In Search of Midaq Alley

In his 1947 novel, Midaq Alley, Egypt’s most prominent author, Naguib Mahfouz, breathes life into the most hopeless of Cairo’s population. His story inter-weaves the lives of the alley’s citizens into a great tapestry of hope and struggle as well as an array of characters who represent some of the very best and some of the very worst of humanity. This grand story is set in the grime of a poor Cairo alleyway. I won’t go into the plot of the book, but I highly recommend picking it up at any bookstore.

My first encounter with this novel came in the fall term of my freshman year at Middlebury in my History and Culture of the Modern Middle East class taught by Professor Febe Armanios. At the time that I read the novel, I did not understand Mahfouz’s stature as a writer; I didn’t grasp that I was reading such a major piece of Egyptian literature. Or a better way of putting it would be to say that I didn’t understand just how great a writer Mahfouz in the eyes of the Egyptians. On top of that, the characters in the book seemed so foreign to me, so different from anybody you’d meet in the United States that I found myself unable to relate to them in the way you need to relate to characters of such a human drama.

All of that changed when I came to Egypt. Mahfouz is everywhere; his publications from fifty years ago are in the front windows of bookstores everywhere; his portraits adorn the walls of cafes across the city, commemorating his visits to those places. Furthermore, Midaq Alley’s characters have taken on a new life to me, and I am fond of recalling them and considering them in new lights as I begin to better understand the context of their lives. For example, how could I possibly begin to understand the alley’s matchmaker? It was her job to find suitable partners for marriage and to negotiate the terms for the two families. Now, as I begin to understand the traditional role of marriage here, and the traditions and customs that accompany it, I begin to appreciate her as a character.

The most difficult and intriguing character in the novel is Hamida, a young girl desperate to break free from life in the alley. Her desire to escape the alley is fascinating and she stands as a rebel among dozens of characters who seem happy to spend their days in the confines of the alley. It was with the desire to understand better this enigmatic character’s need for escape and with the desire to pursue further knowledge of one of Egypt’s greatest works that I set off yesterday to find Midaq Alley.

The alley appears in only one of my guide books, and even that guide book leaves something to the imagination because it shows Midaq Alley at the end of a twisted series of tiny alleyways in the heart of old Islamic Cairo. I took a taxi to the al Husayn mosque, one that I wrote about in an earlier post, “The Maze.” Getting out there, I pulled out the guide book and began piecing together my route. The book’s map of Islamic Cairo is more or less just a series of lines etched on a page that vaguely detail the twists and turns of dirt roads and alleys.

First I walked down the major street, al-Azhar, and turned right onto the road across from the Gamhuriya (one of the biggest buildings in Islamic Cairo). With that, I was once again lost in the world of dirt roads, donkeys, wild smells (both pleasant and frightening), and salesmen. I knew that I had to turn right and I judged that that was about a hundred yards down the path. As I walked down the tiny street, I realized that I was at the spice market in Khan il-Khalili. Every store was piled to the ceiling with finely ground spices and I saw several men sitting on the ground barefoot and Indian style with a giant sieve basket, refining the spices they wanted to sell. Not entirely sure where I was going, I stopped to check my guide book. And like flies to a picnic, I was instantly surrounded by salesmen asking where I was from, what I wanted to buy, what my name was, and god knows what else. I slammed the guide book shut and continued on to find a quieter spot. But when I stopped again, I encountered the same result. So I was forced to read the map on the move, avoiding the donkeys, the beggars, and the massive inexplicable holes in the road as I made my way. By the time I had reached another mosque, I knew I had gone too far; my zoomed in map had no mosque on it. And so I went back, keeping my head down to avoid the jeers from the salesmen I had brushed by with the assumption of never seeing them again.

Finally I found my turn-off. The scale of the map convinced me that this was the right place to go. This alley was half the size of the last road and it was made dark by fabrics that had been spread over the roofs of the buildings. This road felt damp and dim, and off the beaten path. There were no salesmen to accost me here, only old men smoking shesha and other younger men selling items that were not directly aimed at tourists. In one store I saw sacks of wool piled from floor to ceiling. I knew that the alley that led to Midaq Alley would be off this road. I trudged along this tiny alley looking for a break in the wall that could constitute the entrance to the alley. Every salesman’s stall that had a back room got me peering anxiously to see if it was going to open up into what I was looking for. After making it far enough down the road, I was convinced that I had missed it. I turned back and started the search again. About half the way back I took another look at a café I’d passed the first time. This café was set about twenty feet off of the alley in a gap between two of the buildings. There were two men sitting outside smoking shesha and I saw open doors in front of the table that seemed to imply that there might be more of a café within. It should be noted that this was a café in the loosest, most rustic sense of the word. The reason that I had not given this café a second look on my first time by is that it seemed as though it was contained by the sides of two buildings and by the back of another.

