I made them act movie parts, discuss the meaning of science-fiction, listen to my sentences and find the errors in my grammar. They rose to the challenge, participating eagerly, while always deferring to the other invisible figures.

As the class came to a close, one of the voices from the left side of the classroom rose with a question. "Teacher, what is tragedy?" He had remembered it from our vocabulary list from before it got too dark. I had purposely omitted any of the heavier words from our discussion because I had figured that levity was the best way to make it through a class without lights. I began to explain to the class what it meant, but it then occurred to me that displaced from their homeland, sitting in a falling-down building in a dirt poor neighborhood, learning English out of the sheer desperation that stemming from the need for survival, these kids were living a tragedy. I didn't tell them that, though. When I finished describing tragedy, I suppose I hadn't done a very good job because one of them asked me about the difference between a tragedy and a drama, one of our earlier vocabulary words. Realizing I didn't really know the difference, I told them that a tragedy is a drama in which everyone dies. Then I understood that I was standing there in front of these students in the modest hope that I could play some small role in insuring that when all was said and done their story could be recorded in the books of history as a drama, not a tragedy.

News

First a quick word on my absence from this blog over the past month and a brief update on what I'm up to now.

About a month ago, my computer decided that it couldn't handle the culture shock of Egypt and had a total meltdown. When I tried to turn it on it sounded as though some small animal was loose inside and the screen wouldn't even pretend to be making an effort. So about one month of back and forth with the computer company has left the computer back in my hands with a whole new hard drive and all my old files deleted. I've saved my old hard drive in the hopes that some American computer geek can do what several Egyptian computer geeks were unable to do. While my computer was on the fritz I never managed to post from the over-priced, smoky, and incredibly slow internet cafes around. Now I'm back and I'm determined to post several times a week for my last two and a half months in Cairo.

But enough about computers….

Let me give you a quick news update, although I'll be short on details because many of these tidbits I'll flesh out over the next few weeks into full fledge posts.

Just over a month ago, I moved apartments. I used to live in the neighborhood of Dokki on the west bank of the Nile but found out that my apartment, while dirt-cheap by U.S. standards, was actually costing me far more than an apartment should. My friend Moustafa helped me look for a new place and I lucked out in renting an apartment in the neighborhood of Zamalek. Ironically, Zamalek, an island in the middle of the Nile, is one of the swankiest and richest neighborhoods in Cairo, but my apartment here is costing me an arm and a leg less than my old one in Dokki.

I'm in my fourth one-month long semester at Kalimat. As ever, I'm taking a traditional Arabic class in the morning and a colloquial class in the afternoon. The traditional classes go up by half-levels, so I'm currently in 4.5, in which we read lots of newspaper articles and the most basic of Naguib Mahfouz stories. Colloquial classes go up by whole levels, and I had to skip the fourth level because I was the only one to sign up for it, so now I'm in the fifth level which mainly consists of advanced grammatical topics and strangely basic odds-and-ends vocabulary, the type that never found a place in the lower levels like animals and body-parts.

It's Ramadan here now; we're two weeks into it and have about two weeks to go. I have a long post on this forthcoming, but I'll tell you now that it's been a fascinating time that, while tedious, has been an incredible insight into many aspects of the Egyptian persona and the Islamic culture.

Finally, I've managed to add one more Egyptian trip to my name since I last posted. A couple of weeks ago, a few friends of mine and I ventured to the Sinai peninsula for a beach weekend. Needless to say, the adventure of the whole thing deserves a whole post, one I hope to get up by next week. More on travel…. The parents are on their way to Cairo in fewer than two weeks and Sharm al-Sheik, Aswan, and Luxor are on the travel list. More on that when it happens.

So that's all for now. Please check back soon!

Churches, Synagogues, and Mosques: My Trip to Coptic Cairo

Sorry it’s been so long since the last post. The Mother came to visit about ten days ago and she ran me ragged from dawn till dusk doing everything Cairo has to offer. But she’s left now, and I will have a post coming sometime soon on her visit. But for now, enjoy this one.

“Copt or Coptic?” This is what I woke up saying to myself one morning. I had decided to spend the day in Coptic Cairo but was annoyed that I had neglected to do my research in advance. Feeling weekend-lazy, the only way I could get moving was to excuse myself from doing some advance fact-finding. I decided I’d go in cold and figure out this mysterious district of southern Cairo on the fly. But I just had to know: are they called Copts or Coptics? Surely, I figured, this was the least I could do. But when I began considering going back to bed, I gave up on even this minor piece of information, took a shower, and headed out.

