Theo's Year in the Middle East

Food In Egypt

2008-12-20T00:13:00.002+02:00

An Iraqi Dinner

2008-08-01T17:59:00.002+03:00

The drive to 6th of October City is a lonely one — for me and the thousands of other cars on the road. Despite the immense urban sprawl that has come to define Cairo, I jumped in a taxi on a major thoroughfare that runs by my apartment and was deep in the surrounding agricultural sprawl within ten minutes. Hauling through quiet countryside, I made my way towards one of Cairo's satellite cities fifteen miles away.

Years ago, recognizing the over-congestion of Egypt's capital, government officials launched an ambitious plan to build entire cities in the surrounding desert in the hopes of enticing some of the populace away from the city center. 6th of October rings a discordant tone when you first get to it. There are no neighborhoods or walking streets, just rows of quiet sandy apartment buildings, punctuated with a supermarket here and there. It doesn't seem like much of a city, rather it feels like an over-sized middle class housing development. Cruising through farmland, and then desert, a few nights ago, the pyramids distantly silhouetted to my right, I eagerly anticipated my impending arrival to the city, which hosts many of Egypt's 150,000 Iraqi refugees.

I had been put in touch with a guy named Abu Bashar, from Baghdad, for a story I was working on. Though I'll withhold some of the details of the conversation for the story I'm working on, I'll describe the bulk of my evening.

I found Abu Bashar's restaurant behind a shopping center which represented one of 6th of October's only lively night spots.

When I found Abu Bashar, I launched right into the traditions of Arab hospitality, which I always find a way to bungle. Trying to make small talk as we settled into our seats in a next-door restaurant (why we didn't sit at his restaurant is a mystery to me!), I asked Abu Bashar if his restaurant offered shisha. Thinking I wanted a shisha right then, he sprung into action, demanding a waiter come take my order. Trying to make good on my training in the ways of Arab culture, which demands generous hospitality from the host and scores of modest refusals from the guest, I repeatedly turned down the shisha. Ridiculous, I thought, since I had essentially just ordered a shisha. Abu Bashar, a short-ish stalky Iraqi with a surprisingly fair western complexion, demanded I take the shisha. Back and forth we went for a few minutes before I acquiesced and took the shisha, embarrassed that I had flunked round one.

Soon thereafter, we got to talking. Discussing issues pertinent to my story, we then turned discussion to the war at large, and I turned off the recorder in the hopes of eliciting a candid dialogue. Abu Bashar, a Sunni, had arrived in Cairo two years ago after Shia militia men took over his engineering company. Driving his wife and three children out of war-torn Baghdad, Abu Bashar stopped for some weeks in Damascus before taking a flight to set up life in Cairo. An engineer by training, Abu Bashar grinned as he discussed the challenges of setting up a restaurant.

Egypt, which has taken little of the refugee burden as compared to Syria and Jordan, hosts a more affluent refugee community since coming here since getting here typically entails air travel. Most, like Abu Bashar, arrive with some savings and struggle to set up businesses in the face of a hostile Egyptian government, hardened from its dealings with refugees of all stripes, be they Sudanese, Eritreans, etc.

As our conversation progressed, I began to ask Abu Bashar about his impressions of the war. His very bloodline, I soon discovered, represented an anti-sectarian view of his country. With a Sunni father and a Shia mother, Abu Bashar was quick to point out to this short-sighted American the sectarian mixing that defined Baghdad pre-war. He lived in a Shia neighborhood and, he explained, many of his friends and business partners were Shia.

This, however, is where he ran into trouble. As the war ran out of control and neighborhoods turned into sectarian bastions, Abu Bashar and his family soon found themselves on the wrong side of the wall, so to speak. Because he was unable to insulate himself from the hostile Shia militias, he was forced out of home and country, in search of a quieter upbringing for his children.

Abu Bashar today represents a moderate point of view on the war, not far from the mainstream of American politics. In 2003, with illegal satellite, he knew the war was coming, and though Saddam had provided security for the country, he wasn't opposed to an overthrow. After the invasion, he argued, the biggest mistake the Americans made was in keeping the troops infew massively fortified bases. This took me aback since it directly echoed pre-surge criticism of the war levied by many in the States. The troops, he continued, with whom he had nothing but good dealings, became anonymous and threatening. Then, articulating the Petraeus strategy without using the term, he discussed how much better things had become last year when troops began moving out into the communities and dealing with the people directly. Though he's still dissatisfied with how the Americans have handled the militias, he said that moving into communities has helped root out Al Qaeda. I couldn't believe how closely his opinions paralleled so many reports I've read about the new strategy from the western media. When I brought up Moqtada al Sadr, Abu Bashar derided him as a "boy," suggesting that the real Shia power in the country came from Iran.

After finishing our interview, my ability to navigate the waters of Arab hospitality was tested twice in quick succession. First, when I tried to pay for the shisha, Abu Bashar refused to let me pull out cash. Back and forth we went, in required form, until he won the argument and we walked over to his restaurant. Quickly, Abu Bashar invited me to stay for an Iraqi dinner. I refused. He insisted. I told him that I didn't want to impose on his hospitality. He demanded it. I made towards the main road. He called me back. Eventually, I caved and sat down at one of his outside tables. Before long, an embarrassingly generous feast arrived, and Abu Bashar began to walk me through the various dishes which, to my surprise, resembled nothing of the Egyptian or Lebanese food to which I had become accustomed. I worked my way through fried potatoes, fried rice balls, grape leaves and onions both stuffed with sticky yellow rice, a tomato-based stew served over rice, and a particularly stale tasting glass of milk. The milk, he offered, was boiled for hours, covered with cloth, left out over night, and then chilled.

As the meal drew to a close, over Abu Bashar's constant complaints that I hadn't eaten enough (I ate for about four people), Abu Bashar declared that we would be good friends. Pleased, and relieved that this new friendship seemingly let me off the hook from trying to pay, I invited him and his family over for dinner. Abu Bashar was convinced that American food was all burgers, steaks, and pizza, so I invited him for an all-American pizza feast.

How on earth I'll ever cook pizza is anybody's guess.

Readers' Questions and Comments

2008-07-23T16:26:00.003+03:00

Over the past couple of weeks, many of you have been good enough to write in to the comment section of my blog with thoughts, questions, etc.

The format of a blog is meant to encourage discussion, and I'd be a fool to let your comments sit unanswered, so I'll do my best here.

1) From Matt Doyle: "Great to see your blog is back in action and I am going to link it to mine so we can try and increase our global influence."

Matt is one of my best buddies from Middlebury, and he's spending the summer in Honk Kong. When he studied abroad in China he kept a blog, which he's resuscitated for the summer. I recommend you all check it out here for lots of great insights into Chinese life. It's also posted on my blog-roll on the right column of this blog.

2) From Peggy Burns: "Any photos from Ras Shaitan?"

Go to the right hand column of my blog, open the 2006 tab, and click on the post titled "Cats, Camels, Ghosts, and More." As you scroll through, you'll see photos — the last I've taken — from Ras Shaitan and the Sinai. Or just click here to get to that post.

3) From Karen May: "How much alcohol is available in Cairo?"

Alcohol of all stripes is readily available throughout the city, though if you're looking for the high-quality stuff, you better be prepared to go the hotels and pay an arm and a leg.

There's a company in Cairo, a favorite among all expats, called Drinkies. Drinkies, which has outlets throughout the city, will deliver beer, wine, and hard alcohol until 2 in the morning. Beer is limited to two local brands, Saqqara and Stella, and Heineken. I tend to go for the Saqqara. The local wine is pretty bad, but hey, I'm 23, right? The hard stuff, from which I tend to steer clear, is all local and pretty awful.

Bars abound in Cairo because, I suspect, Egypt depends so much on the tourism industry. Interestingly, the bars, though not hidden, tend to keep the drinking invisible to the streets out of respect for the Muslim culture. Take, for example, my favorite local bar, Pub 28. It sits on a crowded streets and it advertises itself openly as a bar, but all the drinking is done behind a thick wooden door and frosted glass windows. This sort of concealment is common.

In the scheme of Arab countries, Egypt seems to sit right in the middle when it comes to drinking. Lebanon, by contrast, seems to have built a culture around drinking. Every corner store has copious supplies of beer and hard alcohol and many of the bars spill onto the sidewalks. Yemen, on the other hand, lies at the other end of the spectrum. When I visited Sana'a, I asked the management of my hotel, a French Mercure, whether they had any wine. Several gasps and awkward stares later, I was informed that Yemen was a dry country. I eventually found a couple of beers, in a convenience store, in a cooler hidden behind some local soda cans. From what I could tell, Syria and Jordan had adopted the Egyptian model, with low-key bars dotting a handful of street corners.

Finally, and most importantly, I was relieved discovered that I can, for 16 bucks a pop, get my bourbon fix at any of the major hotel chains here in Cairo (Are you reading this, Jim Gish?!). It's a little beyond the reach of a journalist's budget, but I think I'll treat myself to a nice Makers Mark every couple of months.

4) From Anonymous: "I am still trying to figure out IF I can figure out how to post a comment correctly...my last comment went only to me! .... Hoping this comment actually goes through!"

Anonymous, your comment did, in fact, go through. Thanks for writing. Next time, however, unless you want to remain a mystery, sign your name at the bottom!

5) From Tony May: "one: why is a camera man sitting in the front seat, designating a journalist to the "no leg room" section of the bus? second: is journalism REALLY a profession or really a time-honored way to have adventures? third: i am under the impression the library was never discovered.... so what did you really see to your right?"

As to your first question, I don't have a good answer for you! He took the front and that was that! Not even our intrepid reporter got front-seat status. I suppose the assistant-producer title doesn't get you more than a couple of nights at the Sheraton Alexandria on the company dime. And, hey, if I'd sat in the front, would I have had such a compelling story to tell?!

To your second question. As you've teased me about endlessly, I seem to have chosen a profession that is dying a slow death. To deny that international journalism really serves as a vehicle for adventuring would be to tell a lie. But if journalists weren't excited about the adventure, any international story could be covered from the safety and comfort of an air-conditioned office in downtown New York. It is precisely the allure of adventure that brings reporters to odd corners of remote countries with a willingness to dig for the fascinating story. Point it, adventure is the key ingredient that keeps a small band of wayward fools (note: dying profession) bringing the most important untold stories to your door every morning.

Finally, the Alexandria library of old is, in fact, lost to the passage of time. A bunch of years ago, though, Egypt contracted the building of a new library on the sea that opened in 2003. They meant it to be the modern incarnation of the ancient library. You can see a picture I found online here. It's not, as you can tell, meant to replicate the original library, but I imagine it was meant to recapture some of the remarkable innovation associated with its predecessor.

That's all from here. Please feel free to write in with more questions. Please also request any topic you'd like me to look into for a post.

North Coast on the Air!

2008-07-22T14:44:00.003+03:00

As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I spent a couple days last week up on the north coast on assignment with ABC News. We put together a piece for World News with Charlie Gibson about how Egyptians spend their summer vacations, which aired last night. It's part of a Small World segment that World News is doing each Monday in July. In each installment, reporters from around the globe file pieces on how different people celebrate weddings, summer vacations, etc.

I served as assistant producer on the piece, which you can see here. Scroll down to the Small World tab and click on "Watch Vacations around the Globe."

All Things Music

2008-07-21T18:07:00.003+03:00

This post is a hodge-podge of all things music in the Middle East.

