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.
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Monday, April 28, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Weekend plans
Easter weekend my travel plans (Jerusalem, anyone?) fell through, so I stayed at the dorms and am planning to go to the Holy Land for Eastern Easter, with a kid I met here who's Greek Orthodox. So I staying in Cairo and worked on my grant proposal for this summer (!!!) and did some little things. One morning I hung around the room of some friends of mine who are roommates (Hala, who's Palestinian, and Jessica, who's American) and Hala made us Turkish coffee and we sat on their balcony. Turkish coffee, Hala explained to us, is not like a cup of American coffee--it's not to be drunk on the run, and you drink it in company. Hanging out with them was lovely and probably the highlight of the weekend.
Because I stayed in a lot, I felt kind of disconnected from Egypt and being here during the week following Easter, and I was trying to just wrap up a couple assignments so I stayed in and just went between the dorms and campus. The weekend following was nice, and I feel back on track as far as trying to engage with the culture and the people I meet. I went with some friends (mix of Americans and Arabs) to "Islamic Cairo", which is a touristy market in the midst of important Islamic buildings that are about a thousand years old. We went to a park...which is not a common or natural occurrence on the Cairo landscape. It was huge, green, lit up after the sun went down and was full of young happy Egyptians. Afterwards, Enas (my roommate) and I were going to go home and do homework, but then decided since it was a Friday night to give it one more hour (we're such wild girls; we stay out until 8:45) and go on with the group to an Egyptian coffee-and-hookah cafe called an "'ahwa," which is one of the richest, simplest pleasures for me here. It was even better because I've been buckling down on homework and Grinnell requirements recently, so I haven't gone to one of these places in 3-4 weeks. I love Turkish coffee and باشرب شيشة احيانا and the atmosphere is so relaxed and social and unrushed. It's always mostly older and middle aged Egyptian men at the other tables, and they're interested in talking to their friends and drinking their tea or coffee, just like we are. The best 'ahawi (plural of 'ahwa) in my opinion have been in alleys between other buildings, so it's like there are walls on two sides but you're open to the air above and there's thoroughfare and activity at either end of the "premises." Chris called while we were at this 'ahwa, so I got to talk to him a little--the best of both worlds.
Saturday was also an out and about day, with an architectural field trip to some early Muslim shrines and religious schools. I've started asking my architecture professor more questions about Islam, and it's great to talk to her because she's so smart and knowledgeable. I asked some questions about fatwa-s and the mufti (apparently there is one for Egypt, but a group--دار--of scholars here who discuss that kind of religious interpretations stuff) because we had discussed it in my Anthropology class Thursday. There's so much interesting stuff about Islam that I don't know anything about!
I had my first Formal Arabic (aka Modern Standard Arabic aka فصحى) lesson Saturday, which I'm getting through a language school downtown separate from AUC that a friend here recommended. It felt really good to be doing some formal study again, and I don't think it'll be nearly as hard to move between Formal and Colloquial as I thought. Enas has it down and knows which words are formal and which are colloquial and which are both, so why can't I? I'm managing, on the low level of Arabic that I do have under my belt. Immediately after the Formal lesson, I had a talkative cab driver back to the dorms, so no threat of loosing my colloquial. I still don't have a good answer to the question of what I'm going to do with my Arabic. But I like languages too much to just let learning them turn into a personal passtime.
Because I stayed in a lot, I felt kind of disconnected from Egypt and being here during the week following Easter, and I was trying to just wrap up a couple assignments so I stayed in and just went between the dorms and campus. The weekend following was nice, and I feel back on track as far as trying to engage with the culture and the people I meet. I went with some friends (mix of Americans and Arabs) to "Islamic Cairo", which is a touristy market in the midst of important Islamic buildings that are about a thousand years old. We went to a park...which is not a common or natural occurrence on the Cairo landscape. It was huge, green, lit up after the sun went down and was full of young happy Egyptians. Afterwards, Enas (my roommate) and I were going to go home and do homework, but then decided since it was a Friday night to give it one more hour (we're such wild girls; we stay out until 8:45) and go on with the group to an Egyptian coffee-and-hookah cafe called an "'ahwa," which is one of the richest, simplest pleasures for me here. It was even better because I've been buckling down on homework and Grinnell requirements recently, so I haven't gone to one of these places in 3-4 weeks. I love Turkish coffee and باشرب شيشة احيانا and the atmosphere is so relaxed and social and unrushed. It's always mostly older and middle aged Egyptian men at the other tables, and they're interested in talking to their friends and drinking their tea or coffee, just like we are. The best 'ahawi (plural of 'ahwa) in my opinion have been in alleys between other buildings, so it's like there are walls on two sides but you're open to the air above and there's thoroughfare and activity at either end of the "premises." Chris called while we were at this 'ahwa, so I got to talk to him a little--the best of both worlds.