After a brief stop in Islamic Cairo to take some photos, I caught a taxi to Coptic Cairo. I wasn’t sure how to tell the driver where I wanted to go, but my knowledge of the city was good enough that I could get him headed in the right direction while I tried everything from repeating “Kanisa! Kanisa!” (Church! Church!) to genuflecting, to asking him to pull over so I could try to ask an English speaker for help. When all these failed, I was at a loss until I finally saw a church spire, which I pointed to while enthusiastically exclaiming in Arabic, “I want the place with lots of those!” That seemed to get to him, and with a big smile we made the next left and headed off.

Ten minutes later we pulled up to a police road block and I was made to understand that this was the end of the road. I paid my driver, hopped out, and started walking the rest of the way. It was a strange scene. Because no cars were allowed on the road, there was an unnatural calm and civility that was compounded by the fact that all the building were sparkly white. Although all the store fronts were filled with people, there was a tangible calm on this three block corridor to the world of Coptic Cairo.

Entering this strange place, I could not help but realize how defensive the layout of the area is. All of the churches are contained within a twenty foot tall white wall. Moreover, they are all huddled together in a way that reminded me of how the pioneers used to make camp by circling up all of their covered wagons in a defensive posture. Taking it further, the pioneers needed to create for themselves a small circle of harmony that could at least provide the illusion of safety because the outside world was vast and alien and almost always adversarial. This, too, is Coptic Cairo.

The geography of the place is confusing. You might think that once you enter the gates the Coptic world would open up to you. But you’d be wrong. Sometimes a church would be right through a gate along the wall. Other times you’d find churches down a number of turns through tiny alleyways.

I’ve tried throughout my time here to establish some independence from my guide book. I say this mostly tongue in cheek, but I do have to be careful sometimes to try to think a bit independently so that I can have a unique experience, all my own. As soon as I arrived to the first church, however, I decided to take a quick look in the book. At the beginning of the section is a little information box titled “The Copts.” First mystery solved. The bottom line is that the book proved so reliable in helping navigate the twists and turns of the neighborhood, that I used it all the way through. From here on, any history comes from The Rough Guide to Egypt, but the observations are all mine.

The first church was the Hanging Church. Ok, I’d bet that the church was not named that by early Copts but rather by those hoping to bring in generous tourists. Now, if I were a tourist minded fellow, I would be careful not to over-sell on the title if the location itself cannot live up. Entering the gates of the Hanging Church, I had visions of an architectural mystery explained away as divine intervention by centuries of graying monks.

Instead, I saw a perfectly nice church, its perfect white front wall attesting to the care with which it’s been up kept. Ascending the dozen stairs to the church itself, I realized how picturesque and humble it all was. Upon entering the church, I took a look around and got my introduction to the plain style with which the Copts build their houses of worship. The walls were very plain, probably brick or plaster and there were some paintings of holy figures on the walls with candles lit in their honor. The ceiling of the church was wooden with intricate beams criss-crossing and leaving little room for the few stained-glass windows nestled within the maze of beams. The pews were all plain wood. In spite of the physical modesty, there was something grand about the place. Our church in Bangall, New York, for example, is bigger than this one, but the majesty of the two is incomparable. I suppose that what gives it this stature its lasting nature, the idea that it has been around for so many centuries and will be around for many more.

After I had checked it all out, I asked the souvenir saleswoman at the front while they called it the Hanging Church. While her answer was a letdown with regard to the word hanging, something else she said was fascinating. The church was built on two stanchions (that I later saw through a window on the floor of the church), which hold the church fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. The reason that this church was built so high is because the Nile used to flood up to it back in the seventh century when it was built. It was built, therefore, on the two towers of the “Water Gate.” I should point out how dramatic the flooding must have been since the church is several blocks away from the river.

After leaving the church, I followed the outside of the guard wall to the twin pillars of Trajan’s fortress build in 130AD. Because one of the turrets is falling apart, the bowels of thing are exposed and the sophistication of the architecture can be understood.

I also took a quick look into the grounds of the church and monastery of St. George where I saw the grandest and most regal church that Coptic Cairo has to offer. The only round church in Cairo, the Church of St. George defines the skyline of this neighborhood, and its ornate insides are a testament to the importance that Copts bestow on it.

All of these buildings that I’ve mentioned thus far were accessible from the main road outside the gates, but past the cemetery of St. George was a set of stairs, leading to a dark underground tunnel, which in turn led to the heart of the neighborhood. The end of the short tunnel opened up into another strange alleyway which was as narrow as some of those in Islamic Cairo but different in that it was much cleaner and light on commerce. There were some shops and vendors, but there was also a misplaced peace about it.

I took only a quick peek into the Convent of St. George, noticing he sheep and doves in the front lawn, and deciding against following my guidebook’s advice of begging the nuns to wrap me in St. George’s chains for a photo-op.