Dueling musical trends, as best I can tell, rule in Egypt. The first, I'm not so fond of.

There is a thriving pop music industry here that has successfully penetrated deep into the culture. Walk into a cafe, any cafe, and you'll find at least one flat screen blasting the latest music videos. At the bottom of each screen is a rotating list of phone numbers, depending on your Middle East country, through which you can send in messages that scroll at the very bottom of the screen (a la breaking news ticker on any cable news channel). "Samir hearts Ranya," "Doha International School," etc. seem to be the norm.

For my ears, the music is kept far too loud. It makes conversation tough and reading a book even worse. Yeah, I'm in a cafe now, conveniently with my back to the tv, but the volume is near-suffocating. The Egyptians, though, love it. And I'm not really in a position to complain since these "music video cafes" are so much a part of the culture.

The other track, and the far more appealing one, is the deep and pervasive love of the old singers, revered by all age groups. Take singer Umm Kalthoum, for example. She was once dubbed the unofficial First Lady of Egypt, using her star power to ease diplomatic tensions between Egypt and Libya. She's long since dead, but her music is everywhere but Egyptians still speak of her with tremendous affection. In modern terms, she's a lounge singer, crooning about love lost and found. She heads a list of old-timers that even the teeny-bopper generation here appreciates in a way that our own Britney-loving kids in the States don't express admiration for our bygone singers. It's this affection for the past that makes me love this group of singers and their enduring legacy.

The music scene in Beirut, by contrast, is far more rock-based. The hot bands there, for the most part, tear through songs with a sort of reckless abandon that has come to represent the country as a whole. They've got a classic rock sound with a 21st-century Lebanese message. That type of music also works well in a country that loves its live music and loves to party.

I'll never forget my first trip to Beirut's Music Hall. It's an old cinema that was transformed by a young guy with a passion for music into one of Beirut's hippest clubs. I had made a reservation with friends weeks ahead and walked to the Hall with a great deal of anticipation. Arriving at midnight (early by Music Hall and Beirut standards), I walked past tanks and barbed wire on my way. Hezbollah had been protesting in the city on and off for weeks and the government had put the capital on lockdown. Sitting at the table inside, my friends and I ordered a bottle of Johnny Walker and a round of cigars. The height of sophistication. And then, with an uneasy truce holding on the streets, the program in the Music Hall began. Though this would be my first of many evenings at the Music Hall, the first, for all its novelty, was the best.

The routine there was twenty minutes of live music on the stage, followed by twenty minutes of DJ music, followed by twenty more minutes of live music, etc. The evening started slowly. A couple of lounge singers, belting Sinatra and the like, while the DJ led things off with slow rock. But the well-coordinated production began to take off, with performers and DJ alike building an arc of intensity. At one point, a Queen cover singer came on and rocked through the requisite greatest hits before closing with "We are the champions." This song elicited the requisite eye-roll from this American who had long grown tired with the over-played number. But my attitude quickly changed as everyone in the audience rose from their seats, some with tears in their eyes (no kidding), threw their arms around each other, and sang every word.

As the evening progressed, the tempo of the music and, no doubt, the booze turned the place into an full-out dance club — a mass of people jumping and dancing in unison.

As the curtain went up for the final act, I groaned. On stage was a band of traditional Palestinian musicians, dressed in traditional clothes, sporting beards turbans, and mandolins to boot. This, I complained to myself, was how the night was slated to end? But little did I know. Moments later, the band launched into a rousing rendition of the Pulp Fiction theme song, their signature, and the place went ballistic. As they raced through songs in both English and Arabic, they played like a rock band on a mission. It was a fitting, and thrilling, end to a terrific evening that encompassed the full spectrum of the Lebanese music scene — a scene, I'd argue, unmatched in its passion anywhere in the world.

On the Road

2008-07-20T16:46:00.003+03:00

Serving as a journalist in quiet Cairo is a far cry from working in conflict-prone Lebanon. I don't anticipate moving apartments, as I had to in Beirut, because road blockages and burning tires hindered my morning commute. I don't feel the urgency to spring out of bed in the morning to check the headlines wondering whether a bomb or a shooting will put my long-term story assignments on hold.

Still, though, life as a journalist in Egypt presents its share of the unexpected. Late last week, for example, I had to pound out a story for the Daily News on the construction projects springing up around Egypt (see the link in my last post). The story coincided with a trip I had to up to Egypt's north coast for ABC News. I'll stay mum on the ABC story so as not to cross any lines, but needless to say it was a fantastic two-day learning/working adventure. I conducted my interviews in the car en route to the north, and each pothole and car swerve is memorialized in the practically illegible notes I took.

After a stopover well west of Alexandria, we decided to head to the north coast's biggest city around 11pm. I knew I needed to get my story in that night so that my editors to spend the next day reviewing it, and my only window was the hour and a half long jog east to Alexandria. I sat in the backseat, passenger-side, with my MacBook propped open on my lap ready to write. I could only open the computer a little ways since our 6-foot 5-inch camera man sat in front of me had decided to put his seat back, practically in my lap. The car's windows were wide-open for the two smokers in the front, so little flecks of debris from the road kept irritating my contact lenses. So knees in my face, computer screen mostly shut, all sorts of crap flying in the window, potholes knocking my fingers off the keys, Springsteen blaring in my headphones, I wrote. With the Mediterranean in full view to my left, sites like the library of Alexandria to my right, I wrote.

It's a modest story, I know, but it's moments like those that put a smile on my face and make me love this profession.

Egyptian Construction — More than you wanted to know

2008-07-20T11:42:00.002+03:00

Interested in learning about the latest construction trends in Egypt? Read my article here.

Another post coming this pm. It's been a hectic few days....

24 Hour Cairo

2008-07-14T16:53:00.002+03:00

My conundrum: how to lead both a professional lifestyle and an Egyptian one, too. Side note: doesn't it say something that leading a professional lifestyle in Egypt is practically mutually exclusive from following an Egyptian way of life?

This thought came to me today on the way home from work during a triumphant cab ride where I found myself, for once, galloping a breakneck speeds down the thoroughfare on the way home from work, the car's five hundred nuts and bolts rattling violently. As we hit 30mph and I thought the 20 year-old cab might literally fall apart right there on the road (similar feeling to when I flew Yemenia Airlines), I achieved a moment of clarity. I was straddling two lifestyles, which together are wholly unsustainable. First, the professional way of life. It's not too dissimilar to the way a working person in New York might behave. I wake up at 8:30, throw a pot of water on the stove, and hop in the shower. After showering, and with water on the stove at a boil, I make myself a cup of instant 3-in-1 Egyptian coffee (yeah, that's right, one packet contains coffee, powdered milk, and sugar), and gulp it down as I pick through my clothes to find the least sweaty, least gritty button-down in my closet. A quick read of the overnight headlines and a brief check of my email, and I'm ready to go.

I hop a cab, paying 5 pounds (roughly 90 cents) for the fifteen minute hop across the river to my office in Dokki, not far from where I lived when I first moved to Egypt two years ago. The office is a quiet one on the fourth floor of a modern-ish building, and I set my MacBook up and get to work on my latest assignment. I spend woefully little time reporting and writing, and am instead obliged to pass the balance of my time bouncing around from person to person on the phone, trying, sometimes in vain, to find someone at a given government ministry or private firm to talk with me. Such is life for a reporter who has yet to establish a thick Rolodex of contacts. Yesterday, for example, I spoke with four people at the Foreign ministry, two at the Ministry of Trade, one at the Libyan Embassy, and six at the ministry of Petroleum before finding one person who'd give me an interview. I then supplement my interviews with as much research as I can muster (yesterday it was on Libyan-Egyptian trade relations) and get to writing. When the writing process starts, I throw a little Springsteen on the iPod and get at it. Some hours later, I wrap up the story, email it to my editor, wait to see if she has any comments, and hit the road.

Once back home, I spend the balance of the afternoon and evening plugging away at various ABC assignments and freelance aspirations. A quick dinner (I've learned to cook pasta) and beer (Saqqara, named after a pyramid south of Cairo, is the best local stuff), and I'm all done.

It's only then, though, that my determination to lead the Egyptian lifestyle kicks in. The shisha cafes, a ritual stop for me, don't get hopping until midnight, at best. Say I'm feeling lazy and unwilling to go far afield, I'll cobble together a group of friends and head down the block to Goal, a cafe on the Nile with acceptable peach flavored shisha and an apathetic wait staff. Lingering over my shisha and a glass of water (note: broke reporter on a budget), I usually play a game of backgammon or two, pay the check, and leave. If I have any interest in heading to see the downtown scene, where thousands of Egyptians nightly hit the streets on the prowl for a bargain on a pair of pants, sunglasses, etc., 1am is usually a good time. On any given work night, the downtown social scene stretches deep into the night as people adjust their schedules to beat the heat. I visited one of Egypt's slums, called Imbaba, the other night at 2am with a taxi driver from the area, and the markets were hitting their peak just as I was leaving an hour later.

Basic services also stretch late into the night. Imagine my frustration when, with a 10am interview, I searched unsuccessfully for one of the clothes ironing stands. 9:30am, and not a one to be found. Instead, I caught up with my local ironer at 1:30 that night and he worked on my clothes for an hour afterward and was still open for me to pick them up. Last night, I picked up my dry cleaning just after midnight and then poked my head into Osama's barbershop to find out his hours but didn't return for a trim since he planned to close at 1, and I had another engagement until then.

With these two worlds in Cairo, that collectively stretch practically around the clock, I find it difficult to squeeze in a few hours for sleep. Unwilling to sacrifice either my job or the world of Cairo that I've come to love, I live in perpetually sleep-deprived haze. At this point, I'm starting to get used to the way of life, and lack of sleep has become more of an annoyance than a problem. I can't complain, though, because it's the life that I've chosen and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Food Prices

2008-07-12T14:17:00.002+03:00

Here's my latest story on food prices in Egypt. Not terribly exciting to those outside the country since it was meant to be a narrow news story instead of a broader profile of food prices. Hope you enjoy it anyways.

What North Coast?

2008-07-10T19:14:00.006+03:00

I admit, though I try to do all things Egyptian, there's one trend I haven't gotten caught up in: the ritual summer pilgrimage to the North Coast. Egyptians are blessed in having two waterfronts, and Cairenes are quite stubborn about the seasonality of each. As a rule, Egyptians spend their summers up on the Mediterranean in the north and their free time in the winter on the Sinai or along the east coast at the Red Sea.

Every summer, like clockwork, the city's wealthy flock to a string of high-end resort towns, mostly to the west of Alexandria. Here's one you can check out; it's called Marina. They turn down the Red Sea cost mostly due to the scorching temperatures and social duties up in the north.

I've never been able to bring myself to spend much time up there, though. I'm still enraptured with the authentic Egyptian culture, and going to these places seems like a cop-out. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it all out, but sitting on even the most elite of beaches, drinking beer with five-thousand of my most high-end Egyptian friends does not add up to a good time for me. Instead, I elicit eye-rolls from every Egyptian I tell this to and head to the Sinai on a regular basis for 115 degree low-key weekends. I usually go either to a hippie town called Dahab or a quiet little Bedouin camp called Ras Shaitan.

