Home again

I guess I should draw up something conclusive to this blog, since my plane landed in O'Hare last Monday and I've started the next chapter of my adventures: work! I'm interning at the offices of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions this summer, which shouldn't be too shocking a difference from Egypt, just because I'm imagining I'll still get to have conversations about Islam etc; I'll just probably not be a religious minority anymore.

Mom got into Cairo right before my last final. We went to visit the tourists' market, but also campus, the dorms, my favorite restaurants, and my host family. When we got in the taxi to go visit them (the third time I've gone back since my initial stay ended-yay!) the driver warned us that when people go to this neighborhood who don't know it, they usually say, "Oh my god!" when they they get there. This wasn't encouraging, but I've never had anything resembling trouble when I've gone. Plus, we walk from the cab directly to their apartment and back. So they were quite pleased to meet mom, but as we were leaving I was having to say goodbye to them basically for forever, which was hard. It's so wonderful to meet people who like you and are nice to you for no good reason, and who you hoped you were able to treat the same.

Once I finished my finals (final grades: 3 A-'s and a B-) Mom and I headed south to Upper Egypt for our Nile cruise--although not before Mom spent a day by herself while I was taking my music final. She took a taxi by herself and looked around Coptic Cairo--all her own idea, totally autonomous from the tour agency. And this was like her 2nd full day in Egypt--she's so capable! This Nile cruise thing was pretty nice, and our cabin provided excellent napping opportunities and relief from the heat.

My worth as a bride was quoted to us at 2 million camels, and one guide told me I was an optical illusion! By which he meant to say that I was visually observant, but I think there's more than one compliment in there somewhere.

I managed to buy some good gifts, and I got an Arabic lesson in the process:
مَفْرَش table cloth

مَفارِش table cloths

سِوان sheet

When in Rome... well, we had a guide say to us at one site that he found the way we were dressing respectful. Because we were respecting his culture, he felt compelled to respect us and our culture as he interacted with us. I normally felt and had been told that Egyptians, there was a sense of understanding and more lax standards for foreigners, because they are, after all, foreigners. I had never heard and Egyptian speak in such strong disapproval again the prostitute-garb, meaning miniskirts and back-less shirts that Western women are determined to wear in this Muslim country, of the tourist women.

So, the trip with Mom was a nice transition (back to the Western world), though I had a tough goodbye with my roommate. I can definetly see myself going back to Egypt, though my plans for the coming year are pretty set--finish college! I really want to keep up with my Arabic and to throw in some extra effort on my Spanish. I have a lot of pictures that I'll be sharing and I hope that this trip has had a positive impact on my life and that I've have some positive impact on those I met. I'll be telling lots of stories this summer, so even though you may feel exhausted just from the experience of reading this blog, ask me! and I'll keep the anecdotes coming. مع سلامة، يا مصر

Last days, disconnected observations

There's only a couple days left before mom gets here and we go on our tourism adventures, which should in themselves be fun and informative, but right now I just want to tie up any loose ends and enjoy the people I've gotten to know here. And get through my finals.

I feel like there's so much I haven't experienced about Cairo, but at the same time it's important to acknowledge what I have done. I still need to go shopping in the infamous Khan al-Khalili market, though I have made it to "City Stars," the monstrously large, international style mall here. I haven't done much in the way of anthropological research, but I have had several meetings with my Anthro professor here, and I have a deep respect for him. I still haven't seen "Girls and Motorcycles," and Egyptian movie that looks too inappropriate to have made it into theaters in this fairly conservative country (which is exactly why I need to see it)--but on the other hand I saw Heena Maisara, another Egyptian movie on poverty in Cairo and ways that peoples lives can go right or wrong here. And I saw that movie with my roommate and some friends of hers, and it was interesting to see much a movie about Cairo could surprise and open the eyes of people from Cairo. I haven't gone to mosques during worship or talked to too many people about their faith, but I have visited many stunningly beautiful mosques with my architecture class, and saw examples of how people live as Muslims from my classmates, my professors, and my host family.

So before I start in on adventures with mom (and I'm really glad that we're doing that, because 1.) it'll distract me from being sad that people are leaving and 2.) I do want to see this other side of Egypt and 3.) it gives me a little transition time between AUC being over and the moment when I actually leave Egypt, because otherwise they kick us out of the dorms as soon as final are over and before we possibly could have a chance to catch our breath...and 4.) I'll have no excuse not to shop for people which I haven't really done yet and which could be fun), which hopefully I'll document on this blog as best as possible ان شاء الله (God willing), I want to get in a couple more observations and anecdotes.

