Saturday, March 29, 2008
In loving memory of Uncle Ed
More observations
I sleep crazy hours, but that's okay here. I stayed up until 4 one morning studying, but I was down in the lobby and there were a bunch of other students there too the whole time. Some were studying, others were socializing, others were just playing around on their laptops. It wasn't a big deal to stay up that late; it's like all hours of the day and night are opened up to be inhabited. Some Egyptian kids here have told me that they stay up all night sometimes for no reason and think nothing of it. Sure, they're tired, but malesh (the catchall for "I'm sorry or too bad but don't worry about it because it's not a big deal, whatever"). They can catch up during the next morning or evening.
I'm not sure how long this attitude or lifestyle can last--there's a lot I want to read, for example, and I actually have time to do it here--but this past couple weeks have been very chill and good fun. It's how I would arrange the most perfect vacation--sometimes there's work to be done, but you're surrounded by students, American and otherwise, who are interested enough in the world to care about studying here, but who have time to hang out and do nothing and enjoy each other's company.
For the record I've been drinking small quantities of tap water as of week four, and I've been fine. I must have intestines of steel, because I've eaten pretty much everything I've laid eyes on here and I only feel sick when I over-indulge on Nutella.
There are times I'm hanging out with girls from Arab countries and the conversation will turn down a route that I feel I don't really need to be paying attention to, and it's only tonight that I realized there's something worth mentioning about these moments. I get bored when girls are talking about their crushes, or when my roommate talks with other RA's (yeah, Residence Advisors) about RA politics and whether so-and-so responded inappropriately to such-and-such RA crisis. I tend to allow myself to zone out when these conversations are happening because I tell myself, "This isn't Egyptian--this is just like back home." But, of course, that's stupid. Conversations about crushes or inner-organizational politics are normal--or at least among the upper/middle class girls that I hear having these conversations. There's nothing American about them, or if there is, there's certainly nothing anti-Egyptian because they're happening in Egypt between Egyptians. They're mundane sorts of conversations, and I may not be taking in huge amounts of cultural knowledge from being privy to them because they're personal conversations, not cultural. And that's life--just because it's not a culturally rich moment doesn't mean I should ignore it.
Chris asked about Egyptian men's staring, and there's not much to explain about that. White girls and even non-Egyptian girls of all stripes stand out--even the girls whose parents are Egyptian but who grew up in the States. Egypt gets a lot of tourists, but that doesn't make people any less curious about us. Little kids walk by and say, "Hello, what is your name?" in English and then run away, shy. Men stare, and for those who didn't know, American women have an international reputation not of independence or free-siritedness or high education, but as being loose women. I saw an Egyptian man come up to a blond friend of mine and strike up a conversation by asking if she was married and putting a hand on her thigh. And girls, say from Jordan or Lebanon, have a similar reputation, apparently with the added threat of, "You're Arab so you're one of our women so I have some authority over you." A Palestinian friend of mine says that she's at a disadvantage because Egyptian girls are taught to be tough and can handle these situations. I don't get as much attention as other female students here do, but it comes my way. It's arbitrary of how you dress too, and maybe even of how beautiful you are. One solution is to take control of the situation with a firm, "Asalaamu aleikum," which is a respectful, somewhat religious greeting, and sets a tone in which ogling isn't okay. I do this when I'm walking at night, for example with police officers, who are high on the list of offenders because they have nothing better to do.
There are police officers on every corner practically, particularly in Zamalek (my neighborhood) where there are a lot of foreigners. There are a lot of underemployed people here, like the two guys whose job it is to open the door for you a Cinnabon. And then there'll be five guys working behind the counter, with one cash register and one oven. Underemployment is better than unemployment, but there's plenty of that too.