Ras Shaitan (meaning, literally, "Devil's Head") is the best because it sits empty most of the year, and we arrive to a beach all our own, great meals, and personal cabins....all for $10 per night! It turns out that the place is practically devoid of tourists except for about five holiday weekends per year when Israelis (yes, Israelis!) seep over the border for a little r&r by the seaside. Ras Shaitan is at its best once the sun goes down. By tradition, I, along with whatever friends I've brought along, pull lounge chairs to the seaside, drink beers, and enjoy the unobstructed view of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel. There is little better in life.

Each time we go to the Sinai, we make a trip up to the north end, mere miles from the heavily fortified Israeli border, for dinner at a place called Castle Zaman. It's a re-created castle, where they pride themselves on their method of slow cooking (meaning three hours) their meals. We typically get a tremendous platter of seafood or an entire leg of lamb. Not bad.

I'll move on, though, for risk of sounding like a travel writer.

There's another summer phenomenon, though, that drives Egyptians away from Cairo for the summer: the arrival of the dreaded "Gulfies." Many upper-middle class Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Emiratis, descend on Cairo for the summer. In oil rich countries, these people may be fairly middle of the road, but they come to Cairo where they're suddenly some of the country's wealthiest. I dare you to find me an Egyptian that does not bristle at the term "Khaligi," which is Arabic for Gulfie. They're rude, obnoxious, Egyptians would tell me. At first, I thought this was all a little over the top, but I've had a few run-ins myself ... and not one has been pleasant. I'm still waiting to see the huge influx that I saw two summers ago, but I'm assured by many Egyptians, that it's coming.

So maybe I ought to get with it, join the ranks of Egyptians, and head north. In the meantime, though, I'll do my part to avoid the Gulfies ... but I'll do so with a massive sun-burn, staring out over the sea, keeping an eye on Saudi Arabia.

(Note to the technologically impaired: any word that appears in a lighter shade is a link. You can click on it and it'll take you to the homepage of whatever it is I'm talking about).

Whitehouse '08: A View from Abroad

2008-07-09T16:16:00.004+03:00

I came over to the Middle East at the height of the '08 elections with mixed emotions. There I was, nestled in the belly of a British Airways jumbo jet, somewhere near south Greenland when the panic struck. How on earth would I get my daily fill of Matthews, Olbermann, and O'Reilly (yeah I'm a Factor junkie) from halfway around the world. Even if I did manage to get my hands on a TV that played MSNBC and FoxNews, would I really be able to stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning to catch my favorite shows? I'm a guy who needs to know every time Obama mentions arugula and McCain reminds us that he only deals in Straight Talk. I immediately threw on my headphones in an effort to let a little Margaritaville numb the pain, but the seeds of doubt had been planted. As Jimmy's chorus rang for a third and a fourth time in my ear, I tried to reassure myself that following the '08 election from the Middle East would be a unique opportunity.

Now, four weeks into my Cairo adventure, and with the help of my political blogs (which today told me that Obama attended a neighborhood barbeque near his house in Chicago over the weekend!), I've been able to begin to look at how Egyptians are viewing this historic election.

It all started about a week into my trip. I needed a trim and, lacking a favorite barber, found a little spot nestled in a back street in my neighborhood. About ten minutes after my barber offered me a joint of hash, which, through muffled laughter (and shock), I declined, he switched Looney Tunes on the TV and began riffing about the election. Despite my concerns that I had a stoner cutting my hair, I listened. "Obama is a very good man. A Muslim. Did you know?" My first instinct was to set the record straight, but I figured there'd be time for that, so I kept my mouth shut and listened. Switching to broken English, my scissor-wielding friend went on to tell me how having a Muslim president would be good for my country, which had so royally screwed up in his region over the past years. As he went on, essentially repeating his main thesis, I got began to grow excited about looking into how Egyptians viewed the Obama/McCain matchup. Here, issues of home foreclosures and tax cuts seem a distant reality and Middle East policy is king.

I left my barber a little while later, having barely dodged a run-in with two handfuls of hair-gel, unable to persuade him that Obama was, in fact, a Bible-carrying Christian. From that moment, I began asking around about the election, mostly among the ranks of the lower and lower-middle classes – taxi drivers, waiters, doormen, etc. — and the reactions have been surprisingly diverse. In fact, very few of the people I ask hold many illusions about Obama's religion. First and foremost, the prevailing attitude here is that people are ready to move past Bush. It's an attitude not dissimilar to the one in the US at the end of any eight-year president. Even with high approval ratings, people were ready to move on from Clinton in 2000, and I bet the same held true with Reagan in 1988. I've also been surprised by how many people simply haven't heard of Obama; I get a number of blank stares when I mention his name. Many, though, who know Obama and know his true religious affiliation, approach the election with a healthy dose of enthusiasm. There's something intangible, non policy-driven, that excites them about him. It bears mentioning that I don't have much to say about McCain since he rarely registers on the radar of your standard-issue cab driver.

While I can draw no over-arching conclusions from this initial assessment of how Egypt's poor view the presidential election, since opinions and levels of understanding are so varied, this mini sociological experiment has reinforced my belief in the importance of soft power as a critical tool in America's arsenal. Put, for a moment, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest of the extremist groups aside. While they have come to represent the face of the Middle East to the West, the real face of this region is the tens of millions of under-payed, under-represented Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, etc. They grow the food, build the houses, etc. They are critical in setting a tone for the region. And it was through these conversations I had with people on the street that I began to realize how open they are to moving back into the American camp. There is this deep, and somewhat amusing, affection among many in the region for Jimmy Carter. No kidding. He comes up often in conversation because they remember him as the last earnest American peace-broker in the region. As much as this may horrify many back home, people here are waiting for their next Jimmy Carter. It is a powerful sentiment, backed by millions, and forms the root of soft-power; and I think the next American President, whoever he may be, will stand a strong chance of reconstituting it. As the Egyptians grow to learn about both candidates, the door will open to begin a new chapter with them. I think, for example, Newt Gingrich's idea that the next President-elect ought to embark on a round-the-world listening tour, would be a powerful gesture to Egyptians up and down the ranks. The next President ignores the masses of the Middle East at their own peril.

Welcome Back

2008-07-09T02:40:00.001+03:00

Well, I've been in Cairo for almost a month, and I figured it was about time to get this blog re-started. This time I'm going to do things a little differently, though. When I was last in the Middle East, I registered thirty-five posts over eleven months. Not bad, but going forward I plan to cut down on the length of my posts and instead focus on posting shorter posts far more frequently. Needless to say, when I have one of those groundbreaking epiphanies that suddenly allow me to see the Middle East in a new and fascinating light, I won't hold back. In the meantime, this blog will serve as a means of constantly updating you, the faithful reader, on a day-to-day basis. Count on many stories — the funny, the peculiar, the tragic — and some (I hope not too pretentious) thoughts on Egypt and the region. Some posts will be personal, some analytical. In the end, though, I hope that through these posts and the comment section at the bottom, we might be able to all share a little bit of knowledge in the study of this fascinating region.

Now let me tell you about my first month here. I spent my first days living with my friends Tom and Whitney at their place here in Zamalek, which is the neighborhood on the island in the middle of the Nile. I've since moved and found myself a nice little place just down the street from Tom and Whitney, across from where I used to live.

I've started work as a part-time business reporter for a local paper called Daily News Egypt, and you can check out my latest article here. Hey, whoever knew that natural gas could be such a blast. I'm also getting started right now with some work I'll be doing for ABC News over the course of the coming year. I'd tell you what I'm working on for them, but Charlie (you know, Gibson) told me to keep it under wraps. Just kidding.

My friends from Middlebury, Rowan and Justin came to visit near the end of June and we had a great time visiting the sites around Cairo, including the pyramids, the camel market, the Friday market (where monkeys come cheap!), etc. We also ventured to the Sinai for a few days of rest Bedouin style.

I suppose I'll leave it there for now. Nothing too exciting in this post, but I wanted to give you the full update in short order. Many more stories to come in the coming days and weeks.

In the meantime, I've put a few photos in the post below to whet your appetite. You should be able to click on each image to enlarge it.

The First Installment of Photos

2008-07-09T02:07:00.005+03:00

If this doesn't get you coming back, nothing will!

Positive Forces

2007-04-25T13:18:00.000+02:00

I received a comment on my last blog from Peggy at Middlebury, and she asked me to tell a more upbeat story. I read her comment, and I started thinking for hours about what I could write in reply. What about the success stories? Initially I was a little mixed up since my experience in Lebanon has been generally upbeat punctuated by only a handful of sad stories. It was only after a while that I realized how my world, nestled here in upscale Beirut is what's so pleasant. Far from the squalor of the Palestinian camps, the bombed out houses in the south, and the fields of deadly cluster bombs, my little street in the neighborhood of Gemmayze boasts dozens of bars, food ranging from spaghetti to sushi, and more people speaking French than Arabic. It's only when I remove myself from my little bubble and head into the wilds of Lebanon that I see the massive problems the country faces.
But central Beirut aside, I began thinking about my experiences as a whole in my travels to the south, the Bekka Valley, the southern suburbs, the Chouf, and the Palestinian camps. Clearly my most vivid memories of these trips were of the awful smells of the back alleys of Chatila camp or of the terrified shepherd who was weekly losing sheep to cluster bombs. These are the things that will stick with me for years, but today I began to realize that they are not representative of life throughout Lebanon. There's another force at play out there, tirelessly toiling against the powers of destruction. Lebanese NGO's are carrying the back-breaking burden of a country plagued by decades of strife and riddled with politicians too self-involved to work on fixing things.
The NGO's grab none of the headlines that a Hezbollah sit-in strike does; they make for none of the riveting television that riots do; but there are hundreds, maybe thousands of these groups working relentlessly, but quietly, in the slow march of progress. Over the past two and a half months, I've been privileged enough to spend time with a handful of these groups while working on various stories.
Some of the most impressive NGO work is going on inside the Palestinian camps. Although nearly half a million Palestinians live inside Lebanon, the vast majority of them live inside the dirt poor camps that are scattered across the country. They have a fraction of the rights afforded to Lebanese citizens. Against all these odds, non government groups are flourishing here and are doing the good work that others are not.
I have one friend named Ahmed who works as a science teacher in a school in Sabra camp. He was one of five founders of an NGO they began fifteen years ago. What's amazing about their work is that they aren't focused on only one issue. They change or grow the scope of the organization to recognize needs of the community. Ahmed showed me the maternity clinic his group recently opened. Mothers receive inexpensive medical consults from doctors all because Ahmed's group has managed to tap into the vast amounts of international aid that are available to Lebanese. Ahmed's organization also bought a multi-storey apartment building and has converted it into very low cost housing. In return, Ahmed's staff checks up on the tenants to make sure they're working, the theory being that level of income is less important than simply maintaining steady employment given the low legal status of Palestinians in Lebanon.
I’ve met with mothers who started a campaign to bring quality education to autistic children. I’ve talked with a group that has launched a campaign against eye disease. Intel corporation is pioneering telemedicine in Lebanon to bring quality healthcare to the remote corners of the country. Another group is working on a project in the south to bring high school students of different religions together to engage in inter-faith dialogue. Yet another NGO has created a cooperative of organic farmers as part of a campaign to rehabilitate agriculture in the south of the country. And the list goes on.
I’ve been privileged to do much of my work in Lebanon on these groups because although they’re not headline grabbing, it’s important that the world see the work they’re doing, that group by group and person by person they are the ones building the civil society that is so often threatened here.

View from a Hilltop

2007-03-12T18:26:00.000+02:00

Have you ever met somebody who has nothing? I don't mean somebody living in poverty, I mean someone who, already poor, goes on to lose everything. No? Meet Ali.