It was then that I remembered two things that gave me further pause. First, the opening scene of the book is set at a café in Midaq Alley. This weighed on me along with the recollection I had of a friend telling me that Midaq Alley was hard to find because they’d taken down the sign, but that they kept the sign in a small café in the alley. These two bits of information tugged at me just enough to walk down that way and take a look. I didn’t feel self-conscious when I was approaching the café; it was only after I had buzzed by the entrance and was walking straight toward what appeared to be a solid wall that I could begin to imagine the two old men behind me having a chuckle over the idiot American who was mysteriously walking towards a wall. But when I got into the corner, I knew that I had found what I had come all this way looking for.

At the very end of the right wall is a slender staircase that snuck off straight and to the right. I had heard that a staircase guarded the alley, and I beamed with pride as I came to the realization that I had found it. All the buildings ahead of me were made of light brown sand stone, a big difference from the deep gray facades of many buildings in the area. Also, the buildings were all two or three stories as opposed to the typical five floor buildings that line the streets of the rest of Islamic Cairo. I charged up the stairs, thrilled to see the grittiness of life in the alley. At the top of the stairs, the passage took a ninety degree turn to the left, and as soon as I had rounded the corner, Midaq Alley lay out in front of me. In all, it was about fifty feet long with dirt for a ground and almost entirely empty! As I walked down the startlingly short expanse of the alley, there were old shut down stands on either side and no people to be seen. Most of the way down on the left there was one on small shoe stand open with a man sitting inside quite literally twittling his thumbs. I asked him in Arabic if this was Midaq Alley, and he nodded with great enthusiasm. He became slightly less excited when he realized that I wasn’t going to buy anything.

After the initial shock at how small and how empty the alley was, the experience began to take another dimension entirely. Suddenly I began to realize that I was standing in the middle of literary greatness. I could reach out both arms and touch either side of the alley with wingspan to spare; I could walk the length of the alley in fifteen seconds. For those glorious moments, Midaq Alley belonged to me. It was an amazing feeling. I stood for five minutes just admiring the place, and then I decided to leave. As I turned the corner to head back down the stairs, I heard a voice from overhead that made me stop and look. A little old man in a gray jalabiyya was perched on a stoop a floor above my head. He looked old enough that it seemed to me that he may well have sat in that same place watching the goings and coming in Midaq Alley fifty years before. I wasn’t able to hear what he said the first time, so I asked him to repeat it. “Mahfouz,” he said. “Yes,” I replied. All I got in return was an approving nod, and I went on my way. As I passed the café at the entrance, I glanced in and noticed for the first time the many pictures of Naguib Mahfouz on the wall. I decided not to try to get a photo with the sign, and so I moved on, allowing myself to get swept away in the busier alleyways of Islamic Cairo, fully understanding why Hamida would have wanted so badly to get out of Midaq Alley but also grasping its attraction that made so many happy to spend their many years in its tiny confines.

It's an Egyptian Thing

A stomach bug has done a pretty good job on me over the last couple days, so I really don’t have any new adventures to report on. Instead, I’m going to take the opportunity to introduce you to Egypt’s national dish. You might be tempted to believe that it would be something with a lamb kebab, or some modification of the amazing Lebanese mezzes that are so prevalent here. But you’d be wrong. Meet kushari, the pride and joy of Egypt.

Kushari defies logic in a bunch of ways. First, it’s pretty shocking that this dish actually tastes good. Let me explain to you what it’s made of. Kushari is typically served in a bowl and it’s a mixture of rice, pasta (usually macaroni), lentils, chick peas, tomato sauce, and hot sauce. I mean, it’s the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever heard of. We Americans love to laugh at the fact that that for a national dish, this is pretty odd, and not too glorious…. There’s no suckling lamb roasting over an open spit here. Just a whole bunch of starches in a bowl.

On top of this, kushari is considered a fast food here, a food for the masses, and when I went with a couple of friends for my first try at this dish to Cairo’s most famous kushari joint, the waiters made clear that they meant fast food. Abu Tariq Kushari is right in downtown Cairo, down a rather grimy street, but it stands as a pillar of cleanliness and efficiency in an area where both are lacking. You no sooner sit down than bowls of kushari are heaved in front of each person at the table. Communal pitchers of tomato sauce, hot sauce, garlic sauce, and water are left on the table. I kept trying to get the waiter’s attention because the guy who had sat at the table before us, had decided that using a cup to drink water would unnecessarily slow the pace of the meal, so he drank straight from the pitcher. Clearly, the waiter thought that replacing the pitcher for me would also unnecessarily slow the pace of the meal, so he ignored me. All the while, my mouth was burning from the hot sauce, and as soon as I’d finished about half my bowl, waiters and new people looking for seats began closing in around us making no secret of the fact that they wanted us out. And so we finished, and we left.