My roommate is teaching me to order in--the Arab students here don't go out to eat like the American students tend to, even if they wind up spending the same amount of money. Everywhere here delivers. If you want something like groceries or office supplies, the answer is, "Go to Metromart or Alfamart," which are Western style grocery stores. Study-abroads buy food on the street, which Egyptian students think is weird of them. My classmates eat at McDonalds and dress like US-ers (the school uniform appears to be hipster-preppy with the occassional higab, or head scarf, thrown in and sometimes the headscarf will be Louis Vuitton or Gucci) but they aren't as much like us as they seem; this comes out in our different points of reference. They speak great English, but then some don't know what a trumpet is, and the region I know as "Israel" or "Israel and Palestine" is always "Palestine." A couple Americans have said if you want to experience the different side of a country, the most distinctive and seemingly "Egyptian" part of the culture, the least international and the most domestic and traditional, you go to the poor, and you see how they live. That's certainly not the kids we go to school with. Because study abroads like exploring and going out (again, not a money thing but a getting-to-know-Cairo thing, because "going out" is often to cheap places), they know the neighborhood better than full time students. I have postulated with a couple American girls here that this has some deep, social implications or is a sign of larger things. Primarily, it means that people with money here never see or interact with people without money here. Perhaps this means that those who have the capital to take a bite out of poverty aren't informed enough about it to take action. Or perhaps the poverty here is so enormous--in the difference between rich and poor and the number of people who are in need--that it is actually too vast and twisted to be impacted. But I feel like there's something weird at hand when most AUC students don't know the restaurants around campus that are even a single block off the street that connects classroom buildings. Even on said street, there's a place study abroad students go that we call "Magic Window" where you can get Egyptian felafel for 0.75 LE or about 14 American pennies. And my roommate has never been. This is a half block past the last classroom building on the main drag. But the people jostling in line with American students for refried beans and felafel (فول وطعمية) are the Egyptians who labor in the area. Even this small contact increases awareness, I think. Which I guess should make me rethink where I go in the US. Generally, I think that the poorest places are considered unsafe, and here if you go to the poorest places of the city, people will ask what you're doing there or what you're doing, so it's not right to go if you have no business there.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Adventures part 1
Despite all my protestations about how I'm interested in contemporary Egyptian culture and I didn't care about the ancient stuff, I made it out to the pyramids before I had even been here a week. The trip was planned by AUC and our Student Orientation Leaders, and after we got out of Survival Arabic class (a week-long intensive in colloquial Egyptian) we hopped in a bus to go to Giza. Those three iconic pyramids (called haramaat in Arabic, which kind of/almost/doesn't at all sound like "pyramid") are practically a 20 minute drive from downtown Cairo (depending on traffic). So close!
Now, the caveat here is that I didn't really get to see the pyramids that much. The most awe-inspiring moment was went we were first able to spot them from the highway. It was very dramatic to be driving along, still practially within the city limits, and to see these dark, looming, ancient, triangular shadows right next to us.
When we arrived, we were thrown onto horses with no explanations whatsoever on how to ride, and hollered at to stay with the group. Now, as luck would have it, I got the angry horse. I probably did something wrong, but whatever it was, I was not communicating "stop" very well, and the horse ignored me and tried to bite me and fought with other horses and generally drew my attention away from the desert, which we were riding into as we left the town with the stables behind. Our orientation leaders kept pointing out horses that had died and were laying in the sand on their sides in various states of decay. Apparently the area is very horse-oriented, because we saw riders go by even without tourists in tow, and their horses' hooves would make sparks every time they hit a small rock in the sand.
As for the pyramids...where we rode was even farther from the pyramids than the highway had been, so they were there, off in the distance...but not in any detail. We essentially rode in a straight line out into the desert (away from the pyramids! I kept noticing) and then rode back. And on the ride back, my relationship with my horse struck a high note. I heard a girl in my group yell, and glancing back I saw her standing on the ground and her horse rolling in the sand. I didn't know what was going on, but because it looked bad I figured my horse was about to do it too--and immediately I felt him start to kneel down, so I scrambled to get my foot out of the stirrups and get off. I had this terrible image in my mind of my leg being crushed under his big, contrary mass. It turns out that he had gotten fed up with working and wanted to go for a roll in the sand.