From here I would meander my way down many an alleyway to look in this or that church. Because many of the churches looked similar in their cimplicity, I’ll spare you the play-by-play, but I’ll note a few memorable moments.

After leaving the convent, I took a couple turns down the alley before ducking under a five foot tall opening in the wall and making my way down yet another road to the Church of St. Sergius, founded in the fifth century. When I walked into the church, there was a rather large tourist family standing near the entrance. I had been in the church for about a minute when I suddenly heard a commotion from where the family was. I looked over to see a Coptic priest, black robes, gold chains, gray beard and all, yelling (and I mean yelling) at a boy in the group who looked about my age. The priest’s Arabic was too fast and furious for me to follow, but at the end of the tirade, the priest reached way back and laid a hard slap on the face of the frightened young man. The priest then chased the family out, and they kept running until they were halfway down the block. The only thing faster than they were… was me. As a confirmed, God-fearing Catholic, I knew to put as much distance as possible in as little time as possible between me and an angry priest.

I checked into a few more churches before trying to find the Church of St. Barbara, which was marked as particularly remote on my map. Wandering around for a while, I finally asked one of the many, many policemen for directions. He sent me off on my way with a few quick instructions, and I made my way to the church, took a quick look around inside, and headed back. The return, however, was not as simple as I had imagined. When I got back to the little gateway, guarded by the policeman who’d given me directions, he appeared from the other side of the entrance and planted himself firmly in my way. My first instinct, that he wanted to try out some English on me, turned out to be wrong. All he said to me was, “Money.” When I didn’t reply, he repeated, “Money,” adding, “I give you help before.” Having faced cops like this one before (I may have even blogged about them already), I was not about to back down. I’ve learned that while policemen feel emboldened to ask for money, their uniform constrains them from pushing too much. Not about to give this guy even the pleasure of a conversation, I said, “No.” With that, he gave me one of this looks as though he was expecting me to finish the sentence with a “Pleeeeaaase. I don’t have a lot of money.” If he wasn’t going to get money from me, he at least wanted a little pleading. “No,” I repeated. This guy clearly didn’t want to push his luck because he backed down and let me pass with a forced smile.

One quick word. I’ve found that everyone in Cairo understands the word “No.” I’ve also found that “No” has a much more confident and effective ring to it that its Arabic equivalent, “La.” Try walking down the street someday when you’re being solicited and just say to everyone, “La, la, la, la.” It doesn’t radiate confidence.

After the incident with the policeman, I realized that I had seen all the churches, so I headed to the only place left in Coptic Cairo: The Ben Ezra Synagogue. According to my guidebook, there are fewer than two hundred Jews left in Egypt. If this is true, then by entering that synagogue, I was witnessing some strange bookends of history. Let me explain. According to tradition, this ornate structure was build on the site that Moses the infant was plucked from the bulrushes on the banks of the flooded Nile by the Pharoah’s daughter. Moses, of course, led the Jews out of Egypt in an escape from their oppressors. With only two hundred Jews left in Egypt, I couldn’t help but feel the symbolism in standing on the site that witnessed the beginnings of the man who would lead the great exodus, and in living in the time, thousands of years later, when that exodus was nearly reaching completion.

When I left the synagogue, I followed the maze back out to the main road and set off on a small walk to find a taxi. Before I could find one, I saw the hulking structure of a monolithic mosque. Flipping through my guidebook, I found that this was the Amr Mosque, a direct descendant of Egypt’s first mosque. Captivated by the obvious symbolism in visiting a church, a synagogue, and a mosque all in one day, I took off my shoes at the threshold and walked in. All I could hear was the whir of hundreds of ceiling fans. Spread out across the vast colonnade were a couple dozen men lying on the floor, enjoying the shade and the cool breeze. While mosques I would visit on other days would be magnificent in their architecture, this one was plain, build functionally fourteen-hundred years ago to hold the entire Muslim army. I strolled for a while, enjoying the tranquility and the silence. Soon I put my shoes back on and headed out.

As I had my hand raised waiting for a taxi, my mind wandered, as it often does, to this blog. I thought with a good deal of excitement about the post I could write about the day. Visiting a church, a synagogue, and a mosque all in one day is certainly good material given what’s going on in the world today. But I’ve resisted rambling on about that point and will instead leave it to you, the reader, to consider the importance of that, to understand the magnitude of being able to do that in, of all places, Cairo, which is a place not all that far from countries where the privilege of visiting houses of worship of these three religions would be next to impossible.