Now, before the meal, one of my friends who had had kushari a bunch before warned me. She said that I should watch out because kushari would do a number on my digestive system. Despite the solemn nods from the other people we were with, all of whom were kushari veterans, I shrugged this off deciding that no dish made of rice and chick peas could possibly be that bad. It was that bad. The only way I can put this is to tell you that the aftermath of kushari is roughly the equivalent of swallowing a meat grinder whole and on. It’s like a couple little elves decided to get into your stomach and make mashed potatoes out of your internal organs. That’s really the only way to put it. As a guy who doesn’t get heartburn, the heartburn was surely the worst of it, but the stomach ache raged on for a day or two as well. The strangest thing about it is you’d never guess that those ingredients would pack such a punch.

But here’s the catch. Here’s what I haven’t told you yet. Kushari is the single most delicious thing I’ve eaten since I’ve been here. If you consider that pasta, lentils, rice, and tomato sauce are all some of the great comfort foods independently, put them together and what you get from that is glorious. In the moments you’re eating it, you’re seduced into forgetting the dire consequences. I’ve been back to kushari a bunch since that first try, and I’ll keep going back because it’s really that good. Maybe part of it is the feeling you get when you’re eating kushari, looking out the window at the dirty streets, packed into small tables while eating elbow to elbow with real Egyptians, trying desperately to look as though you are unphased by the hot sauce, indulging in a last-meal type of thing before the near-fatal intestinal battles ahead. Maybe it’s that. And maybe, when it comes to kushari, it’s good not to ask too many questions.

The Cairo Survival Pack

Coming up to the end of my first month here, I’d like to make an observation on the language. I’ve concluded that to make it by in this city, the aspiring Arabic speaker need only have mastery of three words. They are words that the Egyptians use often, and one would be wise to adopt these words as his or her own. Let me introduce you to those words now in case you ever find yourself in Cairo or anywhere in Egypt for that matter.

Shwayya shwayya: Transliterated, of course, from the Arabic this word means so-so. How’s your Arabic? “Shwaya shwaya.” The beauty of this word is in its modesty, and also in the fact that it appears to be the one word people assume a westerner will know. Getting into a cab, the driver will respond to my modest Arabic with a barrage of Arabic far beyond my level of comprehension. After he catches the bewildered look on my face, the driver will invariably say, “Shwaya shwaya!” and then have a good laugh. I’ve picked up on that as best I can and I preempt people all over the city with “Shwaya shwaya,” meaning I only understand you so-so. After that people slow down, and speak very deliberately in Arabic I’m more likely to understand.

Kwayyiss: This word is used as the path of least resistance. It means “okay” or “good” or “fine.” If ever I don’t feel like getting a headache over the language barrier, I just say “Kwayyiss.” For example, I was just ordering some food over the telephone. The man had a very difficult time understanding what I wanted. When he thought he had it, he let fly with a slew of Arabic I didn’t have a clue about. Tired and unwilling to expend energy on this, I just said “Kwayyiss” a few times and hung up. We’ll see what strange dish walks through the door in about twenty minutes. “Kwayyiss” is a high risk word, but it is good for those who don’t have the fight in them. I have definitely used “Kwayyiss” in taxis too and ended up not quite where I wanted….

Yanni: No, not the famous musician, this is without a doubt the most common and, yes, my favorite word in the Arabic language. It literally means “It means,” but it is used by Egyptians the same way we over use “like.” I think, however, that “Yanni” is more accepted than “like” which is frowned up by adults. It was a big relief to find out what “Yanni” meant in colloquial because I could never understand why people kept telling me “It means…. It means.” But using Yanni is an art the mastery of which comes only with time. The beauty of the word is that if you have it on instant recall, you can start saying it when you’re struggling to come up with the right words, and it will buy you time. For example, “I’m from America. I’m a student here in Cairo. I’m meeting friends at a…. Yanni, Yanni, Yaaaaannnnni, restaurant tonight.” The key is finding out how far you can stretch it without looking like an idiot. As of this writing, I can Yanni myself to about twenty seconds, plenty of time to remember the Arabic word I need.

So that about does it. Remember these three words, and you’ll never go wrong.

By the way, my food just got here: salad and burger, just as I ordered. Kwayyiss has paid off once again!