Myself and a guy we were paying who actually knew what he was doing caught the horse (of course he had trotted off and left me once he finished his sand bath), and I had to get back on. Someone decided that we were now experienced, so we had a very bumpy (for me at least) gallop back into town. Overall, an exciting night, with exciting smells on my clothes, particularly my gloves, which went straight into the wash when I got back to the dorms. I hope I don't sound too complainy; even though I wouldn't do it again, it was a great night.
2/6/08 A full day
Some days here have one little adventure, and some are just packed. I got out of colloquial class and went to buy books this afternoon, but as I was buying books, I looked out over the little tennis courts (which are always in use for kids playing soccer between, or instead of, classes) and I saw girls. Girls?!?! Playing soccer?! So I scampered on over and asked if this was tryouts and if I could join. The coach said yes and I played in my dress pants and nice sneakers since that's what I had. The other girls had on shorts and t-shirts, which shocked me at first since this is Egypt, and then which made sense, since this was AUC. Only two of the girls wore higab, though, which is a much smaller proportion than the number of higabis in the student population (which is probably a little shy of 50%). I was so happy to get to play--I was afriad that being a girl would keep me away from soccer here.
Some of my friends watched the practice for a while, but didn't wait for me to finish. I called them when practice was over, and they said they were at a restaurant called "Felfela," and that it was hard to get to, but I should try to find it. So I set off, and asked people on the way, until some English-speaking Egyptian man came up to me and told me he knew where it was and would walk me part way there. I was suspicious, but needed help.
We got as far as his perfume shop.... He told me the rest of the directions, then invited me into his shop for some tea, which he told me Egyptian hospitality dictated, and I was a sap enough to accept. I honestly didn't think that I would be caught up in one of the infamous perfume fiascos that other American students had warned me of. The guy started telling me about his farm in Fayoum where he harvests the scents for all the perfumes in glass bottles around the shop. He made me smell some of it, and kept telling me it'd cost 1 pound, he was giving me a student discount. Now, I had heard in my colloquial class that people will tell you low prices or that something is a gift to be polite, but that after that they'll say the real price. I don't think it's devious: they wish they could give it to you as a gift, because they're nice people, but they have to make a living. So I was expecting a higher price, but when the guy said 50 pounds, I was done playing his game. I got up to go, since I really just wanted to get to dinner anyway. But he thought I was in bargaining, so for about a full minute he said, "Excuse me, how much?" to get me to name my price. To every excuse I started in on, he would cut me off to repeat, "Excuse me, how much?" After all his crap about showing me hospitality, I knew that he was being rude by any standards, probably particularly Egyptian. Everything I told him was true, "I'm just trying to get to dinner," "I am interested in buying perfume in Egypt but not today," "I'm here for a whole semester; I don't need to buy perfume now," but each time he cut me off. I tried, "Excuse me, I'm not interested," but his face got angrier with the taste of his own medicine, and I dropped that approach immediately. Then he started opening boxes, each of them containing smaller and smaller bottles. Finally, he got to a bottle the height of my pinky, filled it half way and said, "5 pounds," which is a little less than an American dollar. I still didn't want it, but I saw this was my way out, so I said yes. He didn't wrap it for me, and he said, "No business," because the exchange had been so small. And my tea never showed up either.
The guy's directions turned out to be right, but my friends weren't there anymore. Amazingly, though, some other people I knew were about to eat there, so I decided to join them. The restaurant was the hole-in-the-wall style, except pretty big as holes go, and very crowded. While I was ordering, I felt people brushing by me, and then I felt a distinct squeeze on my leg, like two fingers. I looked down only to see a little boy looking in the other direction. But the longer I looked at him, it became clear that he was intentionally avoiding my eyes. It took a couple more moments for it to register that he was the one squeezing my leg, but by then he had moved away. I felt weirded out and scandalized. Once I was safely positioned with my friends eating, I noticed that my young molester was one of group of three boys, maybe 7 years old, making the rounds, brushing their little hands out toward each skirt that passed by. When they came back around to our part of the restaurant, I watched my petit assailant start to go for my friend Jess' thigh, and I smacked his groping, infantile hand. He turned on me and said something that was obviously along the lines of, "I didn't do anything--what injustice is this!" I've got enough vocab to have scolded him, but I just glared back until he and his friends scampered back on to the sidewalk. I probably shouldn't have hit someone else's child, but he didn't suffer too much from it.