Saturday was also an out and about day, with an architectural field trip to some early Muslim shrines and religious schools. I've started asking my architecture professor more questions about Islam, and it's great to talk to her because she's so smart and knowledgeable. I asked some questions about fatwa-s and the mufti (apparently there is one for Egypt, but a group--دار--of scholars here who discuss that kind of religious interpretations stuff) because we had discussed it in my Anthropology class Thursday. There's so much interesting stuff about Islam that I don't know anything about!
I had my first Formal Arabic (aka Modern Standard Arabic aka فصحى) lesson Saturday, which I'm getting through a language school downtown separate from AUC that a friend here recommended. It felt really good to be doing some formal study again, and I don't think it'll be nearly as hard to move between Formal and Colloquial as I thought. Enas has it down and knows which words are formal and which are colloquial and which are both, so why can't I? I'm managing, on the low level of Arabic that I do have under my belt. Immediately after the Formal lesson, I had a talkative cab driver back to the dorms, so no threat of loosing my colloquial. I still don't have a good answer to the question of what I'm going to do with my Arabic. But I like languages too much to just let learning them turn into a personal passtime.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Adventures part 1
1/28/08 Horsebacking riding around the pyramids
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.
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.Saturday, February 9, 2008
Observations and updates
I know it's been over a week since I've written, but the internet has been down and I've waited until it was less frustrating to try to get online. The problem isn't totally fixed now, but things are going faster.
I've had my first week of classes, and I've eaten more Egyptian food (kufta is amazing! And Tony, I’m looking for better shawarma, but so far it’s been eclipsed by the koshari, fiteer, and falafel sandwiches). I think I was one of several American students who didn't quite connect the dots that this would be like a regular school semester...so I didn't really bring a backpack or a cell phone. In Grinnell, I could get by without using my phone much. Here, in the big city, not so much. So I bought the cheapest phone possible, and I’ve been like a sketchy old man, going around to everyone who I’ve barely met and asking “nimrit telefoonik kam?” (نمرة تلفونك كام؟) I must describe my phone for you, because I love it. It has Arabic and English letters printed on the keys for texting, and it’s not a color phone but it has a color background, which I’m pretty sure is a color transparency in between the light source and the layer that the text appears on, and it looks like a tropical Caribbean isle with a sail boat in the foreground.
Every time something goes wrong here, I’ve been told, “Welcome to Egypt,” which is a phrase I’m getting sick of hearing for multiple reasons. One is that I’d just like to register for classes, please. Another reason is that it’s mostly ex-pats who say this, even students in my own program who’ve only been here as long as I have, and I’m not cool with the idea that people get jaded and decide that the defining characteristic of Egypt is that things don’t work here. I would much rather just be told to have patience. One exception to hearing “Welcome to Egypt” from old, white men is when people will shout it out on the street when they see obvious foreigners, when I'm assuming that's the one phrase they know in English. The other exception I've heard was the response I got when I asked two Egyptian students why trash cans on campus are usually found in pairs, one white and one green, and if the green one was for recycling. It was a mystery to them too.
School stuff
Campus is beautiful, like most of the things I encounter here, and classes have been good so far. There are a couple “campuses” separated by 1-2 blocks from each other. The “Greek” campus (no idea where the name comes from) houses the social sciences buildings and the library, as well as a big quad (bricked, grass isn’t big here) with lots of tables and chairs surrounded by the fortress of the academic buildings and completely divided from the street. This is the major hangout spot. People fill that space all day long, sometimes making it difficult for others to get through the throng of socializers to their social sciences classes. I like the library, although it is devoid of cushy chairs, and all three of us Grinnellians who are here this semester found each other in the library a couple days ago and made sure the others were doing well.