A Little Slice of Egypt

Egypt struggles with a constant tug of war between the conservative Islamic world and the modern western world. This past week, I have had the pleasure (and at some points, shock) of witnessing the frontlines of this battle as it played out in the world of popular culture. It took about a second and a half after I arrived in Egypt before I first started hearing about the phenomenon of The Yacoubian Building. Written four years ago by an Egyptian dentist, this novel raised some eyebrows and earned moderate sales at the time, but when the region’s most famous actors came together last year to make it into a movie, the book became iconic and explosive, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear some discussion of it.

When I went to the American University bookstore a couple weeks ago, I asked the manager what books were the biggest ones in the country at present. He said two things: anything by Naguib Mahfouz and The Yacoubian Building. Aside from it being fascinating that books Mahfouz wrote fifty years ago are still hot, I became enthralled with the whole culture surrounding this other book that everyone was talking so much about. I had heard descriptions of The Yacoubian Building that ranged from “Oh, it’s not that bad!” to “It’s disgusting, some of the things he wrote,” and I realized that this book held a major key to understanding the war over social decency in Egypt.

The book is a series of stories that tells about the lives of ten or so Egyptians. The common thread that binds all of them is that they all live in or work at a large and historically important building in downtown called the Yacoubian Building. The stories are interwoven, with each chapter lasting just a couple pages before leaping to another character’s tale. The beauty of the book is that each story plods along, granting an intriguing look into Egyptian society, until they all reach jarring, but unforced, climaxes at the end.

My first impression of the book, after a sitting in which I read the first fifty pages, was that this was a cheap story over-focused on sex. Everybody at the beginning was having cheap lustful sex plagued with the guilt of defying Egypt’s conservative social norms. But as I read on, I understood the mastery of the writing, that this was an amazing character study that showed how often survival in Cairo meant a betrayal of one’s values.

I want to get into the plot a little here, so I recommend you stop reading this post if you think you might be tempted to read the novel and don’t want the story spoiled.

One girl, Busayna, who lived in the shack-city on top of the Yacoubian Building, was faced with providing for her whole family. A good and modest girl, she was appalled to learn from her friends how easy it was to make a few extra pounds a day by letting her employer take her for ten minutes into the back room. Her initial discomfort turns to easy submission as she realizes how much more she can bring to her family for a few minutes of displeasure everyday.

Another character, Hagg Azzam, wants to enter the parliament because he feels the genuine urge to give back to the community that had given him so much success. He quickly finds that bosses run the election process and he is forced to bribe his way into office and subsequently pay off his higher-ups to maintain power. Furthermore, Hagg had taken on a second wife, with the blessing of a Sheik, when he began feeling lustful urges that his first wife could not fulfill. He kept this second wife secretly housed in an apartment in Cairo, and she accepted this because of the great income it would bring her family. When she becomes pregnant, in violation of their marital conditions, Hagg insists she have an abortion. When she refuses, he sends people to her house in the middle of the night to forcibly abort her child. This decision was made not for financial reasons but because he knew a child with his secret wife would destroy his social standing and likely get him removed from parliament.

A character named Zaki Bey is one of the novels most gripping characters. He is the building’s oldest tenant, and, as the title Bey denotes, he is a remnant of the pre-Nasser era in which noblemen were seriously respected. Living off his family’s great wealth, the Bey does little with his life other than try to find women to get into bed with. To me, the most amazing, scene in the movie comes when the Bey is stumbling home with his girlfriend from a night of drinking. Hardly able to walk, the Bey stops right in the middle of Midan Talat Harb, a major city center, and looks around at the dilapidated buildings and the dirty streets. He starts screaming to no one in particular about the state of the city. He screams, “Look was has become of Cairo!” His point is that before Nasser’s populist movement took hold, the city was fresh and European; it was clean and thriving until the past fifty years laid it to waste.

Where the Bey represents all that Egypt once was, the doorman’s son Taha represents what the country has become. It is also an interesting argument for how terrorists come to be. Straight edge and well meaning, Taha has fought the social odds and excelled at school. The novel begins with him interviewing for a job to become a member of the police force. The interview goes well and Taha feels confident until the sergeant interviewing him asks what his father does. “Civil servant, sir,” Taha replies. Pressed further, Taha admits that his father is a bowab, or doorman. As soon as the word “bowab” slips from his mouth, the sergeant roars, “Dismissed!” From there, Taha begins his studies at Cairo University where he comes to embrace Islam and meet a radical Sheik who organizes a political protest that he asks Taha to lead. When he’s arrested at the protest, Taha refuses to give the police the name of the Sheik who’s responsible for it all. From there, the author graphically details how Taha becomes violently molested by the police for weeks until, frustrated, they let him go. From there, Taha becomes hell-bent on revenge and joins an Islamist group that trains him in the ways of terrorism. Taha finally gets his chance to enact his revenge, which he does furiously by gunning down the man who had led his interrogation, before being gunned down himself.