I parted ways from my friends with hugs, which is apparently wrong when it's between the sexes here, but I like it and I'm culturally sensitive about everything else.
2/12/08 Soccer drama
I went to soccer practice today, which felt good even though my abilities aren't anything to write home about. Things went well, and the girls are nice, and explain stuff to everyone who doesn't speak Arabic because the coach doesn't speak any English beyond some key words like, "Stop!" Practice was going pretty well--we always scrimage for a lot longer than we do drills, which I like. Anyway, a lot of personalities come out when you're playing, and one of those was from a particular girl who gets a little bossy. My approach is just to jump through whatever hoops are set before me to maximize the time I get to play. But one of the girls couldn't deal with being bossed, and she started shouting and calling the other girl names and complaining that the power structure of the soccer team was flawed and disorganized and corrupt and unjust...and a whole lot more junk which only communicated to me that her pride was much more important to her than the game. (And these criticisms would never have been voiced if she'd just taken international student orientation, where they tell you to expect bureaucracy and inefficiency and run-around and to have a carefree, humorous attitude toward all of this. But, as Egyptians themselves, neither of these girls had to take international student orientation.) Now, the comments were pretty middle-school in their maturity and complexity, but she got a rise out of the other girl and tried to provoke her further, encouraging her to hit her and more and more junk. And of course the antagonist was a tiny, cutesy girl, and the girl she was baiting could and would have actually done her some harm. Despite the captain's and coach's attempts to separate them, we had a little fight right there on the soccer field. They yelled at each other a lot, and then it got physical and one went for the neck and the other started kicking.... And to make it worse, the boys' team was watching our practice, and we've set a poor example as female atheletes. It's unfortunate, because the only females ever playing soccer on that field is this team. I've never seen a single solitary woman playing there outside of our practices, and the space is in use for soccer any and every time of the day that you walk by. As soon as our coach sat us down to talk about what had just happened, the boys' team had taken the field.
3/7-8/08 Black and White Desert
This weekend nearly 100 students (mostly Americans) independently planned to head out to the desert, contacting tour guides themselves instead of through AUC. It went off marvelously. I was in a medium sized group of about 20, and the girl who organized our group was fantastic. She got us a coach bus to drive the four hours to the desert, and it even would have left right on time at 6am had not a police officer wandered over, elicited that we were Americans and decided we needed a police escort. We waited two hours on the bus, not even a half-block down the road from the dorms, until finally we convinced the police that we could not wait for them to find a squad car, which apparently they were having trouble doing (???), and we rolled out delayed for two hours for no reason at all. I was frustrated with the situation for the first time in a while, because I was actually on a schedule.... I have classes that I get to on time and church services and other timed events, but hold ups for those are always brief or my own fault.
The rest of the trip was aaamazing, though. We made a pit stop at gas station in the middle of a desert (it looked like my mental picture of Saudi Arabia--old tires and flat sands as far as the eye could see), where I got to use a squat toilet for the first time! Exciting! Terrifying! But I have a friend here who is originally from Bangladesh, where she got to know all about squat toilets, and she gave me some tips. I even dare to say, it was kind of fun.
We got back on the bus and drove through more sands, but closer to our destination, the sands got more interesting. There were mountains and rocks and dunes. And then there was the oasis. The night before we left, I told a girl from Morroco that I was going to the desert, and she started in on how going to the desert is always a time of spiritual healing for her. I didn't understand until we drove through that oasis. There were trees and waters all together, surrounded completely by sand and rocks. I couldn't look at without thinking that it was a miracle--how could something so incongruous and lush and thick occur? All those metaphors you hear about water or oases in the desert now seem so much more powerful and significant.