Me-stuff
The nearest Christian church is Catholic, so I’ve been there twice—once for a weekly service and once for Ash Wednesday. I really enjoyed it, and I already feel less ignorant about Catholicism. There’s a big contingent here from Notre Dame (one of whom is named John-Paul, who’s been here a semester already and shows us around sometimes) and so I go to church with them. They keep me straight and tell me when it’s okay to participate as a non-Catholic (e.g. receiving the ashes) and when it’s not (e.g. communion). And you thought my only new religious exposures would be to Islam!
I know I said that I wasn’t going to spend much time with Americans here, but I’ve met some Americans who are really great people and who I already hope to keep in contact with once I get back to the States. I guess you would say that it’s a “self-selecting pool” of study-abroad students because as the president of AUC told us at an orientation address, only 1% of American college students study abroad, and only 1% of those who do will go to the Middle East. And I think he said most of that 1% is at AUC. Additionally, I don’t want to spend time with a certain group of people because of an objectifying characteristic, like, “They’re Egyptian.” I’m getting to know study-abroads and full-time students alike, and I’m enjoying the company of people on both sides. My social strategy remains to force myself upon new people of all persuasions, and it has met with wild success. For example, I met an Egyptian girl in my Architecture class because she made the mistake of making eye contact with me and smiling, so down I sat next to her and by the end of class she was introducing me to her friends.
Arabic stuff
Last week I took a week-long intensive called “Survival Arabic,” which was really helpful. Things like how to order food or talk to cabbies. I’m really glad I took it, and I’m enrolled in an Egyptian Spoken Arabic class for this semester, which is going well too. I really enjoy the dumb language jokes that people learning the basics will make, and the pretend-sketchy conversations we have in class when all we learned on the first day was how to ask someone was if they were married and which floor they live on. You can get by a lot of the time in English. All the students here have to be fluent in English, and some of them know like three other languages in addition to English and Arabic, no exaggeration. Classes are all in English, and many vendors speak English. They like when you speak Arabic, though many don't understand the "universal" formal Arabic that is taught in American college classes. It took me about ten minutes to order flat bread with fig jelly on it the other day, because of the language barrier, but oh, was it worth it. The last day of Survival Arabic, my class of five walked through the streets with our teacher and talked to vendors in Arabic, just asking dumb stuff like, "How much is this?" and "What is the name of this?" Some of the vendors really got into it when they realized that we were learning Arabic, and they would quiz us on the names or colors of the things they were selling.
Egypt stuff
A couple Americans here have commented that the biggest culture shock is the McDonalds, and I think that the presence of stores and products that we can get in the US makes it seem deceptively Western here. Firstly, places that I think of as American or Western, I have heard described here as “international,” which belies a different orientation. Secondly, these restaurants and stores exist in a different context, and mean something culturally different here than they do back home. McDonalds is not a restaurant for rich people in the US, and their target audience may even be the lower economic classes. But in Egypt, if you buy American or “international” food, you pay international prices. I can get 2 falafel sandwiches on the street for 1.75-2LE (Egyptian Pounds), but I pay 20LE, 10 times more, for a McDonalds sandwich, which comes to about four American dollars. Now, given the price of the falafel, how much money do you think the falafel maker is making? He certainly doesn’t waste that money eating at McDonalds. I still feel confused by the mixture things here—there’s so much that I know I don’t understand.
I cover my hair sometimes, if I wake up feeling modest. I’ve heard that people here expect Americans to dress differently from themselves, and maybe not to be as nicely dressed as Egyptians would be at, say, a nice restaurant. Dressing up all the time is a strain for me, but Mom and I limited my wardrobe here to only decent looking clothes. When I cover my hair, I do it bandana-style; I never wrap my scarf under my chin or try to make it look like hijab (called hee-gab here, like “HE has the gift of GAB”) because I don’t want people to wonder if I’m Muslim. I’m not Muslim, and I’m not Egyptian, and that’s obvious because of my skin color and the style of clothes I wear and the way I carry myself. However, while I do my best to be respectful of culture and norms, I have no interest in assimilating. I’m an American in Egypt, and I don’t want to pretend to be otherwise. I’m interested in learning about everything here, and participating as much as possible, but I want people to know that I’m a foreigner, in every possible sense of the word.