Into the Great Unkown

Last weekend, a few friends of mine and I headed for a two night trip to the desert oasis of Bahariyya. Ten of us who study at Kalimat went through the language center to do this trip to explore the desert and oasis with local Bedouin guides. Bahariyya is the smallest of Egypt’s four oases, but at only five hours it’s the closest drive from Cairo. For all the shoulder-to-shoulder bustle of Cairo, it takes only about twenty minutes driving to leave all civilization, at which point you see no towns or even houses for the entire five hour drive out to the oasis. We all packed into a microbus and suffered through the suffocatingly hot drive on a one lane road across the Sahara. The size of the road makes for interesting confrontations when cars of varying sizes need to pass one another; a game of chicken breaks out until the smaller car pulls off the road to let the bigger one through.

We got to the town of Biwiti in Bahariyaa at around 10pm at which point we moved our bags over to a couple of Libyan made Land Rover-esque desert vehicles for a twenty minute trek into the desert. It was late and we weren’t going far, but a twenty minute off-road drive away from a tiny town that, itself, is hundreds of miles from anywhere is enough to get me excited. When we got to where we were going (just one of the tens of thousands of sand dunes out there) we set up camp. The Bedouins who were leading us pulled the two Range Rovers nose to nose, forming an “L” and creating an effective wind block. They then tied fifteen foot canvass walls to the cars, essentially putting up two walls of a tent. They also put mats all over the ground. This had taken them all of five minutes in a display of professionalism so alien to Cairo. They cooked dinner for us, and we feasted on potatoes, eggplant, meat (I’ve learned not to ask what kind), rice, and tea. After dinner, the ten of us sat around a fire and listened to the Bedouins play music for a couple hours and then most people called it a night. I, however, decided to set off and do a little exploring, which led me through the monotony of several sand dunes before I decided there wasn’t much to see and that I ought to get some sleep.

After a breakfast of excellent Bedouin beans and Twinkies the next morning, we set out to explore the desert. What we learned is that the desert is not, as the movies would have you believe, thousands of miles of rolling sand dunes. To the contrary, the terrain of the desert varies tremendously; we had spent the night in the area of the great dunes, and over the next two days we were to explore various other parts. After getting back on the “main” road, we drove for about an hour to the black desert. This is an area in which the brown sand of the desert is covered with black pebbles for as far as the eye can see. The landscape is also marked with sharp peaks (one of which we climbed) that make for dramatic views. Afterwards, we went back to the oasis to spend the balance of the day out of the heat before continuing our adventure. For about four hours we lounged under date trees and olive trees, reading a chatting, and quite happy to escape the blistering sun.

At around 4pm, we loaded back into the cars and headed to the crystal desert. Here, all the rock structures are loaded with clear crystal-like rocks. Essentially, you look at these brown and gray rocks and they all glisten and sparkle, and it takes a closer investigation to realize that these rocks are covered in these smaller clear rocks that one girl supposed was quartz.

Next, we went set off on a very long drive southwest. For about two hours we drove down a tiny road, not passing another car, heading still further from Cairo. Indeed, when one looks at a map as I did later, to drive southwest from Bahariyya is to head to what is probably to most remote part of the Egyptian Sahara. After about two hours, our Bedouin suddenly veered off the road and headed toward a drop off that was about one step shy of a cliff. We all yelled and braced ourselves, and I’m still not quite sure how we made it down the massive sand embankment, but one way or another we slid down and were rewarded for our patience. We were in a part of the desert that was never identified to me, but it was the most spectacular stop we made. We were on top of a massive dune with the desert unfolding before us and white mountains surrounding us. I’ve included a photo of this stop here, and if you look for a speck in the middle of the shot, you will see me waving my arms over my head.

After that awe inspiring stop, we headed to the white desert to make camp. I had naturally assumed that “white desert” referred to the color of the sand, but as we bushwhacked in our four-wheelers across the desert for another hour, I began to realize that I was mistaken. The sand was the same color, but soon massive chalk structures began to rise out of the earth. Some were no more than a foot or two tall and others topped thirty feet, but they stretched on endlessly in every direction. When we finally stopped to camp, we were surrounded by several of the tallest we had seen. When evening set, I headed off a ways until I found a mound that looked like it had a nice place to sit at the top. I climbed it and sat there for about an hour watching the sunset. I was out of sight of the cars and the other travelers, and so I reflected on how remote we truly were. Five hours southwest of Cairo to Bahariyya, another two and a half hours southwest down an empty desert road to the spectacular views from atop a massive dune, and another hour across the desert floor to the very place where I sat.

When I returned to camp, everyone got a good laugh because I was covered head to toe in chalk that had rubbed off on me. We then ate dinner and sat around chatting for a couple hours. It was somewhere near bedtime when we began hearing noises beyond the light of our campfire. Suddenly, one of us saw something dart by, just on the edge of the light. This startled everyone a bit, but about five minutes later we all had a good laugh as a mangy little gray desert fox with huge ears, much too big for his small head, strode brazenly into our camp. He took a look around and headed over to the food containers. When he almost caused one to tip over on himself, he was startled and fled. About an hour later, he returned… this time with reinforcements. We counted six foxes in all, and they did their utmost to startle us constantly and also steal our breakfast. I fell asleep pretty quickly, but the next morning a friend of mine told me that the foxes had stolen our sugar and had tried to steal a shoe but were scared off. Apparently, too, a couple of people had woken up in the middle of the night to find the foxes strolling among the sleeping bags.