The genius of Taha’s character is how, over the course of a three hundred page novel, he goes from desperately seeking admission to the police academy to being a violent terrorist fixated on revenge. Each step in his progression towards terrorism is natural and understandable. The reader can sympathize with each step he takes in that direction, and his demise is agonizing. The brilliance in the writing is that the author forces you to have to keep reminding yourself that Taha is a terrorist and that he does die committing a horrible crime. In spite of all that, all you want to do is root for this character, one who is just another victim of the system.

There were many more characters and stories in the novel. But I won’t bother recounting them all to you for fear of turning this entry into too much of a fifth grade book report! I’m just trying to hit the major ones that give the greatest insight into this enigmatic culture.

And now a few words about the movie….

In order to understand what it was like to see this movie, it’s first necessary to understand a thing or two about Egyptian movie-going. When I went to see what film had done to this novel, I decided to go to the Grand Hyatt cinemas which was the only place showing the movie with subtitles. The small theater with assigned seats was filled with people of all backgrounds: westerners, Saudis, Kuwaitis, liberally dressed Egyptians, and women wearing with full covering. I’m glad that I had read the book ahead of time because apparently nobody gets the concept of silencing his or her cell phones for a movie. And I don’t mean that a cell phone went off a couple of times. Without fail, not five minutes would go by without a ring. Literally. And the ringtones were all Arab pop songs so that I began to feel as though I was in some sort of disco. On top of that, half the people who received calls, answered them and began talking! They made evening plans, checked in with loved ones, etc. This was enough to put me in an edgy and annoyed mood, which the film exploited so that when I left three hours later, I was angry and disillusioned.

There were two insights I gained from watching the film. While in the book all the characters earned somewhat equal billing, the film shifted the focus so that Zaki Bey became the main character. Played by the Middle East’s most famous actor, the Bey stood stalwart as a remnant from the old days, and his was the only story that did not end in Shakespearean like tragedy. While all the other stories were like watching a train-wreck in slow motion, the Bey rose in the face of his tribulations and closed the film with his engagement party to a girl he had grown to love. I thought that this made for intriguing social commentary.

While the book described many of the sex scenes in graphic detail, the movie was cautious to not over-expose the scandalous scenes. For example, the cameras would cut in just as sex had finished or would cut out just as sex was beginning. While suggestion was strong, the filmmakers played to the more modest sensibilities of the Egyptian moviegoers. But what was so shocking was the gruesome detail that the filmmakers include in the scene where Taha is shot dead while taking his revenge. While they wouldn’t let you see a moment of sex, the filmmakers slow the film down to agonizingly slow motion to show Taha get pumped full of bullets and his blood flying everywhere as he staggers to his death. The last you see of Taha is as he’s lying on the ground, body riddled with bullet holes and blood trickling into the nearby gutter. This is a scene that would have been graphic by American standards, but it is in which the makers of the movie spared no expense in showing Taha’s slow death.

One final observation. One major character who I have not yet mentioned is Hatim, the gay editor-in-chief of one of Cairo’s major newspapers. Hatim makes a habit of wandering the streets in search of one-night stands. He practices a more sophisticated form of prostitution, showering his would-be lovers with gifts and wine until they are flattered enough and drunk enough to get into bed with him. Neither the book nor the movie really give good insight into popular opinion of homosexuality. Rather, it was the movie going experience that said it all. Hatim finds himself a boyfriend, Abduh, and is very happy for most of the movie until Abduh’s baby son becomes sick and dies at the hospital. Hatim comes home to find that Abduh and his wife have vacated the room that he had given them on top of the Yacoubian building, and that they left no note telling where they were going. In a dramatic moment, Hatim opens the door to the tiny rooftop room to find it completely empty of Abduh’s possessions, and he starts bawling at the realization that he’s just lost someone he loves. What was so incredible was that as soon Hatim started crying, the audience in the movie theater began to howl with laughter. They roared on for several minutes as Hatim pours all of his emotions out in heaving sobs. I, along with the other Americans who I was watching with movie with, all exchanged bewildered glances as the hoots of laughter continued on. This, I thought, was the most telling scene in the film. The Arab movie goers found it uproariously funny that the gay man would cry at the loss of a lover, and I completely understood what Arab perception of homosexuality was.

This movie-book combo did as much for my understanding of the Egyptian world as any day spent out on the streets. It showed to me Egyptians’ accepting of death and terrorism and their discomfort with sex and homosexuality. It showed me that at the heart of Egyptian culture is a certain pressure to betray one’s values to get ahead. It showed that the system in place is easily exploited and that there is a need to take advantage of that. It showed me the existence of the old Cairo that still believes in the days when the Nile flooded and noblemen ruled the land. Most of all, it showed me that at the heart of this culture, there is something far darker and more complex than I had expected, and that I’m much further from understanding this place than I could ever have imagined.