Anyway, the variety in how people dress probably makes any style of scarf-tying that I employ ambiguously religious, even if my hair is sticking out. In a place like this where over 50% of women veil, variation is okay, and women will cover their hair in all sorts of different ways. Most of those covered will wrap hijab-style (under the chin, with one corner of the scarf hanging down the back), but even among that group, there are different ways of wrapping a hijab and different cloth and pin accessories that go along. Women in this country are pretty intense about their accessories, and a ton of women have this amazing, creative sense of color. A lot of the American girls feel like they’re dressing like schmucks, particularly on campus where most of our classmates come from very wealthy families. Unlike in Grinnell, there’s no “shabby chic” mentality, unless you count pre-ripped and –faded jeans. I don’t tell kids I meet here about my love for thrift stores; I’m afraid they’ll think I need their aid to stop wearing second-hand clothes. It’s been a little warmer this week, or I’m just acclimatized, but I’ve stopped wearing my long johns…. I do still wear a hoodie at night.
I think it’s true what they say about Egyptian hospitality. I met a girl here named Dena on Wednesday, and she said to let her know whenever I was free and that we would hang out. So on Friday (which is the Sabbath here, remember, and the work week starts on Sunday) we went to “City Stars,” (that’s what they call it in Arabic too, سيتي ستارز) the big mall here, and two American girls I know from the dorms came too. Dena steered us to the food court, and then as soon as I finished ordering, jumped in front of me and said, “Laura, go sit down.” I put up a small argument, but she was not to be deterred from paying for my food. She did the same for the other two, even strong-arming one of them into ordering at all. She was great at hosting us at the mall, and we all just walked around and looked at things.
My roommate moved in finally! She was spending time with her mom, but now she’s here and she’s great. Her name is Enas (sounds a little like Ines) and she’s from Egypt but she grew up in Kuwait. She’s really nice and friendly and we went to dinner (lunch for her) at 4:30 on Thursday on campus. I’ve heard three other Americans talking about bad situations with their non-American roommates, like the person talks too much or too little or is standoffish or asks if they can borrow/have all of the American girl’s stuff, and I have zero complaints about mine and a lot of good to say. Even though she doesn’t go to mosque, she says she’ll take me one of these weeks so I can see and experience Friday prayers. How generous!
Other stuff
Please notice the change in email. Since my AUC email is hosted in Egypt, it’s just easier to access than my Grinnell mail. You can email me for my cell phone number here, if you’d like to call me on your international calling card, since I get free incoming. I’m still trying to figure out an inexpensive way to call the US, because a five minute call will eat most of my minutes on the pay-as-you-go phone (or “mobile” in Egyptian English) that I bought.
Mom has told me to write more tactile descriptions, and I think I’ll try to work on that in my next post, which will be full of pictures. Also, I have a couple small adventures to descibe, including one at the pyramids! Hopefully, as the semester goes on, I'll be able to write more focused (and shorter) entries, but I'm still inundated with new sights and observations, and I think that's what you all are interested in reading at this point as well.
Also for those of you wondering, Chris and I have been together for a year today. I'm smiling.
I've had my first week of classes, and I've eaten more Egyptian food (kufta is amazing! And Tony, I’m looking for better shawarma, but so far it’s been eclipsed by the koshari, fiteer, and falafel sandwiches). I think I was one of several American students who didn't quite connect the dots that this would be like a regular school semester...so I didn't really bring a backpack or a cell phone. In Grinnell, I could get by without using my phone much. Here, in the big city, not so much. So I bought the cheapest phone possible, and I’ve been like a sketchy old man, going around to everyone who I’ve barely met and asking “nimrit telefoonik kam?” (نمرة تلفونك كام؟) I must describe my phone for you, because I love it. It has Arabic and English letters printed on the keys for texting, and it’s not a color phone but it has a color background, which I’m pretty sure is a color transparency in between the light source and the layer that the text appears on, and it looks like a tropical Caribbean isle with a sail boat in the foreground.