After dinking some sugarless instant coffee, we set off toward home. A quick stop in the town of Biwiti for a shower and lunch broke up what would have otherwise been a brutal drive. By the early evening, the lights of Cairo we coming into view, and when I saw the distant silhouettes of the pyramids, I knew that probably never again would I feel so blissfully isolated and cut off in my life.

The Maze

There are some must-do’s when visiting Cairo. The Pyramids, the Egyptian Museum, a stroll down Corniche al-Nile are all musts. Equally amazing is a trip to old Islamic Cairo. This is a neighborhood that lies on the eastern edge of the city and it is a startling departure from the modernity of downtown just a mile or so away. It’s a vast neighborhood, and for my first visit I decided to approach the area from the most straightforward route, a taxi up al-Azhar Street. The first thing that strikes you when you approach this part of the city is that it is guarded by Egypt’s two major mosques. Driving up to the entrance of Islamic Cairo, minarets dominate the skyline announcing the presence of the sprawling complex of the al-Azhar mosque on the right side of the road and the more compact, but equally impressive, al-Husayn mosque on the left. In addition to these two, the area is full of mosques, a fact that I’ll discuss later. Quick history: the al-Husayn mosque is sacred because is guards the head of the Prophet Muhammad’s successor, Husayn. The al-Azhar mosque claims to be the world’s oldest university, teaching Islam to students since the year 970.

Getting out of the taxi, I took a walk around the plaza in front of the al-Husayn mosque. Here there were Egyptians of all shapes and sizes standing in groups of two, three, or four having discussions and enjoying the early evening hours and the day’s first break from the heat. Around the perimeter of the plaza is an endless spread of old Egyptian cafes filled with Egyptians, probably just of work, enjoying a cup of coffee and a couple puffs of the shisha before heading home. It is off of this main plaza that the fun begins. Khan al-Khalili is the famous old commercial section of Islamic Cairo and I set off down a street in the corner of the plaza, determined to make heads and tails of this area.
By stepping down any one of these streets you forfeit your grasp on modernity and surrender yourself to a strange mix between feeling like your walking through a 15th century world and getting ready to shoot a scene in Hollywood. It’s that strange. As soon as the main plaza disappears behind you, you begin to understand the world you’ve entered. Islamic Cairo is made up of miles and miles and miles of tiny roads and alleys all teeming with the crush of humanity. The major thoroughfares of this pedestrian-only neighborhood are little wider than a New York City sidewalk. When you get really off the beaten path, you sometimes have to navigate alleyways with both shoulders brushing up against the walls on either side. The main strips in Khan al-Khalili are lined with salesmen hoping to sell you anything from cheap plaster souvenir pyramids to old exotic Egyptian clothes to “Anything you want, sir! Anything!” (I didn’t ask any questions).
Once you get off all these “bigger” roads, you get into the real heart of Cairo: small alleyways with young boys playing soccer and tiny cafes with the city’s ancients enjoying some summer shisha. Here you don’t get attacked by salesmen desperate for business. Here life moves slowly, in dignified poverty. These are not slums; the people here are poor but they seem to maintain a kind of pride that I can only guess comes from their intimate connection to Islam. Around each corner is another alleyway, probably narrower than the last until you are forced to change your mindset from enjoyment to escape from the labyrinth. But within a minute or two you find yourself in one of the wider alleys, once again surrounded by the crazed shopkeeps and the endless parade of tourists who, I like to think, looked more helpless than I, myself, did.
When I decided it was time to call it a day, I simply put the setting sun to my right and walked south until I ran into al-Azhar street. From there I went up the avenue to the very edge of the city for dinner in the Azhar Gardens. This is a park that, when initially proposed, many thought would be another broken promise by the central government. Surprisingly, the government completed the park, and it stands as an amazing testament to what Egypt is capable of. Built on top of a massive hill, the park overlooks the entire city with Islamic Cairo in the foreground and downtown on the horizon. It is a park filled with trolleys (to take you on tours), fountains, and impressive gardens. At the same time, however, the park is able to maintain a natural feeling that is a welcome change from the city. Also, the park charges a fee for admission and it is tightly policed, so it remains uncrowded and respectable.
As I settled down for some Labna (yogurt made from goat’s milk) and lamb kebab, and as I watched the sun set over the city, slowly I began hearing the calls to prayer. I hear the call to prayer often throughout the city, but because I was in Islamic Cairo and because I was on top of a hill, the air soon became filled with dozens of voices chanting the Koran, calling the faithful to prayer. I couldn’t help but get goose bumps as these chants went on for several minutes in a fuller chorus than I had ever heard. And I could just imagine those grizzled Egyptians in the most remote of back alleys pulling themselves away from their coffee and smoke for a minute or two as they had surely done everyday for decades.

