The neighborhood

I went on one of my very rare excursions out by myself last Sunday (seriously rare--I'd ballpark the number of times I've tread outside the path from the dorms to campus and in between classes by myself, as in completely unaccompanied, in the single digits and that was at the end of Week Three) walking around the island that my dorm is on. The Nile flows around the neighborhood-sized island, called Zamaalek, which houses a large number of embassies and classy, international places like that, so it's predominently upscale and definitely safe. One of the other dorms is called Kenzy, and a friend of mine who lives there says she likes that it's in a grittier neighborhood than Zamaalek because it seems more like the real Egypt instead of the sterilized, internationalized Egypt. However, I guess because this is the third world (whatever that means), you've got the very poor mixed in with the very rich. So getting off the beaten path in Zamaalek reveals a much different view than I'm used to. Actually getting off the beaten path is pretty easy, considering that the AUC shuttle picks us up at the library on campus and drops us at the door of the dorm. Furthermore, my usual walks around Zamaalek (all accompanied, mind you) are either to A.) a nearby street that has a currency exchange, my favorite felafel shop, the Vodafone store, a supermarket, and Cinnabon or B.)mass with the Notre Dame faction here.


But today I walked to 26th of July Street, which is a major street as far as the entire city is concerned, and then I took a winding way back. I ran into shops that are much more practical than luxuious. There were real clothing stores instead of boutiques (whose whole inventory is about 15 shirts and 10 pairs of shoes, period) and grocery stores and snack shops with cheaper wares and fewer brand names that I recognized than at the stores that know they'll get tourists or wealthy students passing by. There wasn't anything too mind blowing, but I could tell the audience was different. It was a little more private, particularly since it was morning. It was a little more mundane, less advertised and flashy. The content wasn't captivating but I liked the slight change in atmosphere.

The walls of the dorm don't seem so thick when you know how close the real world is, and how your fortress is smack dab in the middle of something different from itself.