Every time something goes wrong here, I’ve been told, “Welcome to Egypt,” which is a phrase I’m getting sick of hearing for multiple reasons. One is that I’d just like to register for classes, please. Another reason is that it’s mostly ex-pats who say this, even students in my own program who’ve only been here as long as I have, and I’m not cool with the idea that people get jaded and decide that the defining characteristic of Egypt is that things don’t work here. I would much rather just be told to have patience. One exception to hearing “Welcome to Egypt” from old, white men is when people will shout it out on the street when they see obvious foreigners, when I'm assuming that's the one phrase they know in English. The other exception I've heard was the response I got when I asked two Egyptian students why trash cans on campus are usually found in pairs, one white and one green, and if the green one was for recycling. It was a mystery to them too.
School stuff
Campus is beautiful, like most of the things I encounter here, and classes have been good so far. There are a couple “campuses” separated by 1-2 blocks from each other. The “Greek” campus (no idea where the name comes from) houses the social sciences buildings and the library, as well as a big quad (bricked, grass isn’t big here) with lots of tables and chairs surrounded by the fortress of the academic buildings and completely divided from the street. This is the major hangout spot. People fill that space all day long, sometimes making it difficult for others to get through the throng of socializers to their social sciences classes. I like the library, although it is devoid of cushy chairs, and all three of us Grinnellians who are here this semester found each other in the library a couple days ago and made sure the others were doing well.
Me-stuff
The nearest Christian church is Catholic, so I’ve been there twice—once for a weekly service and once for Ash Wednesday. I really enjoyed it, and I already feel less ignorant about Catholicism. There’s a big contingent here from Notre Dame (one of whom is named John-Paul, who’s been here a semester already and shows us around sometimes) and so I go to church with them. They keep me straight and tell me when it’s okay to participate as a non-Catholic (e.g. receiving the ashes) and when it’s not (e.g. communion). And you thought my only new religious exposures would be to Islam!
I know I said that I wasn’t going to spend much time with Americans here, but I’ve met some Americans who are really great people and who I already hope to keep in contact with once I get back to the States. I guess you would say that it’s a “self-selecting pool” of study-abroad students because as the president of AUC told us at an orientation address, only 1% of American college students study abroad, and only 1% of those who do will go to the Middle East. And I think he said most of that 1% is at AUC. Additionally, I don’t want to spend time with a certain group of people because of an objectifying characteristic, like, “They’re Egyptian.” I’m getting to know study-abroads and full-time students alike, and I’m enjoying the company of people on both sides. My social strategy remains to force myself upon new people of all persuasions, and it has met with wild success. For example, I met an Egyptian girl in my Architecture class because she made the mistake of making eye contact with me and smiling, so down I sat next to her and by the end of class she was introducing me to her friends.
Arabic stuff
Last week I took a week-long intensive called “Survival Arabic,” which was really helpful. Things like how to order food or talk to cabbies. I’m really glad I took it, and I’m enrolled in an Egyptian Spoken Arabic class for this semester, which is going well too. I really enjoy the dumb language jokes that people learning the basics will make, and the pretend-sketchy conversations we have in class when all we learned on the first day was how to ask someone was if they were married and which floor they live on. You can get by a lot of the time in English. All the students here have to be fluent in English, and some of them know like three other languages in addition to English and Arabic, no exaggeration. Classes are all in English, and many vendors speak English. They like when you speak Arabic, though many don't understand the "universal" formal Arabic that is taught in American college classes. It took me about ten minutes to order flat bread with fig jelly on it the other day, because of the language barrier, but oh, was it worth it. The last day of Survival Arabic, my class of five walked through the streets with our teacher and talked to vendors in Arabic, just asking dumb stuff like, "How much is this?" and "What is the name of this?" Some of the vendors really got into it when they realized that we were learning Arabic, and they would quiz us on the names or colors of the things they were selling.
Egypt stuff
A couple Americans here have commented that the biggest culture shock is the McDonalds, and I think that the presence of stores and products that we can get in the US makes it seem deceptively Western here. Firstly, places that I think of as American or Western, I have heard described here as “international,” which belies a different orientation. Secondly, these restaurants and stores exist in a different context, and mean something culturally different here than they do back home. McDonalds is not a restaurant for rich people in the US, and their target audience may even be the lower economic classes. But in Egypt, if you buy American or “international” food, you pay international prices. I can get 2 falafel sandwiches on the street for 1.75-2LE (Egyptian Pounds), but I pay 20LE, 10 times more, for a McDonalds sandwich, which comes to about four American dollars. Now, given the price of the falafel, how much money do you think the falafel maker is making? He certainly doesn’t waste that money eating at McDonalds. I still feel confused by the mixture things here—there’s so much that I know I don’t understand.