Photos

Here are some odds-and-ends photos. Please take a look.
Because of some frustrating technical difficulties with the internet cafe, I haven't been able to post in the last week. I now have internet at my apartment, making it a lot easier to put up pictures and thoughts. Earlier today, I posted about my trip to the pyramids. It was something I wrote a few days ago but hadn't been able to post. And tonight, I posted some thoughts on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. So please scroll down far enough that you don't miss anything!




This is a picture of the Citadel as viewed from the Azhar Gardens.








This is a picture of me and our unwanted guide at the step pyramid in North Saqqara, just south of Cairo.

This is the kind of person we dealt with at the pyramids: so genuine in his desire to have his photo taken by an American; equally genuine in his desire to receive a small monetary reward for his cooperation.



A couple of pounds and some well placed, if mispronounced, Arabic phrases can get you a seat right on the Great Pyramid itself.

A Dialogue on the Present Middle East Conflict; Comments Appreciated

With fighting intensifying up in Lebanon, it’s going to be very interesting to watch Egypt try to find its footing in this mess. Traditionally a leader in anti-Israeli action, Egypt has kept a decidedly low profile since the latest round of violence began. When the first Israeli soldier was kidnapped in Gaza a couple weeks ago, Egypt stepped in as moderator between Hamas and the Israelis. Now, in the last couple of days, Egypt has hosted an Arab League meeting and called for a ceasefire on both sides. I’d like to try to explain, for those who may not know Egypt well, why the government is following this path. I’d also like to get into what may lie ahead for Egypt in the tricky world of Arab diplomacy. Finally, I’d like to give you a sense of the pulse of this country (as best I can) as it relates to the conflict.
There are two facts, plain and simple, that go a long way in explaining Egypt’s quiet role in the latest conflict. First, Egypt is one of only two Arab nations (the other being Jordan) to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. If Egypt wants to remain a credible partner in the international community, it knows that it going against the peace accord would severely damage its reputation. The second point is that Egypt is the second largest recipient of US military aid, below Israel and just above Colombia. With all its problem’s in the Middle East, the United States counts on the fact that such a large package will encourage the Egyptians to strike a neutral tone. In turn, the Egyptian government recognizes how much it has to lose if it goes too far.
The Egyptian government has a tough road ahead, and I see two major potential problems for them. First, if Israel intensifies its military actions, if it either steps up the level of engagement in Lebanon or decides to cast a wider net that may include Syria or Iran, the Egyptian government will want more and more badly to take a stand as a show of Arab solidarity. If the violence worsens, Egypt will begin to look the fool to its allies who will start to think of it as a lap dog to the US. The other problem I see for Egypt, and one I think is actually bigger than the first, is if public opinion diverges too substantially from the official position of the government. The reason this may be an even more serious concern is because violence does not even have to increase for this to happen. The longer this conflict goes on, the more and more agitated the people of Egypt become. If the government starts to seem too out of touch with the political will of the Egyptian citizens, it might feel compelled to take action against Israel or it might fall victim to severe internal unrest.
This brings me to my third and final point of discussion which is the sentiment on the streets of Cairo. There is an intensifying anger here. More and more, people seem less shy about letting their voices heard on this conflict. When it first began, just a couple of days ago, people were more hesitant and less outspoken. Now, their words have the official backing of several Arab states and even leaders in the Western world. Over in Islamic Cairo, there was a five thousand man protest outside of the Al-Azhar Mosque after services were held on Friday. Stay tuned to see if sermons this Friday compel more Egyptians to take to the streets. The role that Hezbollah plays here is interesting too. The poorer and less well educated have a greater tendency to openly voice support for Hezbollah, but the more educated seem torn between their Arab hearts and Western brains. I’ve talked to a number of more well educated Egyptians and not one will give a clear answer on Hezbollah. The answers are meandering and vague, given that way so as to avoid having to tell me that they have sympathies for a group that my government brands as terrorist.
What I’ve been careful to do here is to avoid expressing my opinion on the present conflict because it is so much more interesting to try to get a sense of how a population that I live in deals with these complicated international issues. What I would really like is for some in the US to comment on this post by writing about the pulse of the American people on this issue and the similarities and differences between the sentiment of the American people and the stance of the US government. I will, in turn, keep you updated in the comment section as I have more conversations and get a better sense of the complexities of Egypt’s situation.