Talking Politics... Reluctantly

The last thing I ever try to do is start a political conversation with Egyptians on the street. But somehow, I feel as though I’ve had more than my fair share. I’m careful with who I engage in politics; discussing Israel and Lebanon, Iraq, or George Bush is intensely emotional for Egyptians, but it is a conversation I want to have because I have a lot to learn about the Egyptian mind and heart, and politics is a big part of their makeup. So I enter carefully, discussing only with my teachers, my landlord, and a few other select people who I can trust to discuss rationally.

But then there are those conversations I didn’t bargain for, the ones that are thrust upon me, and they are the ones that really keep me up at night as I struggle to piece together the sum of my knowledge and experience in the region, which, by the way, is an impossible and yet thrilling task. While I am often approached by strangers who want to discuss America and Bush with me, I should note that there is almost always context to these conversations. People do not approach me out of the blue, but rather they are waiters, taxi drivers, sandwich stand owners, and store keeps with whom I do business. They speak clearly from an Arab point of view (and all that implies), but I found the tone to be generally that of disappointment with the United States, rather than anger. Many people also make the point of distinguishing between their problems with the U.S. government and the American people. Still, these conversations are always a little jarring to me because these people speak more from the heart than the brain, and this is something I’m not used to.

I met a few Egyptians in the United States in the weeks leading up to my trip here. Everyone had handfuls of advice, and so I found it most useful to really focus in on those tidbits that seemed common throughout many of the conversations. One of the most common suggestions I received was that Egyptians are very frank and straightforward people and that I should expect an earful from some of them, but that the key was to listen because not only would I learn a lot, but I would earn the respect of those I talked to as well. And I became pretty good at that; I listened thoughtfully, threw in maybe an observation or two, but I really left the talking up to them.

But yesterday I broke my own rule of thumb, and it’s been really nagging at me ever since. On my way home from school yesterday, at about four in the afternoon, a well-dressed (this is especially important in Egypt where being well dressed really is a sign of status) man talking with his two friends turned sharply on me as I walked by, saying, “Hey, you American?” When I told him that I was, he asked me pointedly whether or not I agreed with the U.S. stance on Lebanon-Israel. Annoyed by his tone, I was tempted to keep walking, but I didn’t and I answered his question in a careful manner, “No, I don’t agree with my country’s policy towards Lebanon.” He shot back, “Well why don’t you do anything about it then? Why don’t your people do anything to destroy very very bad government?" Instead of staying calm and giving him a stock answer, I felt all the blood rush to my face and in a moment of anger, I retorted, “What are you saying? That every time I disagree with my government I should tear it down? That I should just rip it all up? That’s a philosophy I see an awful lot over here, and it hasn’t done anybody much good.” I had done it. Not only had I expressed my disagreement, but I had done so through a criticism of his people and with an angry tone. After this, he reiterated some of his complaints, shook my hand, and that I plodded home.

Retrospectively, I’m not pleased with how I handled the situation; my temper got the best of me and the words just slipped out. But I do want to go to my main point, which was weighing very heavily on my mind when I made those comments to the Egyptian. My biggest difficulty here is in my ability to express my dissatisfaction with certain U.S. government policy, while simultaneously making it clear that I love my country and wholeheartedly support the governing institution that runs it and that there is a clear distinction between my stance on “Bush” and my stance on “America.”

Many of the Egyptians I’ve talked to are cagey, trying to wedge me into a corner in which I criticize my country when I really only intend to criticize policy. I have avoided tiptoed carefully and have therefore avoided the fate of being attributed rhetoric that I try to steer clear of. I find it frustrating to say to someone, “I don’t agree with U.S. policy towards Lebanon,” and in turn get the response, “Yes, a bunch of Jews control your country, and that’s why the policy is that way.” I don’t even know how to begin to respond to that. They usurp a discussion that I want to have on certain terms and take the rhetoric to such intense extremities that we cannot continue the conversation because I feel compelled to rebut their last comment with a defense of my country rather than going on and discussing the heart of the matter.

A better example was when I told someone in moderate terms of my view towards Iraq, and they responded by saying, “Yes, your country does horrible things.” Again, this is a conversation I cannot continue because it turns me from making a critique of Bush to pursuing a defense of America.

The difference in the rhetoric between our two cultures is substantial. Sometimes when I take a step back I realize that I have to adjust my whole radar when I come over here because if placed in America, some of the comments I hear would be grounds for serious repercussion. And maybe that’s part of the problem with U.S.—Middle East relations: we don’t talk the same talk, literally, and more importantly, metaphorically. There’s a desperation here that doesn’t lend itself to moderation, and that’s what makes being a foreigner here so intriguing and, on occasion, so painful.