Ali lives in the tiny mountain-top town of Maroun Ras in southern Lebanon. Maroun Ras, while small, was the site of one of the most intense battles of the summer war. I visited it last Tuesday as part of a tour I was taking to find stories. After going down to the coastal city of Tyre to spend Monday night, I hired a taxi for the day Tuesday to take me around and show me a few towns in the south.

Let me interrupt myself for a second to allay the worries some of you may have. My process for deciding where to travel in the country is long and involved. I have a whole series of people I ask about the places I want to visit. Knowing each person I ask and their level of adventurousness and risk taking capacity, I can then make a judgment about where I can and cannot go.

Back to Maroun Ras. I ended up there after going through the towns of Yater, and Bint Jbeil. Let me give you a tour of the town. Imagine I'm standing on the narrow dirt road that passes by Ali's house. I'll give you a 360° tour, labeling the way I'm facing as one would label the face of a clock.

12 o'clock to 2 o'clock: open farmland. From where I stand on the road, the landscape drops off, not severely, into a long shallow valley. We're on top of a tall hill in Maroun Ras, and while it's short-sleeve weather on the coast only an hour west, I'm bundled in a heavy fleece as I survey the scene. About three or four kilometers away, the other side of the valley gives way to a set of steep rolling hills. They rise quite a bit higher than the hill I'm on, and I quickly learn that the tops of these hills mark the Israeli frontier. The Israelis, smartly, retain the high ground since many of the Hezbollah attacks last summer came from right where I was standing. It's unclear to me whether the Israelis grabbed the hills during the war or whether they already occupied that territory before the war began.

Three o’clock: A crumbling house, grand and somewhat out of place in a humble village, that was nonetheless another victim of the summer war. It’s a two storey house sitting at the high point of the hill. Columns support the second storey which overhangs a spacious porch on the ground floor. I would later go up to the house and knock on the door. No answer. I walked around to the other side, where an odd number of shoes waited outside the door. But again, no answer.

My driver tells me (and a reporter friend of mine subsequently confirmed) that after the battle for Maroun Ras, the Israelis took over the house. In the middle of the night, a band of Hezbollah members snuck back to the house and killed between six and twelve Israeli soldiers there.

As I walk on the porch, there is debris everywhere: old food items, broken picture frames, etc. I find there a shell casing, and my driver tells me that it came from an Israeli machine-gun. I have no idea if he’s right. On the far side of the porch, is some graffiti, presumably Israeli, depicting a Star of David with Hebrew underneath it. Walking up the stairs, there is more graffiti, impossible to tell whose, showing armed men aiming guns at baby-carriages.

On one side of the house is a virtual garbage dump, piles of old food containers, some labeled in Arabic and others in Hebrew.

Six o’clock: In the fore-ground is Ali’s meager tobacco field. I can’t really tell you the size precisely, but I can say that it would be easy for me to throw a baseball over the length of his field two-times over. Ali and the girl with him that I assume is his daughter claims that he was detained for twenty days by the Israelis during the summer war at the time he should have been harvesting his tobacco crop, and he therefore lost his entire year’s income.

The tobacco field is now ruined. It’s covered by heavy chunks of rubble and the earth is all askew and in disarray.

Immediately behind his field is a school. The façade of the school has been devastated by shelling. Seemingly hundreds of holes penetrate its front. I’m not sure if the school has been re-patched enough on the inside to open itself to students. It’s a grim reminder that every war has its innocent casualties.

Nine o’clock. The main road of town stretches before me. Slightly downhill, the road runs straight just a couple hundred yards until the other end of town at which point it bends out of sight. It’s a gravelly dirt road, and it seems as though every other building along it has been destroyed. Clearly too poor to deal with the devastation, town's only marked sign of progress in the seven months since the ceasefire is that the debris has clearly been pushed off the road, creating an abrupt wall of crumbled building chunks along the way. A few people sit or stand along the road, but the overcast skies and the cold temperatures seem to have driven most of the people indoors. Either that, or they just get sick of looking at their shattered town.

Eleven o’clock. At the mouth of the road that leads through town stands Ali in front of his house. Ali, I have to believe, is well under five feet tall. At first I thought he must be over eighty years old, but the more I think about it, the more I have to wonder how much the lifestyle of a frontier farmer would prematurely age him. He walks stooped over and uses a cane that was once a broomstick.

I try speaking to Ali in Arabic but have a hard time understanding him. I turn to my translator in frustration, but he, a native speaker, replies that even he is having a difficult time understanding him because Ali's age has caused him to mutter and because he speaks a more formal dialect. Ali explains to us that he was “kidnapped” (his word, not mine) by the Israeli Defense Forces and held for twenty days without food or water. During that time, as I already mentioned, he lost his tobacco crop for the year.

Behind Ali is his house. The right side of it has caved in under the burden of bombs and mortar rounds. I was not invited in, but what little I could see from the doorway indicated a very simple way of life. Ali had no electricity and his water pump had also been destroyed. In front of his house was a slab of concrete, under which Ali kept a few modest jugs of water that he had somehow obtained. As I talked to Ali and learned his story, I asked him about the nearly unrecognizable hunk of metal off ten feet to his left. “My car,” he said. There was almost nothing left of it. Or, more accurately put, it was all still there but in a form too bombed out and too mangled to recognize.

I suppose that I was inaccurate when I said that Ali has nothing. It’s not true. He has half a house, a few hidden jugs of water, and a broken broom stick. He has all these things but little more. What scares me so much is that Ali has literally no means of making a dollar. He missed out on last summer’s income possibilities, and with the destruction of his farmland, he’ll miss out again this summer. Clearly, the fact that this town is so remote and so small means that aid has not reached Maroun Ras yet in any noticeable way.

I recount my trip with no political bias. I have long come to terms with the fact that it would be irresponsible of me takes sides in the summer war without visiting the other side of the border, talking with Israeli citizens, and taking in the damage there. But even so, the damage has been done, and I really worry about Ali’s future. Besides his house, his water, and his walking stick, Ali has a few graves in his backyard that belong to deceased family. Set in overgrown, unkempt grass, these graves provide a moment of respite in a town that has so little to be relaxed about. I worry that if Ali doesn’t get the help he needs, a helping hand to put him back on his feet, he could join his ancestors in the tranquility of his back lawn sooner than he should.

Photos (Sorry that they're disorganized)

2007-02-18T18:52:00.000+02:00

So here is a new round of photos. Sorry for not integrating them into my writing posts. I'm just a little strapped for time nowadays, so I get stuff on the blog whenever, however I can!
Photos from top to bottom: The first six photos are of Martyr's Square. The ones with no people were taken two days before the protests to mark the two year anniversary of the assassination of Rafik Hariri. The ones with people are of the day of the protest. The next photo is of the fishing harbor in Tyre in South Lebanon. The next three mountain photos are of Druze territory in the Chouf Mountains. Below that is the boardwalk in Tyre. The last photo is of the town of Qana, ground zero for a lot of violence between Lebanon and Israel. Sorry this is all a bit of a mess, but this program makes it tough to get photos organized.

Redemption

2007-02-15T00:18:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, Tuesday, is a day I wish I could quickly forget.
Blessed with a journalist's working hours, my alarm was still an hour from sounding when I rolled out of bed at nine in the morning. Opening my computer to see that I had no new email and that there was no new news coming out of Lebanon, I crawled back into bed for some more shut eye.
When I got out of bed an hour later, I flicked on CNN, a common trick for helping me come to my senses. I turned it on just in time to see the broadcast's opening segmet. "Twin blasts kill a dozen north of Beirut," the caption at the bottom of the page read. Startled, I hustled through showering and getting dressed before running out the door. As I walked down the street, it seemed just perfect to me that a day like this would be cold and rainy. It wasn't that the rain was that hard, it was that the cloud cover was so thick that the city was eerily dark.
When I bustled into work minutes later, I conferred with the other journalists to get the news. In the middle of my questioning, two other reporters brushed by me towards the door. One of them was in tears because her family was from the mountain town where the bombing had occurred. Hardly saying a word, I grabbed my camera and rushed after them. We were soaked by the time we reached our car just a block away.
What was so terrible about this bombing, we all agreed in the car, was that this was really the first time since the civil war ended that terrorists had targeted civilians at random. Unlike many other terror-prone Middle Eastern countries, terrorism in Lebanon targets important politicians and journalists almost exclusively.
Our route took us about twenty minutes straight up the coastal highway. The clouds kept us from seeing much of the sea. We then made an abrupt turn off the highway and started up the tiny mountain road that would take us to our destination. Small town piled upon small town all rolled out in front of us as we tackled a seemingly endless set of switchbacks that traversed the steep mountainside. Watching the clouds wind their way through the mountains, I could not help but feel some sort of dread for having tagged along.
At last, we saw a poncho-wearing policeman up ahead on the road, diverting all cars off to the left. We drove up to him and showed our press credentials and he immediately, and almost apologetically, waved us through. We drove another fifty yards up the road and parked. As we headed up the rest of the way on foot, we began to see an assembled crowd ahead. There were too many cars, journalists, and policemen to make immediate sense of my surroundings.
As I approached, however, it all laid itself out for me in nightmarish reality. I think what initially surprised me most was, ironically, my momentary lack of shock. For a moment it seemed to me as though I had seen something like this a hundred times before. Then I realized that it was television and movies that were paving that lie, and at that moment I flinched in the understanding that this was the first real act of terrorism I had laid eyes on.
The first bus was only about twenty feet behind the police barricade. I was facing the bus head-on and the damage done to it was frightening. The windows were all either blown out or broken into shards. The back of the bus, where the bomb had been planted, was squeezed like an accordion. I was fortunate that, having arrived exactly three hours after the bombing, all the victims had been taken to hospitals and all blood had been washed away by the rain.
I turned to my left and saw the CNN reporter who had first brought the gruesome images straight from the rainy mountains into my apartment. In front of me was a barrage of policemen and several bomb sniffing dogs. Soaked to the bone with their backs to the buses, the policemen looked something between scared and helpless.
Dignitaries streamed to the site. Members of Parliament, flanked by body guards and led by aides with umbrellas, would duck under the police line and walk right up to the buses, head bowed as they prayed for a moment or two before being hustled back to their cars by concerned guards.
The second bus, about thirty meters behind the first, was even more chilling. Its roof and walls were entirely ripped off. Where they had landed, I have no idea. Soaked and burned, the brownish-orange seats sat in a mangled mess. Devistatingly, local store-keeps told us, the bomb in the second bus went off between five to ten minutes after the first one. By the time the second one went off, people had swarmed the first bus, trying to help the injured. After the second explosion, locals were too afraid to approach the buses and help people for fear of further bombs. This was truly the classic definition of terrorism.
Standing where I was, twenty feet from the first bus, I looked out left of the road into a steep drop-off between mountains. On the right side of the road was a tall wall that had been erected when the road was carved out of the mountain. The distance between the wall and the drop off must have been fifteen yards. As I stood there taking in the scene, the most devastating thing happened. A group of about a dozen ten year-old students came walking up from behind. Ushered by several teachers, they were on their way home after school had been cancelled early. Because of the limited number of roads on the mountain, the kids were forced to walk down this one.
When they arrived at the police barricade, one of the teachers conferred with the head policeman and explained the issue. The policeman looked reluctant since almost nobody, barring dignitaries, were gaining access to the site itself. But he relented. As the students, short enough to not have to duck under the police tape, started heading down the road, their teachers called to them urgently and repeatedly to face the wall. "Look at the wall," they yelled. "Don't look over here." But as ten year olds tend to, several of them stole looks at the buses which lay no more than fifteen feet away. The looks on their faces will be unforgettable to me. They were clearly bewildered and pained and even the curious ten year-olds voluntarily snapped their heads back towards the wall.
I couldn't believe that this is how these kids were growing up—walking through bomb sites on the way home from an early school closure. I could not comprehend this kind of childhood.
As I stood there contemplating all this, one of the other reporters called to me to start heading back to the car. As I turned, I realized that I had been standing right next to something large on the ground. I had never bothered to look down and see what it was. But as I turned to head back, I almost fell over the bumper of the first bus, blown well down the road by the blast. I just shook my head and put up my hood to hide from the rain. Hopeless, I thought.