February involved a lot of getting used to school here and hanging out with different people. In March I retreated to my room and hung out with Enas a lot, worked on homework, the Lily grant and finding an apartment. I was gearing up, in April, for spring break and then actually going on it, and in May I think I struck a better balance with going out and getting work done, as well as striking a balance between spending time with people I care about deeply here and people who I like to hang out with just for fun.

One day in the beginning of April I heard an Egyptian guy on campus playing the oud (عود-picture stolen from http://shafisaid.wordpress.com/2007/05/31/for-the-love-of-oud/), which I think is a very important instrument in Arab music--but since it was college students he wasn't playing some traditional tune. He was playing the theme from "Pulp Fiction" ("Misirlou" by Dick Dale and His Del-Tones?) on an Arab musical scale. It was hott.

I've continued loving the Egyptian coffeehouses (though "house" seems like an overstatement) and going every once in a while. There are a couple near campus, and a guy friend of mine from Architecture of Cairo class will go in the mornings before class or fieldtrips. I wouldn't go to these places unaccompanied or even without someone male--there's no threat, it's just very palpably a man's world and I need some XY genes along to legitimate my presence there. Usually Sam and I get "take away" but a couple times we've sat and taken our time over a Turkish coffee after class. In early March (which means warm weather here), we took some homework one day to the 'ahwa and were in no rush. We wound up getting into a conversation, entirely in Arabic (me with my paltry Colloquial and Sam, who's only taken formal, newscaster Arabic) with the older men who frequent these places. We just talked about the different names of the drinks served there, what they are made of, the names of the different parts of the water pipes they smoke. But it was neat. People here are comfortable talking to people they don't know--a clerk in a store will comment on something funny to a customer if he notices it, or vendors will gently tease us about our Arabic. Egypt is a good place for joking around.

I don't want to stereotype or generalize, but I do want to try to articulate how it's different from the US. I think that people don't cop an attitude with each other here. If you address someone on the street, there's never a sense of, "Why are you talking to me?" or of people assuming that you're stupid or that your question/comment was unnecessary or obvious. I mean, they're not saints; people get into explosive fights when someone hits their car, but there's an 'innocent until proven guilty' attitude toward others that strikes me as constrasting a coldness and suspicion in the US. That said, I love the US, I'm so excited to get back, really looking forward to feeling comfortable and like I know what's going on. I'm excited to try myself treating people back home in this less suspicious, more friendly way, and I'm sure it will fly there too.

I've noticed that couples seem to genuinely enjoy other, and whenever you see them, they're always in dialogue, back and forth between the man and the woman. I would have said that this is like the US, but when ever I see it here, it always amazes me and looks like a phenomenon I've never seen before. I'll have to people watch back home more to see if this is true, but no matter the age of the couple, they always seem to be on good terms, respectful and interested in what the other has to say. This has been my experience of my host family as well, though, so maybe those two ideas are related.

I've become a little disillusioned with looking or acting or being cool. Everyone has their own definition of cool, of course, but even my own definitions of things I find interesting and intriguing about other people seem really unimportant sometimes. How much better to be good, or respectful, or respectable. This has to do with the AUC Gucci posing (how can there be so many girls in skinny leg jeans?), but also with people I've met and gotten to know, and the cool ones...either I don't feel a gut connection to them, or I eventually have to admit to myself that they aren't as interesting as, say, the people who I orginally found to be less cool, but who are earnest, or who are deeply humorous.

In the past couple months, I've gotten really close to my roommate Enas. I've divulged the secrets of American dating culture to her, she talked me through a small social crisis, and she's basically amazing. She cares about me and thinks that my flaws and faux pas are funny, and I try to watch out for her. I love her sense of humor--light, sarcastic, yet deeply funny. She says that her life isn't very interesting, but just because she manages to avoid drama and doesn't have a lot of embarrassing stories does not prevent her from being delightful company. Before a couple months ago, she had never seen a drunk person, and was very curious about it. I told her she wasn't missing out on anything, but since she's lived in Muslim countries where alcohol is limited to a very few shady spots, she hasn't had the demystifying experience of seeing drunken people on the street or particularly on college campuses. So when a couple of the American kids from the dorm had gone out and gotten a little buzzed, I sent her in their direction to say hi. And I accompanied her to a party that reminded me a lot of high school when people's parents were out for the weekend (and I would sit in the corner, drinking a can of Coke and hoping my friends would be ready to leave soon). Unsurprisingly, drunkness wasn't as neat, or as debilitating, as she thought it might be, and now she wants to avoid drunks as much as possible. So I feel like she's had a good introduction to it. Also amusingly, she asked me the other day if I use laundry paper, and it took us a really long time to realize that she was talking about dryer sheets. But really, her English is impeccable (though lamentably British in vocabulary sometimes, because of her grammar school education)--I think I've mentioned before that she even curses well in English, which I learned in linguistics class is one of the grammatically most complicated parts of the language which students of a language usually can't ever do as well as native speakers.