A Day at the Pyramids

It was a day I had anticipated for a long time, and it lived up to expectation in almost every way. A friend of mine that I met through Kalimat told me that she was planning to make her first trip to the pyramids with another girl she’d met at her hotel. The two of them had hired a taxi to drive them around for the whole day. They asked if I wanted to join them and split the price, which, of course, I did because it meant I was paying about twelve dollars for an entire day of chauffeuring, albeit in a small taxi.
And so we left at 7:30am, determined to beat the traffic. Throughout the preceding week and a half I’d spent in Cairo, I had caught a couple fleeting and distant glimpses of the pyramids. I’d see vague silhouettes imprinted against the ski. This only heightened the anticipation with which I waited to walk among the ancients.
But to make it to the great pyramids, I’d have to wait just a little longer. We decided to go to two additional sets of ruins in addition to the pyramids at Giza. First we drove twenty miles South of Cairo to the ruins of Saqqara, a vast burial ground for Egypt’s early Pharaohs. Saqqara is spread over a fairly large expanse of desert, miles and miles in fact, so it’s best to go to one of the two concentrations of ruins, called North and South Saqqara. We went to North Saqqara because we didn’t want to go any further south than we had already gone since it was going to be a long day.
When we arrived at Saqqara, we were the ONLY people there. Now, imagine coming to a center of the ancient world, surrounded by pyramids and tombs and temples, and you are the only tourists there, literally. It was quite shocking. As there are everywhere, however, there were a few salesmen determined to take advantage of their first targets of the day. One man, for example latched onto us from the beginning and started giving us a tour. The two girls repeatedly told him we weren’t giving him any money, which didn’t seem to be a problem until he was done with his “tour” and got really upset when we didn’t pay him. That’s a major theme here in Egypt, by the way: receiving services you don’t want and then being harassed for money. But after all the rare-coin salesmen, tour guides, and camel riders had all had their shots and realized that we weren’t interested, we were able to stroll the grounds uninterrupted. And, it should be noted, that unlike in the States or in Europe, there were no robes or glass or anything keeping us from getting to close to any of the antiquities. So for an hour and a half we walked around the step pyramid and poked into a handful of tombs adorned with hieroglyphics and ancient drawings.
But before too long we decided to move onto the next spot in order to beat the tourists. So from Saqqara we drove three miles down to road to Memphis. Memphis was the first capital of the combined kingdoms of North and South Egypt. It remained the capital until Alexander the Great moved it to Alexandria. And time had left little for the passing sight-seer to enjoy. Memphis is a standard rural town now in the Nile Valley. When you drive through the dirty streets lined with poor cafes and stray dogs, there is no hint that this used to be the capital of the ancient world. Unfortunately, almost every treasure that once belonged to Memphis has worn away with time. What is left has all been assembled in an outdoor museum just outside the town. Let me put it to you this way: taking our time, it took us fifteen minutes to see all the relics. There are only two artifacts of note: one is a thirty foot tall statue of one of the Egyptian Gods (I forget now which one) and the other is an alabaster sphinx that is probably eight feet tall and fifteen feet long. This is a stop worth making only if you know in advance what you’re getting into. For us, with visions of the ancient metropolis dancing in our minds, the remains were few and disappointing.
After getting back in the taxi, we made the twenty minute trip over to Giza for the main attraction. Anticipation had slowly been building throughout the day, and we were going at last. And, I must say, I was not disappointed. The town of Giza, while nominally distinct from Cairo, runs right into the main city. On the side opposite Cairo, Giza comes right up to the edge of the desert and the pyramids. You need to arm yourself with two words to enjoy the sights here: la and shukran. These mean “no” and “thank you.” From the moment you enter the grounds, you just have to start saying these to keep the endless stream of salesmen at bay. The first thing you come upon is the sphinx. When you first arrive at the pyramids, the sphinx actually looks like something of a disappointment. It’s absolutely tiny in the presence of the pyramids. But when you get closer, it begins to look more imposing and the craftsmanship of it really takes charge. You can’t help but get goose bumps when you get close to it and you begin to absorb the magnitude of the history staring you in the face. In this photo I’ve posted, you can see the sphinx on the far left. On the right side of the photo is the Great Pyramid of Cheops. It is the largest of the pyramids and it’s the one we walked all the way around. When you get to the backside of these pyramids, there are fewer tourists and no salesmen, so you can really enjoy the sights. The pyramid in the middle of the photo is Chephren’s pyramid. It’s less tall than Cheops’ but it’s on higher ground so it looks taller, and more of the top is in tact, so it actually is the more impressive of the two. Also while we were there, we climbed down into one of the tombs abutting the Great Pyramid. Climbing down was less about what you saw when you were down there (an empty room) but more just to feel the claustrophobia, smell the humidity, and wonder if the policeman at the top would slam the door shut on you. He did not and therefore asked us for tips, which, having made it out safely, we refused him.
It’s hard to talk about these sights we saw because we didn’t do very much while were there. It’s so much more about the fact that you are at these places and there is a sort of pull that won’t let you leave, and you invent new heaps of sand you suggest might be ancient remnants to give yourself an excuse to stay and stare at these wonders. They’re truly magnificent and force you to reevaluate your concept of time and longevity.