As bad as things get here, as bleak and as dark as times can seem, the Lebanese have a way of shocking you with their ability to turn the page. My trip up the mountain had really shaken me pretty hard, and it was with a great deal of suspicion and sadness that I rolled out of bed this morning. Just a day after the bombings, today had all the trappings of a damning day in the history of Lebanon since hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Christians, hurting from Tuesday's bombings, would be descending on Martyr's Square to commemorate the second anniversary of the assassination of beloved Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In the very same square, Hezbollah has its tent city, created two and a half months ago, where it has been protesting the government. It seemed as though many ominous stars had aligned themselves to bring ruin to any semblance of peace in the country. Indeed, in the past it had taken far less than today's conditions to bring about violence.
To make matters worse in my own head, I was charged with writing the article on any casualties that came from today's rallies. I positioned myself in Martyr's Square early so as to be on hand if anyone got hurt. I periodically talked to the Red Cross who said that nothing had yet happened. In light of the previous day, I felt miserable as I stood there waiting for the fighting to break out.
But what transpired in Martyr's Square was inspiring. Hundreds of people set themselves up around the square, selling sandwiches and sodas and handing out flags and scarves and hats. On top of that, today was a family affair. Thousands of families—men, women, and children—came together in a carnival-like atmosphere to remember the leader they loved. Wearing everything from western dress to full-fledged hijabs and galabayas, they came. Some were dressed in work clothes and others in celebratory outfits. Kids played and laughed and sang. Periodically from one corner or another from the square I could hear the ring of drums as a small group of children had gotten together to do a chant.
About three and a half hours after I arrived, the speeches began. Gibran, Edde, Geagea, Jumblatt, Hariri Jr.—they all came and tried to rouse the crowd. Filled with energy, the crowd responded enthusiastically, hollering in approval, thousands of Lebanese flags fluttering.
In a time of so much despair, the Lebanese really give reason to hope. On a day where all the seeds for violence had been planted, the people rejected that in favor of celebration. Despite so much cause for a fight, the Lebanese people en masse put civil strife on hold to give Hariri the celebration he deserved. It also gives hope for the future. If there ever was a day for the fragile and tentative peace in this country to spiral out of control, this was it. After today, Lebanon looks, just maybe, like a country unwilling to enter the period of violence that looks so imminent.
The speakers throughout the day continually referred to the capital city as Beirutikum, meaning Your Beirut. Today, the people of the Lebanon really took that to heart, embracing the city as their own rather than looking like a group wanting to destroying it. For this reason, getting up in the morning tomorrow will bring a little more hope.

The Stage

2007-02-13T14:05:00.000+02:00

I write this on a rainy winter Tuesday in Beirut. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day for much of the rest of the world, but not for Lebanon. For the Lebanese tomorrow will mark the two year anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and a day of incredible passion and activism across the country.
I look out the windows behind me and the mountains to the north and east are shrouded in low, dark clouds revealing only occasional glimpses of steep slopes plunging into the sea that give Beirut so much of its allure. It is probably a good thing that the mountains are hidden for just inside of them two bombs tore through commuter buses, killing several about three hours ago.
Just down the block, Martyr’s Square is a land divided. Just south of Hariri’s great blue-domed mosque, members of Hezbollah pass the days in their camp talking, drinking tea, and playing soccer as part of their two and a half month long sit-in strike against the government. Next to them is the fence. It is a new fence that runs right into the heart of Hariri’s beloved mosque. Built just last week, this fence is a tool to insure peace tomorrow. It is funny how a tall steel wall and two rows of razor wire can be used as tools of peace.
On the other side of the wall is an empty plaza, stretching almost to the sea. In twenty-four hours time hundreds of thousands are expected to flood it to remember their great slain Prime Minister.
So the stage is set. One plaza with two sides, a Hezbollah camp filled with life, a Hariri camp empty but expectant, an ominous wall down the middle, and now, today, the emotional charge that will set the tone.

More photos

2007-02-08T19:04:00.000+02:00

Top to Bottom: Wine barrels in the caves at Ksara winery; a warehouse in Il Marj that was bombed out in the summer war against Israel; me in front of a temple in Baalbek; all that remains of a different temple in Baalbek; a castle in Sidon.

Fire-- Six photos from Beirut

2007-02-08T11:52:00.000+02:00

This is the first of three postings I'm doing all at once. To begin, scroll down to the post "Three Stories" and work your way up from there. I keep working on posts and then new things come up, so I get a major backlog. The two posts below this one really combine most of my stories and clear my backlog of things I want to write about.

This post is for photos since my blog has been light on photos so far. I have a bunch of others I've been trying to post of my weekend adventures, but technical difficulties are preventing me. Enjoy these for now.

Smoke rising up from burning tires in Martyr's Square in Central Beirut.

Tires on fire in Central Beirut.

Members of Hezbollah with a container of gasoline.

Bombed out buildings from the summer war with Israel in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

More rubble.

Rubble in the southern suburbs from the summer war with Israel.

First Adventures out of Beirut

2007-02-08T11:50:00.000+02:00

This past weekend, I decided to take my first steps outside the city to explore the rest of Lebanon. I know I will have to go everywhere twice—once now to assuage my curiosity and again in the spring when the weather is warm and the towns are all open. A lot of places, I've learned, really go into hibernation for the winter. Saturday marked the first of four straight days of intense days we'd have. Undeterred, Steve (Groton class of '04, spending the semester traveling throughout the Middle East, in case you missed it from an earlier post) and I made our way down to the Cola bus station to head out to the Bekka Valley for the day.
The Bekka has always been number one on my list of places to go in Lebanon, and rather than wait and build up to it, I just decided to go straight away. The transport system in Lebanon is incredible. When I arrived at the bus terminal in Beirut, several men asked me where I wanted to go. I said I wanted to go to the village of Ksara in the Bekka. I was then shuttled to one of the many, many microbuses waiting at the terminal. Unlike any place I've been, there was no haggling over my business. There was order and reason to it all. I made it to Ksara, roughly an hour and a half ride, for three dollars only. To get to the Bekka Valley, which runs north to south on the eastern edge of Lebanon, we had to drive through the impressive Chouf mountains that made for really steep roads and some pretty intense snow.
By the time we got to Ksara, the snow had turned back to rain, and we were ready for the first stop on our daylong tour. We stopped in Ksara to go to the oldest and most famous winery in Lebanon, which is, surprisingly, supposed to make quite good wine. Of course, we were the only idiots to be visiting the winery on a rainy Saturday in the middle of winter at 9am, but we were excited nonetheless. A smart young Lebanese woman gave us a tour of the winery. The winery, back fifty years ago, had been owned by monks who made and sold wine, the profits form which would benefit the church. It is now owned by four private families. Our guide showed us the natural caves which are two miles in length, and because of their constant year-round temperature, are where the wine is aged. Barrels upon barrels of wine lined the corridors of the caves. Little alcoves on the right and left were used to keep wines from each year for the sake of history.
The tour concluded with a wine tasting in which our guide gave us all the information on the different wines and gave us different kinds of things, including Lebanon's national drink, Arak. When all was said and done, we went to the store in the winery and I bought a bottle of cognac, something I don't even drink, because production of it was stopped when the families bought the winery from the monks. The thought of owning fifty year old cognac made by monks in the heart of Lebanon was too much. Plus, it didn't cost a lot.
From west-central Bekka, we moved on to the south Bekka. The day before, while on assignment, I had met the mayor, named Kamal Harb, of a small city called il-Marjj. He invited me to come visit him anytime, and when I told him I was going to be in the Bekka the next day, he insisted I come by for coffee. To get down to his town, we took a taxi driven by a Palestinian who, when I asked him about his desire to return to the West Bank, got the most glazed over look in his eyes that I have ever seen. It was one of the purest moments of nostalgia I think I'll ever see. I bring it up only because at the mention of Palestine, it was startling how much he was transported to a different time and place.
We ended up staying and chatting with Kamal for almost two hours. We talked only politics, but of a scope that ranged from local to international. One thing we talked a lot about was a meeting he had just come from. He had been meeting with the director of the military in the Bekka region to express his displeasure on the previous week's events. His town, il-Marjj, is a bastion of Sunni authority in a region that is heavily, heavily Shi'a. When the Hezbollah protestors took over the country for a day two weeks ago, they also blocked the main street of his town with tires. He was furious because his town was Sunni and wanted nothing to do with these protests. His message to the military was that they had better take action if Hezbollah takes to the streets again because the alternative would be a violent uprising by the townsmen.
We chatted on and on at length over rotating cups of espressos, lattes, and teas. The trays of drinks kept coming, and I kept taking them as long as my host did. After a couple of hours, Kamal's brother, a dentist, arrived to take us on a driving tour of the town. He showed us everything from the town center to the agricultural fields. We saw farmland owned by the church, an unfinished library that was supposed to be built by the Syrians, and a factory that had been bombed out by the Israelis.
Kamal's brother then dropped us off at the Microbus hub and we caught one heading up to the town of Baalbek in north-central Bekka. Despite its major reputation, the town of Baalbek is actually quite small. It really has one major road with a side road that houses the souqs, or markets. The residential area expands modestly from this center, but it isn't much. What makes Baalbek so incredible are its expansive Roman ruins. When I entered the ruin complex, right next to the town, I saw some free standing wall structures with acres and acres of fallen columns and other giant pieces of marble and granite strewn across yard. The bits of wall still standing have varying degrees of carving and detail left on them.
The site only got really incredible towards the back. Near the end of the walk through the site I saw a giant temple on my left. Showing its age and soaked with rain, the temple now looks like a hollow remnant of its former self, but it still has the ability to amaze. Standing across from it is part of what must once have been a temple—five, or so, columns, standing lonely against the sky, supporting nothing, guarding nothing. Plus, they're on top of a major rise in the earth, so they really stand out in an unnaturally lonely way.
Drenched and tired, Steve and I headed back to Beirut to rest up for the next day. We were supposed to go skiing on Sunday, but I got an email from my friend Alex at 7:30am telling me that the snow had closed the mountain roads so we wouldn't be able to go that day. We slept in instead and got going closer to noon. Steve and I headed back to the bus station because I wanted to fulfill a serious desire I have to visit the Shebba Farms. Very briefly, the Shebba Farms are a group of farms right on the tri-border region between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. These farms have geo-strategic benefits and are currently occupied by the Israelis. The controversy is that by UN decree, Israel is allowed to occupy parts of Syria, namely the Golan Heights, but it is unable to occupy any territory in Lebanon. Unfortunately, the ownership of the Shebba is in question. The Syrians and Lebanese say its Lebanese territory, therefore forbidden to the Israelis, while Israel claims that it's Syarian territory. Anyways, it's a really important issue in Lebanon right now and I wanted to go see it with my own two eyes.
When we got to the bus terminal, however, we learned that we'd need permission from the Lebanese army to go near the farms. Since it was Sunday, such permission was impossible to come by. Shelving my Shebba ambitions for a day, we decided to go to the port town of Sidon about an hour south of Beirut. The city itself is not much to brag about. It's a dirty collection of shops and markets in the middle of a greater residential area. The seafront is more interesting, though, lined with seafood restaurants and also with a Medieval castle that sits practically in the sea. The best parts of the city, though, are the covered markets. The old city is a collection of ratty old three story buildings. Within them, however, at ground level, are what can best be described as an endless series of tunnels, housing hundreds of small shops. From clothing to sweets to trinkets, this market had it all. Endless covered passageways that twisted and turned and forked held an immense amount of life in what otherwise would have been considered dingy and forgettable. Shopping is difficult for me because, right or wrong, I avoid giving business to any store that sells Hezbollah memorabilia. Because stores selling Nasrallah key chains or Hezbollah flags were so prevalent, my options were quite limited. I did walk out of one store, though, with a little bronze cedar tree on a wood stand that says "Lebanon" on it.
After wandering the tunnels for a while and grabbing a seaside seafood lunch, we boarded a bus and headed back to Beirut.
All the traveling this past weekend was extraordinary and has my mind wandering wildly as I begin to consider this weekend's possibilities. So stay tuned for the next installment.