Return to the Alley

No, don’t worry, this blog is not becoming the “Midaq Alley Show,” but due to popular demand (thanks, Peggy) I returned to the Alley today to take some photographs.

When I got to the major street, I was pretty surprised that I remembered so well how to get back there. Stopping only for photos along the way, I headed through the spice market (first photograph) and took a right into the smaller and shaded alley (second photograph). To my surprise, the entrance to Midaq Alley was filled with office supplies for sale (third photograph) that were not there when I made my first trip a week ago. But through the canyons of notebooks, I could see the unmistakable café that guarded the entrance to Egypt’s most famous alley. It takes a while to get to the alley from my house, and I was reluctant to just take a handful of photos and then leave. Instead, I sat down for tea and shesha at some tables outside the café. A quick word on shesha, which is one of the major cultural elements of Egypt…. On pretty much every block you will find a café in which mostly men congregate daily to smoke tobacco from large water-pipes. I have two of them within two blocks of my house, and throughout the city they act as gathering points for the masses. The tea I drank is also amazing; it’s called Arousa, and you drink it with fresh mint leaves. Having never liked tea before, I’m quite happy letting tea assuage my coffee binging tendencies. But back to the Alley….

As I sat there drinking my tea and smoking my shesha, I noticed that everyone in the Alley started looking at me strangely. Of course I attributed this to the fact that they weren’t used to having foreigners come for tea in their little alley. It was difficult to ignore the handful of Cairenes sitting in the café tossing strange looks at me and engaging in conversation that was clearly about me, but I did my best. After about five minutes I began feeling uncomfortably hot. Engrossed in a book, I hadn’t realized how much I was sweating. And so, like any smart kid my age, I moved my chair three feet over into the shade. And with that, I heard an eruption of giggles from within the café. I looked up and saw all the men having a good laugh and a bunch of them were giving me the thumbs up. “Very good, very good,” said one. I had forgotten that it was so much in their nature to avoid the sun whenever possible, and that it was strange when someone didn’t. Walk down the street any afternoon, and you will find one side virtually empty, while the shady side is nearly paralyzed with pedestrians. So, after giving those Egyptians their little laugh for the afternoon, I headed up to the rest of the Alley.

At the end of the main entrance to the Alley, where the café is, stood a spice shop which had been closed the previous week. Wondering whether this was a sign of more life to come up the stairs, I pushed on.

Rounding the corner, I headed up the stairs (fourth picture). At the top of the stairs is a big landing (fifth picture) that goes back a ways, filled with trash and seemingly without purpose. I turned left to face the Alley again, and I was a little disappointed to find that the spice shop below had not served as on omen, but rather as an anomaly since the shoe shop was the only sign of life (sixth photo). I had felt a certain embarrassment about taking photos below with so many Egyptians lounging in the lower part of the Alley. Here, though, I snapped away with all the confidence in the world just because I could. And upon my return home, I plugged my camera into my computer to find that all fifteen, or so, photos of the Alley looked just about the same.

This return visit was amazing to me in that I was able to focus not so much on getting there, but on being there. It was really incredible to me to take such a small chunk of earth, visit it twice, and get to know it fairly intimately. Its colors, its smells, its garbage all became familiar because there wasn’t much to have to get to know. Amazing, too, that it, as a piece of land, a piece of property, is worth so little but that the spirit invested in it by one man’s writing is something that cannot be priced.

Anatomy of a Protest

I don’t visit Islamic Cairo on Fridays. Every Friday for hundreds of years, devout Sunnis have assembled in any one of the dozens of mosques spread across Islamic Cairo to listen to readings from the Qur’an and hear the various Sheikhs deliver their sermons. In the past four weeks, the services, which begin around 12:30 and last for about an hour, have spilled out into the streets in the form of intense anti-Israeli protests. I avoid these protests, especially, because of the direct religious connection they have and because they are known to be among the biggest protests in the city. I am still waiting to hear news as to whether there was another round of protests today following the services that ended less than two hours ago. The size, duration, and intensity of these protests are somewhat of a gauge of sentiment in the city.

While I avoid these protests, there is enough civil unrest in the city that continued avoidance is practically impossible.

In the middle of last week there was a pretty major protest in Midan Tahrir, the city’s central plaza. Surrounded by the likes of the Egyptian Antiquities Musuem, the Nile Hilton, the Mugamma (a massive government building), the AUC, and the beginnings of some of Cairo’s most major streets (like Talat Harb and Qasr il-Nil), this really is the heart of the city. On my way to meet some people at the American University in Cairo, I took a taxi to within a couple blocks of Midan Tahrir and elected to walk the rest of the way given the Midan’s infamous traffic. About two blocks from the Midan, I passed a brigade of riot police. This only raised my eyebrows a little bit because in Cairo I am used to and appreciative of seeing massive police forces. Oftentimes in the city, I’ve seen a confluence of forces and have passed without ever understanding their purpose. The only thing that brought about suspicion was that these police seemed on high alert, instead of the lazy ambivalence of the forces who know that they’re probably superfluous.