Last Thursday, I went to a lecture that was like Introduction/Politics of Bollywood, which was pretty informative since I know basically nothing about this industry that apparently has an audience of like half of the entire world. But it also reminded me of something I've been noticing all spring--that contemporary South Asia and the Middle East are much more connected than I'd realized. One of my closest friends here is an American girl whose family is from Bangladesh, and she points out similarities between Arabic and Bengali language, as well as correcting me whenever I call certain foods "Middle Eastern," because she says they originated closer to her homeland. Another friend of mine here says that parts of Cairo look a lot like his native India, and when Enas went to visit my host family with me, she said their neighborhood reminded her of her trip to India. Enas is also familiar with Bollywood movies (and commands a wicked--in both senses of the word--Indian acccent) and that's not unusual here. Attention to Bollywood is surely growing in the US, but it's still pitifully limited. Realizing that my country manages to basically ignore something that's pervasive in so much of the rest of the world is interesting both because it shows me, once more, how much bigger the world is than how I think about it, and that Americans, who say that the world is "shrinking" and that we're more connected everyday, are still insulated from certain unfamiliar forms.

Also, trying to describe the culture and experience of being here as made me much more sure that there's no way I could ever be an anthropologist. Just describing the difference between a normal street around my host family's apartment vs. a normal street in the neighborhood where the dorm is-- that seems daunting to the point of impossible. They're vastly different, but I'd need a boatload of insight to be able to explain how.

Back from spring break with one month to go

I was afriad that I was going to be let down coming back into Egypt. A lot of people who have traveled get depressed and start focusing on all the dirt, poverty, low quality of ... all sorts of stuff, and inefficiency here, because the places they've been like Turkey or Israel aren't like that. I went through border control with my friend Sam and some other AUC students. As we were leaving Israel, the Israeli guards asked us questions, "Where are you going? What will you do there? What did you do here?" and generally questions I expected (and got) on the way in to Israel. Two of the other AUC students we met in line and wound up traveling back to Cairo with were Muslim, one of whom wore hijab, and she got asked about her religion and if she knew people in Israel, which seem kind of irrelevant if you don't ask follow up questions like, "How does your religion impact your feelings toward Jewish people?" or "Are those people you know is Israel terrorists?" Anyway, I've never been questioned while I was in the exit line for a country. You'd think the Egyptians would be asking us questions since we're entering their country. But when we got to the Egyptian side, the guard there said hi, glanced at our passports, and when he saw the girl in hijab, he laughed. We didn't know what he said, but he was clearly sympathizing with her, "You just came through there and you dress like that? I know they gave you a hard time." And that made all of us smile, because in Egypt, people joke around a lot, like as a nation, and when they encounter people who are suffering or just got hasseled, they know how to laugh about it. We were glad to be back.

So I'm in Cairo and feeling pretty positive about the last few weeks here. No bittersweet--I'm glad for the time I've been here and will be here, and I'm excited for this summer, which is kind of hard to picture because it's going to be so different from here. Spring break was obviously a really enriching couple weeks, and now I know for sure that I've got a job, a grant, and an apartment for this summer, so I'm very blessed. We went out to an "American" restaurant last night, kind of to celebrate things falling into place for me and kind of just to go out. I got waffles.

Briefly, since I'm thinking of it, I'll just jot down a couple things that I've explained to people about the US. As I've been here longer and gotten to know people better, they've asked me questions about things that are different. (The first couple days back in January, I got a lot of, "So how do you think Egypt is different from America?" which is an impossibly huge question to answer, particularly when you've had no time to reflect on it and get exposed to more Egypt.) It's a lot harder than I thought to elicit what the "rules" are in the US, but they're definitely there. Here are some things that people have asked me about.