Three Stories

2007-02-08T11:48:00.000+02:00

I've just finished week three of this five month adventure at The Daily Star. I've just had my seventh article published, and just at the end of last week I got a permanent desk in the office. So things are looking good here on the east coast of the Mediterranean. On top of that, a week of very measured speeches given by the country's top politicians has made for a quiet week here on the civil-strife front. All in all, a pretty damn good week.
In light of the lack of drama around here, let me tell you about the three stories I wrote this week, and the three interesting lessons I learned from writing them. I'll go in reverse chronological order.

Lesson 1: Never Underestimate a Topic
Thursday night my boss told me to attend a press conference in the morning and write an article about it. The press conference was being held to formalize the donation by the European Union of seventeen "waste management trucks" to the Lebanese government. At first, I thought this article was going to be a total snooze-fest—the kind of thing I'd do to make the bosses happy, but one with no real substance that was only getting attention because it was a slow news day.
On Friday morning, I sleepily made my way over to the Starco building in downtown where the government has many of its offices. After asking around a bit, I found the room with the press conference. To my amazement, the room was far bigger, had far more people, and had far more cameras set up than any press conference I had yet been to. Within minutes, one of the cabinet ministers and the representative from the EU strolled in. They began talking in Arabic as I began reviewing the press material, and it was then that I learned my lesson.
While waste management may not be the most fascinating topic, the story turned out to have far deeper roots. You should read the article, but I'll summarize by saying that in 1999, a commission from Europe traveled Lebanon to see how it could help Lebanon recover from the civil war, and it found that one of the most important civil elements that town leader after town leader said was lacking was the ability to manage solid waste. So, the EU gave Lebanon a multi-million dollar grant, of which an important part was set to handle waste management. Essentially, this story was, on the surface, about seventeen garbage trucks. It was, in reality, about a deep and meaningful partnership between Lebanon and a strong ally that is committed to helping Lebanon overcome setbacks from the civil war and avoid future conflict.

Lesson 2: Don't Forget about the "Lebanese Twist"
In the middle of last week, I was told to attend a press conference held by the American University of Beirut Alumni Association where they would be discussing proposed amendments to their constitution. Lesson two is not so dissimilar from the first lesson because this one too began with an assignment that did not look interesting.
After an opening word and the singing of the AUB school hymn, the press conference began with everyone looking over their copies of the new constitution. Everything was going as I'd expected. And then I began to ask questions of the people sitting next to me. With that, what I call the "Lebanese Twist" came into sharp focus. What should have been no more than a typical annual Constitutional review was actually more of a battle to stay alive. What I learned at the press conference was that the Alumni Association had always prided itself on being independent of the university because it gave the group more freedom to do as it pleased. And then, reasonably, the university decided it wanted a group to represent alumni globally, not just in Lebanon as the Alumni Association was doing. So the Alumni Association, determined to stay the only alumni group began to go ahead with a plan to globalize its operations. The university was unsatisfied with the Alumni Association's new effort and it therefore created its own group called something like the Worldwide Alumni Association. Something like that.
By the time I entered the scene—at the press conference—the Alumni Association was pushing to ratify its globalizing propositions so that it could stay relevant, prove its dominance, and eventually return to its position as the only group representing the university's alumni.
The Lebanese Twist, to me, is that no matter what the story, no matter how seemingly mundane or ordinary, there is almost always a dark political twist to it. If you search a story, top to bottom, you'll likely find a little corner of darkness in there somewhere. That's part of what gives Lebanon its appeal, but it's also what makes the country such a sad case.

Lesson 3: You Have to Deal with the War Angle All the Time
By this, I mean that in every single story I've been assigned, war is always a major player. It makes writing an article tough. You can't have a newspaper that everyday that brings war into every story, into every pore of Lebanese life. Sure, war's important, but it isn't everything. Some examples….
My first story involved covering a press conference by the head of a small Christian party who was calling for the return of all Palestinian refugees to the Palestinian Territories. If you study Lebanese history, you would know that the Palestinians played a very tragic and very destructive role during the civil war. But for the past seventeen years, since the end of the war, they have been a faction relegated to one of Lebanon's twelve refugee camps. To say they are second class citizens would be generous. They are an impoverished people with no political rights, no political rights, and no homeland. But still that press conference seeped with implication that ousting Palestinians from their territories and forcing an exodus of almost a half million people was the natural reaction to what their militia did to Lebanon during the civil war. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that the Palestinians, as they've told me many times, would like to return to Palestine too, and the party leader at the press conference could have spun it that way, but instead he brings it back to a reaction of the civil war.
I have a few other examples, but I think I'll skip those and go right to the most potent one. Last week, I was writing a story on the VAT tax which was first implemented in 2002 in Lebanon and will now be raised to fifteen percent over the next three years. I went down to the southern suburbs, Shiite Hezbollah stronghold, to cover the impact of the tax on small business owners. I went south because it is one of the poorest places in the country, and my angle was to see just how much this tax was hurting those in greatest poverty.
I was not prepared in the least for what I was about to encounter. What I saw really knocked me back on my heels and put me into a pretty good funk for about a day. As I approached the neighborhood, I began to notice posters on each lamppost on the road's center divide. After I asked about them, my cabbie told me that on each poster was the face of one of the "martyrs" who'd died this summer in the war against Israel.
The taxi dropped me off right in the middle of the neighborhood called Haret il-Hreik, and I went to work. As I made my way down the street, stopping in stores right and left to chat with workers, I noticed that about two blocks down, the buildings just stopped on the left side of the street. While they began again a little ways later, there was more than a block with no buildings. Curious, I thought. It just seemed very out of place for the most bustling street in the southern suburbs. Since this was my first trip down there, I didn't make the mental leap I should have. Unfortunately, mental leaps were unnecessary. My eyes would take care of everything for me.
When I made my way down the street, I stopped in awe of what stood before me. Lot upon lot of mangled rubble: concrete mixed with wires mixed with lots of assorted debris. The occasional forgotten shoe gave the site its eerie humanity. Some buildings hadn't fallen, they were just gutted. This was ground zero for the summer war against Israel. I was stunned.
My interview subjects, too, seethed over the summer war. When I'd ask how the VAT tax had affected business, people would often reply sharply by saying something like, "Israel has killed my business." It took two full days of intense interviewing to get enough non-war related material to proceed with my story.
That is maybe the starkest example of the way in which war tried to push its way into my story, but it comes up again and again in almost every story I work on. This really is a country that knows war, that is prepared to fight, and that knows how to rebound from a war like no other society.

High School

2007-01-26T13:50:00.000+02:00

I opened my eyes Tuesday morning, wary of what the day would hold. Named by Hezbollah as the day of the nation strike, I was frightened and excited by what the day might bring. "Snow Day," I chuckled as I started to get dressed. In the northeast United States, we all stay home when it snows too hard to get on the road, but in Lebanon, I was quickly learning, we all stay in when Hezbollah decides to hit the streets.
I turned on the news to see what the latest was, but the reporting on BBC was too general for somebody who lives in the city. I got quickly changed and headed out to the street to get to work. I opened the front door to my building to find an almost abandoned city. There were some people walking along the streets, but there were no cars to be found. I headed on my way from Hamra, where I live, to Gemmayze, where I work, along a route that I had picked out on a map with help from my doorman. I set out with my friend Steve Walker from Groton, who is visiting Beirut for a month as part of a Middle East tour he's making, and we nervously anticipated what each turn in the road might hold.
Most of the businesses were closed, some because they were run by Shiites but most because their employees could not reach their shops. Another significant difference between this and any other day was that that the typically extraordinary view of the mountains and the sea was obscured by a dark gray haze that hung low over the city. I'd have typically taken a cab to work, but since there were none on the roads it was almost half an hour before I arrived in downtown. A part of the city that's almost unnaturally modern and clean due to Rafiq Hariri's rebuilding plan, downtown was a virtual fortress of troops, barbed wire, and tanks. We twisted and turned through downtown, passing the Prime Minister's offices and the Parliament Building before coming to the last leg of our walk.
In order to get to Rue Gouraud, where my office is, I had to cross Martyr's Sqaure, a giant oblong plaza, and a favorite spot for activist movements. Sure enough, as I entered the square, I spotted a group of about fifty or so men burning tires in the road. The amazing thing about Lebanon is that because it's such a small country, it only takes blocking a handful of roads to effectively shut down the country. Martyr's square is a confluence of important roads, and if shutting down the country was their aim, then these protestors were well placed. I passed them by quietly, drawing not more than a passing glance. I knew that hurting westerners was not their aim; plus, these men were not Hezbollah but rather members of a Hezbollah-allied Christian party called the Free Patriotic Movement (the FPM) who harbor considerably less resentment to the western countries. I could tell they were FPM because many of them were dressed in orange, the party's color. The air, as I passed these protestors, was thick with the awful smoke of burning rubber.
I made it to the office and spent the day watching the news and calling the hospitals for casualty reports. For those of you worried about me, you'll be happy to know that the staff would not send me out into the field on this day because as an intern, I was not under contract with the newspaper, and I therefore posed a higher level of liability to them. Throughout the day, I watched the western news on the television and grimaced in the knowledge of what everyone would be seeing back in the States. While what you all saw on television actually was happening here, it was not representative of the Lebanon I was witnessing. In northern Beirut, where I live and work, there were some peaceful demonstrations, like the one I saw, but by and large the city was just in a quiet waiting mode. Most of the violence was in the south of the city or in the north of the country.
I walked home without incident, picking up a couple beers on my way celebrate with Steve our first encounter with major civil strife. I went to bed that night after watching the news in which all of the many political leaders were taking to the airwaves in a flurry angry rhetoric which seemed to me to be killing more people than the day's gun battles.
I woke up the next morning, Wednesday, and wondered what the streets would be like since Hezbollah had decided against a second day of strikes. I've always been told that the greatest danger in Lebanon is that once you come, you'll never want to leave. I didn't know what to expect on Wednesday as I stepped out of the building, but I was amazed to see a city bustling defiantly with life. Suddenly I saw the other maxim I'd always heard about Lebanon fuse with the first. The second one says that the country can be besieged by war and violence one day, but that with the strength of its people, it rebounds immediately the next. I realized at that first moment I hit the street on Wednesday that so much of Lebanon's allure, so much of the reason that I'm quickly falling in love with it has to do with the resilience of its people.
Wednesday was a peaceful day in Beirut, but a hectic one in the office. I was charged with my most difficult story yet. I had to write a report on the previous day's casualties and arrests. This was challenging because the information was still coming in all day Wednesday and would continue to right up to the point I had to submit my story. The difficulty here was that I had to begin the story and continually add and edit as the details shifted. On top of that, I had sources who, for much of the day, gave me conflicting information on how many dead and wounded. So I had to continually try to widen my number of sources to achieve consensus numbers that most reflected the general thinking among the authorities. Ultimately, I ended up noting the conflicting sources in the article as well.
Then there was today. Today was the first day that made me anxious. Tuesday's violence felt somehow controlled, and I felt less at risk in the city. Today was a little more difficult. The day began with a note of optimism as I sat in the office watching the proceedings at Paris aid conference. I saw each delegation give encouraging words to Lebanon and then announce its dollar pledge. The United States and Saudi Arabia each offered generous sums, and as much as I hate to say it, I have to give the French a tip of the cap for their sizeable donation too. But then violence once again stole the headlines. Sunni-Shiite fighting broke out around the Arab University in south Beirut. In the camera shots I recognized the stadium that I had driven past many times on the airport road. I was a little rattled by this spontaneous outburst of violence because I could handle conflict that was announced days in advance, like Tuesday's, but unexpectedness of this new round really stunned me.
To make matters worse, I heard of outbursts around a university in Hamra, where I live. Furthermore, we could hear spirts of machine gun fire as we sat in our office. The whole thing made me a little uneasy.
And now I come back to the title I've assigned to this post. High School. I left the office at about 6:30, getting home around 7. When I went out to go to the internet café at 8, my doorman warned me that the government had just instated a curfew that would go into effect in half an hour. I ran down to the café to find it closed. So was the other one on my street. Considering the late hour that the curfew was announced, I saw people hustling down the street and rushing to their cars, heading home. And now here I sit, unable to leave, wondering what the coming days will hold. This amazing three day stretch began with a Lebanese snow day and ended with a Lebanese curfew. I somehow feel like I'm back in high school.