We got to a town that probably mostly runs on tourism, and in groups of 4 and 5, we piled into jeeps and drove into the desert. By drove into the desert, I mean that we were on the highway for a while, and then, at a unmarked point, all the drivers turned off the road--not onto another road, but just into the sand. The structure of our trek through the desert was perfect--we would all drive to some spot, like with dunes or rocky mountains and at one point to an old volcano, and the drivers would shoo us out and we'd just walk around and take it all in. Mostly we would just climb whatever there was to climb, or pick up rocks or fossils.
We got to our destination for the evening, and while our guides/drivers were setting up camp, we climbed on the rocks and played in the sand. We were making quite a bit of noise, and as we reached a consensus that we would head over to the camp, one person suggested that we should take a minute of silence to listen to our surroundings. Everyone shut up and the silence rolled in--it was ringing, like when there's a thick snow but more dramatic. But within the huge silence, there were so many tiny noises. We realized that there were about 5 other camps whose fires we could see around us on the horizon, and we could hear conversations from all of them. I would even say that you could tell Arabic was being spoken. We were all so aware and amazed that we probably went a bit over 60 seconds, and afterwards everyone agreed that it had been such a good idea.
The student response to the desert seemed appropriate; 5 students in the group were Jewish, and they invited a couple goyim to sneak off with them to have a Shabbat service. Since they only had one book, two kids led a bunch of songs and encouraged everyone who didn't know the words to hum along. By the time we got back to the camp, it was time for dinner.
The camp had been set up by circling the wagons (aka the jeeps) into a horseshoe and stringing sheets from the jeeps and some poles to serve as three walls. Carpets on the ground kept the sand out, and the "tent" was open to the desert on one side and to the sky. The drivers had cooked chicken, rice, and potatoes over the fire. I wanted to go to sleep at that point, but someone had brought some drums, and the drivers sat around the fire and encouraged (read: forced) us to dance for a while, which would have been fun if I wasn't so tired and if Egyptian men didn't stare so much.
Inspired by the Jewish service, a friend of mine invited a couple of us to go off a little ways, while everyone else was setting up for bed, to read some Greek Orthodox prayers, which is his tradition. I had really been wanting to be able to pray in fellowship, and neatly there was a section in the Orthodox prayers for speaking to God in your own words, so I took this part. After that we sat around and talked about the struggles that each of us were having with our faith, which was good.
I woke up every few hours in the night, but each time I did the light had changed a little, so it was always beautiful. Breakfast was tea, hardboiled eggs, and pita (called here "aish baladi"=عيش بلدي=nation bread) with fig jam, cream cheese, and black honey. Then back into the jeep, to make a few more stops before we left for Cairo. The driver I had was nice, though my attempts at Arabic tried his patience, and he had good taste in Arabic music but made us clap along some times like trained monkeys.
Over the course of two days, we drove to so many different looking places! The first was just a big dune with soft sands, but after that was the volcano covered with hardened, black lava--the ash from which completely covers the "Black Desert" and gives it its name. The White Desert was really the best--it's white because it is made of chalk, so it's white. There's sand on top of the chalk slabs, but it even comes up through the sand in crazy formations you can see just by googling "white desert egypt." Then there were little black plant fossils all over white desert, and a completely separate mountain made of (quartz?) crystals. This trip completely changed my perspective on deserts. Before, any time they were mentioned, I would think of wastelands, depressing and empty. But that is not the case. Even in my total ignorance, I could tell there was so much geological and biological complexity going on, and the biggest part of being there was just looking at how beautiful the land was. It was like being in a big, beautiful mosque or cathedral. We're studying beduin people in my Anthropology class now, who have mostly all moved to cities, and it would be so hard to leave those wide open spaces and ample natural structures to move into a cramped, crowded metropolis, even if you badly needed the work.