I cover my hair sometimes, if I wake up feeling modest. I’ve heard that people here expect Americans to dress differently from themselves, and maybe not to be as nicely dressed as Egyptians would be at, say, a nice restaurant. Dressing up all the time is a strain for me, but Mom and I limited my wardrobe here to only decent looking clothes. When I cover my hair, I do it bandana-style; I never wrap my scarf under my chin or try to make it look like hijab (called hee-gab here, like “HE has the gift of GAB”) because I don’t want people to wonder if I’m Muslim. I’m not Muslim, and I’m not Egyptian, and that’s obvious because of my skin color and the style of clothes I wear and the way I carry myself. However, while I do my best to be respectful of culture and norms, I have no interest in assimilating. I’m an American in Egypt, and I don’t want to pretend to be otherwise. I’m interested in learning about everything here, and participating as much as possible, but I want people to know that I’m a foreigner, in every possible sense of the word.
Anyway, the variety in how people dress probably makes any style of scarf-tying that I employ ambiguously religious, even if my hair is sticking out. In a place like this where over 50% of women veil, variation is okay, and women will cover their hair in all sorts of different ways. Most of those covered will wrap hijab-style (under the chin, with one corner of the scarf hanging down the back), but even among that group, there are different ways of wrapping a hijab and different cloth and pin accessories that go along. Women in this country are pretty intense about their accessories, and a ton of women have this amazing, creative sense of color. A lot of the American girls feel like they’re dressing like schmucks, particularly on campus where most of our classmates come from very wealthy families. Unlike in Grinnell, there’s no “shabby chic” mentality, unless you count pre-ripped and –faded jeans. I don’t tell kids I meet here about my love for thrift stores; I’m afraid they’ll think I need their aid to stop wearing second-hand clothes. It’s been a little warmer this week, or I’m just acclimatized, but I’ve stopped wearing my long johns…. I do still wear a hoodie at night.
I think it’s true what they say about Egyptian hospitality. I met a girl here named Dena on Wednesday, and she said to let her know whenever I was free and that we would hang out. So on Friday (which is the Sabbath here, remember, and the work week starts on Sunday) we went to “City Stars,” (that’s what they call it in Arabic too, سيتي ستارز) the big mall here, and two American girls I know from the dorms came too. Dena steered us to the food court, and then as soon as I finished ordering, jumped in front of me and said, “Laura, go sit down.” I put up a small argument, but she was not to be deterred from paying for my food. She did the same for the other two, even strong-arming one of them into ordering at all. She was great at hosting us at the mall, and we all just walked around and looked at things.
My roommate moved in finally! She was spending time with her mom, but now she’s here and she’s great. Her name is Enas (sounds a little like Ines) and she’s from Egypt but she grew up in Kuwait. She’s really nice and friendly and we went to dinner (lunch for her) at 4:30 on Thursday on campus. I’ve heard three other Americans talking about bad situations with their non-American roommates, like the person talks too much or too little or is standoffish or asks if they can borrow/have all of the American girl’s stuff, and I have zero complaints about mine and a lot of good to say. Even though she doesn’t go to mosque, she says she’ll take me one of these weeks so I can see and experience Friday prayers. How generous!
Other stuff
Please notice the change in email. Since my AUC email is hosted in Egypt, it’s just easier to access than my Grinnell mail. You can email me for my cell phone number here, if you’d like to call me on your international calling card, since I get free incoming. I’m still trying to figure out an inexpensive way to call the US, because a five minute call will eat most of my minutes on the pay-as-you-go phone (or “mobile” in Egyptian English) that I bought.
Mom has told me to write more tactile descriptions, and I think I’ll try to work on that in my next post, which will be full of pictures. Also, I have a couple small adventures to descibe, including one at the pyramids! Hopefully, as the semester goes on, I'll be able to write more focused (and shorter) entries, but I'm still inundated with new sights and observations, and I think that's what you all are interested in reading at this point as well.
Also for those of you wondering, Chris and I have been together for a year today. I'm smiling.
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