• In America, men who are friends can't kiss each other in public, or anywhere, really.
• In America, you have to have friends outside of your family--if not, even your family will think that you have a problem. Further, if you don't see your friends outside of just school or work, people will think that there's something wrong with you.
• In America, Christians are the majority. They form many small denominations. Historically, these groups were significantly different from each other, but today they are similar in many regards. Christian fundamentalism has been growing in the States for many decades, and I don't know the answer to "Why?"
• In America, before you get engaged to be married, you date. You have a relationship with that person and are "more than friends," optimally for years before you get engaged. If you do not, everyone will think it's fishy and that you're making a terrible decision. There is no word in Egyptian Arabic for dating, or for boyfriend/girlfriend--only "friend" and "fiance".
• In America, male children and female children are supposed to inherit the same amount when their parents die. One son or daughter may get more than another because the parent chose to give them somethind special, but this is on an individual basis, not a gender basis. It does not matter if the parent who died was male or female. And really, not perfectly in all regards but in quite a lot, men and women are equal under the law.

Yerushalayim!

My homestay added a whole new level of poverty to my vision of Egypt. The family had their own apartment, with 6 beds for 8 people, and could feed their 6 children well. The three oldest all worked, and the three youngest were in grammer and middle school. One of the older boys is an engineer, the other in school to be a family councelor but drives a small, 3-wheeled taxi called a tuktuk, and the older daughter works as a translator and secretary--so by any country's standards, they're doing well. But each of the family members has about 2 outfits that they wear outside the house. Now, those outfits range from neat to nice-looking, but imagine having only two changes of clothes. Once they get back to the house, the women change into galabeyas (loose dresses). Getting a big bottle of Sprite to share after dinner was a treat, and we would share bowls at dinner, though not forks, since they were concerned with cleanliness. They were sad that I was leaving them for Jerusalem, but as soon as I get a chance I'll go back to visit, because they're just such a wonderful family.

The first thing that struck my sleep deprived brain after the 15 hour trek from Cairo to the Holy City was boys with earrings and women looking pretty and not feeling bad about it. Israel is so not Egypt. It's not as if you've taken something out of Europe and dropped it in the Mid East, but it is a Western country. And the tacky souveniers here--much nicer and more tasteful than their counterparts in Egypt. The buildings only a couple stories, which creates a much different look than Cairo's predominant apartment towers. And that white stone they use everywhere here...cement can't possibly compete as a building material. It's just lovely here--I'm thinking of extending my stay. I should probably be doing the good little anthropological thing and describing more details, but I want to tell stories about my adventures.

Saturday was day two in J'lem, but my first full day here. While I was eating the YMCA's continental breakfast and reading the Bible, I noticed an old man at the next table looking over at me. I was super nervous, but I took a chance and went over to his table and said hello. He didn't seem surprised or confused at why I was speaking to him, and we wound up talking for over an hour about a lot of things--my education (hooray, someone who believes in liberal arts and studying abroad simply to make yourself a better, more educated person!), religion (I think he'd been looking over because I'd been reading, and he's an atheist and wondered what was going through my mind), ourselves (I described the AUC jaunt and he described coming as a baby from Austria to Israel). It was really great, and I felt very blessed to have gotten to talk to him. After this, I thought I'd go find an internet cafe in the Old City and email my advisor. I found one, though to get into the Old City I had to flash my American passport and tell the police that I was just trying to get to my hostel (when I'm actually at the Y outside the old city) but I naively thought that I'd go say Hi to my AUC friends who were planning on staking out a space in Holy Sepulchre for the service of the Holy Fire. I should have realized that there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people trying to get into Holy Sepulchre at for that same service. That was the reason there was a police barrier. But I started going toward the church, and then I got swept up in the crowds, and then suddenly I was in the church, and I didn't know what to do or where to go look for them. But I knew I was in a desirable place, so I sat down against a wall for a while, staking my claim on a little floorspace. But then the police/Israeli army decided that the hall I was in was not allowed to have people in it, at least not yet, so they forced everyone down some stairs into a chamber without any other exit. They were pushing very roughly, including all the old ladies and being scary. I later found that we had been sent down into the Armenian chapel. There were maybe 300-400 people down there; it wasn't crowded, and it wasn't as hot as upstairs, but I was stuck. Between the soldiers and the pilgrims crowding the stairs, there was no way I wasn't going to be staying for the service. I didn't really know what it involved, and everyone around me was Orthodox, meaning mostly from countries where they don't speak English. So I napped a little, did a little homework. After 2 or 3 hours of waiting, there were noises of excitement from upstairs, and all of down in that room crowded toward the stairs, people holding their bundles of 33 candles in the air, ready to receive the Holy Fire. And then we waited for maybe another hour, with moments of noise from upstairs getting people all exicted down stairs. But finally there was cheering from upstairs, and a bell started ringing. From mass this semester, I've learned that chimes indicate the miracle of transsubstantiation, and I knew that the bell meant that the priest had come out of the tomb with the miraculous fire sent by God. I was so excited along with the other pilgrims, and when the fire finally made it down to us, I was crying and laughing because it was so beautiful and wonderful.