Independence Day

On this, the Fourth of July, 2006, I propose that we, as a nation, change our outdated definition of independence. It has taken me spending my Independence Day on the streets of the third world to understand how flawed we are when we think of independence in the way we do. On the fourth of July we celebrate our declaration of our political sovereignty, that day two hundred and thirty years ago on which we demanded self-rule and started the process that would, over the next decade and a half, result in a government that was meant to allow the people maximum personal liberty and assure their collective security.

I want to fast-forward to the modern era, a time in which the words freedom and independence are much discussed. We, as Americans, take great pride in comparing ourselves to people from other nations and boasting about how pure our freedom is by comparison. Human rights in China, women’s rights in Afghanistan, political rights in Venezuela. These are examples, we like to say, of how we really are, by comparison, a shining beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.

But I ask you to reevaluate this perception of freedom because seeing life as it exists in Cairo has taught me that economics is the best indicator of freedom and independence. And using economics as a measuring tool, it is clear that the United States has a long way to go.

I have done a little investigating in the last couple days to resolve a discrepancy that arose several weeks ago. My father was quizzing the family on the populations of the world’s biggest cities. I told him that Cairo’s population was eighteen million, as I had read in a guide book, but he told me that his list had Cairo marked down around eleven million. I figured that this was a normal discrepancy derived from a difference of method on where to draw the city lines. Surely, one source was giving the population of Cairo proper and the other of Cairo and surrounding areas. But then a conversation with an educated businessman from Holland brought the issue into frightening perspective. Eleven million, he told me, was the official population of the city. Eighteen million was the actual size when accounting for the masses that eat and drink and breathe in the squalor of the back alleys and gutters of Cairo’s vast slums. Think of it: a city in which as many as seven million are so destitute that they do not even make it onto the government registry.

Yesterday, I saw two legs sticking out of a grimy dumpster in an upscale Cairo neighborhood. Moments later I saw that it was a little boy, likely homeless, digging through the dumpster for any food he could find. When he reappeared from the garbage, he had trash plastered all over his face and tattered clothes, and in his hand he held a banana peel. As I turned around the corner, the last I saw of him was as he scraped his teeth again and again over the peel, hoping to get a morsel or two for his efforts.

I believe that any one of these seven million anonymous faces is far less free and independent than any woman in Saudi Arabia or political dissident in Venezuela. In Cairo, I pass women everyday wearing the traditional robes, exposing only their eyes. But, as a veiled woman told me at my school, these kinds of dress are often a comfortable expression of who they are, and woman are treated with more respect in Egypt than in anyplace I’ve been. I do not want to get into a discussion about women in the Middle East as it deserves a post unto itself, but I do want to make the point that merely the ability to debate dress code in the Middle East, the time to fight for self-expression in China, the means to fight for free press in Russia, these are all “luxuries” that assume a level of economic adequacy in which mere survival is not the everyday focus.

Let me turn this argument a little and bring it back to the United States, whose independence we today celebrate. In our country, millions live in the indefensible gap between the minimum wage and the livable wage. A person making minimum wage without family in the United States is unable to maintain a decent one bedroom apartment, eat three meals a day, and supply for themselves other basic necessities that would fall under the designation survival. Let’s not even begin talking about the minimum wage earner who has to provide for a family. We need to remember that this gap is state sponsored; that is to say that the government has, with all the research out there on livable wage, endorsed a wage that insures a continuing cycle of poverty. The minimum wage earner in the United States is a prisoner in much the same way as the boy in the dumpster. Both must dedicate their whole existence to survival without time to pursue social, political, and economic advancement.

As this day draws to a close for me in Cairo, I think that I will never look at the Fourth in the same way again. Just as many around the world live without freedom, so too do the poorest of our country. And this is not just a lament; we have the tools and the means to solve this problem. This is not a problem as difficult and overwhelming as AIDS in Africa or global warming; it is more immediately fixable. And just as the poorest among us live in chains, so too should we, the more well-to-do, consider ourselves bound by the chains of duty and human decency that require us to take action against this injustice. Today we should celebrate not what freedom we have but what freedom we might one day have. And we can achieve it with a little sweat, a little integrity, and, of course, a little sacrifice.