I walked on and was further surprised to see two more brigades on alert. They took up vast chunks of the sidewalk and were lined up in unusually strict formation. Each man was wearing a black uniform (unlike the usual white uniforms donned typically by police officers), and each wore a helmet with a large clear face guard, and each carried a wooden club.

When I arrived at the Midan, everything became clear. On one of the big islands between several of the many major roads cutting through the Midan, there was a vast gathering of men waving signs and chanting, sometimes in unison and sometimes in disarray. While many of these men held signs and banners, almost all of them waved the Lebanese flag, with the unmistakable cedar tree in the middle, as a show of solidarity with the people of Lebanon. These people, a thousand strong at the height of the protest, were the nucleus of the whole circus show.

Surrounding the protestors was a thick layer of riot police. I imagine that one strategy employed by the government is to contain the protestors to such a point that they cannot move. I saw how the riot police had formed a ring around the band of flag waving men and were pushing up close so as not to give them any breathing room. This layer of police was about four men thick. Rather than being given an area, the protestors take an area and the riot police seem to use the full strength of their numbers to contain people within that area.

Beyond the riot police is a nebulous area that envelopes the protest. It is filled with members of the regular police force, who control the car traffic, as well as the infamous plainclothes thugs that work for President Mubarak. These thugs turn away would-be protestors in order to insure that protests never become too big. They also push and shove those who stop to watch the spectacle, telling them to move on in order to keep the sidewalk traffic flowing. I have heard that these thugs often become violent, smashing cameras and crushing toes when they need to. Because of their apparently high status in the security forces apparatus, the regular laws of decency don’t apply to them.

Beyond this layer is an amazingly well choreographed interplay between the various brigades of the riot police. On the outskirts of the Midan they move quickly purposefully around, sometimes relieving the police who are up against the protestors, other times merely repositioning to stay prepared for every eventuality. I must have seen a dozen of these brigades, each thirty or so men strong, moving, shifting, preparing. This is a really well-oiled machine.

As I approached the AUC, I was still a bit away from the protest. As I closed in on the last couple dozen feet before the entrance, an unusually kind policeman stopped me to suggest that I go around the back way to the University. As he and I were in mid-conversation, a man who was no less than 6’3” tall and weighed no fewer than 250lbs. came up in his standard slack and button down shirt and stood next to the policeman. His crossed arms and his angry gaze were enough to persuade me to turn around and zip into the other entrance at AUC.

When I returned to Midan Tahrir on Monday, there was another protest going on, and the same interplay between all the various cogs seemed to be exactly the same.

Protests in Cairo have a strange feeling about them. In many ways, they’re just like any other protest anywhere in the world, but there’s something about a protest in a police state that gives pause to foreign onlookers. There’s something amazingly organic about protests in free countries; ten or twelve years ago, when the Cuban side of my family headed downtown in New York to protest outside Fidel Castro’s hotel, there was something very real about it, even if nobody expected a great change in policy to result from our efforts. In Buenos Aires last year, when protestors stormed the theater where we had come to hear the first lady of Argentina speak, there was something refreshingly spontaneous and intense about it. But here in our police state in the northeast corner of a continent filled with police states, there seems to be that certain spark missing from these frequent gatherings.

In the United States, our right to protest is protected by the Constitution, in part because it expressly grants us that right and in part because it puts checks on the powers of our leaders to prevent them from trying to curtail that right. In Cairo, a protest is allowed to proceed at the pleasure of the President. The protests in Cairo have not only been anti-Israel, they have also been anti-Mubarak. There is a strong feeling in the streets that Mubarak is failing to represent the interests of the Egyptian/Arab people in his stance on the Israel-Lebanon conflict. The local newspapers I have read detail the anti-Mubarak elements of the protests, describing the signs and chants in which people denounce him.

And herein lies the strange element of Egyptian protests. That in an authoritarian state, members of the national security force will pile in layers upon layers to allow people to criticize the government, creates a strange sensation of falsehood for the whole spectacle. In a sense it seems that Mubarak allows the protests just as a way of releasing a little steam from the kettle. Give the people a little bit of state run, highly controlled protest, and they’ll feel as though they do have freedom and it will prevent the kettle from exploding. But to an outsider looking in, these protests seem to be another big movie set, arranged by the government, and staffed by enthusiastic but hopeless activists.