People passed the fire around, and then passed their hands through it, for blessings I guess, and then put out the candles. I didn't have any candles, but some people let me put my hands over their flames. People said it wasn't as hot as regular fire; maybe. God was very present in that moment, as He has been for me since the beginning of this trip. When we made it out of the church, I went and bought some candles to light later. The size of the flame from all the candles bundled together was very big, and when people had been carrying it around, it made my think of God's flame in my heart, and how seeing a fire that I could imagine sitting in my chest and burning was very inspiring.

I found a felafel place and had lunch, with my third Turkish coffee here finally being the most like they have in Egypt. Now I'm worried I won't be able to find it in the US--I don't want espresso or something that tastes like regular black coffee grounds sitting unfiltered in the bottom of my cup. Anyway, I got a little work done there, and as I was setting out once again to find that internet cafe, who comes down the street by my friends from AUC. So I went off with them as they got lunch at an Arab restaurant, and then we went back to Holy Sepulchre, where the Orthodox kids explained some things to the Protestant kids. So we touched the annointed stone where Christ's body was laid before he was put in the tomb, and we prayed, and saw the rock that the cross stood on. While we were at the cross rock, a priest was fixing a chandelier with oil lamps, and he moved his ladder too quickly and one of the lamps fell to the floor and smashed. So since Al, who's like non-denominational/Protestant, and I were in the mood of venerating objects in holy places and being open to signs, we went and picked up a piece of the lamp and put our fingers in the oil. It wasn't super meaningful, but it couldn't hurt.

Also, people were lined up to go in the Sepulchre itself and ligth their candles from the Holy Fire. We didn't go in, but I got my candles lit from someone who had just walked out of the tomb with the fire, before he put his out in this little cone next to the exit. I feel like I'm forgetting something else that happened, but we visited the chapels next to Holy Sepulchre--the one on the right was Ethiopian, very solemn.

We spent a little time in the hostel where my friends are staying and then, 12 hours after I had originally set off looking for an Internet cafe, I finally landed in one and was able to get some work done. I had carried my laptop around the entire day--my headphone and microphone had unsurprisingly broken at some point. It's hard that God is not interested in my deadlines and the things I feel obligated to do--when there is a spiritual experience for me to have, God never looks at my calendar to make sure it's convenient for me. Actually, the hard part about that is saying, "No, today I'm going to stay away from people or places who I feel God is drawing me to, because I have a paper due tomorrow and I'm going to make that a priority." But hopefully I'm answering a larger calling by investing in my education, even if the immediacy of a spriritual experience beckons more forcefully than meeting a deadline I've committed to. I think that if I strike a balance between the two, I'll be good. I certainly feel the need to justify fulfilling my obligations when the alternative is Jerusalem out there waiting for me.

Homestay family, but just for a week

With AUC's spring break upon us, I've got a homestay for the first week and a trip to Jerusalem for the second, just in time for Othordox/Eastern Easter. I've been with the homestay family for two days and just stopped by the dorm to clean out the fridge, shower, check the email, and, I admit, briefly bask in the air conditioning.

I was very apprehensive about the homestay, but the family is part of a network used by an organization here does a semester abroad for Christian college students, and I should have known that they wouldn't send their students to families that weren't good. Mine consists of a mom, a dad, two boys and a girl older than me, and two girls and a boy younger than me. They're great; of course they stuff me full of food, as host families ought, even when I say, "It is not possible!" they tell me to quite whining and eat up. They've all studied English, but it's nothing like AUC. It's basically all Arabic, all the time. "Mish fahma" مش فهمة or "I don't understand" is my biggest line, though I know already that this is really good for my Arabic. The apartment is nice and doesn't feel crowded--three bedrooms. The first day we (meaning mostly the mom) made aish baladi عيش بلدي or what we'd probably call pita bread back home, which was a really cool process to watch, and yesterday we visited the schools that the three younger kids are in. The littlest one and I are friends, and she's showed me how to eat lib لب seeds and has written Arabic tests for me and we even played Connect 4. The TV's almost always on, but they keep the sound below voice level. The goal for today is not to get tired and nap, but it's warm and the family has let me get away with it the past two days. I have to get ready to go to Jerusalem, but it makes me feel like I'm acting all-important to whip out the travel book since the other members of the family are content to just sit and talk or watch TV. But getting to see the day-to-day of a family here is exactly what I've been hoping for.