Welcome (Officially) to Part 2: Beirut

2007-01-14T18:09:00.000+02:00

So now as the haze of the jet lag finally wears off and my lost bags have been found, I feel as though I can begin to let you all know what I'm doing here and what I've been up to so far.
I arrived Thursday at 4:45am after having flown British Airways through London. When I got to my apartment building, I thought I was going to have to go find a hotel for the night, but enough banging on the door persuaded the doorman in the next room to get up and let me in. My apartment in actually on the first level of the basement, but because the building is built into a hill, I am three floors up with a great view of the Mediterranean and the mountains. It's a small studio apartment with a bathroom by the entrance, a living room, and a bedroom separated from the rest of the apartment by a sort of half wall. Additionally, I have a full, nice kitchen on an enclosed balcony. Next to that, I have a great open balcony that gives good views.
I live in a neighborhood called Hamra, which is a Muslim neighborhood in West Beirut. I am only a stone's throw from the American University and from the main drag called Rue Bliss. I can't stop chuckling about the fact that even though I try to immerse myself in the culture as much as possible, at the end of the day I have to tell the taxi drivers to take me home to Rue John Kennedy.
As for what I'm doing here….. I have somehow managed to muster enough credit from Middlebury (to still graduate in four years) that I am taking this semester off. I have come to Beirut with a fulltime internship with The Daily Star newspaper. The Daily Star is the large English newspaper based in Beirut. I won't dwell on it for long since I haven't actually started working yet, but what I will tell you is that I am working for their Lebanon section, where I'll be helping out with stories, doing some copy editing, and writing my own articles. I begin work on Monday. Check out their website at www.dailystar.com.lb. If I get anything published on the website, I'll try to post the link here on the blog, but you should check out the website anyways because even by reading the headlines, you'll get an idea of what's happening in the country.
While there is a thrill to being new in a country and discovering everything for the first time, the one thing I really don't like, that I've had to do in the past couple days, is nail down the essentials. Finding the supermarket, bank, laundromat, pharmacy, etc., etc., is both necessary and tedious. I'm looking forward to finishing all that up today or tomorrow. More interesting has been the apartment search. While I like my apartment now, I need to move by the end of the month into a place that is both cheaper and closer to where I will be working. Unlike in Cairo where there are real estate agencies on every block, in Beirut you have to go door to door. Thursday was like a treasure hunt in that I'd go into a café or store and ask about apartments at which point I'd be given directions to somewhere else. By the end of the day, having wandered the length of Rue Gouraud about a dozen times, I had several contacts and decent housing possibilities.
The other thing that bears mentioning are the protests in the center of town. I'll go into more detail in my next post about why they're there, but since December 1, Hezbollah has run a sit-in protest in the center square of town until the Siniora government resigns. Because there is one big road that connects east Beirut to West Beirut, I've driven by the protests several times. What you see when you look out over them is thousands of tents of varying shapes and sizes with people wandering through them. I have not, thank goodness, seen an actual protest yet, just the tent city where the Hezbollah supporters sleep and hold their protests when called to do so. All around the camp also are hundreds of posters of Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.
The tent city forms a sort of semi-circle around the Grand Serail, the Prime Minister's office building. The Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, has hardly left the building since the protests began, and many of his cabinet ministers, fearing violence, have moved into the building too. Considering the proximity of the tents to the building, and considering the supposed size and volume of the protests that take place there, one can only imagine the stress felt by those holed up in the building. Between the protests and the Grand Serail, however, is an intense wall of barbed wire, tanks, and troops. Driving by it, I cannot help but get goose bumps as I watch the scene.
In general, the feel of Beirut is very different from that of Cairo. A much more liberal city, I rarely see women in veils here, and there are noisy and conspicuous bars all over the place. The relative affluence is apparent here too as evident through all the Mercedes, BMW's, and SUV's that prowl the streets. The city feels more like Paris than it does Cairo (a statement that I will permit myself to amend as I see more of the city). All in all, this is a fantastic city that seems as sexy as it does dangerous. And whether the latter contributes the former, I'm not sure yet. All I know is that I'm in for a hell of a semester, an I look forward to many more posts on the blog as my life here begins to take shape.

10 Ways You Know You're Back in the Middle East/Beirut

2007-01-12T11:06:00.000+02:00

(In sequential order)

1) When the Che-Guevara-biography-toting Lebanese guy sitting next to you on the airplane tells the flight attendant he's "a fucking idiot" for offering wine to a veiled woman.

2) When you expect your bags to get lost en route to Beirut and when you find out they are, you know there is still order in the universe.

3) When the taxi that was supposed to be waiting for you upon your 4am arrival is nowhere to be found.

4) When the Prime Minister's office building looks more Alcatraz than the White House, with miles and miles of barbed wire and dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers protecting it.

5) When you begin your apartment search by asking in a restaurant for the location of a real estate agency and a waiter comes over to you and swears he's a professional real estate agent.

6) When, after seeing rain clouds on the horizon and asking somebody whether they think it will rain tonight, you get an annoyed glare and they say to you, "How should I know? Only God knows this!"

7) When you chuckle at the irony when a man in a café tells you, "You don't want to live in Hamra. That's a Muslim neighborhood. You want to live here in Gemayze because only Christians live here," which he follows up with "Alhamdulilah!" ("Thanks to Allah!").

8) When you're already able to string three languages together in the same sentence.

9) When, typical of the 'life goes on' Lebanese mentality, you get more than a half dozen "Who knows" and "I'm not even sure" comments when you ask about the Hezbollah protests that are taking place in the middle of town.

10) When you swell with pride after getting asked if you're Egyptian when you say a few quick words in Arabic.

So, yes, I am now here in Lebanon. I arrived at 4am on Thursday morning and still feel crazy with jet-lag and too tired to write a more detailed post. Tomorrow I'll put up a more thorough explanation of what I'm actually doing here as well as some initial observations from the city. After that, I'll try to do Lebanese history/current Lebanese political situation 101 so that further posts make more sense. So, bottom lines: I'm safe and sound, I'm wearing the same clothes three days running since the airport lost my bags (I'm supposed to get them back today), I'm unable to think straight due to jet lag, and I promise there'll be more soon!

Cats, Camels, Ghosts, and More

2006-12-17T16:45:00.000+02:00

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

2006-10-13T12:14:00.000+02:00

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

2006-10-12T13:08:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-26T12:08:00.000+03:00

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

2006-08-12T23:57:00.000+03:00

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

2006-08-08T03:04:00.000+03:00

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

2006-08-06T01:53:00.000+03:00

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

2006-08-04T16:14:00.000+03:00

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.

In Search of Midaq Alley

2006-07-30T23:42:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-25T16:29:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-22T20:58:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-21T17:47:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-21T14:02:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-17T01:52:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-17T01:47:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-16T17:46:00.000+03:00

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

2006-07-05T10:38:00.000+03:00

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.

Salesmen

2006-06-30T14:05:00.000+03:00

Everybody here’s a salesman. It’s really quite remarkable to see. When it comes to selling, there are two tactics that seem most prevalent. First, there is the tactical and sudden amnesia on behalf of Egyptian salesmen when it comes to speaking English. As I walked down the street the other day, a man came up to me and asked in good in English if I wanted to buy some French perfume. Even though I’ve only been here three days, I think that I’ve become fairly proficient in turning away salesmen because they stand at every turn. But this guy was different. He found a way to keep bugging me for three blocks. When he asked if I wanted perfume, I said “No thanks, not today.” He immediately replied, “No English. No English.” Hardly batting an eyelash, I switched to Arabic, “No, I don’t want it.” To this he replied, “I no understand.” This took place over the course of a block, this interaction interspersed with his sales pitches. Then I cut to the chase, saying no in alternating English and Arabic: “no, le, no, le” etc. Somehow, he seemed not to understand this. I could barely suppress a smile as he continued to insist that he didn’t understand. Finally, he opened the perfume’s package, tearing the plastic wrapping and saying to me, “Now you give me 14 pounds. Give me 14 pounds.” At this point I began to get a little nervous because he’d opened the package and I was afraid he’d insist more emphatically that I buy. And so I stopped in my tracks, faced him, and said “NO!”, all the while the waving my arms emphatically over my head. With that, he sulked off, dejected. Clearly, when all else fails, one must resort to the ever-reliable realm of international hand signals. I have had other experiences with salesmen claiming not to speak English, so I know that this is a trend, but I’ll save those for another day.
The other tactic of being a salesman in the city of Cairo, as it is anywhere, is persistence. Let me give you two examples. Yesterday, as I walked down the street, I saw a family sitting on the corner. As passed, I saw the mother shove her youngest daughter to me. I kept walking, but she ran along beside me, waving a pack of tissues at me, telling me that she was selling them for one pound per pack. At this point, I’ve learned to cut to the chase, mixing forceful no’s with just ignoring her. But still she persisted. First she tried shoving the tissues into my hand and under my arm, the theory being that if I actually possessed the tissues they would be harder for me to turn down. When that failed, she took the pack of tissues and pushed them up against my face. She held them there for a few seconds before I, yes you guessed it, turned to her and waved my arms wildly over my head. With that, she ran away.
One more example. Today I went apartment hunting. The first apartment I saw was run by a landlady named Sr. Sohayr. She was an adamant salesman, going over the details again and again, as I sat patiently. After the third time she went over the fact that the washing machine was a new one, I told her what she wanted to hear: that I was interested in the apartment and would call her later about it. This was a lie; the apartment was a nice one, but it met none of my specifications. But I told her I liked it and spared myself a fourth go at the washing machine. I then made the fatal error. Dr. Sohayr asked for my cell phone number, and I gave it to her. Over the next four hours I went on to receive FIVE calls from Dr. Sohayr. She called to give me more details on the apartment. Most of the information was repetitive, but presented as if it were new. She even offered up her son as a friend to me: “If you live in my apartment, my son will be here and he will become a friend to you.” Every time she called, she told me that there were various other offers from other people but that she was saving the apartment just for me. The number of other people who made offers on the apartment fluctuated depending on the call.
On another subject, I want to point out an interesting merger of cultures I experienced last night. I went to watch the sunset on the roof of my hotel last night. It’s truly an amazing sight because the Egyptian sun takes on the form lets you look at it much earlier than the American sun does. I was able to stare at that big gold orb for the last forty five minutes it hung in the sky.

As I sat there, high above the city, watching the sun swing low, the music on the speakers was of a lonely Arab chant. I think this was a prayer chant but I’m not totally sure. I began to settle back in my chair, reflecting on just how truly Egyptian this setting was, and then the irony all hit me. As I watched this amazing scene, I realized the humor in the fact that I was drinking a Heineken while sitting on top of a Hilton hotel. Somehow this clash didn’t particularly bother me. For once, for one moment, these two cultures existed in perfect harmony.

Street Crossing 101

2006-06-29T11:46:00.000+03:00

Quick note: I am posting frequently, so look below this post for picutres of the Nile and my first post from the city.

Let me tell you about the babies we almost killed today. To do that, I need to talk about crossing streets in this city. The topic probably deserves a blog unto itself, but I'll limit it to one post. Stop lights in Cairo are largely symbolic. Symbolic of the pretend sense of order that the city vainly tries to put forward. There is no yellow on these stoplights, simply red and green. And they flash red, green, red, green, all day............. but nobody seems to notice. The cars fly at a furious pace, weaving and lurching. Honking for no apparent reason. I want to acknowledge that everybody who has ever visited a foreign country asserts that the driving there was insanity. I'd like to put forward, however, the proposition that Cairo may well take the cake as far as drivers go because you have to consider the drivers in addition to the fact that pedestrians are ruthless and that the stop lights are mere gestures. My point is that it goes beyond the drivers to the conditions on the road. I've never quite seen anything like it.
Let me give you an example, before I get back to the babies. The Nile Hilton, where I'm staying, is surrounded on all sides by major multi-lane roads. To go anywhere in the city from the hotel involves crossing a street. In front of the hotel is an eight lane road that runs along the river Nile. On this road, called Corniche al-Nil, cars go sixty in bumper to bumper traffic. Yesterday morning, I needed to cross the Nile en route to my language school. To get to the bridge, I had to first cross the 8 laner. I stood on the curb and looked in both directions as far as the eye can see. No intersections anywhere. But all around me were Egyptians on foot, crossing. If you haven't seen it, it's hard to describe the sight on crossing so much traffic. It's fairly awe inspiring. It's almost like a dance between pedestrians and drivers. Where there is seemingly no room on the road for cars to swerve or brake, they manage to find a way (with lots of horn).
Now let me address those who think that this post is over doing it a little and that to call street crossing a dance is just trying to sound stupidly poetic. While I prepared to travel to Cairo, many people told me about the street crossings. It was much trumpeted in my mind, and so I eagerly, and nervously, anticipated it. But then I got here, and it was every bit as people had said. It's sort of a controlled insanity.
And so I made my crossing on that eight lane road. Becuase there are no breaks in the traffic, I put my head down and walked. The first car came to a screeching halt, honking hysterically. In the next lane, the car swerved right and all the cars next to it got the picture and all swerved right in tandem. The car in the next lane made no bones about it. He wasn't stopping. And so I gave a little hop step and narrowly averted disaster. You get the picture. The point is, I made it accross just fine. You just can't have any fear.
Now to the babies. This morning, I got in a cab to head to the other side of town. As we hauled around a turn onto the entrance ramp of one of the Nile's bridges, I saw ahead of us were about a dozen women, covered from head to toe in long black robes, as many of the women here are. Each of them was holding a small child. I'm not sure whether they were all going to a function with their children or just taking them out for a walk, but there they were. We were going about 60 and right at them. We'd almost hit single people before, but never had I been confronted by such a mass right in front of me. And just as we got to within feet of them, a path opened between them, just the width of the car. With a casual nature that I have never seen with American mothers, these women made room with ease as we made our way through. I saw on both sides that our side view mirrors caught the robes of a couple of these women, but nobody seemed to mind. And just as quickly as the sea had parted in front of us, it closed up again around our exhaust.
Even the smallest things in this city are wildly fascinating to me.
A Preview: That cab ride took me across town to a real estate agent. Today is apartment searching day. I am currently sitting in an internet cafe on the outskirts of town. We saw one apartment this morning and we will look at more this afternoon. A full report to follow tonight.

The Mighty Nile!

2006-06-29T09:30:00.000+03:00

Picture taken from the East bank of the Nile, looking south west. I took it while strolling the banks yesterday.

And so it begins......

2006-06-28T08:50:00.000+03:00

It’s about three hours before I’d ever go to bed in the States, but jet lag has made sure that I’m wide awake at 6am Cairo time! I arrived at 5pm yesterday, and already I can add two people to what I’m sure will become a fascinating cast of characters.
First, let me tell you about my cab driver, Ramadan. Ramadan introduced himself to me at the airport saying with a grin, “Hello! I am Ramadan. That means holiday!” He whisked me from the crush of the airport and away towards downtown.
In the cab, Ramadan said to me, “So, you from Europe?” When I told him that I was actually American, he went silent. When I tried to ask him a question about some building we were passing, he quipped, “I no speak English.” This was somewhat frustrating, and we sat in silence for a while.
It soon occurred to me what I needed to do. I took a deep breath and began talking in my broken traditional Arabic, telling him that I was happy to be here and that I was going to be studying in Cairo for the next six months. When I was done, still more silence. My attempt to ingratiate myself had failed.
But then, about two minutes later, Ramadan offered me a cigarette. Ah, the ultimate form of acceptance! I was almost tempted to smoke it just to get in good with him, but I declined politely. Ramadan then, in English, began to set up all the trips that he and I would take together around Egypt in the next week. “So tomorrow, I drive you to the pyramids. I show you the pyramids! Later, I take you to museums. I take you around all week. Very reasonable price!” When I told him that I wasn’t sure about his schedule but that I’d like to ride with him, he gave me three different phone numbers to reach him.
Further, he called his friend and had me talk to his friend who assured me that he could find me apartments anywhere in the city. After that discussion, Ramadan tried to persuade me to go look for apartments right then. I had to insist that my hotel was waiting for me to check in.
I have photos of my cab ride in, but this connection is not letting me post them. I will do it as soon as I can.
The other person that I need to tell you about is a man named Muhammed. After a quick nap at the hotel, I set out looking for dinner. Drawing hundreds of odd, but not hostile stares as I wandered around the overwhelmingly Arab neighborhood outside my hotel, I looked like a fish out of water. Suddenly a well dressed man with minimal English approached me and asked, “You lost?” I told him that I was looking for dinner. He told me to follow him, that he was meeting friends in half an hour, but that he’d like to show me where to find dinner. I was too tired to want to talk to anyone, but I agreed, mostly following my stomach.
We walked and walked and walked. And then we left the beaten path. I began to get a little nervous because Muhammed had told me that there was a square just down the road with restaurants. That proved false, but we eventually arrived to the restaurant, mere moments before I would have turned around.
To call it a restaurant may be overstating the point. It was, in fact, a few tables in an open stall. We were the only diners there. The whole way over to the restaurant, Muhammed had been telling me that he was going to have me eat chicken kebabs. He kept telling me that the chicken kebabs we delicious and that I would love them. When we arrived at the restaurant, Muhammed ordered in Arabic (no menus) and the food arrived a few minutes later: chicken, tahini sauce, pita, and salad. When I told him how delicious I found the chicken, he said to me, “What chicken?! Are you crazy. We no eat chicken in Egypt. Too much disease.” In my disbelief, I asked him what the meat was. “Buffalo!” he exclaimed. Now, as far as I know, buffalo is not an animal that lives outside of the western United States. Bottom line is that I didn’t push my luck any further. I guess I will never know what it was I ate.
We were joined at dinner by half a dozen stray cats, two of which took the other two empty seats at the table. The four of us discussed politics, culture, and religion for the next half an hour, though the cats contributed little to the conversation. After a while, Muhammed excused himself because he had to go meet friends, and I finished my mystery-meat dinner, making sparse and un-reciprocated conversation with the cats before heading back to the hotel and going to sleep.

Tomorrow

2006-06-26T01:44:00.000+03:00

This post must be brief because getting ready to go on a six month trip is, as I'm figuring out, quite time consuming! After a farewell dinner tonight with my parents and Thorn, I will have to do a marathon session to get ready. My flight leaves tomorrow at 5:20pm, en-route to Zurich. In Zurich I change planes and will be on the ground in Cairo by 2:30pm Tuesday. I'm staying at a hotel in the middle of the city and will have only several days to find an apartment for myself. I've decided to spend my first full day (Wednesday) in the city just walking around and soaking it all in. I will look at neighborhoods that I'm interested in living in. I am meeting with several real estate agents on Thursday, and I hope to move into my new pad a few days later. I'm only scratching the surface here describing to you of all the planning I've done for my first few days there. I think that's the excitement kicking in. As of now, I have pretty much every moment of my first 72 hours covered. But I know the beauty of such a trip is that I have had the pleasure of planning out each moment, but all the plans will likely dissolve into the chaos that 11 million Cairoans have to offer from the moment I set foot on the ground. As I write, the dog sleeps at my feet, CNN is flashing the day's news, and my room is fairly clean. This is a scene out of any normal day at home for me. In 38 hours, I will take my first steps on the continent of Africa, and the dog, CNN, and my bedroom will seem as foreign to me as the banks of the Nile do now.
Next post: Wednesday from Cairo!

Welcome!

2006-06-12T09:14:00.000+03:00

This is a welcome and a test-post all in one. I've decided to branch out from the Middlebury blogs and to create one of my own on google. Let's see if it can survive without being overrun by outside posters.
T-Minus fifteen days until departure for Cairo and there's a lot to do. I have a list that goes just about down to the ground. I just got back from my tour of the south, visiting Miami, Boca Grande, Atlanta, and Nashville (see photo of tarpon in Boca) and it's time to get some sleep before a busy day tomorrow. Expect frequent posts on my blog once I get to Cairo, but be patient with me over the next two weeks while I get all my business in order. You can expect one more post before I leave to the Middle East. That post will be the detailed one. There I will detail the specifics of my upcoming trip and outline the purposes of my blog which I am determined to update frequently and to use for a range of purposes from light to serious.
That's all for now. I promise this will be the only garbage post I ever do... just need to figure out how to work this program!
Theo